'Superhero Power: Mr. X has the ability to see through clothing. While he can’t see through walls, tanks or anything that would help him fight crime, Mr. X still claims superhero status.'
image: namethegarels.com (click for link)
Less than 12 months ago Dean Letfus breathlessly told the world
via YouTube how excited he was to have “discovered” the power of the internet through attending Shaun Stenning’s Geekversity weekend course — which it appears Dean Letfus and his mate Steve Goodey promptly started to promote far and wide as affiliates … ‘twisting Shaun’s arm’ to return to NZ to pitch it … until Geekversity was reportedly
SHUT DOWN down in Australia amid rancour and complaints … at a AUD$5.5 million loss.
Lawyers are still (even last weekend!) promoting their services (PDF) to Geekversity victims on a ‘no-win, no-pay’ basis to pursue their legal rights and refunds, presumably for non-delivery of the hyperbolic promises of cash rolling in through the whizz-bang ka-ching internet marketing ‘cash machine’ the smooth-talking self-proclaimed ‘experts’ hawked around the country.
Is this a case of deja vu?
Here’s Dean Letfus speaking in June 2009 in his enthusiastic promotional video for Geekversity (full transcript here):
I’ve been a professional sales and marketer for a long time and I never realised the power and just the volume of business that’s being generated online. It’s like a whole new world.
I never really understood that I could replace a 40 or 60 hour a week job and earn a lot more money than I could in that from the comfort of my own laptop or my own home and effectively ‘buy my life back’.
You can do that too, and it’s incredible just with a little bit of education and some action the results that you can get.
Questions:
(1) Hey Dean, how much of that ‘a lot more money’ was affiliate income from promoting Geekversity itself?
(2) Er, jeez, Dean. What did you say to people who signed up for the Geekversity $20,000 12 month ‘coaching’ on your recommendation for it to all fall apart a few months later?
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Anyway, RIGHT NOW Dean Letfus is being marketed as an ‘internet marketing expert’ (no joke) who can show you how to “build your very own online cash machines”.
It looks to me like just another version of the rags to-riches, I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-saved, blind-but-now-I-see tale peddled by this same spruiker with the same ‘I’ve been here 5 minutes and now I am a guru’ spiel he used with his property “coaching”-property sales business.
This time he’s in partnership with a boy-wonder salesman who claims to have been an internet marketing expert since puberty.
From the look of it, Shaun Stenning is promoting his own business partner Dean Letfus as the mysterious “Mr X”, “a little known internet marketing expert”, to Asian wealth seekers — while keeping a very low profile himself in Australian marketing for the same er, product.
This reticence is understandable, I guess, given the fallout from the collapse of Geekversity and Stenning’s high profile in promoting that scheme to Aussie battlers. (Perhaps the ‘Shaun Stenning scam’ Google suggestion indicates some stigma?)
The story of Dean Letfus as the ‘little known internet marketing expert’ almost deserves an award for new fiction writing. In my view, the whole sales pitch has a sort of sixth-form social studies essay ring to it — and like any good sixth-form essay, it looks like someone’s copied their mate’s work.
See if you can spot any similarities … Continue reading →
