Unstrapp’d: The Documentary?

I was originally going to write this as a reply to a comment by John S, who seems to have some good inside info on the most compelling entrepreneurs of this century, so if you’re reading this, John, tell me whether this chimes anywhere. It sounds like you have a wealth of info on this story, which brings together so many interesting themes and could be an amazing documentary if directed by a competent outsider.

You may have seen the fail film “The Making of a film idol” which is viewable online (though maybe not in the US). It’s the brilliantly funny story of a wannabe film producer and his descent into bankruptcy due to his own massive incompetence and emotional immaturity. The documentary was pieced together from footage taped by a film crew he had hired to shoot a hagiography of a thrusting go getting businessman; when they were unpaid they claimed the rights to the humiliating content of the tapes in lieu of their fee.

The cameraman living with the unstrapp’d crew may have some amazing material, especially if the guys in the house have been relatively candid in front of him, imagining friendly edits to cover any indiscretions.

Unstrapp’d:the Documentary could be the story of how a group of naive and greedy young men, egged on by a ‘success’ industry that preys on the ignorance and childishness of grown-up spoilt brats, took huge financial risks to pursue an unobtainable dream, and lost not just their money and credit but friendships and self respect.

I don’t see it being solely a negative film; of all the characters I think Kyle Garret is the most likeable and the least slippery. He’s at the other end of the spectrum from Chris Record, who seems savvy enough to cloak himself in the ‘passive income’ bullshit whenever he needs quick cash from a sucker without ever buying into it himself.

I could see Kyle as the hopeful survivor at the finale of this disaster movie, leaving the house a little wiser and less trusting, but still fundamentally a decent guy. He’ll have a lot to think about when he drives back across country to his dad’s house, hopefully without all the bullshit books that got him into trouble in the first place.

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12 comments
  1. Plugz said:

    Michael perhaps you should try a GIS on “unstrappd” There are several reviews of their work.

  2. Curious said:

    Thanks or another great article, Mr. Story. I looked for the video you mentioned but it’s not viewable in the U.S.

    I’ve read your bio page and I’m now interested in poking around your site a bit more for your other stories and reviews.

  3. Dolph said:

    I recommend to anybody watch Penn & Teller’s Bulls*** if you can. There is an episode devoted to MLMs and it lays out how easy it is to suck people into that world.

    For guys like Kyle, who I bet is a good person, they think that walking around calling themselves “lifepreneurs”, “entrepreneurs” and so forth means they are. These guys are all about hustling education that only enriches themselves and creates more competition for themselves since the only way to make money is to find more suckers to buy into these programs.

    Sad.

  4. John S said:

    Interesting opinions guys. I’ve been following the unstrappd crew for several months now and have had the exact opposite experience as you guys. With so many “snake oil salesman” out there as curious puts it, it’s good to see some people actually take time to give quality content for free. I have a traditional business and I spent over $1500 on my website with a local design company and got decent design but it wasn’t getting any traffic. A friend referred me toChris Record and I started attending his weekly social media webinars, which were free, and started following his advice and now I have several top 10 listings in google and I am actually excited about my website.

    Michael I can respect your opinion and it’s good to see diverse reviews but in the other post you commented that all you had seen was the trailer and yet somehow you came to this conclusion? 

    In the end I wish they would have kept going. I am looking forward to their next videos. I agree that the drama of your plot more interesting and would be more compellin to watch. The only problem is that based on what I have seen these guys went on to have some pretty good success. On last months call they mentioned they had sold around three thousand hosting accounts and I’m pretty sure they make around $100 for each one. Plus they had an investor on the call who had earned a good return on a loan he had given them and he talked about a charity campaign he was helping with to build blogs for over a thousand people with disabilities completely free. 

    So far I have seen these guys add value to peoples lives and not the stuff that you or these commenters talk about. But I guess if I were pissed off about something I might vent negatively about it here too. So to each his own. 

    • MichaelWStory said:

      Hi John

      I think with all the negative publicity they’ve been getting after the meltdown (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Unstrappd) I’d be surprised if they were very keen to promote their conference calls too heavily.

      According to the secret docs left on an open server by these web ‘experts’ they had only one ‘investor’ who loaned them money to the tune of $50,000. Even if they had sold some hosting accounts, they would have had to sell a huge number to pay for that huge house and their ridiculous salaries, and to have covered all that AND paid back their seed money would be impressive for any new business but seems especially unlikely for this group of real estate refugees who by their own admission have had mostly failed businesses and McJobs in their wake.

      Was there any hint on those calls as to their state of mind? They must have been pretty spooked by the attention to go dark like that.
      I’m also curious about your experience with ‘Savvy’ Chris Record. Have you met him in person? Is he anything like how he appears in the Unstrapp’d or NRU vids?

  5. John S said:

    I have not met Chris in person. His training has been good though and he always allows everyone to ask as many questions as needed so I don’t think anyone would have a problem with his training. Plus its free. Maybe in person he is different who knows. 

    Why are you quoting the encyclopedia drama site?  I read through some of it and whoever wrote it obviously is just trying to poke fun at these guys. I have to admit it was kinda funny though! But why are they making it seem like these guys “took money from a cripple.” That’s pretty messed up to even call him that. Plus they need to get their facts straight. He seemed happy about his investment and it sounds like he made a great return quickly and is now doing sone pretty cool stuff for paraplegic charities.  Shouldn’t we be happy about that kind of noble effort in today’s society where there are so many companies really doing evil things? It seems kind of silly to put so much effort into these guys but I’m sire someone has their reasons. Whoever wrote the article is definitely out of the loop. Or maybe they just don’t care becaus they just want to make fun of them. I’m not sure where they are getting their info from. 

    You mention things like ridiculous salaries and everything. You must know something I don’t which is odd because you just said you only saw the trailer. From what I heard I was under the impression they weren’t taking salaries and that Chris was paying for the house and other stuff from income from his real estate business. I’m pretty sure Chris has been the main investor but I also know they were raising more money a few months back and they probably got some there but who knows. Plus making several hundred thousand dollars in just a few months from hosting is not chump change so I’m sure these guys are doing fine. 

    When they first announced the blog factory and affiliate program they said they were only going to leave it open for a limited time. I missed the last call but the one before it said they reached the max referrals allowed at their hosting company and had to renegotiate a better contract. You guys make it seem like they went dark all of the sudden. Maybe they did, I’m not sure but they were pretty open about it prior to closing the sites so it wasn’t much of a shocker. 

    The part that I am most disappointed about was that they shut down the show and made it private. I know you and your commenters didn’t like the show but I really enjoyed watching the episodes. They said the new contract turned over the show and past episodes and it would be more of a documentary when we see it and they were going to focus on interviews for now but I still thought they should have held off longer because they were just starting to get popular. Hopefully they make something bigger and better next time around. 

    • Michael said:

      I have known Ben Dixon since he was a baby. What you are saying here about their success from this is not true. You should not take promotional literature at face value. Leaving this here for posterity.

  6. Dolph said:

    John, you sound suspiciously like John Stippick. Care to confirm or deny this?

    Before you deny, keep in mind that the M.O. of these people is to post anonymously propping each guy up with praise.

    If the handicapped gentleman made his money back I find that surprising. How did they pay him back when it is obvious they weren’t paying each other and had heavy debt issues relating to that ridiculous mansion?

    If they were paying for that ridiculous mansion from Chris’ private cash stash why isn’t he the head of the company instead of Brad? Brad bragged in a video about that 50K and even showed us the check. Social Spin is an LLC and as such has to follow rules for corporations. Chris sounds as if he is “co-mingling” personal funds which is a no-no in a majority of states and with the IRS. If he was getting equity in the business in return then it would be fine. See the problem? These guys want to teach people about business yet can’t even be transparent in terms of how they handle their own affairs.

    If Chris is paying the business expense on the ridiculous house, then why are they gone from sight? It seems they ran out of cash. Where did the 50K go then?

    Seems to me they would have done better had they rented a decent 1,000-2000 sq ft office in a quiet part of town for 1-1.25/sq foot. Seems like a better use of funds and they could have still filmed and done other things that would best ensure the growth of their dream.

  7. John S said:

    Dolph, as stated in the other comments i am not John Stippick.

    And from what I’ve seen these guys are the ones posting openly while you and many of the other commenters post anonymously. So I wouldn’t say that your statement pulls any weight. The reason I’m not sharing my last name is because I’m concerned some of these commenters may say bad stuff about me and my business online for no reason. I’m sure that’s the same reason why the other commenters post anonymously as well. 

    I don’t know enough about their financials to answer your questions. If you figure they took a $50k loan and invested it into their blog building system and made a few hundred grand it doesn’t seem that hard to pay back the lender plus give him a return. Here is the hostgator link I found:  secure.hostgator.com/affiliates.shtml

    From that link it looks like they make $125 per referral. So if they did 3,000 referrals, that’s nearly $400 grand. If they only did 1,000 referrals that’s $125 grand. Plus I’m sure they have other services that make money. So it doesn’t seem that hard to pay off a $50 grand note. You are suggesting chris is doing some kind of co-mingling yet there is no evidence to support that. Its pretty likely they have a lawyer assisting them with setting up their corporations and investments so I doubt there is anything blatantly wrong with their setup. 

    The story that Brad shared with everyone early this year was that Chris was going to invest and help him launch the company. I think Chris got a big equity chunk in return. He was originally going to be an advisor to the guys but agreed to be President for a few months to help out. He was having $50k months from his real estate business which i found quite impressive and one of the first webinars I was on he showed documentation of a $150k month so I doubt they are struggling financially at all. 

    You say they are all gone from sight but from what I can tell they are still pretty active. Yeah they may have done better or worse doing something else who knows. Chris is a pretty good real estate negotiator so I’m sure he thought through his options. On one of his trainings I vaguely remember him talking about the deal he got on the house in California being half off listed price, i think around $4-5 grand a month, that was several months ago though and I don’t fully recall. They talked about getting a 6 month lease to see if they want to stay in the area or not before getting an office. It’s been about 6 months now so maybe they will do what you are suggesting and get a cheap local office somewhere. I remember there was an unstrappd episode where brad talked about why they chose to save money and not get a house right away. Too bad it’s private or I would link to it for you.

  8. John S said:

    I agree with Michael that his plot would make for a good documentary. I know I would watch it. Obviously Michael is a professional at this stuff. And I also agree that they should have kept filming the episodes. This is the kind of stuff that people could really learn from and they could probably clear up some of the misinformation out there like the encyclopedia page. 

    Dolph you make a good point about being frugal to ensure more success. As a small business owner I agree with you and that is smart advice. These guys are much younger than us and are soon going to learn that flashy cars and big houses are not necessary to build a successful company. But I don’t think professionals like us should be calling people cripples and giving these guys a hard time for designing people blogs and teaching folks like me how to use Facebook and YouTube to promote my business. 

    But I guess if it’s good constructive criticism backed by facts that can actually teach them how to improve then perhaps it’s good for them. 

  9. candy said:

    This guy has committed many crimes and these r all lies. Can prove most of it.he ruined my career. He is a con artist and eventually he will get caught. Not wasting my time on it……he will land in prison by himself. I have better things to do.

You should write what you think about this here, especially if you disagree- help smash my media bubble!

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