WISE is one of the lost step-children of the scientology hierarchy. Out there in left field, the only real value they have had is to pull a couple of dental/chiropractic consultants under their wing and then pump them to get new people using LRH tech and then onto the Bridge to collect FSM Commissions.
The CO WISE WUS sends out a constant stream of useless articles about random subjects, and I have not commented on them before.
But it suddenly struck me what is wrong with his pitch. Oh so very wrong.
First, glance through this latest piece to get a flavor of it for yourself:
Dear George,
Finally an article on which I have full subjective certainty!
Let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Sakhi Guma
CO WISE WUS
Building the Better Burger: The Inside Story of Five Guys
When it comes to building a better burger, Five Guys has answers. Over the past twenty years, it has become one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the country. Founded in 1986, their objective, right from the beginning, was to build a better burger cooked to perfection on a grill, along with fresh-cut fries cooked in pure peanut oil.
The Burger Biz
Five Guys CEO, Jerry Murrell, had this to say about opening a hamburger business: “My mom always said if you can give a good haircut, make a good drink and make a good hamburger, you’ll be all right in life. I just thought that was a good idea. I didn’t think we could make a good hamburger, but I thought, well, a lot of people do it, so maybe we could figure it out.”
And figure it out they did, as they were going for quality right from the beginning. They could not get a bank loan, so they scraped together the funds and rented a small, out-of-the-way place. But one thing they did not skimp on was ingredients—they only bought the best. From the beef to the bacon to getting the best rolls, the Murrell family did not compromise. And then there are their incredible hand-cut fries, cooked in peanut oil (costing several times more than the oil used in most burger places). Imagine: Their first restaurant was a takeout joint that was far out of the way, with no parking, selling burgers for twice the amount of the average burger chain. They broke even from day one.
The Five Guys’ philosophy aligns with a datum from L. Ron Hubbard in his article of 20 September 1976 called “THE STAT PUSH.”
“The answer to not having money is, of course, to make more money. BUT that is not done with a Gross Income push.’ It is done with putting a whole organization there, every part of it functioning and delivering with all the bugs out of its lines, and making a lot, lot, lot more money.”
The Murrell family literally put the whole organization there—their entire family was involved right from the outset, and this continues to this day with everyone having a role to play. Matt and Jim travel the country visiting stores, Chad oversees training, Ben selects the franchisees, and Tyler runs the bakery.
Training Staff
They believe strongly in training and working with staff. They even have a “fry calibration” class, which drills staff on the proper mix of starch, water and temperature needed to make the perfect french fry.
Mr. Hubbard goes on to say:
“Fifty trained staff producing everything an organization is supposed to produce will make far more money than five guys concentrating on GI only and letting the rest of the organizational go to blazes.”
Five Guys is known to do things a little differently than most restaurant chains. They invest heavily in their workers—paying them a decent wage. As Murrell says: “Hire well-paid people and they’ll stay with you.” So, the Murrells did not just push sales; they pushed making better burgers and fries and delivering an incredible product.
As L. Ron Hubbard says:
“First of all one has to know precisely that STATISTICS ARE AN INDICATOR; THEY ARE NOT AN OBJECT.
“WHEN YOU PUSH THE INDICATOR, YOU DO NOT OBTAIN THE OBJECT IT REPRESENTS.
“PRODUCTION IS COMPLETED CYCLES OF ACTION, NOT JUST NUMBERS.”
The Murrells represent quality, and they achieved their numbers not by pushing sales but by pushing a great product and differentiating themselves from the rest of the marketplace.
___________________________________
by Prosperity Editor
So, what is wrong with this and the many similar article that have preceded it?
Not a single one of these successful companies is actually USING LRH tech. None.
But he goes through and picks out things they are doing and correlates them to some statement made by LRH somewhere as if it proves the “admin tech” is really brilliant.
But the fact is it proves the exact opposite.
Hubbard claims (and so does WISE) that LRH tech is the ONLY administrative tech that actually works. Everything else is hit and miss, flawed and does not have the benefit of Hubbard’s “wholetrack research” where he isolated why organizations only last a few million years and then fail (funny, his has yet to make it a century and there is every likelihood it will not live to celebrate that day)…
Yet, if this is the “only” “tech”, how is it that Five Guys is a roaring success? Why has Tesla grown to have the largest market cap of any car company in the world inside a decade? How is Apple such a success? McDonalds? Anything? None of them use or ever would use anything written by LRH.
And why is it that in 50 years NOT A SINGLE COMPANY ANYWHERE EVER has grown to be a national, let alone international, success applying LRH administrative technology?
More empiric evidence that the assertions of Hubbard concerning the miracles, breakthroughs never seen before, workability and infallibility of his tech are bunk. Though for sure you can find individuals who will proclaim his brlliance and how their dental practice would not have expanded without it – though that is really a lie. Had they applied Tony Robbins or Landmark they likely would have improved their practice simply be ause they believed and applied A system. But individual “successes” do not prove this is the ONLY workable tech. If it WAS the only workable tech, just like his article about Five Guys says, it would have taken over the world.
This same truth holds true for all scientology “tech.” If it was as it is claimed not even the insane antics of David Miscavige could stop it from being adopted all over the world faster than a raging wildfire. After all, Hubbard himself says that word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising so it must be true.
I only know of one business who used WISE. Survival Insurance. They’re out of business.
My understanding is WISE Geztapoed their way in, got theIr hands on the checkbook, start taking their “tithe”, even when the money wasnt there. One unverified report said they took $ meant for employee FICA, SDI accounts and sent it uplines. All 25+ BRANCHES were closed, employees gone, owner in BK, and biz under State investigation. And, minions desperately trying to erase the money trails to you know who!
Any other wins out there?
Good comment, Phil. And let’s not forget owner of Survival Insurance, Richie Acunto. He took money from the business that he shouldn’t have to make very hefty donations to the IAS. He really liked racking up all those IAS statuses. When he was close to bankruptcy, kicked out of his house due to impending divorce, living on a boat, he hired a Scn young kid only 18 years old or less, who drove his motorcycle all the way from one coast to the other just to work for Acunto. Turns out Acunto put him to work babysitting his kids in return for living in his house with Richie’s wife. (This is on top of the work he did at Survival Ins), and all that money he was owed due to horrendous hours he was working, was NOT paid to him. It broke the kid financially as well as his heart since he believed in Richie. The kid didn’t even have the money to get back home to his mom. I think he finally borrowed it. I heard many employees from Survival are still owed money. Anyone have any PT data on Rickie Acunto? What is he doing for money these days?
The answer to having no money is to make more money? Really?
Tell that to the receptionists, the clerks, anyone who works for an employer in this kind of economy. They’re hanging on to their jobs for dear life. Yes, they can do something after hours but how long is that “solution” sustainable?
The above statement is arrogant in the extreme.
Show me one Nobel Prize winner that is a Scientologist. That’s right, there isn’t one.
Show me one astronaut that’s a Scientologist. Nope?
Show me one Dean of a University that’s a Scientologist. Nope?
Show me one great architect. Or a world leader. Or a true Civil Rights leader – you know, one that actually does something – that is a Scientologist. Nope.
What more proof do you need that as a belief system, or as a success facilitator, it is worthless. Scientologists sure don’t seem exceptional to me.
Mark, good points.
And, ironically, given Scientology’s focus on celebrities, as far as I can tell none have ever won an Oscar. In fact, when I was looking into that, I noticed the celebs tended to stop even getting nominated for major awards like Oscars and Emmys as they got heavily involved in Scientology, as if the processing or something actually interfered with their acting craft.
Paul Haggis
And Leah Remini has an Emmy.
Well, briefly, the Danish Technical University had a head of chemical engineering (one quarter of the student body and university) who was a member in good standing of the criminal organisation known as the “church” of $cientology. The selection process turned out to have been fudged and the head was replaced after it becoming a bit of a scandal.
But, of course, the heart and soul of Wise (hah!) is to funnel money from the unsuspecting companies into the criminal Co$. There is a lawsuit underway in France concerning psychological harassment in a company Arcadia (and the financial side is also a topic) with the organisation itself being investigated.
https://whyweprotest.net/threads/france-scientologists-to-be-investigated-for-workplace-harassment.119613/
What a good point about the scntologist celebrities – no Oscars!
Most scntologists I know are broke! Lol!
The whales had money anyway before they came into scn. Notice that?
Brought to you by the same folks who send pimple faced children with no life experience to chastise grown men about their masturbating or to tell grown people how to run their lives, under the guise of ethics handlings. Or, they send clueless, inexperienced S.O. kids who have never worked a day in their lives around the world to tell people in the real world the “secrets” of how to make money. The presumptuousness is galling.
The most revealing thing about Hubbard system was that everyone was a TERMINAL, not a person, human being, employee etc. The word indicates inanimate object.
Pretty dehumanizing and cold.
Loaded language to manipulate you into minimizing the value of people
2-d for family – the most important group one needs
Scientology manipulates members to discard family w/o sorrow
Think about it
I always hated the term ‘ethics particle’. From a simple human being you are downgraded to a downstat pathetic particle… with NO rights. Thats a statement and a half considering you can count the rights of an SO member on one hand.
I often wonder why WISE concentrates on recruiting dentists, vets and chiropractors but never MDs.
Jonathan, I think it basically comes down to MDs being too educated including in scientific method, and too professional, to fall for Scientology. Scientology also attracts few if any highly-trained professionals with advanced education in other areas that require really rigorous thinking and data evaluation, like the sciences and engineering.
Dentists are generally not as well educated or as well trained in science, and they also are in a profession that leaves them looking for ways to make more money – the sort of money that MDs do. Vets are also les well paid and so looking to increase their incomes, but I think they tend to be a bit better trained in science (which may account for their being of them), though I do not know enough about the profession to be sure of that.
Chiropractors are practicing pseudo-medicine with few – though some – provable benefits, and that fits right in with Scientology, along with the same angle of wanting to make the kind of money that real doctors do.
Sorry in advance if I’ve stepped on any toes with those characterizations, but I needed to be brief, and I have known quite a few individuals in most of those professions, along with people and organizations that serve the professions, so I think my generalizations are more on-target than off.
Dental school is 4 years, and very intensive on the science. There must be some other explanation than that they’re not well educated.
Spot on Peace Maker!
If I had to take a stab at guessing, I’d say it is probably due to the fact chiros, vets, and dentists tend to own their own practices, thus leading them to need help administrating their fledgling business and to have more access to larger, company funds.
It’s because the range of services that dentists and chiropractors offer is fairly limited compared to a doctor, especially a specialist. There are only two ways for a dentist to make more money: work faster (generally pretty hard to do, especially if you’re trying to do a quality job) or sell lots of services not covered by insurance. The WISE method of selling prepaid plans with cash up front and delivering the services later is straight out of the playbook for the Scientology organization. The dentists take the cash out of the business (some donate it to Scientology, others just keep it for themselves) as soon as they receive it. The problem is that it’s a deposit, it’s not really “sales” or a profit that you can spend. You owe it back to the customer if they request it. So you’re supposed to keep the cash until it’s actually turned into a service.
The prepaid treatment scheme works great until a few months later when the customers want the service they’ve paid for. At that point, you have no money coming in but you have to incur the expenses for providing the service, like your labor costs, the bill from the lab for making implants or caps, etc. What then happens is that you either feel the financial pain or you get caught on an endless cycle of selling more prepaid cosmetic treatment plans to cover your current expenses, then you need to sell even more treatment plans later on, etc.
It’s a house of cards that will ultimately collapse. Much smarter to accept your lot in life that you’ll never make as much as a heart surgeon and be happy with what you do have and enjoy your time off.
John, I hope that you saw the comment on this subject that I posted around the same time you did, based on specific familiarity with the various medical fields and their personnel. Your financial and managerial analysis is correct, but I think in the big picture, Scientology gets more traction with the ones where the practitioners are less educated and particularly less trained in scientific method and evidence-based treatment – who are also the people who wish they made the sort of money that MDs do.
And as I noted a while back, all the training for these professions fails to prepare the practitioners for running a business, as many of them end up having to do if they go into private practice, so they are a real target market for anyone offering management systems and services.
Excellent point!
I wonder how 5 Guys feels about being unwittingly associated with Scientology.
The US Navy gave Hubbard most of the biggest stable ideas for the organization of Scientology today.
Then, I’ve heard it written, but not yet explored it, but the way Alextor Croweley packaged up and delivered the Magik teachings, supposedly have similarity to how Hubbard packaged up “courses” in Scientology.
Then, is the IRS.
The IRS used to use a massive amount of paper for the Tax IRS forms that US citizens filled out yearly.
The IRS started using “computerized tax forms” to be filled out in blue or black ink, and with boxes so that 1/4 million dollar ($250.000.00) scanning machines could input the info that was written inside the little boxes on the tax forms filled out by citizens.
We in the routing forms project, Carol Titus specifically, proposed and it was approved by Miscavige, to go ahead and do like the IRS and use the same business forms company that produced the old IRS citizen tax forms.
So, who is following whom?
Hubbard’s ideas came from the US Navy and we used the IRS’s printing and business forms habits.
Forms and organizations are great ideas. They should be used. I have forms for mundane repetitive tasks, but I modify them EACH AND EVERY time I have a new client to suit the client in front of me.
Likewise with hierarchy. Sometimes I am the boss of me sometimes my boss is the boss of me, sometimes I am the boss of my boss, depending on what the situation requires. There is a fluid structure based on the situation at hand. We both know our limitations and deal with things accordingly. We respect each other and are able to do that because we do not force rule our situations.
There are times some days when we discuss how to make the organization run smoother or why a problem occurred. All of this is based on dealing with human beings and treating each other with respect.
Scientology attempts to treat each person as though they were exactly. the. same. as the last one. This does not, and will not, work as long as people are involved. Removing HE&R (human emotion and reaction) from the situation only creates pretend automatons who will wear out because they ARE human. This was not taken into account when creating the scientology structure.
Here here!
“Subjective certainty”: an oxymoron written by a moron.
“First of all one has to know precisely that STATISTICS ARE AN INDICATOR; THEY ARE NOT AN OBJECT.
“WHEN YOU PUSH THE INDICATOR, YOU DO NOT OBTAIN THE OBJECT IT REPRESENTS.
“PRODUCTION IS COMPLETED CYCLES OF ACTION, NOT JUST NUMBERS.”
The irony…oh the irony!
I live on the East Coast and have never heard of nor seen a “5 Guys”. I just surveyed 100 people on FB in the area and none had heard of them either
The WISE idiot should of choose a better example.
Hi Wynski
They’re here in downstate NY
Good burger, a little pricey, but they give you free peanuts
Rob
There are also some in upstate New York and New England, and maybe some a bit further South, I know that I have seen them while on vacation.
I don’t know where you are on the east coast… but this is a franchise chain that started in Virginia, has moved up and down the east coast, into the midwest and even into Europe.
For west coasters, compare to In and Out Burger.
Dave,
Wise Advice Update:
Whether it is Hubbard winging it, you running the Valley Mortuary or Sakhi BSing it, word of mouth has it that you are all a bunch of cartoons.
BTW, good to see that you have been droned again. Are you aware of those small drones the size of insects?
That Potemkin Village is scientology 😉 I should have known. All facade and no people. No wonder David Miscavige offered to “fix the facades” of Clearwater businesses. A facade is all he has to offer.
Yep, spot on Mike!
In the 30 something years I’ve had Hubbard’s “wizardry” buzzing and bouncing around inside my head I’ve never seen policy work, nor have I seen any WISE advised/dominated company do any good whatsoever. The evidence is astounding that Scientology Administrative tech is one, big, HUGE flunking failure!
Success in life sure isn’t easy but apply to Scientology to the outside world is the best guarantee you’ll fail before your ever get truly started. With Scientology you’ll never, EVER enjoy the fruits of your labors, Scientology guarantees it!.
Geezers, what ever happened to good old common sense? Hubbard tried to ambush it and call it his own!
My advice is stay away from Scientology and your odds in succeeding in anything you do will improve remarkably. I suppose another way of saying the same thing is, Scientology thrives on stupidity!
What? What? You don’t have your home org board posted on your refrigerator? Sad story. When I was in, I visited hard core households where there seriously was an org board for running the household. I still question why a home needs a Div VI, or most of the other divs for that matter. Surprise surprise, most of them were HFA by mom and dad, imagine that.
Yeah, but my imagination is twisted and broken concerning Scientology, it has been led up too many blind alleys, especially that green on white stuff. My in-laws (who don’t talk to me anymore) have an Org board at their home and at their business, which by the way is a typical Scientologist’s business, broke, barely surviving and under constant onslaught by the reges, so much so they changed all their phone numbers etc.
The term, “being in good standing” would have to be one of the darkest of accomplishments I could ever contemplate this side of a full blown but never ending nightmare! Yuck, what a horrible thing organised Scientology is?
Reminds me of a time early in my SO career, almost 40 years ago now (jeez). I was in FSO and my then-wife was one of only a handful of staff of the new WISE Int recently started in CW. I told her I thought of the perfect slogan for WISE: “What could be worse than working for WISE.” Turns out it was a pretty good slogan.
“Jeez” is right. Add Scientology to your life and suddenly you realize – “where’d my life go?”
I used to think the “touch it once” principle that LRH “invented” was genius. Well, I still like it. I just know it was only plagiarized by LRH from Neville Parkinson (http://www.economist.com/node/14116121) as was basically anything that I found in scientology that was workable. Once I stopped acknowledging LRH as source and recognizing knowledge for what it was, simply good advice from others, and became a seeker of truth and started trusting myself, my life became easier.
WISE forces you to believe LRH came up with the only workable admin tech while touting the success of non-scientology businesses as models of success. That alone should tell you there’s something rotten in Denmark.
I don’t understand how 5 Guys could have become successful.
They didn’t start out with an Ideal building.
Ok that made me laugh
No Ideal building? Whoa! Someone’s going to be licking the bathroom floors…
I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today……
F or what it’s worth, Five Guys invaded So Cal about 6-7 years ago. I tried it a few times, was not impresssed.
In-N-Out is five time as good for five times less money. Typically, Five Guys has a mostly empty parking lot and In-N-Out has a line of cars around the full parking lot and going out to the street. Five guys making one burger vs five guys making 20 burgers at a time. Sakhi prefers to spend one third of his weekly pay for a burger and fries. LOL
The walls of In-N-Out are decorated with pictures of Southern California themes, like palm trees and classic cars and such. 5 Guys is decorated with posters about how great 5 Guys is.
I’ve gotta agree 3FB. And I’m not the only one…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qGJcVUWY08E
Same ere, don’t like their burgers at all……nothing anything different from Wendy’s…which I prefer over Burger King and Mc Donald’ss….
Hubby loves it. I’m “meh”. Of course I’m allergic to eggs and chocolate, and their buns have eggs. Anywhere I have to avoid half the products in a restaurant makes me “meh”. There are several like that around. When I go in and watch everyone go yum yum yum and I’m poking a burger patty sitting on my plate, it kind of kills the experience TBH. They do make some awesome fries. And sooooooooo many that one order is enough to feed a village.
“They invest heavily in their workers—paying them a decent wage.” That certainly doesn’t sound like $cientology to me.
Lol
Auditing. That is their only viable product. Yet, where are all the high class auditors? What happened to the training and production of auditors? Why are sec checks more common place than auditing? Every Hubbard quote I’ve seen is contrary to the idea of depending on donations, yet, that is exactly what the whole ideal org nonsense has been about for years. Why isn’t Wise focusing on the big fatal flaw in its own organization? That was rhetorical. I know why. Hypocrisy, thy name is Scientology.
LMAO! exemplaryangel , auditing is a COMPLETELY non-viable “product”. Hence people cannot make a living doing it. Scientology CRASHED when the orgs were stuffed full of auditors.
Wynski, I see your point. Taking that into consideration, what would be the product/service that they are selling? The bridge? Super Powers? Eternity? I can’t recognize any of those options as viable either. So, I suppose that makes me unWise.
I do like cheeseburgers, though.
exemplaryangel, they are selling a lie. Think snake oil and you are on the right track. If they had a viable product they would not be defunct.
do WISE businesses pay a percentage of their revenues to the cult, similar to a franchisee, or do they simply buy courses?
Yes, they hold a yearly membership (5 or 400$ in 2007) and pay 10% to WISE of the income they make when using LRH policy or tech. So if it were a school then all amounts charged for word clearing, supervising, the basic study courses would be tallied weekly and the 10% paid. WISE tried to get me to pay 10% of my income when I started a financial management business. I called BS and held the yearly as it was good PR and Mary Kay loved to send me clients. There is a whole other side to WISE in that it is Wise’s job to handle business upsets. Judging by the criminality exposed in Scientology companies (Fishmen, Slatkin etc.) WISE doesn’t do its job. Too busy getting in the stats/GI they’ve lost sight of their purpose if they ever saw one to begin with.
Mike, great article. Scn has lost experienced staff and execs through blows, death, retirement etc. Those left are inexperienced, unable to think and full of cognitive dissonance. So a “brilliant” article by the head of WISE is par for the course.
The escalating insanity of Scientology is inevitable and all the money in the world cannot stop their incredibly bad word of mouth reputation.
I’m pretty sure his subjective reality comes from eating burgers and not from being well paid, well trained and not focusing on stat-pushing GI.
“Fifty trained staff producing everything an organization is supposed to produce will make far more money than five guys concentrating on GI only and letting the rest of the organizational go to blazes.” LRH
The church of scientology itself has the inverse ratio of this. To every five staff producing everything the organization is suppose to produce…bla bla bla…there are fifty guys concentrating on GI only and letting the rest of the organizational go to blazes. There is way more concentration on making money in the church.
The FACT that all of the HUBBARD trained Oat Tea’s were no match for the ONE, TINY, “SP” called DM proves that the “Tech” does NOT make people more able than the average “wog” with NO “tech”.
That was the acid test for scamology “tech” and it FAILED.
Back in the days of long ago, I was regged to take Admin courses. This was before the green volumes came out and single HCOBs were packaged up for staff to use. I said that I knew and saw the tech working; but, please please show me where the HCOPLs have been successful and working. Nothing but excuses.
The only successful and thriving ones I saw were Ray Kemp’s and Phil Spickler’s missions, and both got slammed for making money and making the senior orgs look inept. Truth was, they succeeded because their staff were firstly trained auditors, well rewarded, and in “ARC” with their public. The orgs, not so much.
Five Guys succeeded because they came at it from the bottom up, made a unified effort, and focused on quality at every step. Totally unlike the entire cherch bureaucracy.
Right! Missions could be viable because of what you observed. Orgs had to tolerate strict SO oversight which meant crappy pay, crush regging, heavy ethics and ripped off staff.
Like his processing tech, Hubbard likely obtained his admin tech from various sources and repackaged those ideas for profit. Some of the admin principles are common sense and useful, such as “First of all one has to know precisely that STATISTICS ARE AN INDICATOR; THEY ARE NOT AN OBJECT.”
During my 30-something years in Scientology (several in the SO), I observed that the aforementioned principle was ALMOST ALWAYS violated. Any sanity in the org board and in admin policies or principles was sacrificed to relentless stat pushing.
For me, one of the barriers to seeing Scientology for “what it is” was the sheer volume of Hubbard’s writings, both tech & admin. Who would expend that much effort to create a self-serving scam disguised as a religion?
Answering that question involved some study of sociopathy and personality disorders.
Mike, thanks for posting more drivel exposing the idiocy of one of the two worst pieces of Hubbard drivel out there. The “Admin Tech” is one of the things that continues to drag the Scientology organization into the swamp; even if Miscavige disappeared tomorrow and was replaced by a competent management team, but one that followed Hubbard “Admin Tech” to the letter, the cult would still be doomed to fail.
The most fundamental thing wrong with “Admin Tech” is that it denies the existence of change. Hubbard said that this one way of doing things was perfect for all organizations of any size forever. Once you adopted admin tech, you’d never have to do anything different for millions of years. Any business of any size, particularly a growing one, is grappling with the need to change to meet new challenges — cost pressures, expanding into new markets, developing new products, coping with the loss of money from obsolete products, employee turnover, and on and on forever.
So you’d think that the ability to manage change and to adapt to the unknown would be baked into any successful methodology for running a business. But that’s exactly what Hubbard avoided like the plague. Why? Because “Admin Tech” was all about Hubbard “proving” that he was the smartest guy ever — he had to lay down some stuff and say “this always works,” especially if he claimed to have all those whole track memories stretching back uncounted trillions of years.
It’s good that WISE is struggling because the product is useless and because the people running it are not exactly Scientology’s best and brightest, or it would be screwing up far more companies than it currently does.
Not sure, but I thought Survival Insurance was a WISE company. And of course the early Earthlink was owned by Scientologists, not sure if they paid tribute to WISE. Peter Gillham did a few vitamin company startups, some of whom are still around. Rumor has it that Alacer, the makers of Emergen-C may have been WISE guys at some point. If you can find a copy of the old “Who What Where” flier it was full of WISE guys. (http://www.whowhatwheredirectory.com/ last updated 2015)
And of course there are lots of WISE dentists and chiropractors. If your chiropractor takes a moment to gaze off into space as he touches your back, he may be using his OT powerz to find your misalignment. If so, run!
Lots of get rich quick scams have Scientology footprints. Like selling rugs in the park or meat door-to-door. Let’s face it, your typical Scilon needs lots of cash just to keep going on the Bridge. “Get rich quick” comes naturally to them.
The joke is that WISE was actually advised to be formed by Hubbard to “get businesses off the backs of Orgs”, to prevent Scientologists from spending their money on anything but Scientology. He hated the little row of shops near the Big Blue where you could buy office supplies (“New York George’s”) or vitamins or a sandwich from a fellow Scientologist. But then WISE kept evolving into Scientology businesses so they compromised by requiring “management technology lease payments” and bragging about how companies were using Scientology to “boom”. Mostly they busted.
Bruce, I have the years 2007 & 2010 copies. Both state 35,000 distribution. What does the 2017 site say I wonder? 2007 was 80 pages. 2010 was 64 🙂
Yeah, and as soon as Earthlink started to get big, it ditched Org Board tech. Even while Sky was still running it.
What is so forgotten, is Reg Sharpe was a successful business person and he credited some of LRH’s ideas, but then Reg himself I think behind the scenes contributed and helped Hubbard percolate the “Saint Hill” administrative era of organizational things that Hubbard took at the credit for. I heard or read, of Reg’s significant contributions for which he was quite humble to give and not get credit for.
Reg Sharpe would have been such a giant of the 1960s to have interviewed in detail of what parts of the admin of the 1960s Hubbard writings were Reg’s input, and how much was Hubbard’s.
So much Scientology nuts and bolts history to have been actually mined historically from the people who there as Hubbard “invented” and made policy of all the things that got made into policy, which today the WISE groups are suckered into paying back dues to WISE for using these LRH admin ideas.
Just despicable hoarding of actual “Source” by Hubbard, and getting money back to the Hubbard organizations for other people’s contributions, the “admin” principles that supposedly are such valuable ideas which gain Scientology WISE income today.
The name “David Mayo” leaps to mind, Chuck. I had some auditing from him when he had his mission in Santa Barbara. Great service. I think Hubbard stole a lot from him.
I totally agree John P. Capitalist.
Admin tech like Auditing tech is full of conflicts, mistakes, errors and wrong conclusions. And, because no one (except self appointed Miscavige) is allowed to delete/ignore/improve these instructions or use any “judgement” for their application, the entire organization and all auditors are condemned to NEVER use one’s own judgement to correct things after something crashes into a wall.
The cherch as an organization is screwed because they can’t deal with change. The same is true with its PC’s. They have become enslaved robots (feeding power to Miscavige in the form of big IAS donations) instead of creating the free thinking beings as LRH promised.
You speak sooth. Evolution applies just as much to human interaction in things such as business, clothes, fashion, engineering, electronics etc as much as it does to a couple of microbes doing their thing in a swamp – things as well as ideas and aspirations evolve constantly around life. What I said the other day comes to mind, Hubbard truly attempted to stop all motion except his own, no matter what he said or wrote. The way he forcefully applied how to do things really sux’d for the rest of us! Miscavige just loves that methodology.
Thank God David Attenborough never became a Scientologist!
” …… WISE is struggling because the product is useless and because the people running it are not exactly Scientology’s best and brightest,….”
Where exactly are $cientology’s ‘best and brightest’ anyway John P. The best and brightest robot of them all is of course our man in Hemet …… Dave the Dildo, but robots they are nonetheless.
Yo Dave,
Have you checked out your insect sized drone today good buddy? Things should be shriveling up noticeably these days around you cult hangouts. Fewer slaves (I mean staff), fewer public, just kind of less of everything Dave.
BTW Dave, that drone footage on TOs site showed some fetid green water up on the North end of Your property. Was that where ‘The Hole’ used to be? Good idea on getting rid of the evidence.
Did anyone else notice how lifeless the area seemed? Traffic pouring through, but only one human I spotted and a couple of little trucks driving around. It seemed an empty space, all built up and pretty, but I can hardly imagine what the residents actually DO, other than keeping the grass mown and picking up any leaves blown around. Dead.
John, thanks as always for your business and management minded perspective, and insights.
Hubbard espoused (and plagiarized from) just the sort of early to mid 20th century military-industrial management style that worked in it’s day, but then got both the military and American industry in trouble by the 1960s and 1970s, before they started to learn to become more adaptive and quality-oriented (or went out of business, like several one-time giants such as Woolworth’s). One of my favorite anecdotes, is that later on the government (keep that in mind) sent people in to help sort out what was going on with GM when the company finally collapsed and required a bailout – and they couldn’t believe the bureaucracy!
GM’s “management by committee” style was horrific for years, and it’s still studied in business schools as a great example of how not to do things. They’ve made great strides in the last 20+ years, even before the 2008 bailout in the financial crisis. One of the great (true) stories is that their cars used to come with two different keys: one for the ignition and one for the doors/trunk (this was before electronic remote door locks). Customers repeatedly said they wanted a single key that unlocked the door and started the motor. But it took GM literally 20 years to get the decision to make a single unified key through all the different committees and organizations who had some opinion on the decision and get it done. They kept trying every year but couldn’t get the signoffs in time to get that model year’s locks into production. And it kept costing them sales every year.
Wow. First of all, the fact they have to use Five Guys as their example of “greatness”, as opposed to their own organization or any WISE companies, should speak volumes to any clear-thinking individual. They’re simply trying to gain a modicum of relevance for their own “business model” by implication as it relates to the success of another completely separate entity.
Secondly, this statement “They invest heavily in their workers—paying them a decent wage.” Well, yes…..investing in your workers (upon whom your own success, as a business owner, depends) is important, even without any emotional aspect of caring for individuals, as it promotes an increase in productivity for your organization. It allows you to both obtain and retain the best workers for your own organization to continue to improve and build upon your previous successes. For the RTC especially (and other staff from top to bottom in the organization), worker retention doesn’t necessarily seem to be their strongest area, especially these days.
Finally, applying just one singular corporate philosophy without flexibility, regardless of the variables that every company will inevitably face, is a recipe for disaster. The longevity of any organization depends upon a number of factors (including at least a bit of “blind luck”, if you want me to be completely honest), not least of which is the ability to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the “marketplace” (or the public relations arena for “non-profits” such as CofS claims to be, arguably). With LRH “tech” as the law, without any ability to modify or change this so-called “tech”, this organization (and its founder) have tied their own hands and will never be able to escape the trap they have set for themselves, and the end game will inevitably be total and permanent irrelevance.
If an organization insists on living in the past, then they will soon find themselves relegated to the past. For this particular abusive and manipulative organization, that can’t come soon enough.
Simply a great comment. I am in Georgia teaching a 70 year old retired dentist from North Carolina. He was badly taken by WISE and and was fascinated and happy to hear of Rinder, Ortega, and Remini as well as the many singular efforts to take down what he experienced was a criminal syndicate masquerading as a church.
Mick,
For all of your never-in status, you seem to have 47X the awareness and abilities of the Prosperity Editor. Come to think about it, you have 47X the awareness and abilities of their top midget.
OR Lron himself……So happy that people can be helped with Mike’s fantastic job and the hard enduring work that Leah and Mike are putting into this.
What really gets to my heart is ALL of YOU dear dear dear people with caring hearts who got sucked into something that looked so wonderful and enlightening….only to have your hearts broken by the not so truth….i.e. the lies.
100% Mick. Have you seen the volumes and volumes of administrative dribble? I keep saying it, because it’s so true, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
I have not, but I would be willing to bet they’re chock-full of non sequitur after non sequitur based on audio I’ve heard of some of his lectures, which included a ton of incoherent rambling and changing of topics. I just couldn’t seem to follow the guy’s line of thinking (probably because he wasn’t capable of having a straight line of thinking).
I could never last long listening to the few lectures I attempted to listen to on YouTube in my attempt to try to learn about his mentality. Perhaps that should tell me all I need to know about the man’s mentality (no offense to any current LRH admirers who comment here, I just couldn’t process that stuff in any logical manner).
The mission I worked for near San Francisco, had no admin books at all. The mission holder said they were unnecessary. He said, “all we need to do is follow Senior Policy…We always deliver what we promise.” It worked nicely.
Good point, thegman77, but then you weren’t doing Scn either.
Mick, at the top of this post, there are eight green volumes, which are administrative policies. These are not wee little books and that doesn’t include the volumes and volumes of executive orders and orders of the day and I don’t even know what else there was.
You shoulda seen Sakhi’s story about Uber and the PR Series! That one was a hoot!
I always considered WISE to be a mafioso arm of Scientology. If you were a Scientologists running a business using any admin tech at all, the WISE guys would swoop in and make you pay a percentage of your income to them because your success was surely and only due to using some tool like a 3 basket system or files or maybe an org board, and less to do with your great idea underlying your business or that you had the smarts to hire good employees. If I had been forced to pay part of my business income to WISE I would have told them to go f_ themselves. Why are we not surprised that we NEVER hear anyone in a public news interview sing praises to Scientology for boosting their business with their incredibly brilliant admin tech??
I was once regged on the premise that since I was a using admin tech in my business, it was copyright infringement to use it without permission. WISE, of course, would provide me with that permission for a fee. It seemed like a shady approach. I told the reg he’d have to get back to me with specifics on my legal rights to do things like use an org board and apply conditions. Never heard back. Regardless of their strong arm tactics, the line that always goes unsaid, “That’s a nice little business you’ve got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
Just did a quick online search of quotation dictionaries — nothing by Hubbard. Did he ever say one worthwhile thing? Why hasn’t the world at large recognized the mind-blowing significance of “delivering with all the bugs out of its lines, and making a lot, lot, lot more money”?
I wonder if, in 50 years, any of Trump’s meandering and nonsensical word salad quotes are going to be memorialized and celebrated.
costermonger, I doubt it. Pols tend to be idiots. There are exceptions but they come only a few in a century. I mean look at Pelosi. Makes Trump look sane, which is scary in and of itself. Or that House Rep who said that an island would tip over into the sea of people went to one side of it. What was his name again?
That would be Congressman Hank Johnson from Georgia, who said he feared that Guam would capsize and tip over into the ocean due to overpopulation because we had so many Marines on the island. He tried to backpedal and say he meant that metaphorically, which I hope he did, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. (Side Note: As someone born and raised in the South……thanks a lot for perpetuating the stereotype of “uneducated Southerners” there Mr. Congressman!)
I do have to tip my hat to the Admiral at that hearing though as he was able to keep his composure, maintain a straight face, and provide probably the biggest understatement in his life by simply saying “We don’t anticipate that”. The look on the Admiral’s face after hearing that though, I’ll never forget.
Thanks Mick. Yes, I remember that Admiral’s understated response. Classic.
“I wonder if, in 50 years, any of Trump’s meandering and nonsensical word salad quotes are going to be memorialized and celebrated.” The same may well be said of Hillary. Or pretty much any politicians. So why pick out Trump?
Phew…when I first started reading this I thought “oh no, 5 guys is a bunch of scientologists”…phew. They aren’t!
As a business owner I would not be very happy, That wise or any CO$ company would use my company to further there claims of success . Plus this article would suggest that they are part of the CO$ world.
Re: Tony Robbins .
I am currently reading the latest Tony Robbins book about finances.The book jacket mentions that Tony has donated almost 250,000 meals to people in need.
Do you know that my friend a very successful realtor in Miami was declared and kicked out of Flag for 3 years,for listening to Tony Robbins lectures on real estate.
Has the Cof$ ever done anything to help people in need ? Yet Tony is considered an SP.
BTW, the MAA canceled the declare when she,the realtor returned to Flag with $100 K,for services.
Tony Robbins is a SP. Did he have to disconnect from Baskin Robbins?
So true, Joetha. I knew a Scn who was an illegal pc and was denied OT Levels for decades because of it. Finally her parents died and she inherited a ton of money, so now all of a sudden they rescinded her illegal pc declare and said it had all been “an arbitrary” and she was allowed to do her OT Levels. She got onto OT VII and got cancer and died. (As an aside, a few years earlier he had decided he wanted a divorce, so they separated. Once she was close to getting her inheritance, he miraculously came back and wanted to repair the marriage. Her husband benefitted from all that inheritance after she died too young. )
What is ‘subjective certainty’?
The letter writer claims to be full of it (subjective certainty that is).
He’s full of something, that is for sure.
“Word of mouth’ excellent example. For many years I have tried to make this point to my friends in Cof$,about the ” Way To Happiness” book. If it is so wonderful why is it we never hear anyone other than Scn talk about it.