The school secretary handed me a stack of brochures and a list with a dozen names and addresses. I had been teaching at this school for a few years now and I knew they urgently needed to increase the number of students. Apparently it had gone from well over a thousand to just a few hundred students in about ten years. But this seemed desperate.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘A list of parents who have shown interest in our school,’ she said. ‘Go to these addresses, hand them the brochures and answer their questions.’

She then explained that the other teachers had also received a list of addresses, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

‘What if they’re not there?’ I said.

‘Go back and try again.’

‘Alright, no problem.’

I’d already decided how to deal with this issue: I’d get up early next Saturday morning and visit the whole list in one go. If the parents weren’t around, I’d simply put the brochure in their mailbox and let them figure it out.

That Saturday morning, with some help from Google Maps, I found the first address. I got out of my car and enjoyed the fresh sea breeze as I went up to the place. It was a small apartment near the beach. Not the kind of place where you’d expect a big family. I rang the bell. No one answered, so I dropped the brochure in the mailbox and continued the journey.

The next address was within walking distance. It was another apartment. I went up to the front door as the wind swung it back and forth. Someone had removed both the door handle and the lock, and the white paint looked like twenty years of wind and rain had been chipping away at it. For a brief moment, the wind blew the door open and the smell of cigarettes wafted in my face. The doorway seemed dark and abandoned. Everything about this place seemed off. I looked at the doorbell. The buttons were broken and it had electrical wires sticking out of the side. With the decision taken out of my hands, I breathed a sigh of relief and typed in the next address on the list.

The next address was an apartment directly facing the beach with a pub on the first floor. I went up to the owner, explained why I was here and asked him about the name on the list.

He stroked his beard. ‘Yeah, he’s on the seventh floor. But he doesn’t have any kids, though.’

That’s when I realised: they’d given me a list of random addresses. Not that it mattered much. I was here anyway and the weather was pretty good, so I decided to fulfil my duty. But I seriously doubted whether it would do us any good.

I went to several more places. No one around.

The last address was a bit further away in a residential area. I rang the bell and two parents opened the door. They were friendly, but they looked confused. Still, I was happy: these were the only parents I’d seen that entire morning.

I introduced myself and told them that I’m handing out brochures for our school, and that if they had any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.

They accepted the brochure and said, ‘We’ve already enrolled our twelve-year-old into her favourite school of choice, but who knows, maybe it’s something for our nine-year-old to look at in a couple of years.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your weekend.’

Next Monday, I asked the school secretary about that list.

‘Who told you these were families with kids?’

She gave me a shrug and said, ‘That’s what the principal told me.’

A little while later, I asked someone a little higher up on the food chain.

She shook her head and gave a big sigh. ‘She probably asked around and someone gave her an old list for free. Pointless. Which is exactly why I told her to spend some money on a fresh list.’

A few months later, it turned summer. A new maths teacher had joined the school. Let’s call her Jane. She invited me and the school secretary, Catherine, to come visit her new place. After showing us her newly decorated living room, we sat down and talked for a little while. Then she brought up the fact that she had bought some new Tupperware for her meal prep.

Jane handed one of the plastic pots to Catherine. ‘I use this one for my chicken and I use that one to store my nuts.’

Catherine played around with the plastic lid.

Jane then handed her another plastic pot. ‘They also have this one for salads.’

Catherine nodded with a polite smile on her face, while she kept popping the lids on and off. ‘My mom used to have these. They never wear out, do they?’

‘No, they don’t,’ Jane acknowledged. ‘Did you know that they have a lifetime warranty?’

‘Makes sense,’ Catherine said with a straight face. ‘They look pretty sturdy.’

Catherine was a woman in her early fifties. She had enough life experience to know what was going on. She was simply being kind by playing along.

‘If you’re interested,’ Jane said, ‘I’m having a Tupperware party next Friday. There’ll be some stuff to look at. But don’t buy anything if you don’t want to! In any case, there’ll be snacks and drinks, and it’s probably mostly going to be women, so it’s going to be a fun time regardless.’ She then briefly mentioned something about discounts and that each sale earned her a small commission.

‘Next Friday?’ Catherine said. ‘Sure, why not.’

Jane gave me a smile. ‘You could come too if you’d like.’

‘Not my cup of tea,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’

I already knew that Tupperware was a multi-level marketing scheme, but I simply kept my mouth shut. I wondered whether she understood that selling plastic pots was never going to get her all that much money, that the big money comes from building a downline of others who sell plastic pots for you. It takes a shark to be successful in multi-level. Jane, the loving mother of two young children, with her authentic wide-open smile all the time, simply wasn’t that kind of person.

I understood why the principal did what she did. The school was desperate for more students. So she made a plan. Just not a very good one. She grabbed a list, printed some brochures, and delegated the work. It looked and felt like we were doing something productive, but delivering brochures to empty apartments serves no useful purpose.

I also understood why Jane did what she did. The MLM found her at a fragile point in her life: new home, new job, young kids. But selling plastic pots was never going to be the solution.

‘Here’s a plan,’ someone tells you. ‘Just follow this plan and all your dreams will come true.’

So you put in the hours, thinking that all that effort is going to get you somewhere.

That’s the lure: the hope of moving forward.

Alexander is de 18 jarige ontwikkelaar van het populairste spel in België. Hij krijgt een uitnodiging om mee te doen aan een wedstrijd voor uitvinders. Zijn deelname krijgt een onverwachte wending wanneer de robots tilt slaan en iedereen in het gebouw doden. Hij draait hiervoor op en gaat op de vlucht. Het enige bewijs van zijn onschuld ligt verborgen op de maanbasis. Maar geraakt hij daar wel op tijd voor de Sovjets het van hem stelen?

Zin in een avontuur naar de maan?

Dat idee werd maandenlang m’n persoonlijke obsessie. Neem een jonge held en steek hem diep in de penarie. Verberg de enige oplossing op de haast onbereikbare maanbasis. Plaats hem in een wereld waar alles net iets anders is gelopen, waar hij zowel robots, als KGB-agenten met laserwapens moet ontwijken.

Mijn bedoeling?

Een van de lezers (onderaan) vatte het best samen: “Een debuut met een verhaal dat boordevol actie zit, dat een razendsnel tempo heeft, vlot leest en waar je even mee van deze aarde kan verdwijnen.”

Als je daarmee tevreden bent, dan is dit boek voor jou. Maar het is zeker niet voor iedereen. Ik heb het volledig zelf geschreven en uitgegeven, zonder een betaald redactieteam om alles te controleren. Hier en daar staat er dus een komma te weinig of een woord teveel. Hier is wat een review daarover zei: “Mij stoorde het niet, en veel lezers zullen er ook niet over vallen, want het verhaal is sterk genoeg om daar overheen te lezen.”

Reviews

Hoe te verkrijgen

Dit boek wordt niet meer online verkocht, maar is wel beschikbaar op aanvraag zolang het nog op voorraad is. Neem contact op via e-mail of in persoon.

The first time I came into contact with self-help was several years ago. I was in my mid-twenties, eating lunch by myself, watching YouTube to pass the time, when I stumbled onto this video. The video showed some mountain climbing stock footage while playing an audio lecture about how to get ahead in life. Essentially, the speaker argued for the value of education when climbing the ladder of success, the main message being that career progression is not just about working hard, it’s also about picking up the required knowledge and skills. At the time, I felt like I’d been holding onto my old teenage philosophies for a bit too long, and I wanted to add some nuance. So I liked the way that this speaker challenged some of my preconceptions. I found myself internally debating what he was saying: agreeing with some of his points, disagreeing with others.

Later, I looked him up and found that he used to be a motivational speaker from the 1970s and 1980s. Let’s call him George, even though that’s not his real name. There were several old videos online of him speaking on stage. Here’s what you’d usually see.

George stepped on stage wearing a dark grey business suit, matching dark grey tie and white shirt. It looked classy without being overly ostentatious and it fit him like a glove. Tailored more than likely. His hair had prematurely gone white, making him look like a grandfather in his seventies. The audience gave him a quick applause as he entered. The camera panned to show a packed audience. A handful seemed to be in their thirties, but most looked over fifty. All the men wore suits, the women were dressed more casually.

Like usual, he started off his speech with a joke. It went a little something like this:

‘Did you hear about the man who got hit in the head with a can of soda?’ George paused a beat. ‘He was lucky. It was a soft drink.’

The audience responded with nervous laughter. Not that it was all that funny, but they didn’t want to leave him hanging.

‘It gets better,’ George quickly added. ‘Don’t leave just yet!’

Now, the audience burst out in laughter.

If you think that line was improvised, you’d be mistaken. George had been in the business for decades by now and every part of his speech was practiced.

Then he started by telling his own personal story. Long story short, he was in his mid-twenties and not doing all that well in life, until he found a businessman willing to coach him, teaching him some new ideas and philosophies.

George continued by saying, ‘I’ll share some of those ideas with you tonight. You don’t have to buy them all. Take what makes sense and try it out.’

It’s not that George shared anything all that groundbreaking. He mostly talked common sense, but it was all in the delivery. He’d honed his voice like a fine-tuned instrument to the point that he could mesmerise his audience for the next four hours of his talk.

George was a strong proponent of goalsetting, which is what I did. I thought about some long lost dreams and set out to achieve them: getting fit and writing a novel. Each day I worked on reaching those goals and it felt almost intoxicating to see how I got closer one small step at a time. Eventually I achieved those goals and found that there was a lot of truth in the old saying: the journey is often better than the destination. Nevertheless, I’d proven that George’s philosophies had at least some merit. I wanted more, so I listened again and again to his speeches. After listening to him, I always felt motivated and driven, like I could conquer the world. But not much happened in reality. George mostly discussed general principles and left the rest of it up to the listener. I was fired up with nowhere to go.

Later, I learned why. The key was in the personal story he told every time he went up on stage. Let me reframe the story slightly. Somewhere in the 1950s, George had been invited to a sales pitch. Not for a product, but for the opportunity of selling products to others. Someone who had all the regalia of a businessman sold him on the opportunity of selling vitamins and supplements to others, a multilevel marketing scheme as it’s called. George joined the scheme and received some much-needed sales coaching by the businessman. He not only had to learn how to convince people to join, but he also needed to keep them motivated for them to stay. Fortunately, he’d caught the wave early and rode it all the way to the top. He made a fortune. Until it eventually crashed. He tried a few more multilevel businesses afterwards, and when that didn’t work, he eventually turned to motivational speaking. He took away the pitch for joining the organisation and kept everything else the same. So, no big surprise I felt fired up… with nowhere to go.

For a long while, I didn’t know what to do with that information. I still liked listening to George though, so I made all the excuses in the world for him. I’d tell myself that this happened back when door-to-door sales still was a thing and there is worse in the world than selling overpriced vitamins. I didn’t yet catch onto how these schemes actually worked: joining the scheme meant buying large quantities of product as a prerequisite before having made a single sale. I also didn’t yet fully understand the language games that were being played. How “success” is code for “rich”, how words like “the keys to…” implies quick and easy results, and how “getting more education” really means buying more self-help books and tapes, and parroting quotes to replace critical thinking.

Today, the 1980s motivational speaker has all but died out. Or so it seems. The truth is that self-help is everywhere nowadays: from business podcasts to manosphere YouTube channels. Even celebrities want in on the action, promising the keys to success. Arnold Schwarzenegger claims he has found the seven principles for good fortune, Steve Harvey turns into a motivational speaker, and Jimmy Carr becomes an oracle dishing out life advice. The names and the faces change, but they all share that same look in their eyes: they are all true believers, high on their own supply. Watch them deliver their speeches, and it’s hard not to feel a rush of excitement. Just keep in mind that these dealers of the self-help high are not in it for your benefit, and that if you dig deep enough, you may well find that there is more to their story than they’re sharing.

In the end, it’s not that self-help is a complete sham. It might even work some of the time, as it did for me. But more often than not, it leaves you chasing that same high long after it has worn off.