From the 27th to the 29th of June, I was coerced (long and private story) into attending an overpriced workshop titled Millionaire Mind Intensive. Having seen enough examples both in print and online of self-help gurus hating poor people, I assumed this would be mind-numbingly similar.
It was much worse. As soon as I realized how insidious it was, I began taking notes, and here's a summary.
The event started off with a saccharine vibe, with the organizers asking everyone to dance to the music. This theme would continue through the three days, making the audience do activities together to (successfully) force a sense of community and get everyone to lower their guards.
The real content of the workshop then started off with us being asked to write down our negative beliefs about money, with the implication being that these beliefs are incorrect and they hold us back from being rich. Later in the workshop, we would be asked to repeat the opposites. It was some Law of Attraction bullshit.
They then went on to talk about how to build up passive income to a level that can sustain your life (if you think a little more about this, that's parasitic), and then had the audacity to say people aren't rich because they haven't put thought into how much money they need. And that poor people are just bad with managing money.
Then we were told about a pretty simple budgeting method, which would genuinely improve people's lives - it involves having separate accounts for money dedicated to different purposes. A few more tips followed for business owners and couples with shared finances, and how to get children into the habit of managing money, which were all reasonable. My only complaint here is that this was treated as a silver bullet for all monetary problems - there are some monetary problems you can't just budget your way out of. And when having less money makes it more important to be better at budgeting, the rich get away with the dumbest decisions while the poor get flogged for the slightest miscalculations. They then went back to blaming poor people because apparently everyone should be able to live on 55% of their income. It also pissed me off when they said "broke people think money is needed to pay for expenses, not for investment".
Then followed the most interesting part of the workshop. We were all asked to take out a sum of money, queue up in front of a volunteer holding a candle, and burn the money. The speaker did ask us to back off at the last second, but many in the audience then expressed that maybe being scared to burn their money meant that they were ruled by money. In a pleasant surprise, the speaker went against this sentiment, but the audience stuck to their belief.
The workshop ended with a few activities - breaking a live hunting arrow by holding the point against your throat and pushing the other end into a wall (I'm an engineer, this was safe, don't worry), chanting an emotional song, celebrating things we're proud of, all emotionally-charged activities designed to build a sense of community.
Everything then built up to a disgusting amount of upselling and "limited-time-offers", with the speaker at one point debating an attendee to buy a group of courses. Sure, technically she could have refused, but the fear of disappointing the community is huge. As far as I can tell, she did manage to leave the event without spending on things she was unsure about.
This end to the event made me realize why I heard of people attending multiple times. It is a fun event and when the learnings don't work, you say "I need a refresher". Most that attend multiple times though, it's a wonderful platform for them to sell their own courses.
Final Verdict
Victim-Blaming Statements: 28
Counts of Playing The Victim: 7
Number of Upsells: 21
Counts of Casual Sexism: I'll keep track next time
Money Wasted: None of my own