Charlene Afremow & Stewart Esposito / Mind Dynamics December 1970 / est October 1971
computeruser
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While Patrick and Everett were mapping plans to bring Mind Dynamics into the
Patrick empire, an energetic red-headed housewife named Charlene Afremow was
in the process of divorcing her husband and moving herself and two young
sons from a Chicago suburb to the San Francisco area. A few years earlier
Afremow had scraped together $5,000 to become a local Holiday Magic
distributor, eventually rising to the top of the pyramid in the Chicago
region. From there she eagerly accepted yet another promotion to the
company's main headquarters in San Rafael, a few miles north of the Golden
Gate Bridge in Marin County.
In California, Afremow found herself falling under the spell of Alexander
Everett. He mesmerized her with his ideas about the amazing untapped powers
of the brain that Mind Dynamics could help unlock. After learning the
program, Afremow eagerly agreed to become a Mind Dynamics instructor, paying
Everett $1,000 for a two week training course that would enable her to teach
the same course to others. One of Everett's other students was a former East
Coast life insurance salesman named Stewart Esposito, who had already become
one of Patrick's Holiday Magic distributors. At the end of the course,
Afremow was rewarded with a Mind Dynamics franchise of her own in Marin
County. Esposito returned to the East Coast, where he began selling the
franchises around New York and Boston. Before long both Afremow and Esposito
would play major roles in the mind-expanding empire built by Werner Erhard.
Erhard started out as one of Charlene Afremow's students, enrolling in the
second Mind Dynamics course she taught at San Rafael's Holiday Inn in
December 1970. Erhard sat in the second row, hanging on every word Afremow
uttered while intently studying her gestures and body language as she led
the class through the mental exercises and long lectures that constituted
the Mind Dynamics program. She had a feeling the man with the handsome face
and dazzling smile somehow was destined to become one of her star pupils.
Erhard wanted to learn as much as he could about Mind Dynamics and the way
in which the program was marketed. After completing Afremow's two-weekend
course, he began showing up at smaller follow-up workshops she conducted out
of her home in San Rafael. One of Afremow's assistants led Mind Dynamics
sessions for young children, and Erhard eagerly enrolled his two young
daughters, Celeste and Adair, in the program. Afremow was impressed with
Erhard's enthusiasm; after all, she had put her own two young sons through
Mind Dynamics.
Erhard never failed to ooze plenty of sweet charm around Afremow. He was
always eager to compliment her, to tell her how much he admired the work she
was doing and how he so much wanted to learn everything he could from her.
Afremow was flattered by Erhard's attention and noticed that he had even
begun showing some outward signs of the kind of transformation promised by
Mind Dynamics. An incessant cigarette smoker, Erhard announced to Afremow he
had quit smoking and also had appeared to lose some excess weight. But
Afremow noticed other quirky habits about Erhard that puzzled her about him.
He never drove himself anywhere, but instead relied on one of his attractive
female assistants from the book business to do the driving. To Afremow, they
seemed like more than just dutiful employees. They worshiped Werner Erhard,
hanging on to his every word and always quick to carry out any little order
he barked at them. At first, Afremow couldn't understand why they were so
devoted. Yet she had to admit there was something very appealing about the
man. She sensed in him a raw, magnetic power that he held over people, but a
power that could be harnessed to do good for others. She wondered whether
her own destiny might intersect with his.
In January 1971, with Afremow's sponsorship, Erhard paid his $1,000 training
fee to Everett and was given the Mind Dynamics San Francisco franchise. He
taught his first class a month later.
Erhard filled a room at the Holiday Inn near Fisherman's Wharf with
thirty-two students, two of whom would come to play major roles in his
burgeoning career. Gonneke Spits, an attractive and strong willed native of
Amsterdam, had first come to work for Erhard at Parents in 1966 and remained
with him ever since. Laurel Scheaf, a statuesque former schoolteacher with
short brown hair, joined Erhard's door-to-door staff about a year later. Now
Erhard's "girls" were ready to take on their next assignment by filling up
seats at his Mind Dynamics classes and recruiting others into the course.
Erhard wasted no time putting Afremow's Mind Dynamics recruiting concepts to
work for himself. He began by hosting "guest seminars" in the homes of some
of his employees. People who had already taken the Mind Dynamics course were
invited to bring guests, who listened while the "graduates" praised the
course. Afterward, the guests were treated to a far more aggressive sales
pitch for the next monthly Mind Dynamics session Erhard was leading. At the
end of the guest seminar, while Erhard chatted in the living room with some
of his graduates, Gonneke Spits or Laurel Scheaf took up their posts in the
bedroom, pressuring the new students into signing up for the $200 course.
While William Penn Patrick's pyramid scheme spread Mind Dynamics around the
country, no one was more successful at selling the program than Werner
Erhard. Though most sessions attracted twenty or thirty students, Erhard was
filling his own classes with sixty to a hundred people. As the course became
more widely known, Erhard began renting out hotel -conference rooms, where
he delivered free introductory lectures that always ended with the same
high-pressure sales pitch he had used for years in the book business. Erhard
used the lectures to hone his own skills as a showman, though one who still
had some of the mannerisms of a slick-talking car salesman. After everyone
had been seated, Erhard usually began the evening by running down the center
aisle, bounding onto the stage, and launching into his presentation in a
loud, high-pitched voice. A few minutes later, upon a prearranged cue, one
of his employees often walked onto the stage to relieve Erhard of his sport
jacket.
By early 1971 Erhard's part-time earnings as a Mind Dynamics instructor- he
was still running the Grolier office -depended entirely on the commissions
he received for each new student who enrolled in the course. To boost the
number of students who signed up, Erhard added his own new marketing twist
to the program. Only through their willingness to introduce others to the
program, Erhard told his "graduates," could they really expect to gain its
full results. "Graduates who take on the responsibility of telling others
about the benefits of Mind Dynamics always increase their ability to apply
the principles in their own lives," Erhard wrote in the group's monthly
newsletter in April 1971. "You can insure your own continuing results by
participating in the success of Mind Dynamics."
Erhard pressed each student for a firm commitment to bring five new people
into the program. "Be especially alive and in tune with these people," said
Erhard. "Make it your responsibility to talk to them about Mind Dynamics in
such a way that they actually become interested in sharing the experience.
Take them to the next available workshop or lecture." Above all else, Erhard
told his students, do whatever was necessary to sell them on the merits of
Mind Dynamics "so that these people are able to overcome their obstacles and
actually be in the course."
A month after taking Erhard's Mind Dynamics course, one of his enthusiastic
new adherents quickly recruited other friends into the next session. A few
weeks later, still flushed with excitement about Erhard and Mind Dynamics,
the same young woman appeared at Erhard's office on Kearny Street. Though
she had not announced her arrival in advance, no one at the office seemed
surprised to see her.
"Oh yeah, Werner said you'd be here," Laurel Scheaf said in a matter-of-fact
tone. "He wants you in the field. So I'll see you Monday morning at eight
o'clock." The woman spent the weekend wondering what Scheaf meant by "the
field." To her utter astonishment, she arrived bright and early Monday
morning only to be sent back out on the street immediately as the newest
member of one of Erhard's door-to-door book-selling teams. Until that
moment, she had no idea that her inspiring Mind Dynamics instructor really
sold books for a living.
As he had been doing for years, Erhard still began each new day of selling
with a rousing pep talk and a round of hand-clapping and singing among the
sales teams, who belted out Beatles' songs and other current tunes before
hitting the streets. Always Erhard stressed the need to achieve good sales
results. The goal was all that mattered. Sometimes he handed the women small
acorns, which they had to place inside their bras or in their panties so
that, as he told them, "when you sit down, you won't ever forget the goal."
There was a constant buzz of activity in the office above Enrico's. During
the day, the book teams fanned out across the city ringing doorbells and
meeting sales quotas. They returned in the afternoon to hit the phones,
calling people to invite them to Erhard's lectures for Mind Dynamics. In the
evenings, there was still more work to do attending Erhard's guest lectures
and signing up students for his next course.
In the late summer of 1971, Erhard assigned a new task to his loyal staff.
For several nights he had them copying the names, addresses, and phone
numbers of everyone who had taken his Mind Dynamics course or showed up at
one of the introductory lectures. He was making plans, he told his staff, to
invite everyone on the list to a very special lecture he was going to give
in September. He confided to them that he was going to leave Mind Dynamics
and begin his own program. "I want you to make me famous," Erhard told his
excited staff members.
Although Erhard already had decided to start his own organization, he waited
for several weeks before telling Alexander Everett and William Penn Patrick.
Impressed with his sales results for Mind Dynamics, the two men during the
summer had asked Erhard to become a partner, offering him a slice of the
profits if he agreed to train new instructors around the country. Erhard had
no interest in becoming partners with anyone.
Erhard made sure to take full advantage of his popular standing within Mind
Dynamics when it came to unveiling his new plans. He had earlier scheduled
one of his regular Mind Dynamics lectures for the evening of September 13 in
a ballroom at the Mark Hopkins Hotel atop San Francisco's Nob Hill. Hundreds
showed up to hear him, many of them guests of Erhard's Mind Dynamics
students. But that night Erhard was no longer interested, financially or
otherwise, in touting the miracles and wonders of Alexander Everett's course
on controlling the brain's alpha waves. At the appointed hour, he launched
into his lecture, but without any of the usual theatrics that had always
accompanied an Erhard performance. After finishing his obligatory remarks
about Mind Dynamics, he revealed the real purpose of the night's session. He
announced that he was quitting Mind Dynamics to begin his own self-awareness
program. He had decided to call it Erhard Seminars Training, though he
preferred that it be known only as est.
As Erhard spoke, many in the audience began to realize that Everett himself
was sitting in the ballroom, listening calmly and with a faint smile on his
face while Erhard made his dramatic announcement. When Erhard finished, he
turned toward Everett and motioned him forward toward the microphone. A few
days earlier, after Erhard had finally broken the news directly to Everett,
he invited Alexander to send a representative to the Mark Hopkins "to
express whatever views you wish." Erhard had not expected to see Everett
himself that evening.
"I want everyone here to know that Werner has worked with me for some time,"
Everett told the audience. "And I want everyone to know that he's a great
person. I'm sorry that he wants to leave but that's his choice. And so I
want you to know that I'm supporting him in anything that he does. And I
back him all the way in creating his own organization."
Privately, Everett was furious with Erhard for working behind his back for
months while he planned his break. But Everett knew there was little he
could do to stop Erhard from going through with his plans. By then he knew
enough about Erhard's past-and about how hard Erhard pushed his own staff-to
realize that in Werner Erhard's world, things either had to be run his way
or not at all.
A week after the evening at the Mark Hopkins, the San Francisco Chronicle
published a four-column ad that featured a dramatic photograph of Erhard,
dressed in a dark jacket and tie, his upraised hands framing a serious face
that seemed to stare at newspaper readers with a hypnotic gaze. The ad
announced the first course to be held later that October by "Erhard Seminars
Training." The ad announced a new course to train people to "know and
understand yourself and others. "
For Werner Erhard, his big moment had finally arrived. For years he had been
selling, but always for others. Now it was time to take center stage, with a
new product to sell-a course that bore his own name. Erhard closed down his
Grolier office at the same time that he announced his break from Mind
Dynamics. In their place est was born, and was about to grow up very
quickly.
~~
Above quotes are a portion of the chapter:
A Door to Door Mind Salesman
by Stephen Pressman
from the book Outrageous Betrayal published by St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1993 Stephen Pressman