#eventscam

I was asked by a friend to work at one of these events while they were short staffed. These guys are the worst sort of people. The whole day consisted of working innocent people up into a frenzy and then pushing expensive (>$5000) products on them once they were in a suggestible state.

Everyone that went into their 'Property Investor Summit' had to sign a confidentiality agreement, though because I was a late hire they didn't ask me.

The 'summit' started at about 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday. They kept the doors to the main area closed while they counted the number of people waiting outside. When they knew how many people had turned up, they removed the excess chairs to give the impression of a 'sellout event'. Sounds pretty tame, though it got much worse.

There was a 'VIP' area, which was just marked with red tape on the floor at the front and center of the stage. The people that got to sit in this area had paid ~$40 for the privilege of being sold to, plus a DVD full of advertising.

Once everyone had sat down, the event began with a 'celebrity' property investor, Steve McKnight, talking about wealth. Except he didn't just talk about wealth. He talked about your feelings about wealth. He made people close their eyes and meditate on how it would feel to have all that wealth while he played music. He talked about how it's right to want all this wealth because it's about helping your family. It's about stopping your family from suffering because you don't have enough money. He flashed up some wealth related catch phrases and got people to repeat them back to him, he talked about personal empowerment and people just-like-you who have achieved so many great things. This went on for just over an hour.

A little way into the presentation the other hires and myself were taken out the back to talk about 'selling'. We were given the details of the product, and given a run through of the selling process. It was disgraceful. The $5000 'property apprenticeship' had a 24 hour cooling off period. 24 hours. These people didn't even have enough time to come down from their 'guaranteed wealth' high before they had a chance to get any money back.

When I asked the organisers whether 24 hours is enough time for this, my question was brushed off with a rubbish explanation about how it's OK because people 'don't try to get their money back'.

When we returned to the presentation room, the property guru, Steve McKnight, was talking about investments, and flashing up some testimonials for people whose lives had changed. Then he went through all the values of his product - The property apprenticeship. Arbitrarily assigning made-up dollar values to the services within. The final figure was $20 000. "$20 000!" he said, "Isn't that a small price to pay compared to how much you'll earn!". Then he took off more than half. "Because I believe in all of you, and I want to see you succeed, I'm going to give it to you for $9000!".

But he wasn't done, he said "Actually…. If you buy it today, it's yours for $4990!". He went on to justify the price some more, saying things like "I could've made this free, but then you wouldn't value it, the reason it's this price is so that you understand how valuable it is". Unbelievably, he followed up with "Do you think I need the money?"

His last incentive was that the first 25 people to join the life changing apprenticeship will get a DVD and book pack. I saw this pack, the book and DVD were both unrelated to property investing and very related to Global1s other speakers - the first 25 people got some more advertising.

As soon as he was done people were falling over themselves to get down to the back of the room to get signed up. I emphasized to those that came to me that there is only a 24 hour cooling off period, and that if they decide to pay by direct deposit they can go home and think about it before transferring the money. This approach almost worked with one lady who didn't have enough money on her credit card and needed to ask her husband, who had to work that day, to transfer more money to it.

The lady was anxious to put down her details before she missed the opportunity to hand over $4990. One of the regular Global1 staff heard this going on and informed her that if she didn't pay by credit card, she wouldn't get the 'first 25' benefit. When she realised she would miss out on the 'fantastic book and dvd pack' she decided "I can pay today, I can pay today'.

The next session was by Rowan Burn of Market First. More of the same, talked for 2 hours about ambiguous property concepts without any real detail, until it came down to joining his program. We were taken out the back again to learn about how to sell this product, and I was happy to see that the cooling off period was 90 days, and the value of the product was $3000.

Then we learned that the membership is actually free, and is talked up to be an expensive product until he 'decides' to hand out free membership vouchers to everyone in attendance. The trick here is that everyone who puts down their details for the free membership gets an one on one appointment with one of his sales reps in the following days. In this session they're sold a higher level membership for around $5000. They said back stage that their conversion rate is about 33%.

I felt terrible about the entire day, though I still got paid for it, so now I'm trying to alleviate some of that guilt by writing about my experience here. I don't want other people to go along to these events unprepared. If you do decide to attend a Global1 event, understand that you are there to be sold to, understand that they will try to make you feel a certain way to get you in the mood to buy. They'll use music, meditation, repetition, parroting, catch phrases, seating arrangements so that you'll buy their expensive products. Most of the event wouldn't be so bad, if they weren't rushing you into purchasing a product you might not be able to afford, without the opportunity to back out later on.