They know her. “Hi, Nichole,” the blonde woman in a black suit says from behind her desk as my chaperone for the evening signs herself and me, as her guest, in. We move towards Ballroom 2 at this particular RSL Club with more nods of acknowledgement coming her way from these people in formal clothes and too much makeup. They know her. I’ve got a dodgy feeling about this.

I am ushered into a conference room full of men and women, all in suits of course, their eyes facing in the one common direction. A lone speaker standing out in front, microphone in hand; an old-ish woman with big shiny grey hair and a red suit jacket worn over a black inner top and black pants, reminding me instantly of those late night TV evangelists. It is immediately evident that whatever it is she is selling is something along the same lines as such misplaced faith: “Are you missing something in your life?”

A bald man four rows in front looks to his side, probably feeling as confused as I am. The woman with her big shiny silver hoop earrings keeps on talking, this time about people wasting money; that you don’t need to be rich or poor to succeed; that you can make your money Work For You. Which is hard to argue with given that the entry fee to come in to see her was ten dollars. Even by this stage, two minutes in, she’s already lost me. At least there’s a pub downstairs; now that might be what’s missing in my life right this minute.

“Do you want to make a difference in your lives, do you want to help people?” The hundred or so people here, all of them, seem transfixed by these seemingly Scientologist slogans. I’m sure it won’t be long before the E-meter makes an appearance. Jesus, this woman is a doctor. At this point I don’t know what to think. “Passive Income,” she says. Maybe I’m being overly critical here, but something tells me she’s not from Medecins Sans Frontiers. The bald man glances a look to his right once again.

I’m beginning to feel kind of bad for Nichole. I ran into her on a couple of occasions at work until it came round to contract renewal time and hers wasn’t renewed, prompting us to have a discussion about work, life, ambition, that sort of thing. We managed to keep in touch via Facebook and the whole premise for this visit in the first place was to “meet a couple of people who are open to the possibilities available to them in life.” It sounded fair enough. But there I was thinking it’d be a small get-together over a couple of beers, confessing to each other our own work dissatisfactions and goals in life, cheering each other up, words of encouragement and positive thinking, pats on backs, that sort of thing. Not that I blame Nichole, not at all. But I definitely feel pretty bad right now, jotting down all of this on a piece of pad paper she has kindly given me, along with her heavy metal pen with the word ‘Hope’ on it. My only hope is that, by the end of this seminar, I haven’t been exorcised and/or accumulated tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt. As Dr Scary Woman goes through a Powerpoint slide entitled “Our Business Provides The Opportunity To Develop Multiple Incomes,” I am thankful that I didn’t jokingly whisper to her, as much as I wanted to, the question “so when are Tom and Kate coming in?”

“We are not looking for investors…” I’ve heard this sort of line before, and it usually ends with a mass book and DVD sell-a-thon in about 45 minutes time. The slide ‘Products’ is now being displayed on the big projector screen. “Who’s got a loyalty card?” the woman asks, upon which around half the people in the room gleefully raise their hands, including Nichole. There are plenty of big numbers on the next slide, situated directly after lots of dollar signs, but I am only paying attention to all those naughts equating to, roughly, a whole lotta nothing.

I just don’t know. Any seminar claiming to be about self-fulfilment but consisting of a red power-suited lady using the words “21% Bonus” and “Monthly Performance Bonuses” just makes that little something click inside my head. Perhaps it’s a difference in personal values. Or maybe it’s to do with how it is now almost 8:30pm and I’ve spent my evening hearing about “successful people” in a conference room full of lost and empty shells of humanity convincing themselves of this ‘truth’ and nervously laughing at unfunny jokes whilst the brainwashing machine is, quite obviously, roaring in full gear. The bald man nods approvingly at the “Platinum Income” slide.

Uh oh. She’s gone and done it. She’s given away her scam! “You can help these people,” she repeats with, in a strangely commendable way, such faux-altruistic verve and passion that I begin worrying that she is, indeed, completely mad. “You can help these people make money and they will help you make money.” Ah So. The Pyramid Scheme. She keeps referring to this whole thing as a “business”, but has not mentioned in the slightest detail what this business involves or what it is actually selling. The last time I encountered something similar was when I was in my first year of uni exchanging Hotmail emails back and forth with some Indian dude’s copied-and-pasted schematics promising an income of up to “20K a Week!” I bloody hate it when people write, or even worse, say the letter ‘K’ to denote monetary value; I hate it when people talk only about money, actually, so clearly I’m fitting in well amongst this crowd.

“Diamond Income.” Who speaks like that? “100% Satisfaction Guarantee.” “Network 21…AMWAY…Network 21 is the education and support, and AMWAY is the product and distribution.” Man. And we still don’t know exactly what this education is about, or what these products we are supposed to be selling are. “Come along this Sunday to the Darling Harbour Convention Centre, and for just $25 find out how the sheep shearer made his fortune!!”

That last line isn’t even an exaggeration.

Crazy Greedy Dr Woman has now used the phrase “in and of themselves…” several times now. And, uh oh, yet again. She’s now offering people the “opportunity” to take out their mortgages with her own, unnamed, “franchise.” I’m starting to get sick of this patent overuse of quotation marks as she moves onto the next slide:  a truly disgusting picture of a man with his wife and two kids, all of them dressed from head to toe in white Ralph Lauren, posing on a glittering white houseboat named “Dreamer.” What is it that this family does? “They build their business in different countries around the world in order to build their communities.” (!!) Righto. The audience has even been given a link to a website, along with log-in details: www.pdcox.com, username is ‘global’ and the password is ‘dreamer.’ I encourage everyone who reads this to abuse this site.

So it turns out that tonight isn’t going to involve chatting with new, friendly people with beers in hand. Okay. Fair enough. And yes, if this was a seminar about life fulfilment without all the ridiculous peddling of fake financial fantasies then I might well have been interested. But my issue with all of this is how the hell I’m going to do my polite routine afterwards and tell Nichole “Yeah yeah it was interesting…very informative…but no I won’t be coming again next week.” And right when I think it’s all over, aiming stealthy little peeks towards the doors and planning my exit strategy – Dr StrangeWoman has finally concluded her presentation and, sure enough, she went ahead and did it…”Starting Point – 12 Steps To Get You Started.” It’s the book! And the accompanying CD! – it just gets even better: random people from the audience (who hopefully haven’t glimpsed over at what I’ve been writing so furiously), all taking turns with the microphone and giving their own prerehearsed speeches complete with the over-enthusiastic used car salesman speech inflexions on why they love running “their business”. Even the bald man gets up, and everyone applauds after these little power pep talks. “I just spent the last twenty minutes out there talking about golf. I don’t know whether that’s what you want out of life, but for me…” When they are done these people pass on the microphone to the next success story and move over to block the exit. I immediately think back to high school and of how ‘Alvin’ who was two years above us used to go round asking everyone for a two dollar coin in the lunchtime canteen queue. Alvin didn’t have a fake smile on his face, though.

Disconcertingly, everyone here knows each other by their first and last names. It turns out the good doctor’s name is Erica, as we are informed by a hideous-looking woman with a short skirt and heels on and, with all honesty, the nastiest and most heinous face I have ever seen. “We need to buy a chauffeur! Who wants a chaffeur?” They sure encourage a lot of hand-raising, these folk, as everyone obliges. I refuse to believe that this is the answer to our problems in life, and if it was and that’s how you turn out, then aren’t we royally screwed? I might not place much theoretical faith in the capitalist system, but this whole Pyramid Scheme thing is just taking advantage of it and making victims of the insecure who were promised a better life as, apparently, financial wealth and self-fulfilment are interconnected. “Who wants to shoots themselves right now?” – Me, Me!!

As they wrap up their ‘Join Us’ speeches, I notice that they’ve all somehow managed to mention that they love to travel, and that by being a part of this “joint venture” their wealth has allowed them to do so. “How many people like to travel?” they ask encouragingly, over and over. I raise my hand, along with everybody else, a knowing smile sneaking it’s way across my lips. I sure would indeed like to travel…straight the fuck out of here!