The Cult of Online Marketing Made Easy
Originally published May 18, 2021; updated July 2023
In late 2020, Tyler J. McCall recorded a live video where he denounced his business mentors James Wedmore and Brooke Castillo, citing what he had learned about their Trump support and Qanon ties.
Then the video disappeared. What happened?
What does all this have to do with Rachel Hollis, Jenna Kutcher, and Amy Porterfield? Is Tony Robbins in on it?
And how the hell did I get mixed up in this? I feel like a 36 year old Harriet the Spy.
Except I also happen to be an expert in my field.
I’m a brand strategist turned business comedian turned court jester of the royal shit show that is online marketing today. (You'll soon find out why.)
Once upon a time, I built brands for hundreds of entrepreneurs. I was the rebrand whisperer, taking a brand in transition from business model to marketing strategy to messaging to creative direction to brand and web design.
The Monday after the Capitol insurrection, I woke up and after 12 years of 7 day weeks, endlessly, haplessly trying to scale as I served hundreds of entrepreneurs, helping them wrestle with the unwieldy funnels somebody with a slick webinar convinced them they needed, something broke.
Burnout is a bright red flag waving you in the direction of exactly what you need to burn down next.
Saw this coming a mile away.
This burnout as old as time and the brand that came before it are both important here because they answer the question:
“Why do you care, RKA?”
And the follow up, “Where do you find the time to follow these people?”
I care because I spent 12 years cleaning up their messes. I’m not a disgruntled customer. I just work with other peoples’ disgruntled customers.
I didn’t “find the time,” my clients paid me to pay attention to these folks. I watched who they watched.
And that included:
Marie Forleo
Amy Porterfield
Jenna Kutcher
Rachel Hollis
Gabby Bernstein
Kris Carr
Danielle LaPorte
Kate Northrup
Laura Belgray
Laura Roeder
Jasmine Star
Shaa Wasmund
Brooke Castillo
Tyler J. McCall
James Wedmore
Lewis Howes
Tim Ferriss
Michael Hyatt
Jeff Walker
Donald Miller
Jim Fortin
Brendon Burchard
Russell Brunson
Tony Robbins
In the B-ginning...
My very first client might be a witch because she told me to watch (and copy) Marie Forleo all those years ago, which ultimately inspired my most popular blog of all time, “You Don’t Want Marie Forleo’s Website.”
This same client had me transcribe Marie’s “Live in the Moment" Booty Camp back when robots weren’t a thing, so I believe I took the early prototype of her upcoming time management program, Time Genius. (You know if she brings Josh Pais back for the revival, I really do see the future.)
This was all way back when Amy Porterfield marketed herself as a “Facebook expert” and hadn’t yet graduated to being the girlboss next door of the entire Online Marketing Industrial Complex.
It might explain why Amy is clinging so fiercely to the funnels she rode to the top. They helped her go from just another Facebook serf to queen of the good girls.
Amy worked for Tony Robbins but then she broke free by spending $20K-ish in Marie Forleo’s original “Rich Happy and Hot” mastermind, alongside Laura Belgray and Laura Roeder. Remember this.
All roads lead back to Tony Robbins.
Repeat it like a mantra.
I only know all this because my client that saw this coming a mile away told me, seething with envy that she wasn’t in the room where it happened.
Yes, this client of mine consumed courses and masterminds and three day $10K retreats like I devoured every second of Jon Hamm in Mad Men.
I spent years with her, trying to make sense of what my traditional marketing education meant in an online marketing world.
Because for the six+ figures she invested in “the secret to end all secrets” at the end of someone’s silky smooth sales pitch, she never seemed to find it. The secret, that is. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
At first I thought I was a bad steward of these systems. But then the patterns presented to me again and again and again.
12 years of examples just like this and I rarely met the type of case study student you’ll find as shiny testimonials on all these celebrity entrepreneurs’ websites.
I worked with hundreds of brilliant business leaders, trying to move from brick and mortar to WWW, ensnared early on by the smooth stylings of someone who knows their way around a webinar.
Only to spend money they didn’t really have on systems that were never going to serve them.
And then they showed up at my door, with nothing left in the budget and nothing much to show for all of Marie Forleo’s promises that “the world needs that special gift that only you have.”
But because they invested so much in this snake oil, including and especially their trust, most of my clients insisted that I find a way to fit their business into these misshapen dickfunnels, anyway.
They believed there was something wrong with THEM, not the model. (To be fair, so did I.)
So they hired my agency to fix it.
And I spent 12 years rolling the same stone uphill with all those scorched by online marketing made sleazy.
I invested dozens of extra hours in each project re-educating my clients — smart, high achieving business owners that wouldn’t self describe as “suckers” — about the realities of modern online marketing and what it would cost, both in terms of time and money, to execute the schemes they learned in some telesummit.
It’s a special type of insult when someone spends thousands of dollars with you only to ignore your best ideas and insist you do something they heard from a bro in a YouTube ad instead.
One day (right around the time I posted the above Brad meme, in fact) I woke up and as the pre-inauguration tension in the United States was at a crescendo, boiling over into the violence of an attempted, and I said to myself:
WHY THE FUCK AM I BUILDING BRANDS FOR PEOPLE WHO INSIST ON REPEATING THE SAME BAD IDEAS?
And that was it. I stopped taking new clients that day.
Soon after, my life and business started to unravel.
In February I started FREE SCHOOL, which I thought at the time was simply going to be a fun experiment in teaching everything I know for free in my Instagram stories with no opt-in or follow required.
TODAY AN IDEA PROPOSED TO ME AND I SAID YES 💍
— Rachael Kay Albers (@rkaink) February 14, 2021
In 2021, I’m running The Greatest Biz Art Experiment of All Time.
I’m a comedian teaching a FREE BUSINESS SCHOOL and creativity university in my Instagram stories.
It’s FREE SCHOOL season now 🔥
Enroll:https://t.co/pEoLEQkirk pic.twitter.com/IalwVuIQYO
But I barely started to warm up when the truth started tapping me on the shoulder, demanding I set it free.
Turns out, the lessons that needed sharing in FREE SCHOOL weren’t about building brands or writing copy, but how to become your own creative director and take agency of, not only of your business, but your life.
The brand names I referenced early on in FREE SCHOOL, like Marie Forleo, Russell Brunson, and James Wedmore, were meant to be symbols to help my audience understand how to spot bro marketing and girlboss tactics in the wild.
FREE SCHOOL didn’t start as an exposé, but the more I referenced these brands in my stories, the more they started exposing themselves.
And what I innocently thought were just a handful of greedy showboats hawking their wares with a few spoonfuls of slime, turned out to reveal itself as much more sinister.
Saw this coming a mile away, too, but I didn’t want to believe it. Nobody ever does.
Especially when we move past the bro marketers to their kid sisters, the ones they recruit to help make their offerings “more inclusive,” as Jenna Kutcher explained when she shared how Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi hired her as “consultant” for their new program, Project Next. (All roads lead back to Tony Robbins, remember?!)
“More inclusive,” in this case is code for horizontal scaling to new markets with the same shitty product.
It’s easy to run from accountability when you’re always hopscotching to new audiences via the latest flavor of the month.
Right now that flavor is Live Laugh Love culture and its spokeswomen are Jenna Kutcher, Rachel Hollis, and Amy Porterfield.
But Marie Forleo walked so Jenna Kutcher could run...straight into the arms of Dean Graziosi.
Before Jenna was flexing her private jet sessions with Uncle Dean, Marie was the original “It Girl” of horizontal scaling.
Meaning, Tony Robbins trained and/or mentored both Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield and they’ve been cross pollinating their audiences ever since.
Never forget that Marie Forleo invented hanging with the bro marketers. She went to Richard Branson’s private island when Jenna Kutcher was still in braces.
Marie Forleo is the Farrah Fawcett to Jenna Kutcher’s Cameron Diaz in Tony’s Angels.
Now, I know you came here for the tea on James Wedmore, Brooke Castillo, and Tyler J. McCall and the lost Trump/Qanon tapes but before I can get to them, I have to tell you about the white women who make all this bullshit possible.
On the surface, these girlbosses are just washing their faces. But make no mistake, something wicked this way comes.
It’s very on brand for disappointing white women that so much of this can be traced back to:
Rachel Hollis and Toiletgate 2021: The Saga of Relatability
Rachel Hollis posted her now infamously unrelatable TikTok toilet TED talk on March 31. (Where were you when you first heard Hollis dehumanize her housekeeper? It’s one of those things a basic bitch never forgets.)
The original TikTok is no longer available but Brad's lip sync is...
It seemed like everyone on the Internet had opinions about Rachel Hollis except for Hollis herself (who was busy making Easter baskets all weekend) and her friends, famously Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher, at least as far as Google is concerned.
So I tagged them and wondered aloud/in the comments what Amy and Jenna had to say about this.
Jenna Kutcher has entered the chat.
I LITERALLY HAD ROBERTO TAKE A VIDEO OF ME WHEN I OPENED MY FIRST VOICE MESSAGE FROM JENNA. I DO NOT OFTEN DM WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE DAMN NEAR A MILLION FOLLOWERS. THESE BITCHES ALL JUST IGNORE ME AS I CLOWN AROUND ON THE INTERNET TALKING TRASH IN THE NAME OF TRUTH. AND I AM NOT AFRAID TO ADMIT THAT BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT JK WAS BANKING ON.
Namely that I would be so cowed by her celebrity and the fact that she would DM with lil’ ol’ me, I might just back off and see that Jenna Kutcher is just a sweet, relatable mom like me.
This is also when Jenna revealed to me that she doesn’t talk to Rachel anymore.
And WHY WOULD I THINK THEY’RE FRIENDS, ANYWAY?!?!
Because she posted that ONE PICTURE? They haven’t even been on each other’s podcasts!!! They don’t even follow each other!!! It was just that one picture!!!
The one picture Jenna and I are referring to features Amy Porterfield, Rachel Hollis, and Jenna Kutcher, laughing with perfectly tousled hair and messy buns in a suspiciously cohesive color palette. Amy in grey, Rachel in black, Jenna in beige. Their feet are pointed in that perfectly imperfect way we all hope our feet look like when we try on those ballet flats and check ‘em out in the ankle mirrors at Ann Taylor Loft.
If I buy these skinny jeans and then give James Wedmore $30,000, will I laugh in a heap with my biz BFFs at Blackberry Farm, too? Should I also get the head wrap?
Oh and this pic, with 49,960 likes on Jenna’s instagram (only 37,862 on Rachel’s Instagram with Amy coming in at 9,282 for her version) also happened to appear on Good Morning America with the headline: “DOUBLE TAP IF YOU'RE LONELY” in a campaign led by Jenna Kutcher to “talk about” loneliness. It pairs well with the Facebook live that Rachel, Jenna, and Amy weekend that picturesque weekend of girlfriending at Blackberry Farm.
But WHY WOULD I THINK THAT Jenna Kutcher AND Rachel Hollis ARE FRIENDS?
It was just ONE photo and ONE Good Morning America feature, which paints a very chill portrait of casual lady friendship indeed with the following:
“Kutcher, Hollis and Porterfield made a commitment to their friendship by booking two more getaways while they were together last weekend. They also set "friendship rules:" "No BS, come as you are and reach out to one another without needing a response or reply," according to Kutcher.”
It was just one photo.
And the fact that when you Google the term “Rachel, Jenna, Amy” the entire first page of results is about their non-existent friendship?
Maybe Jenna was confused because what I was referring to as a "friendship" was no more than a corporate partnership.
I ended up DMing with Kutcher all Easter weekend, who kept telling me she was “talking to Trent and Amy.”
I am so aloof that I thought, “Is her husband’s name TRENT?! Where have I been???”
No, she was referring to Trent Shelton and Amy Porterfield. (Her husband’s name is Drew.) You may recognize Trent from his involvement in the Own Your Future/Project Next dickfunnel alongside his pal Jenna.
Told you all road lead back to Tony Robbins.
Jenna, Amy, and Trent were all in agreement that the best position on their prominent brand partner Rachel Hollis was no position, she told me in voice messages, in between photos of her daughter that she sent almost as if to say, “Back off! I’m just a MOM! Nothing to see here!”
“As a woman who supports woman,” Jenna told me, it just doesn’t seem appropriate to critique Rachel.
Another version of RKA might have felt so overwhelmed with pride that someone as “big” as Jenna Kutcher cared about what I had to say.
And I might have misinterpreted that feeling to be a relationship with this woman that moved me to focus my attention elsewhere.
Because "women who support women" don’t hold each other accountable. They look the other way.
That’s how they getcha.
Sorry not sorry, Jenna Kutcher, I’m not as easy as I used to be. Just ask the man I’m divorcing 365 times.
So I kept talking about it in my Instagram stories.
And Jenna Kutcher kept watching them.
At one point, she approached me and told me she no longer felt “safe” communicating with me because I was twisting the facts for “my agenda.” So she announced that she was “disengaging” and urged me not to frame it as "ghosting."
Good thing I have a PhD in Instagram Gaslighting by now, so I — yup, you guessed it!
Saw this coming a mile away.
Jenna Kutcher thought that if she graced me with her presence and a few blurry snapshots of her toddler, I’d back off.
She was weaponizing my desire for importance and the social currency that comes with being her “friend” to get me to shut up. To distract me from the fact that Jenna Kutcher is the face of a multimillion dollar company. Not just a girl next door.
The genius of this unregulated industry of self appointed experts is that they’ve been able to skirt accountability in a way corporations can’t, by pretending to be people instead of companies.
Mix in the mom element and the millions of women throughout the world who are aching to break free from patriarchy and think their pals Jenna, Rachel, and Amy can help them do it, suddenly we’ve got corporations pretending to be our besties so we’ll feel guilty for ever doubting them.
Jenna Kutcher was relying on my training as a “woman who supports woman” in support of The Man. “Support” in this context means silence. Where a corporation would be held accountable, a personal brand like Jenna’s (or her pal Russell Brunson) asks us to give it “grace.”
When I didn’t, she tried to manipulate me another way.
This is when I bought JennaKutcherIsMadAtMe.com, by the way.
In a weird miracle/mindfuck of sorts, on Easter Sunday, I woke up to a message from Jenna sent at 1 AM with a screenshot of what looked to be a comment she posted in response to Rachel Hollis.
In case you can't see the screenshot, I'll transcribe it here for easy reading.
Jenna Kutcher's comment on Rachel Hollis' privilege post at 1 AM on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021:
"I wasn't going to comment here because I have been an imperfect leader in the past and subconsciously leaned on my own privilege in problematic ways but that the fact that I'm losing sleep thinking that my silence maybe perceived as support to you and this message and it couldn't be further from the truth.
The person I once knew and the troubled, angry, dismissive person in this videos are very different people and instead of pointing out all the ways this video and sentiment is wrong as others have eloquently expressed, I want to say this:
You are being called in to do the work.
You have a glorious opportunity to apologize, learn and grow AND take your community on this journey with you (if you choose), witnessing what that can look like for themselves to learn and understand, too.
You've consistently boxed out anyone who disagrees with you or challenges you or calls you in so I pray those in your inner circle are ready to walk with you through what it takes for you to grow and change into a true leader: a leader who empowers ALL women, who can accept feedback, who is capable of change and values her community.
I'll be here if you're ready to take those steps and need someone who's trying to be better and I'm praying for you to recognize just how wrong this all is. 🙏"
But a funny thing happened on the way through the comments. I couldn’t find Jenna’s.
I re-posted it in my stories, as I now think Jenna expected me to, and went on my merry way.
But then my DMs started filling up with questions as to where exactly we could find Jenna’s official statement.
Suddenly I realized — oh damn! This ain’t no Easter miracle! It’s Kutchlighting in the third degree. Jenna (and Trent and Amy?) thought this comment would get buried in my stories and drift away in 24 hours, never to be seen again.
So I posted it on the grid and now I’m posting it here. The phantom comment.
I reached out to Jenna and asked about the phantom comment, by the way. On Easter fucking Sunday. And the Kutch answered me nearly immediately.
“I had to scroll forever to find it!” She lied.
This is a self described Instagram expert who knows that the very fact that she has nearly 1 million followers means the algorithm will lift her comment and put it at the top, especially for her and Rachel’s mutual followers.
“How many comments and likes are on it?!” I asked her.
No response.
She never posted the comment.
Why, though?
Is this really just a feud between gal pals or two distant brand partners who both profit inadvertently from the other’s success?
So, while Jenna Kutcher and Rachel Hollis the women might not be friends anymore, the girl bosses must remain respectful of each other’s empires so they both can get filthy rich.
And this is why I care.
Because what I stumbled upon thanks to Rachel Hollis’ sweet housekeeper is a scary network of folks who all monetize our collective desire for security and belonging, using tools like hypnosis and then spiritual bypassing the fuck outta us until we all just submit to a world with Tony Robbins as its king, forever paying him and/or one of his many inferiors $1997/month.
But the scary part isn’t that powerful are preying on the less privileged, but that there is seemingly no Google record of all of this.
Like I said with Rachel and Jenna, the men and women behind these brands might hate each other, but their brands — self described 7 and 8 figure empires — are forced to be best friends forever, entangled in endless NDAs and non disparagement clauses.
Marie Forleo is famous for an aggressive legal team that leaves no negative review left online.
This means that the Google record reflects a pristine reputation, not because as they would have us believe, Oprah’s “thought leader for a next generation” is really so effective at transforming peoples’ lives, but because she’s effective at hiring great legal representation.
Ask yourself who this silence serves.
How exactly does a woman supporting women hide real reviews from them, robbing them of their full agency in making a buying decision?
Which leads me back to James Wedmore, Brooke Castillo, and Tyler J. McCall.
Just as Marie Forleo was the fairy godmother of early online marketing stars like Amy Porterfield, Laura Roeder, and Talking Shrimp, Laura Belgray, through her high ticket mastermind, James Wedmore is the modern godfather, with folks paying him $20-$40K to grab a seat at his table, which comes with elbow rubbing with the next class of up and coming pay to players. And Brooke Castillo is queen of the life coaches in giant hats.
One of those players was Tyler J. McCall.
He joined James Wedmore’s high ticket mastermind, got in the room where it happens, and emerged the new It Guy of Instagram and then, like Amy did way back when with her Facebook transition, to online business in general.
Then, Tyler stumbled into James Wedmore leaving a MAGA meeting?! JK but I like to imagine the hilarious circumstances in which Tyler J. McCall could have had his “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” moment with James Wedmore, Brooke Castillo, and Donald Trump.
Tyler J. McCall discovered that his business mentors — who he aggressively supported and affiliated for — were affiliating for the Grand Daddy of Sleazy Marketers, Donald Trump himself. And maybe Q, best known for his work in Qanon, too?! Nobody knows.
So, Tyler hopped on a live video to distance himself from James and Brooke and express his shock and disgust at discovering that people he admired and supported could support a vile (even treasonous???) snake oil salesman like our 45th president?
Rumor has it, Brooke Castillo of The Life Coach School sent a cease and desist to have the video taken down? I don't know! I’m but a humble Internet outcast who heard it through the grapevine. (2023 edit: an inside source with connections to TLS team recently confirmed for me this was likely the case.)
Which is as good as it gets these days because the video vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.
Tyler himself told me in DMs (after he, like Jenna Kutcher, watched my stories silently for days without engaging) that it wasn’t James Wedmore who asked him to take it down.
Who was it then? Brooke Castillo? (Likely.) Angie Lee? Tony Robbins? Donald Trump himself? WAS IT Q, TYLER?!? WAS IT Q????
Nobody will ever know, because the video is gone forever.
I didn’t even see it but my followers and fellow FREE SCHOOL Freshmen do and they kept sending me DMs asking where it went.
I had reached out to Tyler a few times to crickets but the day I tagged him in my stories in relation to James Wedmore, he leapt into the DMs to clarify his position, much like Jenna Kutcher leapt at the chance to clarify that she was no longer BFFs with Rachel Hollis.
Speaking of Rachel, a few days after Tyler slid into my DMs and then agreed to an interview with me on my podcast Making Fun of Business, he backed out via his aptly named assistant Rachel, saying his priorities had changed.
I had offered to steer clear of the topic of James Wedmore completely and focus, instead, on the change that the industry needs.
Tyler J. McCall, like Jenna Kutcher, hoped that if he slid into my DMs, I might hold him to the standard I hold my other biz BFFs.
Joke’s on them! When you burn down your industry and set fire to your reputation, you don’t have biz BFFs.
Just enemies in high places. Like Blackberry Farm. And Necker Island.
(And Nashville? The new Jonestown? See my article on the StoryBrand scandal, Josh Harris, Donald Miller, and…Josh Duggar? Yeah, him too.)
Which brings me back to Rachel Hollis, who is currently taking one for the team.
And by team, I mean this network of network marketers in “coach” clothing, who are lining her pocket and vice versa, as she rides out the latest wave of short term “cancellation,” and then comes back as a repentant sinner and slides into the multibillion dollar “I fucked up!” Industry of motivational speakers who used to suck but now are found.
Saw this coming a mile away.
See, while Jenna initially insisted that she, Trent Shelton, and Amy Porterfield didn’t think there was much to discuss publicly in the vein of Rachel’s latest Hollising, their minds quickly changed as soon as they saw that their customers were paying attention this time.
After days of silence, Amy Porterfield responded to my post — the one where I called Jenna Kutcher’s bluff and shared her phantom comment on the Rachel Hollis thread — that she was working on a response, urging me to be patient.
Years of producing the most hilarious and utterly niche Amy Porterfield jokes (you can see them HERE and HERE) and the warm chocolate chip cookie of the industry never wafted as much as a single watch in my direction.
But when I urged her to comment on Rachel Hollis (and she knew people were watching), she issued me a curt nine words.
The next day, she told her audience "she wanted to share her thoughts" on Hollisgate.
"I have not been in this situation before," Amy shares in her post, a confession that Hollis' comments are the first time something a friend and brand partner said caused her concern. Hmmmm.
But this is where it gets fishy, Amy.
See, Rachel Hollis is no stranger to outrage.
She’s been Hollising in public for years — Buzzfeed published multiple, long form tear downs of her many counts of plagiarizing Black writers and passing off a potpourri of Pinterest quotes as her own.
This was all on the Google record, by the way, unlike Tyler J. McCall’s video about James Wedmore and Brooke Castillo.
But Amy Porterfield, queen of Online Marketing Made Easy, didn’t give Rachel a quick Google before becoming enmeshed in multiple brand partnerships?!
Is this what Amy recommends on her show? Choose your JV partners based on who has the cleanest face and then just hope for the best because you can always take 3-5 business days to consider your position should said partner do something particularly egregious…?
Again, Amy Porterfield — the same Amy Porterfield currently running ads about her 8 figure business — is the face of a company, not the actual girl next door.
As far as I know, she and Hobie don’t even have any neighbors!
They live in the hills of Tennessee now, didn’t you know?
And their move has nothing to do with the fact that so does Donald Miller and Michael Hyatt and a whole network of charismatic religious leaders turned marketers who have secularized mind control because it turns out it’s a lot more lucrative than saving souls!
This is why Tony loves his Angels!
Bro marketers and their Lamborghinis and inflated dickfunnels are easy to hate — they aren’t meant to appeal to everyone. They are caricatures, much like Donald Trump, that appeal to a very specific type of personality.
Girlbosses, on the other hand, are much harder to hate. Because they look like our friends, or at least a fantasy of who our friends could be.
They have messy buns and ripped jeans and toddlers and toilets that need cleaning.
They’ve got the whole perfectly imperfect thing nailed. (It came in a Canva template pack along with a script about “listening and learning” and being an “imperfect leader” any time a scandal like Hollisgate arises.)
And, more than anything, they’ve got us fooled into thinking that holding them as accountable as we would any other corporation, means we’re no longer “women supporting women.”
In a corporate environment, it’s called whistle blowing.
In personal branding, it’s called bullying.
That’s how they getcha.
But Rachel Hollis isn’t the only problematic personal brand/unregulated corporation folks like Amy Porterfield throw their weight behind.
Let me tell you about Russell Brunson, the guy who thinks Hitler is a thought leader
The deeper you go in this dickfunnel shaped rabbit hole, the more you find yourself longing for the simpler times of sweet women cleaning each others’ toilets.
All three of Tony’s Angels — Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, and Rachel Hollis — support Russell Brunson, founder of ClickFunnels, the software that made him famous after the potato gun and, more importantly, Adolf Hitler.
I wish I was joking or exaggerating but on page 2 of Russell Brunson’s “book”/long form blog post doubled spaced to high heaven, Expert Secrets, Russell writes about how he learned to build movements from “attractive” leaders like Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler.
See for yourself:
In Russell Brunson's own words: "It didn't matter if I was studying Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party or Jesus Christ and Christianity; all the examples I found had three things in common that helped them build a mass movement."
The only reason I own Russell Brunson's book is because of Amy Porterfield.
I first heard about him on her show in 2017, when she said, "no one knows how to build a movement better than super entrepreneur Russell Brunson."
And I trusted her.
How could a woman with a voice the equivalent of a warm chocolate chip cookie steer me wrong?
That was my first trip into the heart of a ClickFunnel dickfunnel and I’ll never forget it. Oh shit! The funnel is still live! Amy Porterfield is still making that ClickFunnels money!
Russell did the ol’ “I’ll give you my book for free!” song and dance, beckoning from the sewers like Pennywise.
Before I knew it, I was clicking within an inch of my life, begging for mercy, wondering if I’ll ever see the light of day again — if you think I’m being dramatic, you’ve never been relentlessly upsold by Russell Brunson’s robots.
I’m proud to say I only paid shipping and handling, an awesome feat when surrounded by so many seductive bonuses that are all somehow about to disappear forever. Just my luck! I always wander into a webinar that’s starting in five minutes and the day that Russell Brunson promises to teach me everything he knows — and throw in a George Foreman grill to boot — all for just $37?! How could I bring this guy down when he lifts me up so seflessly?!
Coincidentally, the day I received my copy of Expert Secrets was the day Amy Porterfield’s voice suddenly felt a lot less like a warm chocolate chip cookie and a lot more like a Dollar Tree air freshener tree in “Vanilla Bean."
If you spent 12 years trapped in someone’s dickfunnel, with only tracking cookies and nothing else, and then emerged again to the smell of that vanilla tray swaying from your rearview mirror, you might mistake it for the real thing, too.
Despite Jesus Christ’s alleged involvement, Russell Brunson’s book was god awful and the fact that Amy had so heartily promoted it on her podcast left me feeling ill.
Fun fact: the character of Brad the Braggy Bro Marketer was born a few months later. If you’ve been around since then, you’ve heard me talk about reverse niching — to get clear on what your brand is for, start with what you’re against — and how my best content comes from the shit that pisses me off. Now you know that my shit looks eerily like a dickfunnel.
But I haven’t just penned 6000+ words because I’m mad that Amy Porterfield apparently reads at a third grade level based on the enthusiasm she displayed for Russell Brunson’s unveiled attempt to create a ClickFunnels cult.
The Online Marketing Industrial Complex enthusiastically endorses a man who is actively rebranding, i.e. (whitewashing history) Adolph Hitler as a “movement builder,” which I guess makes the Nazi party kinda like a big “club”??? (that’s Russell Brunson).
And Russell Brunson, in turn, endorses a man with multiple FTC violations (that’s Dean Graziosi).
And Dean Graziosi is partners with a man accused multiple times of sexual assault who famously victim blamed a rape survivor at one of his events, after he rose to mainstream fame starring in a film where he used his skills of hypnosis to exacerbate fatphobia and put Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit (that’s Tony Robbins and, yes, I’m talking about the movie Shallow Hal).
I told you all roads lead back to Tony Robbins.
What universe are we living in where Rachel Hollis is repudiated but Russell Brunson is celebrated?!
Funny how Amy Porterfield has never felt the need to make a statement about Russell Brunson, but she was moved to share her thoughts on Rachel Hollis?
Except we know she didn't actually want to share her thoughts.
Because, as Jenna Kutcher herself told me, Trent Shelton and Amy Porterfield both urged her to stay mum on Hollisgate until a critical mass of us compelled them to change their minds.
And before you go feeling too sorry for Rachel Hollis, remember...
Rachel Hollis may be taking one for the team, but it's still her team.
Speaking of Russell, she was just with Brunson in Idaho in May 2021, while she performs her mandatory sentence of flying under the radar before doing a phoenix move of her very own.
(When she does, I’m gonna tell my kids she copied my ass. Very on brand for her.)
A few weeks later, Jenna Kutcher got Rachel’s sloppy seconds because she was then with Russell in Arizona for the — yup! You guessed it! — Tony Robbins “Own Your Future” event May 11-15, 2021, and its subsequent upsell into Project Next.
Remember, this is the product that Tony and Dean brought Jenna on as a “consultant” to help them make it “more inclusive.” What exactly is Russell consulting on?
When Jenna Kutcher worked with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi on their last product, Knowledge Broker Blueprint, also known as KBB to insiders, they marketed as "the last course you'll ever need." Then they changed their minds and sold that same audience Project Next. No refund. No discounts. No future updates on KBB.
By the way, you know who else was an affiliate for Own Your Future/Project Next? Dave Hollis. Who still works for Hollis Co. So Rachel Hollis is making money off all this, despite whatever The New York Times has to say about it and wherever she may currently be on the radar.
And, again, all roads lead back to Tony Robbins.
Sorry, James Wedmore and Tyler J. McCall, you’re small potatoes compared to these big guns.
But I’ll circle back to you because your story deserves to be on the Google record, too.
In the middle of all the hubbub of Hollisgate, my DMs started to overflow with questions about other industry leaders, including James Wedmore, Brooke Castillo, and what happened to the Tyler J. McCall tapes?!
And should the person behind the personal brand decide to end this friendship, as Jenna Kutcher did with Rachel Hollis and Tyler J. McCall did with James Wedmore, that friendship never ends on Google. Especially if lawyers are involved and money is still flowing as a corporate fruit of this phantom friendship.
As I publish this post on May 19, 2021, if I google “Rachel Jenna Amy” this is what you see:
Jenna might think Rachel is “troubled, angry, dismissive” now (her words, not mine) but she doesn’t mind if her pockets stay fat from the money that somehow makes its way back to her because folks still think they’re friends.
Similarly, while Tyler J. McCall told me he “did his part” and told his friends about what how he saw Wedmore kissing MAGA-non…? (As well as whoever saw the James Wedmore tapes before Q got ‘em, I guess?)
The Google record reflects a different story entirely.
One where James Wedmore is still Tyler’s mentor and Tyler enthusiastically promotes his programs.
One where Tyler J. McCall and James Wedmore both get richer because of their perceived association, so neither is in any hurry to divest from the other.
One where everyone I just mentioned acts endlessly aloof about all of the above, as if they hope we won’t notice them all paying to play with each other.
More like they’re counting on their own ability to StoryBrand/whitewash history — or at least Google search history — and gaslight us/distort the truth through a gorgeous IG grid, more inspirational quotes than you’ll know what to do with (so much value!!!), a few strategic dashes of “listening and learning” when something awful happens OR Rachel Hollises again, and the dollar on the stick dream that you, too, might sit at their table one day. (Who hasn’t fantasized about Jenna Kutcher asking you to pass her the gluten free Mac ’n’ Cheese as you both gaze at the sunset together as Richard Branson and Russell Brunson both look on in admiration, under Tony Robbins’ watchful eye??? Just me???)
In other words, their brands rely on the Google record not reflecting the truth about them.
That’s what the Internet is all about!
But, thankfully, the Internet is about this, too.
By this, I mean, this whistle was made for blowing.
I’m but the lowly court jester of the royal shit show that is online marketing. (Now you can say you have “friends” in low places, but don’t quote me on that in a court of law.)
Clowning around, trash talking in the name of truth.
Nothing to see here. (Literally. Half these folks have blocked me by now! How Black Mirror of them! If an RKA blows your whistle after you block her, does she still show up on Google? Asking for a friend.)
The best thing that Tony’s Angels ever did for me was ignore me.
Thanks to this act of service, nobody could say we’re “friends,” in the company way or otherwise.
But I’m also not going to pretend like I’m above this. If any of these women — or the dickfunnels they rode in on — had given me even a quarter of a millisecond of the time of day, I would have named my kid after one of ‘em in gratitude for all I know.
The Online Marketing Industrial Complex and its SEO optimized friendships had me convinced that I needed to earn their love and that would unlock a door to Willy Wonka’s passive income factory or some shit.
So I spent years of my life trying to fit my clients’ businesses into their misshapen dickfunnels and, ultimately, trying to clown hard enough that they’d maybe laugh at one of my jokes and take pity on me, I guess?
Jenna Kutcher almost had me.
She’s skilled at monetizing her own motherhood and then weaponizing it to keep folks from holding her accountable, something she undoubtedly learned from her coach/mentor/business partner Uncle Dean Graziosi.
But it was too late.
And I was too much of a wild card bitch at that point to be slayed by someone whose podcast I never listened to. Sorry, Jenna, you might have a cool million on Instagram, but it’s Amy Porterfield and her warm chocolate chip cookies that I’ll never forget.
FREE SCHOOL only exists because I’m free of affiliate agreements and brand partnerships and Good Morning America features citing my “commitment” to these people.
In the Internet age, we’re all swimming upstream in a sea of dumb shit.
So why doesn’t the Google record reflect all the shit that these leaders have done?
It’s not fake news we should fear, it’s no news.
After 12 years of watching my clients and friends writhe their way through the labyrinth of dickfunnels that somehow always lead back to walking through fire for Tony Robbins, it clicked.
Marie Forleo once told me that the world needs the special gift that only I have.
Well, here you go, world. I washed my face and then I figured it out. You’re welcome.
2023 edit: Since posting this, Tyler J. McCall has "retired" from online business, took a sabbatical, and is now running a brick & mortar shop. Before his sabbatical, Tyler spoke out about how the industry had affected his mental health. Members of his audience asked that he share more about who in the industry had contributed to these harms and he responded by saying their desire for this information was evidence of a "parasocial relationship" with him. What makes this nuanced is that, in the age of the personal brand, leveraging parasocial relationships is exactly what make online business celebrities wealthy and influential. I wish Tyler would have taken this opportunity to help protect people who trusted him from encountering similar harms, but it may be that he is legally prohibited from doing so.
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WTF is FREE SCHOOL? Comedian and court jester of the royal shit show that is online marketing burns it all down in her Instagram stories. It's the biggest biz art experiment of all time!
My name is Rachael Kay Albers and the kids call me the One Woman SNL of Business Comedy (because I tell 'em to). I'm a brand strategist, business comedian, and a helluva good time.
I started FREE SCHOOL as a free business school and creativity university on Instagram. But then I followed Ranchard Branson into a rabbit hole shaped funnel and found myself muckraking my way into the madhouse. Literally. Try to catch up here. It's a wild ride.
I have no freebie to tempt you with.
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