Mindvalley: A Mindfulness Scam
It’s the beginning of the year. Time for advertisers to tap into our resolutions, whether it’s losing weight, finding a new job, or undertaking a life overhaul.
Mindvalley is one of those marketers. This website of spiritually-infused courses bills itself as “The most effective life transformation platform in the world.” My research suggests…not so much. Truly, buyer beware!
Mindvalley webinar ad from company site
I know you’ve seen the ads: 1) because they are everywhere, and 2) there’s a Reddit devoted to “how can I stop seeing Mindvalley ads?”
The other reason is that Mindvalley worked with Meta to optimize their presence, which was so successful it led to a marketing case study.
Mindvalley case study with Meta
According to the case study: Mindvalley worked with Facebook to compare Automated App Ads with its business-as-usual approach of using mobile app install ads. A Facebook Ads Manager feature, the automated ads allow up to 50 different images and videos, and up to five text variations. Dynamic creative optimization automatically tests every combination of the various assets, finding and putting more budget behind the most effective ones. This led to a 35% higher rate of app installs.
This is, of course, how social media marketing works, but not every advertiser has the depth of content that Mindvalley does. So not only were we bombarded with ads, Facebook’s data made sure we would see content exceedingly relevant to us based on Mindvalley’s library of content and feed that to us again and again and again. On Facebook, where the site sees me as a middle-aged woman who must be fretting about her figure, I saw ads about mindful weight loss and fitness. On TikTok, on the other hand, where I’m more issues and business-focused, I saw ads for selling how to make money from online courses.
What is Mindvalley and why should I beware
Let’s start with some background:
Vishen Lakhiani is the founder of Mindvalley and the bestselling author of The Code of the Extraordinary Mind (2016) and The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work (2020).
The Mindvalley website offers dozens of coaching programs covering topics like leadership, unlimited abundance, healing from heartbreak, all with a heavy dose of content related to focusing your mind and spiritual growth. Programs last between 30 and 50 days and they entail listening to a 20-minute daily lesson.
Why isn’t anyone saying anything bad about this company?
I first got suspicious when I couldn’t find any negative reviews about the company. That’s just weird. Every company has its detractors. I headed over to YouTube, where I watched videos with titles like “I tried Mindvalley, and here’s my honest review.” They would start out legit, but then slyly pivot to how Mindvalley courses changed their life.
After viewing 4 or 5 of those, I began to look at the video notes. Sure enough, all of them had an affiliate code offering heavy discounts on classes.
Sample Mindvalley discount code from a YouTube video
Seems Mindvalley has taken a page from the Mormon playbook. No one “floods the zone” with positive content to hide negative reviews better than the LDS Church. They are so good at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that corporations used to turn to them for advice. To this day, if you search for “church” in Google, the Latter Day Saints beat out the Vatican.
Between the social media ads and the affiliate marketing relationships, the company has made it almost impossible to find out about their dirty doings…but not if you dig hard enough.
There is some criticism….but you really have to look
I discovered Coffeezilla—a YouTuber who creates videos mostly on crypto scams—had produced a video on the Lakhiani and Mindvalley. He repeats a story that I had read and heard many times but the time I found this video. Lakhiani often tells the story of how he lost his job after the dotcom bubble burst. He got a sales job and was terrible at it. That is until he found the Silva Mind Method. By using this approach, every call he made led to a sale. In case you are unfamiliar, the Silva Mind Method has been around since the 1960s and has been debunked as pseudoscience and a cult.
The video starts with Lakhiani saying “Do you believe somebody could be trained potentially to send information not by reading a book but by touching a book.” I had seen this tool used when I studied the Kabbalah Center. The Center sells a set of books called The Zohar for over $400, which is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. How to sell it to English speakers? Explain that by simply scanning the text with your finger, you will receive spiritual connection to the words. (You can read more about this in my book, Brands of Faith.)
Digging still more, I discovered that the company have more than 100 Better Business Bureau complaints. These complaints are related to recurring credit card charges. People are unable to stop these monthly charges, even after receiving confirmation from the company that the account was cancelled.
Over 100 complaints with the Better Business Bureau
Why do people fall for this?
Mindvalley is brilliant at using the tools of social media to its advantage. Overwhelming the system with content is one tactic. All that content has another benefit: it provides social proof. The more we see others doing something, the more we are likely to think it is valuable and want to copy them.
I don’t know if this is true, but others have said the company has a team of people who attack those who denigrate the company. Guess I’ll find out.
Epilogue
There was one sincerely honest video, which appears below. A key point he makes—beyond how annoying the ads are—is that the classes are supposed to be transformational, mostly within the context of spiritual growth, but few courses seem to be about improving students’ spiritual learning.