This is a comment posted on Jeff Berwick’s Facebook page from a former GGC employee.
Imagine if you will, you have a client coming in to see the property, you have spent much time building relationships with them. They are traveling from the other side if the world. You meet them at their hotel and have an appointment to see the land where your boss, lets call him Ken doll, has agreed the night before and an earlier text message to meet you there at 11. You drive an hour and a half to get there with your clients where you sit outside locked gates because this control freak boss makes excuses not to make copies of keys because he is insanely paranoid and wants all actions, all work, everything to depend solely on him.
Imagine you sit there for three hours, no gas stations near by, no restaurants, no restrooms, no cell phone reception. In the hot sun. Finally he shows up 3 hours late with some stranger in the car, laughing and joking at a leisurely pace…
He pulls up beside where you are sitting on the side of the road.. Says hey what’s going on.. You express that we had an 11 o’clock appointment and he shrugs and says I got caught up in blah blah..
He then says I got room for two in my jeep, your clients get in his dog hair infested disgusting jeep and he leaves you on the side of the road for another two hours doing a half ass tour.. Completely inconsiderate of the fact that they are starving and thirsty.
Imagine if after he simply drops them back off. And rolls out again leaving you to do great damage control inflicted by him. All the time building relationships thrown out the window as they are super pissed at the disrespect..
What you have imagined has happened on multiple occasions in dealing w ken doll. (Like 3 hours late almost every single day) Keep in mind this was before the clubhouse became a work area, or had Internet) Now imagine if the next day is pay day and he says I will meet you at the clubhouse, he has “plenty if money” he showed off his big wad as he went to the casino. So you are sure this time he will pay you. you drive an hour and a half to meet him. Two hours later you drive back to town to get cell phone reception to see why he hasn’t showed.
He says “yeah I’ve been super swamped, I’m dealing with blah blah blah” completely inconsiderate to the time you could have spent working on the project. Or anything productive.
So you say ok I will meet your at the beach house tomorrow. Can I count on you, he says yeah man. The next day you drive 3 hours to the beach house. You go in and sit on the sofa as he goes through 6 phone calls and never even acknowledges you exist. An hour and a half later of not wanting to interrupt, you finally walk into his bedroom where he is answering an email and say. “Ken doll, what gives?” He says “what’s up?” I say we were supposed to meet. He says for what.. You say, to get paid.. He says for what? For my fucking work dude.. For the videos I created you troll faced fucktard.
He begins questioning you as if you are trying to get over on him and you present a calendar you have created to detail every day what you have accomplished. He looks it over and says, sorry dude, I had to pay out a bunch of people. I don’t have any money.
His phone rings, he holds up his finger answers it. And leaves you standing dumbfounded on such an asinine amount of inconsideration. He doesn’t bother finishing up your conversation as he gets up and walks out on the phone the whole time. Saying to the caller “well I don’t know what your deal is man, we are all over here working, I don’t know what you’re doing.” He does this to team members who come from professional and entrepreneurial backgrounds. If you are not in his direct eyesight he does not believe you are working.
This is but a snapshot of every single day working for Ken Johnson. This actually happened to me. Its a forced bottleneck under his control, every waking hour, insanely paranoid, incompetent business decision after decision. Infested with Little man syndrome. It’s enough to make you seriously question the value of NAP [non aggression principle–Ed.]. So why would you stay more than a week? Because you believe so much in the message of liberty that you feel it will work in spite of him. After a while [you] begin questioning your own sanity. Like why the fuck is no one else saying shit? It was a fascinating thing to watch unfold, but words can’t describe the frustration. Does it sound like freedom?
As you see, the affinity scam worked on the employees, as well, since most of them were libertarians drawn to the message, just as we investors were.