Posts Tagged ‘Frank Kern’

Why There is So Much Social Pressure to Do Work You Love

Friday, September 24th, 2010

I promise to make sense of the sandwich soon, but first a thought about work, passion, and alienation.

The problem with doing a job you hate is worse than mere alienation or not self-actualizing, as most personal development gurus put it.  Doing a good job—but without a convincing display of enthusiasm—will get you fired.

In our hypercompetitive capitalist environment, you are competing with people who either love to do what you are doing for a living (even though you hate it) and/or can pretend to love the work more “authentically” than you. These happy-looking people work harder, longer, and don’t complain to management when their health benefits are taken away. Your job security is at risk if you don’t give a convincing display of loving your work, hence all the anxiety-driven, manic (tom peters!) search for one’s “true” calling. (more…)

Which Video of Me is More “Authentic”? On the Style of Authenticity

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Tuesday morning, after doing a Core Transformation session with a pro bono client, I got inspired to make a short video. I’m getting a FlipHD that I got birthday money for, and so I’ve been thinking about doing video blog posts for Beyond Growth. I was cramped for time today, but creatively inspired, so I thought I’d do an “authentic” video on the MacBook using iMovie while making an omelette for my breakfast. Below is the result, entitled, “Breakfast with Duff: Cultivating Inner Harmony vs. Inner Dominator Hierarchy.”

I have several questions for you once you’ve watched the video, so if you’d like, please watch the video above and then answer any of my questions in the comments.

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WARNING: Motivational Speaker Tony Robbins is Launching New Get-Rich-Quick Internet Scam

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Personal Development guru Tony Robbins is known for his infomercials in the 80′s advertising his “Personal Power” motivational audiotapes, as a “life coach to the rich and famous,” and his appearances in movies like Shallow Hal.

Robbins, who has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter, has recently released a couple of videos on his “training blog” interviewing internet marketers Frank Kern and John Reese. What most people watching these videos don’t realize is that they are highly-manipulative advertisements, almost certainly for an upcoming get-rich-quick-on-the-internet product–the field of expertise of both Reese and Kern. (8/30/2009–Confirmed: this is for a $67/month CD, DVD, and manual course called “The New Money Masters.” Also confirmed is that Irwin F. Kern (aka “Frank Kern”) was successfully sued by the FTC in 2003 for $634,222.45 for running an illegal chain marketing scheme on the internet called ”Instant Internet Empires.”) (Update 9/10/2009: From 1:00-1:20 in the first video, a new segment has been spliced in where Robbins mentions the product. This was NOT in the original version for the initial product launch, and no note has been included as to the change, thus attempting to rewrite history. The original videos and comments are still on hidden blog pages not accessible from the main http://tonyrobbinstraining.com, but two new pages have been added with the new, spliced videos. The original comments included many people asking what these videos were about, for there was no mention of a product.)

Creating hype before the launch of an information product is a cutting-edge sales tactic that Frank Kern and John Reese both promote in their products. Here’s how they do it:

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The Simulacrum of Self in the Quest for Authenticity

Monday, August 24th, 2009

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When I was looking up clips of Fight Club for my first blog post, I found an interesting related video on YouTube. In the clip below, the pick-up artist and personal development guru “Tyler Durden” is giving a speech about the importance of having an authentic identity.

“Tyler” starts off by talking about the liberation he has experienced ever since he decided to entirely stop caring about other human beings and unleash his inner asshole (he doesn’t put it in quite those terms, of course). He implies how this was a wonderful step forward towards becoming more authentic, and now teaches men to be authentic assholes just like him, for the purpose of having meaningless sexual conquests with HB’s (pickup lingo for “hot babes”). You too can become an authentic asshole by attending one of his “bootcamps”…yours now for only $2000! (more…)