The Power of An Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour A Week (Hardcover)
by Dave Lakhani (Author)

The forward to this book by Dave Lakhani is by T. Harv Eker.
The writing by T. Harv Eker is highly manipulative, and he is trying many embedded suggestions, pretty close to the level that James Arthur Ray does them.

Dave Lakhani also thanks Joe Vitale in the book, and Vitale is another brazen scam-artist.

The book opens up with the standard self-promotion material by Lakhani. He pretty much looks like another guy who is copying what Tony Robbins did.
Tony Robbins also used to teach the persuasion skills he used years ago, but took that off the market, and probably just teaches it now behind closed doors for 10x the inflated price.

This page by Dave Lakhani, has some very manipulative techniques on it. Notice he puts Tony Robbins name on the top of the list, and he is using NLP based techniques right in his own marketing material.
As well as Scarcity, and other tactics.
He also makes it sound "exclusive", like he won't take your $3,500 for a 3 day LGAT seminar, and has to "interview" you first. Yeah right! That is the sucker-test.

Lakhani is running a 3 day LGAT, for over $3,000, plus all the other junk you are going to buy there, and be upsold to.
Dave Lakhani might appear to be explaining some of the persuasion techniques, but he is also using many of them, and not explaining them as he is using them.
So far many red flags are flying, and one has to be extremely careful with the material of Dave Lakhani, you can get sucked right into membership based "coaching", which is where you pay to get sold more junk.
This is Tony Robbins all over again.

_____________QUOTE________________
[www.boldapproach.com]
"Let Me Help You Build Or Grow Your Own Six Or Seven Figure Speaking Business In The Next 12 Months..

This Is The View From The Stage When You Learn These Powerful Profitable Persuasive Speaking Methods! Dozens Of People Crowded Around YOU To Buy YOUR products!

ONLY (5) 1 SEAT LEFT AS OF TODAY

WARNING: YOU MAY NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH ANY OTHER PERSON, YOU HAVE BEEN SPECIALLY INVITED BY EITHER ME OR WERE JUST ON A TELESEMINAR AND WERE INVITED BY ONE OF MY BUSINESS PARTNERS. THIS ISN'T SOME LAME COME ON, SIMPLY, I TEACH THIS PROGRAM ABOUT ONCE EVERY THREE - FIVE YEARS AND I ONLY TEACH 35 PEOPLE AT A TIME. YOU HAVE TO BE QUALIFIED TO ATTEND. IN FACT EVEN IF YOU PAY NOW YOU MUST STILL BE INTERVIEWED BY DAVE BEFORE BEING ALLOWED TO ATTEND. IF YOU ARE DISQUALIFIED YOUR MONEY WILL BE IMMEDIATELY REFUNDED.

Again, no gimmicks here, no sneaky sales pitch, none of that. The price is quite simple it is $3497.00

Here Is What You'll Learn Through Hands On, Experiential Training When You Spend Three Days With Me January 16 - 18, 2009

The Exact Business Model I Use Every Day To Build And Run A Seven Figure Speaking Business
How To Develop A Compelling Story And Persona—You Have To Be Unique And Memorable To Make It
...
The Secret To Developing A Loyal and Profitable Following
...
How To Construct And Deliver Profitable Persuasive Talks Using Easy To Learn and Use Conversational Hypnosis and Covert Persuasion Techniques
...
How To Manage Support Staff And Event Staff
...
How To Maximize The Profitability Of Every Engagement
...
The Three Step Process For Reducing Or Eliminating Returns On Your Products
Profitable Upsell, Affiliate and JV Success Strategies For Massive Back End Profits

How to increase profits immediately using a membership based coaching site
....

.....
Bonus #3

The Dark Art of Persuasion - My Five hour audio training on MP3 with enhanced transcripts so that you can begin learning the fundamental skills of applied psychological persuasion. This information will help you systematically sell more of everything you sell, in person or online

I only have 10 spots left in the event as I've been selling it from the platform for the last month.

I've been very fortunate to have shared the stage with some of the biggest names in speaking over the past 15 years, people like

Tony Robbins
T. Harv Eker
Mark Victor Hansen
Jack Canfield
Chris Howard
Zig Ziglar
Ron Legrand
Marshall Sylver
Brian Tracey
Jay Abraham
Jay Conrad Levinson
Tom Hopkins
Bob Burg
Kevin Hogan
And literally hundreds more
______________________________________

Thanks, Anticult--helpful research on Dave Lakhani. His list of speakers that he's trained with reads like the Who's Who of sleazeball manipulators. Vitale in particular is a piece of work. He recently began selling cheap Russian dolls that you pray to in order to get your wish...for only $39.99!
[www.secretrussianwishmaker.com]

James Arthur Ray's Death Lodge is a great opportunity to bring these professional persuaders under scrutiny, once and for all. While Ray may have been more ruthless in his application of such methods, there are a large number of other folks who get away with ripping people off and indoctrinating them into their LGAT systems.

There is some very dubious information in that book above by Dave Lakhani.
He starts pressing the buttons of categorizing your "relationships" and getting rid of people who don't meet your criteria. This is the road they lead people down, to start stripping you away from your current friends and family.

He also says people have four main wants.
Money, Fame, Sex, Power.

Here is the danger and WARNING about guys like Dave Lakhani, especially when he starts appearing to criticize the methods of guys like James Arthur Ray.
You get the sense, that he is there to help explain what they are doing, but is he?
Isn't he jut using it as contrast and leverage to direct you to his own products?

For example, this speaking seminar he is selling January 16 - 18, 2009.
You go to the seminar thinking you are learning to be a "speaker", and then get lured into the entire Dave Lakhani system of products, which will run into many tens of thousands, as well as "coaching" and every other trick in the book.

For his "advanced" students, he is going to try and tell them he can teach them the most advanced "secret" covert persuasion techniques in the world.
But at the same time, they run the REAL techniques on those same people. Its the big sharks eating the little sharks for lunch.

It would be interesting to look around, and find the most "advanced" persuasion seminar being marketed by Dave Lakhani.

For example, this is linked from his blog. [www.howtopersuade.com]
But it gives no information, and just wants to capture your email address, and hook you in.

QUOTE: "You're About to Discover Secrets Most People Will Never Know About How To Persuade, Influence & Control Minds..."

Here's the deal with Dave Lakhani. He knows exactly the dangerous advanced persuasion techniques that were being used by James Ray, but he only chose to talk about a few of them. Its a way for him to market and sell his own advanced persuasion courses.
One can see he is not even openly advertising his advanced persuasion LGAT seminars, and just appears to link to an email newsletter. That is very clever as it lures people in.

subliminalpersuasionbook.com [www.subliminalpersuasionbook.com]
The most important thing to remember is even when the "content" they are selling is Persuasion, they are still running many covert patterns they are NOT teaching. That is a higher level of persuasion.
So they appear to teach some aspects of persuasion, but in fact most of what they are doing to you, they are not teaching you, but doing to you. So you end up in the same position as getting duped by Byron Katie or James Ray.
The "content" is different, but in fact what is happening is the same.

Just because someone says they are teaching covert persuasion, doesn't mean they really are. They might only be teaching 10% of it, and then use that to lure people into very expensive LGAT's which can cost far more than even the standard LGATS.

So some of these guys who appear to teach "persuasion" are actually worse.
There is no evidence to indicate that Dave Lakhani is "ethical" in his persuasion. As a matter of fact, the evidence is point to a very serious WARNING about what he is doing, and how he is doing it.

You see, they tell you they are going to teach you Conversational Hypnosis, but in fact they are using that "content" to run the real hypnosis on you, without your knowledge. You don't figure that out until you spend $50,000.
So for the average person without years of training in advanced persuasion, they should NOT buy anything from Dave Lakhani whatsoever.
And be extremely careful with the books, as they can lure you in, and you won't know why.

Some of the worst scams out there, are from people who say they are teaching advanced persuasion, when in fact they only teach a small part of it, and just use persuasion as the "content" like Byron Katie uses enlightenment as content.
The danger is you can get scammed far far worse from those who say they are teaching advanced persuasion, as they can raise the prices up to over $100K for some rip-off process.

Dave Lakhani is not to be recommended for learning persuasion, and in fact is to be strongly avoided.

Something that is really outrageous.
Oprah Winfrey reran her TV show about the abducted child Jaycee Dugard.
And Oprah, is literally sitting up on her stage telling the audience to BEWARE when they feel the creepy hairs standing up on their necks, when it comes to child abducters. That is of course good advice.

but, what about the creeps, con-artists and crooks that Oprah made into household names on The Secret?
What about the hairs standing on end, from the creepy manipulations of James Ray on the Oprah show, which was obvious to those with training in this area?

What about James Arthur Ray, who is linked to the deaths of 3, 4, 5 people, and injured many others?
What about all the people who were scammed and lost thousands of dollars?

Why isn't Oprah talking about watching out for these scammers and crooks?
As a matter of fact, Oprah is still promoting James Arthur Ray on her website!

Secret Is Out - Oprah.com [www.oprah.com]
"James Arthur Ray, the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith and Oprah. On February 8, 2007, millions tuned in to The Oprah Winfrey Show to learn the mystery of The Secret"


And James Ray still has an area of his websites, promoting his links with Oprah, and how she had him on the show twice, and on her Oxygen network as well.
Oprah could force him to take the stuff down, but hasn't.

James Arthur Ray | The Oprah Winfrey Show | Free Resources | Oprah
[jamesray.com]

James Arthur Ray | BlogFeaturing: Rhonda Byrne, Michael Beckwith, James Arthur Ray, Jack Canfield and Lisa Nichols. Discovering The Secret on Oprah.com
[blog.jamesray.com]


What about a WARNING from Oprah about the con-artist fake guru's and bankrupt and even kill people?
It doesn't appear that Oprah has made any statement at all about The Secret scammers, and James Ray. What about all the other crooks in The Secret?

One really has to wonder what goes through these people's minds, like Oprah. She made James Ray famous.
Meanwhile, talk about the hairs standing up on your neck from James Ray. The warning signals red flags from that guy were flying like crazy, and instead of WARNING people, Oprah endorses him several times.

And most of the media fears offending Oprah, so no one is going to challenge her on it in person.

Just imagine if Oprah did a series of shows on critical thinking, the scammers in the self-help industry, LGAT seminars, and how The Secret fiasco happened.
But that is not going to happen.

Oprah went after James Frey for lying in his book, big deal, so he lied in a book.

What about the lies upon lies upon lies from guys like James Ray, who Oprah promoted?
Of course she would fear getting entangled with it, but one has to wonder how someone can sleep at night, knowing they promoted a gang of ruthless scammers to exploit your audience?
Maybe they just don't care, and just push it out of their mind.

"What about the lies upon lies upon lies from guys like James Ray, who Oprah promoted?
Of course she would fear getting entangled with it, but one has to wonder how someone can sleep at night, knowing they promoted a gang of ruthless scammers to exploit your audience?
Maybe they just don't care, and just push it out of their mind."

I think it fairly obvious that these people don't care, know that they can get away with it a large part of the time with a good sector of the populace, and intend to carry on as long as they can continue to get away with it. And there is no shortage of others who are keen to learn and use the same tactics.
For me, the way out of this is to try to get my own head around the thinking errors, persuasion tactics, hypnotic behaviours etc promulgated by these unscrupulous types so that I can recognise them when someone tries to pull such a stunt on me.
The problem with this is that almost every communication is an effort by one person to persuade another to his own way of thinking and it is too easy to become paranoid if too much fear of these tactics is generated. Yes, there are some very slick operators out there that pose a danger to the unwary, but they can only succeed in their machinations with our tacit consent and by playing on our ignorance of these tactics.
I grew up in a cult also and it isn't realistic to hope that other people will change and not continue to use these methods of manipulation and persuasion. I still have to function in the world unless I try to hide away and be a recluse (if only!)
I have had to study and learn how these strategies work in order to avoid being continually caught by them because these strategies are the basic formative conditioning for me, this stinkin thinkin was what I, and a lot of others learned as a first reality.
Education in this area has been a huge help to me and I think this site performs a great service at providing the resources for those who want to educate themselves further on this.

For a sane and balanced grounding in hypnosis and the basics of how NLP patterns work, I found a book by clinical psychologist Steven Heller "Monsters and Magical Sticks, There No Such Thing As Hypnosis?" to be useful.
For any Robert Anton Wilson fans, he gives the book a puff on the back cover: " I've been practising hypnosis all my life and didn't know it. And so have you!"

A more involved work that I found useful was "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff which covers much the the same theory of how and why our minds work in this particular way and which also explains why we are so vulnerable to the distorted metaphors and thinking errors employed by these scam artists.

A great analysis of the possible uses of the vast array of medications found when Death Ray fled, from a certified pharmocolgist on Scienceblogs:Death Ray's pharmacology

The general gist seems to be that Ray was using this cocktail (prescribed by an internet Doctor of Osteopathy) for weight control and anti-aging and that such a concoction would have serious side effects which may or may not have been mitigated by further medications.

There's some speculation on the effect this might have had on Ray's state of mind at the time, although no attempt to use that as an excuse.

If the science bit is a heavy going, the comments are well worth reading as the contributors make the very valid point that this was just business as usual for Ray.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2010 12:27AM by Stoic.

The Salty Droid has a doctored video, intercutting Bill Harris' testimonial for Ray with footage about the sweat lodge. Very worthwhile watching at only two minutes:

salty droid vid

There is more interesting info about Dave Lakhani.
He has a book called, Persuasion - The Art of Getting What You Want.

In it, he says he belonged to the cult the "Bible Believers" from William Branham, (BRANHAMITES, Branhamism) [www.caic.org.au]

Its interesting as he tries to say that Manipulation is bad, and Persuasion is good, and the difference is "intent".
Now of course, ask any manipulator and they will believe themselves to be an "ethical" persuader. When someone is saying they are "ethical", and not like the other bad guys, that is akin to a salesperson saying "trust me".

Again, Dave Lakhani says his "highest thanks" goes to Joe Vitale, he is the first guy he thanks.
Now Joe Vitale, from The Secret, is a brazen scam artist, not an "ethical persuader".
So basically according to his criteria, as long as the persuader is not in jail or has the FTC after them...yet...then he is ethical.
Joe Vitale is NOT an ethical persuader!! (if there is such a thing).
He is a classic flim-flam man, a cigar chomping Mountebank, a phoney, a con-artiste preying on the vulnerable gullible, to try and make a fast buck in any way.

Joe Vitale, The Key, cancer cures? [forum.culteducation.com]

Ho'oponopono "Dr." Joe Vitale -one of the worst books in world history,
Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More
by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len
[forum.culteducation.com]

Search Google for:

"Dave Lakhani" "Joe Vitale"

There appears to be excerpts of the text of the book at this link.
Lakhani, Dave - Persuasion-The Art of Getting What You Want (pdf) [fliiby.com]

Totally agree, anticult. Joe Vitale is one of the most brazen con artists out there, and frankly I don't care what Vitale's "intent" is because his IMPACT is that people get massively duped, ripped off, scammed out of everything they are worth.

Intent determines whether the person communicating feels good about their actions, but not whether they are good. Ethics are worked out interpersonally, not subjectively. Good intentions pave the road to Hell, as they say.

James Arthur Ray may have "good intentions" when he ignorantly and brazenly pushed people to their deaths, but it doesn't matter to the families of the deceased. Frankly, I think Ray's intentions were entirely focused on his own narcissistic aims of being a God-man, in total control of others.

Sure of course, but the average person (family) who might try to use some type of guilt to persuade, is totally different than the advanced professionals in the mass media.
The interesting thing is that those who are the best, deliberately avoid tacit consent, by using unconscious persuasion tactics. They engineer consent.

A good way to learn the persuasion tactics is studying the professional persuaders who sell books on the subject to other persuaders. The problem there is more than 50% of what they say is bullshit, and they are always trying to upsell a person to their own seminars and products. So its very difficult.

Its good to put the WARNING out there, as people can literally get bankrupted by these pro's in just months.
Look what happened to Colleen Conaway by James Ray. In just a few months, he "persuaded" her to put thousands on her credit cards, and buy all of his materials. Now for anyone who has worked in that field, that happens everyday. They look for people who are vulnerable, and they clean them out.

There are psychosis, deaths, suicides quite often from people who's lives get wrecked by these LGAT persuaders, its just that no one hears about it.
So persuaders like Byron Katie are extremely dangerous, as they can lure vulnerable people in with a SINGLE CONTACT. A single click on her website, can lure a person into the web.

In the New Age enlightenment area, being "paranoid" is healthy. One needs the very highest levels of skepticism for every single new age salesperson on the market.
Otherwise, one can bounce from system to system for a decade or three.
And that healthy skepticism allows one to sort the wheat from the chaff, and not get burned over and over.

So its good to make an overgeneralization, and not to give ANY of them ANY money.
Of course, when the persuaders hear that, they will go ballistic! That is why they put out "free" materials designed to lure people into the expensive purchases through the back door of their minds.
Its all quite complicated and tricky, that is for sure.

Quote
Stoic
The problem with this is that almost every communication is an effort by one person to persuade another to his own way of thinking and it is too easy to become paranoid if too much fear of these tactics is generated. Yes, there are some very slick operators out there that pose a danger to the unwary, but they can only succeed in their machinations with our tacit consent and by playing on our ignorance of these tactics.
...
Education in this area has been a huge help to me and I think this site performs a great service at providing the resources for those who want to educate themselves further on this.