T A B L E__T A L K Why does financial news resemble "Entertainment Tonight"? Discuss the quest for solid, intelligent and straight business news reporting in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Glutton for luxury By Heather Chaplin One woman's necessity is another woman's excess (07/17/98) Our watches, our selves By Robert Bryce As the economy keeps on ticking, the watch industry sells the daze of our lives (07/10/98) Pot of gold or P.C. money pit? By Heather Chaplin Are socially responsibility mutual funds good karma or bad business? (07/03/98) Swamped By Todd Pitock If everyone is working so hard, why are they always at lunch? (06/26/98) Rich pickings, sour grapes By Linda Tischler A mother envies her daughter's lucrative entrance into the world of work (06/19/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money archives		____________The world of financial infomercials ____________promises "free money," but what they're really ____________selling is their faith in your "potential." BY CAROL LLOYD | It would have been bleak had it not been so painfully, endearingly American. A sea of obedient bodies filled a conference room at the Cathedral Hotel in San Francisco, listening to a rich white man with an iridescent tie and a glint in his eyes. "Why are you here?" cried real estate mogul Scott Vanderweel (author of "Extreme Cashflow"), sparkling like a stolen rhinestone beneath the paneled ceiling. He is our port of entry into the National Grant Conference, a mysterious organization that claims to be a research company specializing in information about government grants, loans and other subsidies. We've paid $10 to get in, seeking solid financial information about this faraway world of bureaucratic maneuverings. But first we must be subjected to a lube job, where our inner lives are opened and oiled. "I said, Why are you here?" "Business." "Money!" "Yeah!" "Free money!" The loudest voices -- ringing with the testimonial rhythms of Baptist services -- come from African-American men, but this rainbow assembly would make Jesse Jackson proud. Elderly couples holding hands, single mothers immaculate in their discount suits, wannabe Mafiosi (fat, white and reeking of cigars), black men in threadbare trousers, weary-eyed matrons, Filipinos, Mexicans, Chinese and those racial mixtures that prove the undeniable beauty of the melting pot ideal -- all took four hours out of their Tuesday afternoon to pack in like elementary school children and suffer through one more lesson on that familiar subject, the American Dream. "What would you do with free money?" Vanderweel singles out an elderly Asian woman sitting in the front row. "Buy a house." "And you, sir?" he calls, casting his line to a portly black man in the back of the hall. "Spend more time with my kids." Like everyone else in this crowd, I had heard about the National Grant Conference from an infomercial. Between excruciatingly vague assurances from talking heads came the quietly rhapsodic stories of "real" individuals. An African-American single mother spoke of moving her family out of the slums and into her dream house outside the city. A graying gentleman with an accent launched his own real estate business. A middle-aged, plain-spoken Caucasian couple found money to remodel their home. All of this was subsidized by Uncle Sam. To learn more, the talking heads exhorted us, one need only attend a National Grant Conference, coming to a city near you. After warming the crowd with questions about their dreams, Vanderweel begins winding a circuitous path toward his invisible goal. He interweaves self-deprecating jokes, personal anecdotes, promises of amazing information and inspirational name-dropping. "You know who Fran Tarkenton is?" he asks, referring to the former quarterback turned motivational guru. "He's my business partner. He went out and bought a jet for his wife just last week. Fran's a very rich man." He holds up a small packet. "I made this for you. I call it 'Four Days to a Fast Start,' and this is going to get you there. You see, I want you to be on TV. That's how TV shows work, right? In order for you to give a testimonial, it's got to work for you." This is the world where "TV shows" means infomercials, and "testimonials" are not spiritual revelations but part of a lucrative strategy in the harvesting of hope -- possibly the most fertile cash crop around. Vanderweel is careful not to make promises, but he does "bet" that no matter what our desire, there is a government program for us: to buy a home, remodel, buy rental property, begin a business, send children to school, live on a boat and travel the world. I begin to feel something work inside me -- fervent and squirrel-hungry. It's possible, I think. Anything is possible. It could happen to me. No, don't think passive -- I could make it happen! But I should know better. I have tilled these fields as well. For the past few years I've taught workshops in career planning for creative people, written a book about it and even tasted the drunken pleasure of being a motivational speaker. The truth is always more complicated than what you can formulate in a few rapturous generalizations. Besides, in my workshops, people are buying my time and insights, nothing more. But Vanderweel is using his expertise, his motivational vigor and the tantalizing bait of information to pursue hard-core sales. The only problem is that we don't know what he's selling. He offers the details in snatches, building a sense of suspense: something about a weekend workshop ... all we have to do is "get involved" with the National Grant Conference ... we'll have the opportunity to invest "with" him. He talks about how he used to land government grants before meeting "the folks" at the National Grant Conference. He used to pay lawyers $150 an hour or grant writers flat fees of $8,000. "Because there are some things you just don't do for yourself," he concludes. "I wouldn't represent myself in court. I wouldn't pull my own teeth or do my own hair." Ergo: we need the National Grant Conference. But why? What exactly does it do? He talks fast, priming the crowd with audience participation, splitting us in two like an orange to eat us in pieces. He waves a tome that "can be yours." Glowing with boyish good looks despite his silver temples, he tells us about how he got started, just the son of a farmer, with no college education. "Just like you I came to one of these seminars," he says. "I'm no genius, but I'm a great copycatter." Ah, one of us, we think, a fellow traveler. "Write this down," he declares, hitting a sudden note of urgency. "One thousand." The people around me scribble like toddlers applying crayons to a wall -- feverish and dutiful at the same time. "One thousand dollars," he says, and the crowds gasps. "Now that you've had your heart attack, write down 'less than.' Write down: 'less than $1,000.'" But he still doesn't tell us the exact price or what "less than $1,000" will actually buy us. Using the overhead projector, he begins throwing out examples of government grants, loans and subsidies, each with an accompanying mug of a regular Joe or Jane who struck gold and received one. He tells people not to take notes, and I ignore this, understanding that this is the information he doesn't want me to know. Finally, though, I drop my note pad and let my mouth hang open in horrified admiration. The spectacle is too much: I feel like weeping, like charging the stage and shouting, "Show me the way," like crawling into bed and eating maple syrup from the plastic bottle, nursing from it like a nipple. This is the art of sales, I think. The art that America, for better or worse, is founded on, and the only art -- be the NEA dead or alive -- our country has ever fully subsidized. Pure business, like pure mathematics, looks to the outsider a little like magic. You seek a simple solution in the form of a useful product or service, but nothing comprehensible appears. Instead -- abracadabra! -- an enormous ghost rises up and promises you something almost -- but not quite -- like meaning. "We will help you make a cash mechanism," he says, and I think: This is some kind of unholy mathematics. The giddy haze of potentiality has almost shut down my powers of rational thinking when he mentions that he's one of the largest owners of "homeless housing" in New York state. This rouses me from my stupor. As he tells it, in 1981 as a good Samaritan he began housing a few homeless men in one of his vacant rental properties and then discovered a government program that subsidized homeless housing at $300 a pop. Then he filled the house to capacity -- from basement to attic. "Suddenly I'm making $1,600 a month off a property that I could only rent for $600 to a family," he exults. I squint my eyes and try to think: Is this an example of a win-win situation or is it depraved exploitation? Finally, after a few more stories about people forming think tanks on sailboats, buying houses for no money down and receiving thousands of dollars to "develop innovation," he says: "Write this down: six nine five. No matter how long you work with National Grant Conference, that's all you're ever going to pay. Six hundred and ninety-five." Soon after, we take a break and chaos ensues. They have told us we must compete to sign up for a limited number of membership spots, but this crowd isn't biting the hook so easily. Vanderweel is stalking behind the sign-up tables, applications aloft, screeching: "Hold up your form of payment! If you don't have the money now, the staff will be here until midnight!" A few people follow suit but most stand by clutching their pocketbooks and gaping. Francisco, a young Filipino man, and his two friends linger on the fringe of the crowd, listening to Vanderweel hawk his wares. He can't decide whether to sign up. "I guess if it was false advertising, we could always sue them for more money than the $695," he muses, catching on to the mores of his new homeland. Helen, a doe-eyed woman with a salt-and-pepper 'fro, has handed over her 700 bucks when I approach her. She's hoping to expand her business, a group home for teen foster children. "Most children in our area are shipped out of state," she explains. "I'm just hoping NGC can help me find a way to keep kids near their homes." "I'm pissed off," says Leah, a young African-American woman. "I took off work to come here." "I agree," says Ruth, the pretty Latina standing next to her. Ruth and Leah, both single mothers, began chatting after recognizing each other's appalled expression. "I never go to these things. I even was embarrassed to tell my friends." Leah nods emphatically. "I just want to get out of renting." "That's right," says Ruth. Later Leah corners the silver-haired gentleman who took our admission fees. "I'm upset," she says. "I paid $10 and you didn't give me anything." I think: nothing? She got the sell job of her life. As the gentleman begins to suggest that it's her fault, that she's "still acting like a tryer," and he can't help her unless she's willing to help herself, the enigma of this strange event opens like a little flower. NGC and their ilk magically make the transaction about the self-esteem of the buyer. In return for your $700, they offer you their "faith" in your potential. "I think they did quite a nice job," demurs Helen, an aging Irish woman, holding her newly purchased binder to her chest. Helen has bought into many of these moneymaking seminars, and although she doesn't blame them, she's never made a penny off them. "I haven't had the guts, really," she says, wistfully. "Maybe this time I will." SALON | July 24, 1998 Carol Lloyd, in addition to being a senior editor at Salon, is the author of her own self-help manifesto: "Creating a Life Worth Living."