s

Occasionally there are family in the city you’re visiting Lucky me, this is my first meeting with Annie, Love Ya!  Both. Uncle Jim

On this job city views are from hotels, this is Orlando

Two of my favorite people on the planet, the Original Angelo Cataldo and my niece Stephanie.  Boston

Gaslight Club

The Scam

The Rock Hotel

Ram Rom Run

Father Son & Holy Ghost

Another Orlando view.

Denver, what a beautiful city.

Good friends are hard to find. Enjoyed knowing you!

Washington DC  All around the hotel is construction.

Gaslight Club

Sanibel Florida

Chapter One

“Mark we can’t keep spending like this.  That forty six inch television is a mistake.  We need to plan our spending for the things we want in our future.  Don’t you want kids?”

“Of course I do Ellen, why are you acting this way?  We’re far from broke; we still have all that money we got from our relatives at the wedding.  We can afford to buy things we need now.”

“We need a forty six inch television?  Mark we really need a new car; we really need a house of our own; we really need a lot of things but we just got married and we really can’t afford any of those things.”

“But Ellen!”

“If we got any of the things we really need, all the money from the wedding would be gone. Our salaries barely cover the rent and monthly expenses. We actually have about fifty dollars a month left over after all the bills.  If we don’t go out to dinner that month.”

“Ellen, it will all work out.  Next year this time we will both be making more money and have a lot left over. Besides, I heard an infomercial the other night that said we could easily learn how to make real money with real estate.”

“Are you crazy?  What do we know about real estate?”

“Nothing, but that’s the beauty of it. This company out of Fitchburg teaches people how to take advantage of the real estate market and make millions doing it.”

“So, why are they going to teach us? Or should I ask, how much is that going to cost us?”

“Now honey, don’t be like that.  Not everyone in the world is trying to cheat us out of money. They charge a reasonable fee for their classes and they have professional teachers all over the country.”

“Ellen, at least listen to Mr. Green Stalker, his seminar is on at twelve thirty tonight.  If you don’t like it we won’t do it.”

The Speaker, Sidney Green Stalker takes the stage to explain how he made over twenty one million dollars last year.

 “Folks anyone can do it, just follow our easy to learn instructions and we will have you making several thousand dollars a week in no time.”

 “Our students are making a fortune buying and selling real estate.”

• “We will show you affidavits attesting to so much money coming in you won’t believe it.”

The “infomercial” goes on for about a half hour and at the end both Ellen and Mark are convinced that they should at least try this free seminar to see what it’s all about. After all it’s free.

Mark called the number on their television screen and got their names added to the upcoming seminar.

Several weeks later the date for the seminar is here and Mark and Ellen attend.  The seminar is four hours long, with either a morning or afternoon session.  They choose the afternoon, and arrive right on time at 5:00 PM

“Even here we’re in line to be seated; at least it’s moving fast.  A group of young smartly dressed people were there to greet them.  Some of the greeters met them at the door and others were waiting at the tables to further direct them.

Mark and Ellen were seated about six rows back and in the middle of their row. The tables were long and narrow, with just enough room for an eight and a half by eleven inch pad of writing paper for notes, a pen and a drink of water or soda. Each table had eight set ups and the room was divided into two sections with fifteen tables in each section.  For a total of two hundred and forty seats in the room.

The first to be introduced to them were the young people who seated them.  They were introduced as the “Winning Team.” Each team member was a specialist in a specific area of Real Estate. Their speaker is a great guy and makes eye contact with each and every person in the room, almost as if he is speaking directly to each of them. 

At the end of the seminar they’re again in a line to leave, but first they must listen to a two minute recap by one of the Wining Team.  There are four winners and the line moves pretty fast, but they’re still there until eleven Pm.

The nice winner was so convincing, and of course he was right when he said “it would be a shame to end their training in the middle, so why not buy the next level of training, it is only four hundred and ninety five dollars.” So, of course they bought it, by credit card.  They are making the nice “Winner” happy and proud of them. 

All the way home, to Milton MA, they discuss the seminar and how nice everyone was and how smart they are to know so much about real estate.  The future seminar is only two weeks away and they’re impatient for it to arrive.

The day of the extended seminar arrives and they nervously drive into the Boston hotel where it’s held.  They’ve both taken “a vacation day” for the Friday of the seminar.  The seminar people couldn’t be nicer. They shake their hands and clap them on the back, all the while telling them how proud and happy they are to welcome them back. Mark and Ellen are convinced they have made a great decision and happily chat to everyone who will listen. 

The speaker begins with how smart Mark and Ellen, and everyone else in the room, are for attending this seminar and insuring themselves a successful future by following the direction of this company’s teachings. 

This speaker is almost hypnotic in his delivery. He is very careful to speak slowly and distinctly, looking everyone in the eye and speaking directly to each of them. Everything he says is true and makes perfect sense.

They break for a morning snack the first day, Friday, and get to talk to other people at the seminar.  Everyone is so nice and they know so much about real estate that Mark and Ellen are convinced again they did the right thing.  During the first day’s lunch break they talk to more attendees like themselves and everyone is bubbling over with enthusiasm. They’re all going to be rich. They can’t miss with all this training they will have more knowledge than lawyers have about real estate. 

The afternoon session is a little more sobering. The speaker told them how much the future classes will cost and it is a lot of money, thousands of dollars in fact for each category.

But, they decide it’s worth it to be finished with punching a time clock and listening to a petty tyrant, order them around. In the future they will be their own bosses.  By the end of the first day they’re happy again.  They’re not thinking about how much the classes cost, but how much they will make the first month.  This is a ploy by high powered salesmen.  They get the person they are conning to think about total success, rather than possible costs

Friday night the attendees at the seminar are mostly convinced that the seminar people know how to make them rich.   So, of course they listen closely and want to do whatever they’re told to do to be rich. 

This is almost mass hypnosis, they are told to be happy, smile and they will be rich.  They are told “listen and do what I tell you” and they will be rich.  They are told don’t question the instructions, “if you follow what I say to do you will be rich.” It almost becomes a litany.  “Do what I say and you will be rich.” “Do what I say and you will be rich.”

The poor people at the seminar don’t have a chance.  They’re sitting in a room with a hundred other people like themselves, all hoping to get rich.  The seminar people all speak the same language, and that language is “convincing you out of your money.”

Saturday’s line is “Listen to what I say and do it.”

Saturday, they give the seminar attendees a single page with a script on it that they’re suppose to read off to their bank, asking for more credit and a lower interest rate.  All day long the speaker is hammering away at them to “listen to what I say and do it.”

Just before the lunch break the speaker told them that they should make the calls to their credit card companies over lunch and come back with who got the highest increase. The highest will get a prize.    When they got back it was no contest, a couple from Connecticut got a fifty thousand dollar increase on one of their credit cards. No one could compete with that.  They were given a nice nylon carrying bag, with the name of the company on it.

Saturday’s second line is “don’t listen to anyone else; we know what we’re talking about.”

The attendees are shown slides of happy people in front of a “Clean” looking home and told;

“Those people are former students who took our advanced classes. They paid less than $500.00 for that house and were able to sell it three days later for $75,000.00. That’s $24,833.34 a day profit. 

The speaker asked;

“Would you like to earn 24,833.34 for a days work?”

Of course every head in the room is nodding yes.

Next, they are shown another similar deal with the same profit level and the same questions about making thousands of dollars a day. At this point the speaker has every head in the room nodding yes to his questions.

For the next two hours the attendees are bombarded with five more deals all almost exactly the same as the first, thousands of dollars profit every day. Now that they are saying yes to every question the speaker asks the audience;

“How will you spend 24,833.34 each day you work? I bet you won’t need to work too many days a week to pay your bills and a “Little” left over for those nice things you’ve been wishing for?”

After the morning full of making thousands of dollars profit, the speaker has the audience spending the profits in every way imaginable.  The speaker spends more time getting his listeners to imagine how to spend the money, without them realizing they still don’t know how to make the money in the first place.

“After all our students have been making millions following our instructions over the years. Listen to their affidavits.”

The fact is what the seminar people are showing them are not affidavits, but advertising copy written by the advertising department of the Conrad Group out of Fitchburg MA.

Of the thousands of people this Conrad Group has taught only a handful have actually made money. This handful would have made the money anyway because they’re smart, industrious and are what is known as “self starters” who can get out there and buy cheap and sell high all on their own. 

All day the speaker is exhorting them to ignore their relatives who will try to convince them against the classes and only listen to the seminar group.  The Conrad Group seminar people are the only ones who know what they’re talking about! 

If you say this over and over, you almost could convince yourself.

And lastly Sunday’s line is “Buy future classes and you will be rich.” Buy future classes and you will be rich.”

Unfortunately Mark and Ellen are simple, hardworking people who don’t know they’ve been “hypnotized” out of their money. They can’t wait to sign up and the selling “helper” keeps selling and they keep buying until they’ve bought it all.  Here, buying it all means spending more than seventy thousand dollars. The only ones getting rich at these seminars are the seminar people.

Chapter Two

Angelo Cataldo, one of the owners of the Gaslight Club in Boston, entered his secretary’s office just after she arrived for the day.

“Good morning Donna, how are you today?”

“Good morning Angie, I feel just great.”

“Is there anything special on today’s schedule?  I haven’t seen Joe Russo yet, I assume he will be in shortly.”

“Angie, I just walked by Joe, who greeted me as he consulted with Frank our cook. 

We have the Calderones coming in for Paul’s birthday party at lunch today. Also, tonight there’s an anniversary dinner at 7:30 in the dining room for a party of six and they’ve requested Alex to sing for them.”

“That sounds great; it should be a busy day.”

“Oh, by the way, I got a call from Officer Jake O’Fallon of the Boston Police.  He said to remind you about the hearing today on those gamblers you threw out last month.  Also, the Boston Globe is renewing your advertisement for the Cataldo Detective Agency and M.A.B Securities Service for this upcoming quarter.

M.A.B. Securities is the securities division of the Cataldo Detective Agency.  It stands for Marilyn Brakeman’s, Angelo Cataldo’s and Bobby Long’s security Company.  They do body guard work for local celebrities in Boston.

“Did the Globe mention any changes needed in the current ad or is it ok as it is?”

“It’s fine just as it is”

“Great I’ll be in my office returning calls if you need me.”

“By the way Paul Calderone wants to schedule a meeting with you and his family as soon as possible.  He said it has something to do with his son Mark.”

As Donna spoke Joe Russo, the manager of the Gaslight Club appeared in the doorway of Donna’s office and said;

“Good Morning Angie how are you doing today?”

Turning to Joe, Angie said;

“Great Joe, I’m heading to my office is there anything you want to go over with me?”

As they left Donna’s office Joe said;

“Judith Calderone ordered one of our special Rum Cakes for Paul’s Birthday party today.  That’s the only special item today.  Everything else is standard menu items. Tonight a party of six is scheduled for an anniversary party and they each want a boiled lobster for their meal, so I’ve ordered them to be delivered at 4:00 PM today.”

“Joe, that sounds good.  Paul wants a family meeting with me, something about Mark.  I’m calling Paul now to find out when.”

“If he needs anything from me, let me know.”

At this point Angie and Joe arrived at Angie’s office. As they entered, Angie went behind his desk and sat, while Joe sat across from the desk in the leather client couch Angie has along the wall. Picking up the phone Angie dialed Paul Calderone’s number.  Paul’s secretary answered and asked Angie to hold as she put Paul on the phone.

“Hello Angie, how’re you doing?”

“Good Paul, how is your wife Judy?”

“She’s well Angie.”

“Donna tells me you need a meeting with me, when would you like to sit down?”

“We will be in the club for lunch today around 12:30 maybe anytime after 1:30 today, that should give us time to finish our lunch. We have a problem, Mark bought some real estate classes and spent a lot of money and we want to see if we can get his money back.”

“Sure Paul, I’ll see you around 2 PM.”

A short time later, Joe Russo, left Angie on the phone as he went down to the first floor bar to let in the now arriving employees for today’ shifts. The club opens for lunch at 11:30 AM, but the employees arrive at different times depending on what they have to prepare for the day’s business.  This night club is a very unique operation. During the day they have a regular busy luncheon business, but at night the Dixieland followers come out and the place takes on a very different atmosphere since this group comes in from the suburbs to swing with the Dixieland Band. 

The club has two owners, Robert Cimino, the original owner and his partner, Angie Cataldo. Robert has a wholesale meat company he runs from an office about two blocks away from the club in the “meat market” district of Boston.  Angie on the other hand, is a new owner, he started off running the club for Robert and when a group of thugs attempted to take over, he and a local group of Police, FBI and State Police fought them off and in gratitude Robert sold Angie half interest for a very nominal fee. After all if Angie would risk his life to defend the club Robert doesn’t want him to get away.

Robert is in his meat company office during the day, but at night he can be found greeting customers at the lounge in the club.  At night Angie moves his office from the fourth floor of the club to a group of tables in the corner of the first floor so he can enjoy the Dixieland Music and talk to perspective agency clients in a swinging and relaxed atmosphere.

A few years earlier a notorious incident brought Angie a lot of favorable press for his ability to help people out of legal and emotional problems.  This led to Angie getting his Private Investigator’s license and Robert insisted that Angie have his office in the club. This way Angie is around all the time and running two businesses.  The detective agency has grown into two distinct operations. First there is the direct detective agency Angie handles day to day. Next is the Security Division which supplies local celebrities with body guards when necessary to protect them from over zealous fans, news people and others that might want to disrupt their lives.  The second part of the operations is run by Marilyn Brakeman, Angie’s girl friend and the daughter of Angie’s good friend Congressman Edward Brakeman, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the State of Massachusetts.  Actually, right now Angie is running both businesses because Marilyn is back at college getting her law degree during the day.

Chapter Three

At the luncheon meeting with the Calderones, Paul, Judy and Mark and Kelly, Paul did the talking at first and explained that Mark and Kelly got taken in by a fast talking Realty scam artist.  They attended a few seminars and little by little the company roped them in for $75,000.00 in classes.

Judith tearfully recounted how their son Mark got taken in a “get rich quick” seminar, where they bought a package of real estate classes from the Conrad Group.  Mark used all of his and Kelly’s savings and wedding money on the purchase, thinking he could make those quick millions. Since I’m a good friend of Mark’s parents and I’m the principle investigator of our agency, the Calderone’s came to me with their problems and want me to get their son’s money back, for a finder’s fee of course.  Because Mark was embarrassed he didn’t tell anyone what he had done.  When he finally did admit what had happened, it was after his immediate legal remedies had expired and he was stuck.  Now he and his wife are remorseful and want the money back. I told them I would look into it and let them know what can be done if anything. Before we parted I gave them a card with my secretary Donna’s name and number on it and suggested that if there is any news Donna will have it.

Donna will be the contact for the Calderones during this investigation. 

Donna and I work together very closely on these cases. I depend on her ability to research information that I need. Donna and I have offices on the fourth floor of the club, but there is too much paper work and files for one single office, so we each have separate offices. Also, Donna is Joe Russo’s secretary and as such needs space and time to deal with Joe’s needs as the manager of the Gaslight Club.

This investigation for the Calderones is going to require me to go undercover working for the Conrad Group.  The way the Conrad Group operates; they travel all over the United States giving instructions on how to “Get Rich Quick” in seminars.  In each city they sell future training classes.  When a student buys one of these classes, he can pick and choose what city to train in and what dates he wants the classes.  The only limitation is the student has six months to register for the first class or lose his money.  The classes are also held in the Boston area several times a year because the company is headquartered in Fitchburg, Mass. Which is right outside Boston, and the company has a very extensive local campus with classrooms and a student cafeteria. Everything sounds and looks reasonable.  The classes are sold as very detailed examinations of the way Real Estate is transacted and the legal way a sharp individual can make extra money in between all the maneuvering in these transactions. 

Not knowing much about real estate transactions myself, I’m very interested in the intricate details and willing to learn.   I made sure I purchased four different books on real estate transactions each one recommended by a local Realtor friend of mine. 

Our Client thinks they’re doing something illegal and wants me to prove it.  Hopefully once I prove they are illegal my client can get his son’s money back.  At this point I’m not promising anything. This investigation sounds like it might require a lawyer to unravel what’s really going on.  However, already there are things that sound “Not Right.” One of these fishy circumstances is they don’t let employees that deal directly with the students take any of the classes we sell.  Their excuse is we will inadvertently give away details that the public will capitalize on and not need to take the full classes.  Personally, I would think we could sell the product better if we understood it.  But, this total ignorance of the company product is pretty fishy to me.

Chapter Four

Captain Robert (Bobbie) Long, a much decorated Massachusetts State Police Trooper is on the phone talking to his friend Marilyn Brakeman who called him to recruit a couple of Bobbies friends, local State Troopers looking for over time to do some body guard work for a local news personality working out of the Boston CGS affiliate station.

“Are we on for Saturday night with Angie at the club for dinner Marilyn?”

“Sure Bobbie, Angie and I are looking forward to it.”

“Great, so Sean and Kevin are working this week end for Roger Anderson of CGS?”

“Yes, Angie said CGS wants them to wear business suits this time and blend in with the crowd.”

“Ok, I’ll tell them. Regards to Angie and I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Wonderful Bobbie see you then.”

As they end the call Bobbie clicked the disconnect button to make another call and called Sean and Kevin to make sure they put this new job on their schedules.

After hanging up with Bobbie Long, Marilyn went off to her next class at the university and her busy schedule as a law student.

Chapter Five

Colorado Springs is a great little airport.  We just arrived from Boston and are heading to the Sherry Town Towers Hotel in Downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado.   We’re a seminar crew here in Colorado Springs to teach the locals how to make millions in real estate. Once in the hotel I find my room and open a suitcase.  Since we’ll be here only overnight, I don’t feel the need to unpack.  After washing my face, I took a look from the tiny balcony at the surrounding countryside.  The room is on the third floor and my view from the balcony is pretty good.  Most of what I can see is the shopping center.  But, to the right from the balcony I can see a unique mountain peak. There is just no other way to describe it, other than a Peak.  Then, not knowing Colorado at all, I guessed it must be Pikes Peak and a quick call to the front desk verifies it for me.  Apparently I’m a geographical wizard, I can look at something and just know what it is, or maybe, I read about Colorado Springs on the airplane, I’m not sure which applies here.

My name is Angelo Cataldo, but here with this crew I’m known as Robert Long, from Dorchester Mass. I’m working undercover for the Cataldo Long detective agency to get a client’s money back. I’m using the name Robert Long, because it’s a common name and the real Bobby Long is a good friend who could not be here. Robert Long is a Captain with the Massachusetts State Police, currently on active duty.  Unfortunately for me the name Angelo Cataldo is infamous in Boston as a hotshot local Private Detective, hence the undercover name. Bobby provided the information for my cover identity on this job. 

In order for me to be here in Colorado Springs I had to get hired and work at the company to travel with them. I expect this investigation will take a few months at least and a lot of travel for me.  After a week of classroom training this is my first foray on the road.

New employees are expected to:

Travel fifty weeks a year.   They are called “Road Travelers”

At first the new employees, as part of their training, are expected to travel one week with each group.  Either work the Monday through Friday schedule or the Thursday through Monday schedule. 

These employees, me included, are expected to work with the assigned speaker and back up everything he says in the seminar.

Our primary job is to sell the attending students more classroom time.

The company has a schedule of classes which cost, from Ten Thousand dollars for three classes to seventy Five Thousand dollars for the full package, which includes a “Personal Trainer”  that comes out to the students city and works “one on one” with them to practice what they’re being taught. The big expense is airfare and hotel for the trainer, since he will stay a week while he is training the student.  They also walk the student though preparing and buying real estate very cheaply. 

The training program the company put me through made this Personal Trainer sound like a good idea.

In this company some words are used to bring up a special response.  The word “Mentor” in the dictionary means “a wise and trusted person”. Usually the word mentor is used in the context of education, where someone, a wise and trusted person, (usually a professor or upper classman) tutors the new students. This company spends a lot of time and effort to promote the concept of “Mentor” because they sell a “Mentor” for one week’s time with any purchase of classes that cost $34,000.00 or more. Every speaker is expected to say the word Mentor hundreds of times during his seminars. 

This is a level of instructions the company wants the students to aspire to. The speakers start out telling the potential students that the company provides “Mentors” to further the student’s education.  The speakers say “The mentor is the thing” over and over until the students actually think it. Of course no one says how much this Mentor costs until later when the speaker has them spending the profits they haven’t made yet.

The company makes several points in their training to potential employees like me. All employees must have a great attitude, be happy, and project a positive attitude, which leads to success.

All employees must follow the company line exactly, word for word. Which they hope will lead to success.

All employees only use the names of immediate superiors in talking to students.  We are specifically told never to mention the name of the company owner.

They actually don’t want new employees like me to talk to students at all. The company is afraid I will say something out of line and they’ll lose a sale.  This is another sign something is wrong with this company. You have to ask yourself, “What’s really wrong with this owner, that the public should not hear his name?” Aside from the fact that he was arrested and did time for “Armed Robbery of a liquor store thirty years ago in Seattle Washington” a fact he is very proud of and will tell everyone who will listen to him talk.  Inevitably he will also tell you he paid his debt to society and has come a long way from there.

Talk is his specialty, he is one of the countries best speakers about “Get Rich Quick Schemes” and sells millions of dollars worth of seminars every year. 

Now let me say right here that he should not be confused with the many legitimate speakers around the country that may have similar backgrounds, or educations or similar speeches. This guy Conrad is very successful and at this moment I don’t know anything bad about him yet. 

In fact Bobby provided the arrest record and the guy has not been in trouble since that earlier time.   

All employees are to use the Post Office Box addresses rather than any physical address for any reason.  This stops students from coming to the classes uninvited.

Some of these rules are very curious but not criminal. The seminars we conduct use different names so that someone who bought one of the Conrad classes will also buy one of our classes without realizing they are the same company. Some of our Company names are, Overnight Riches, Work Smarter not Harder, Millions overnight, and lastly, “If I could do it so can you, Make Millions with no effort.”  

The company stressed that we do things together and every crew has a manager that runs everything. The speaker is the public face of our crew, but, the speaker is subordinate to the manager. The speaker’s job is to convince the students to buy from us, but the manager tells the speaker when to talk and when to become forceful.

There are times when the speaker is expected to yell at the audience and demean them.  To shame them into buying our classes, by whatever means possible. There are two possible configurations for the seminars we give. 

The first is a seminar designed to get the students to buy another, more detailed class later. The company does several newspaper advertisements and at least two “Infomercials” just before the live seminars.  At this point the people, they are not students yet, don’t pay anything to be in the room.  It is the speaker’s job to get these people to become students by buying the next class, which usually is a three day seminar designed to get them to buy future, more expensive instructions.

The company keeps control on all this by having the speaker prepare his three day seminar, word for word,  deliver it on live tape and present it to the company for approval before it is ever delivered in front of an audience.

Once these speeches are approved they are put on tape and the speaker has a tape and visual cue cards he uses to give his entire speech to the seminar audience. The speaker also has a slide projector to present photos and specially prepared graphics to emphasize his statements. 

The schedule for these primary seminars is simply, arrive at a location on Monday and prepare the first hall for the seminar.  The students are allowed in at ten AM and stay for two hours until a noon lunch, then back at one until six PM to close for the day. Now the crew packs up and moves to another location, usually ten or more mile away, to set up and prepare for the next day’s seminar.  All in all there are three such seminars, each about seven hours long after which refreshments are served and the attendees are given the hard sell for more classes. These one day seminars are given on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  The crew travels on Monday and Friday.  Actually, the company likes to get us in the air away from the last city on Thursday Night, the “Red Eye” because it is cheaper and they don’t have to pay for a hotel that last night. 

In our little crew the speaker is Mark Poleman, a good speaker and generally nice guy. Then there is the manager Fabio DeStefano next is his second in command, Dannielle Jannes, who is the female boss on the trip and lastly there is Fred Leoda who is the manager’s shadow. Fred does and says everything the Manager does and says. The last but not least is Bobby Long, the new road traveler, me. When we arrived in Colorado Springs, Fabio rented the van at the airport, and we loaded all the equipment and ourselves on board for the trip. The plan is to move from Colorado Springs into Westminster Denver, then lastly to Aurora Denver.  In the Company we, the crew that leaves on Monday and returns on Friday, are known as the “Primary Contacts”.  The company has televised Infomercials that are run in our next targeted area two weeks before we arrive.  Then the Primary Contacts are first in direct contact with the students. 

The Primary Contacts use vans to travel within the city they are visiting because they move around to at least three different hotels and sometimes as many as three different cities as well. 

Well at this first hotel, nobody told me what to expect and after I dropped my bags in the room I came down to see what the plan was.  Apparently, what I was to expect is the crew’s plan to lose the new guy.  I got down in the lobby less than fifteen minutes after we arrived and they had already left according to the doorman.   Worse, still they took the van and there were no cheap restaurants close by. After a little grumbling, I went back to the room and ordered a sandwich from room service for eighteen dollars, and resenting the hell out of the crew for leaving me to the clutches of Room Service. The cokes are three dollars each from room service.  Later that night I decided I would hit the hotel restaurant and have something there.  When I got to the restaurant I found the rest of the crew having beers together and they ignored me as I entered the restaurant, so I took a table away from them and ordered my dinner and a beer. I later learned this was not a typical crew. Usually the manager made sure his entire crew was constantly accounted for because the room we would later use must be set up by us.  This crew left everything to someone else. The room was setup by the hotel staff and we spent the entire first seminar rearranging the back tables and the equipment, which we brought, like the sound system and the overhead projector.

By this time I’m thinking I must have used the wrong deodorant of something. No one said a word to me either then or later. Only the Speaker, Mark Poleman had the class to acknowledge my presence, the others were so stupid they didn’t even nod in my direction.

This company really has a very complicated setup here. This crew is called the Primer Contacts, because we hold a seminar for people who don’t pay anything to be here.  It’s our job to convince them to buy the next level class.  To do this we set the room up in such a way that for the attendees to leave at the end of the two classes we hold they have to move through a gauntlet of tables we set up to quiz them as they go by, hoping to convince them to buy the next class, which is usually Four Hundred and Ninety Five dollars. We remind them that they learned some very good real estate tips from our speaker and that they will learn a lot more if they go to the next class.  Remember, this is after the speaker worked them for several hours, first teaching them some simple Real Estate tidbits like the one below, and then a little arm twisting to make our pitch sound more plausible. 

Tidbit:  A way to get good tenants into a rental property schedule several people all at the same time to see the rental.  Get their current address and tell them you will get in touch with who got the rental.  Next, show up at each ones door and get inside to talk about their application. Once you get inside the apartment you can see if the tenant is clean and takes care of the landlords property from the condition of the apartment.  Now either tell them I’m sorry we rented it to someone else, or congratulate them on getting the apartment.

The truth is I never saw a crew less capable of selling people anything. The crew from the manager on down is rude to the students.  They actually insult the attendees at every turn.

Pointing out how smart they are if they do and dumb if they don’t follow the instructions exactly.

The assistant manager has a problem talking to people, from the first, when we were registering the students, she would tell them exactly how stupid they were to approach us early since the signs say a certain time and it obviously was not that time yet. She would literally chase them away from the registration desk until exactly the time stated on the signs and not a second before.  She had no problem yelling at everyone there including me and the manager.   

On this crew Dannielle is the typical girlfriend boss. She tells everyone including the manager what to do. You can almost see her reach down and grab Fabio by his zipper as she leads him away. Fabio just follows and doesn’t say a word. The fact is we’re lucky this setup works without the crew needing any brains.  This crew couldn’t sell free ten dollar bills to starving people. People are buying into this because the speaker convinces them it’s a cheap way to make money. A franchise costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and this is only five hundred dollars.  The students don’t know yet that the real classes cost thousands more. 

I later learned that most Primary contact crews were not like the one I worked with. Some are actually intelligently run. Also, the company rule about not dating coworkers is followed by most other workers; at least people dating are not put on the same road crew, like this first one.

The training process has me training with this group first, called the “Primary Contacts” because they get some money out of the people and teach them some real estate tricks. We spent five days in Colorado, first in Colorado Springs then moving on to Westminster in Denver, and lastly to Aurora in Denver.  Then we flew out of Denver airport on Thursday.

Dallas the hotel view.

The Rock Hotel

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