How to Fire Your Boss

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Fire Your Boss"

Podcast: The Dream
Host: Jane Marie
Guest: Stephen Hasson
Date: May 23, 2026

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Brief Overview

In this episode, host Jane Marie reintroduces The Dream as a weekly interview podcast with more freedom in format but the same mission: examining the American Dream and the barriers—including multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) and cult-like organizations—that make it hard to achieve. The episode’s focus is on how individuals become trapped in these organizations, the psychological methods used to keep them there, and, crucially, how to get out. Jane interviews Stephen Hasson, a renowned expert on cult deprogramming, to draw direct connections between MLMs and cults and to offer hope and strategy to those wanting to leave.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Similarity Between MLMs and Cults

• Jane notes a flood of listener correspondence from people feeling stuck in MLMs, asking for help.
• Drawing from prior discussions on cults (like NXIVM, led by Keith Raniere), Jane brings on Doug Brooks (MLM attorney) and Stephen Hasson to illuminate the parallels.

Notable Exchange:

Doug Brooks: "[Keith Raniere] plagiarized from Scientology and Amway and probably a dozen other things, but he’s not this brilliant, original thinker that he portrays himself to be, right?" (03:01)
Stephen Hasson: "A liar. Another pathological liar." (03:10)

2. Stephen Hasson’s Background and Deprogramming Experience

• Hasson, a licensed mental health counselor in Boston, describes his own two-and-a-half years in the Unification Church (“Moonies”) and his family-facilitated exit through deprogramming.
• He now helps people leave destructive groups—religious, commercial (including MLMs), political, and others—and is developing standards for "undue influence" in the legal system.

Hasson shares:

"I had my own journey into the world of mind control ... I describe it as a dissociative disorder where I was given a new Mooney identity and told to die to my old self." (05:36-08:05)

3. Understanding Undue Influence (the BITE Model)

• Ethical influence versus undue influence: the latter involves fraud, coercion, manipulation, and suppressing free will.
• Hasson’s BITE model outlines the tools used:
  • Behavioral: Regulating activities, diet, sleep, social connections.
  • Informational: Controlling, restricting, or distorting outside information.
  • Thought: Creating black-and-white, us-vs-them thinking; instilling new identities.
  • Emotional: Manipulating by guilt, shame, and fear (e.g., warnings of 'bad things' if you leave).

Jane Marie: "BITE stands for Behavioral, Informational, Thought, and Emotional Control ... emotional control is basically nagging and guilty the shit out of people." (19:00)
Stephen Hasson: "Enormous number of people from different cults as well as multi-level marketing groups have looked at the ... BITE model and reflected ... and went, holy mackerel. This is a destructive end of the continuum ..." (19:59)

4. Are MLMs Cults?

Jane Marie: "Do you feel that most or all MLMs are cults?" (20:34)
Stephen Hasson:
"MLMs by definition are using deception ... they're all using deception, fraud and BITE model techniques. Destructive groups will ... omit critical data, distort information, or outright lie and MLMs do all three... So in my worldview, there are ethical, constructive cults and there are destructive cults. And I say any group that's using deception and manipulation to make people dependent and obedient, that's exploiting them socially, financially, emotionally, psychologically, is a destructive cult." (20:41-22:50)

5. The Process: Getting Out of an MLM

• Hasson's intervention:
  • He doesn’t attack the MLM directly—instead, he shares his own cult story and uses educational tools (e.g., BBC Moonies documentaries) to build rapport and encourage reflection.
  • Asks people to consider who they were before joining, and if, knowing what they know now, they would do it again.

Stephen Hasson:
"Who were they before they met the group? ... Often, I'll say, you know, I'm meeting you now, it's five years later, you know, your wife's left you, $30,000 in debt. If you knew then what you know now ... what would you do?" (26:03-27:35)

6. Healing, Recovery, and Looking Forward

• It's about saving face and self-compassion:

  • "There’s a certain amount of face-saving that we want ... but it’s ... you know, we’re human and we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And, and that’s part of what I’m trying to do with my life’s work is role model and say, hey, I got sucked into a cult. But life doesn’t end." (29:38)

• Jane reports the FTC is listening to The Dream and re-examining its MLM approach, offering hope for industry reform and better consumer protection.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On brainwashing and emotional bonds:

  "How do you talk rationally to someone who's in love with somebody and tell them they're a cheater? ... if you're in love, you don't want to believe that because of emotion. It's not because of intellect, it's because of emotional need and desire." — Stephen Hasson (12:08)

• On leaving cults or MLMs:

  "You use it to enrich your appreciation of being free ... to learn how to trust yourself and others based on critical evaluation of data and behavior and not just trusting wishful thinking." — Stephen Hasson (29:38-30:30)

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Highlights with Timestamps

• [01:08] Why this episode matters: Help for those stuck in MLMs
• [03:43] Hasson's cult background and deprogramming
• [05:39] Defining "undue influence"
• [09:10] Hasson's approach: "Strategic Interactive Approach" over "deprogramming"
• [10:00–16:00] The mechanisms of cults and MLMs; dangers of emotional confrontation
• [19:00] The BITE model unpacked
• [20:41] Hasson’s strong stance: “MLMs by definition are using deception... all using BITE model techniques.”
• [26:03] How Hasson works with MLM participants and helps spark realization
• [27:18] The importance of revisiting the start: "If you knew then what you know now..."
• [28:42] Moving forward after leaving: “You just gotta move on.”
• [29:38] Self-forgiveness and learning after cult or MLM experiences
• [28:50] FTC potentially reassessing action against MLMs

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Episode Tone

Jane Marie blends empathy, curiosity, and a touch of irreverence (e.g., “guilty the shit out of people”). Hasson's manner is warm, academic, and honest—never blaming, always focused on compassion, education, and understanding how influence works on anyone given the right context.

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Conclusion

“How to Fire Your Boss” is a deeply empathetic, insight-packed episode exploring the powerful psychological machinery of cults and MLMs—with actionable wisdom for exiting both. Through Stephen Hasson’s expertise and lived example, listeners learn that escaping these organizations is possible, recovery is achievable, and there’s no shame in having been deceived—just in staying silent.

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[End of summary]

Transcript

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[Stephen Hasson]

What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own? What would that take? What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together? These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler. Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube. We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together.

[Jane Marie]

So it's been a while since the first season of the Dream aired, and in the intervening time we've received a ton of email, texts and DMs from people in MLMs asking for help. They're mostly really sad stories of people feeling stuck in the cycle of throwing good money after bad and wondering how to get out. That's why we're doing this episode and why it's so important. Hopefully it's actually helpful. In our last episode, we started to explore just how similar MLMs are to Colts. A dear friend of the podcast and an attorney who's worked on a number of MLM cases. Doug Brooks talked to me about his legal run ins with a man named Keith Ranieri, the the founder of the MLM human trafficking cult called nxivm. And towards the end of our conversation he said something that caught my attention. He told me that to try and fight organizations like NXIVM in court, we needed the help of someone named Steve.

[Capital One Bank Announcer]

I'm thinking that really we need people like Steve to explain to us how it could be that someone just sort of suspends their critical thinking and despite all the information that they have in front of them about their own experience and about the experience of other people, why would they continue to stay in it?

[Jane Marie]

I wanted to know who this Steve guy was and why we needed his help. So I asked Doug if he thought we could get the Two of them in a studio together. And being the gentleman that he is, Doug made it happen. The conversation started out hot.

[Capital One Bank Announcer]

It doesn't surprise me that Keith Renieri did not invent any of this stuff. He's plagiarized from Scientology and Amway and probably a dozen other things, but he's not this brilliant, original thinker that he portrays himself to be, right?

[Stephen Hasson]

A liar. Another pathological liar.

[Jane Marie]

Keith Raniere, was known to tell his followers he was one of the smartest people in the world, claiming he had an IQ of 240. So to give some context, a score of 145 to 159 is considered genius level and is only achieved by about 1% of test takers. I could listen to these guys talk shit about Ranieri forever, but we need to back up here and find out a little bit more about Steve.

[Stephen Hasson]

My name is Stephen Hasson. I'm a licensed mental health counselor. I operate out of Boston, Massachusetts. I've been helping people get out of destructive cults and controlling relationships for over 43 years, since my own deprogramming out of the Moon cult.

[Jane Marie]

The heyday of the Moonies is over, so I'm going to catch everyone up a bit. It's actually called the Unification Movement. People call it the Moonies because it was founded in South Korea in 1954 by a man named Sun Myung Moon. Moon's followers believe that on Easter Day in 1936, Jesus appeared before Moon and asked him to continue the work he had started so very long ago. I suppose the Moonies were known for being very secretive with their church doctrines and also for holding gigantic wedding ceremonies which would absolve participants of past sins, including one at Seoul's Olympic Stadium for 30,000 couples. Since Moon's death in 2010, the group split into several factions. Although Moon's widow is considered by many to be the current Messiah and the quote, mother of all humankind, sounds very Game of Thrones.

[Stephen Hasson]

I am involved with a forensic think tank at Harvard Medical School, pursuing a doctorate, and I want to train young clinicians and I want to create a. A standard in the legal system for undue influence and to develop a forensic evaluation that meets the standards so that any judge or jury could look at something like a nexium. When Keith Ranieri's on trial, currently can listen to the testimony of everyone and understand how intelligent, educated people can fall under someone else's control.

[Jane Marie]

I asked Steve what he meant by undue influence.

[Stephen Hasson]

So, for example, ethical influence. You have informed consent. You have respect. You're not being manipulated, your conscience is being honored. You have free will to read whatever you want to read and talk to whoever you want to talk to. And you have the freedom to exit at any time without any great fear or any type of punishment that happens. Whereas in undue influence situations, there's fraud, there's coercion, there's control, there's manipulation, there's often use of altered states of consciousness exercises, but it's bypassing people's critical rational thoughts and capturing their imagination. I had my own journey into the world of mind control that lasted two and a half years. And I wound up dropping out of college, quitting my job, donating my bank account, turning my back on my religion, which is Judaism, turning my back on my family and friends, my creative writing aspirations, and becoming a right wing fascist who thought that Moon was the Messiah and that we needed to establish a theocracy to rule the world. When I was 19 in an upper junior at Queens College, my girlfriend had dumped me. I was sitting in the cafeteria waiting for my next class and three women approached me, flirting with me, pretending to be students who were basically recruiters for the Mooney cult, which I had never heard of before. And like destructive cults, operate the through deceptive recruitment and manipulation. I was involved for two and a half years. And how I exited was due to act of love from my family. They hired a team of deprogrammers and my sister lured me to come visit to see my nephew who had been born. And they did an intervention with me that lasted five days that I agreed to do because I was so sure I wasn't brainwashed and I wasn't in a cult. I was just following God. But in that five days, I had a chance to reflect on who I was before I met the group and what actually was happening. When you're in a mind control group, you're kept so busy and so sleep deprived that you don't have time to reflect and they alienate you from family, friends, from other sources of information. And I describe it as a dissociative disorder where I was given a new Mooney identity and told to die to my old self. And Moon and his wife were my true parents. Jonestown was the big event where I realized, and I saw the bodies of 300 children who had been poisoned by their parents at the hands of Jim Jones. I realized this is much bigger than just the Moon cult. And so I've really developed an expertise at helping people to exit and to recover.

[Jane Marie]

Okay, so what do you actually call what you do? Because I feel like deprogramming is kind of outdated.

[Stephen Hasson]

I was struggling for a term and I still don't have a snappy one word term. But I describe what I do as strategic interactive approach because it's a process oriented team ethical counter influence campaign that's all aimed at empowering the person to think for themselves and make their own decisions. Contrary to what cults do, which is a systematic social influence process to get people to be dependent and obedient on them and do what they want you to do. This is really aimed at getting people in touch with themselves and giving them tools.

[Jane Marie]

Okay, let's talk about cults and what they are and your work getting people out of them.

[Stephen Hasson]

There are religious cults, there are political cults, there are therapy cults, there are commercial cults, including human traffickers, as well as MLMs as well as cults of personality where someone is completely under someone else's control and thinking is black and white. All or nothing, good versus evil. We are the chosen. We have the special, special knowledge and the special formula for success. The universal mind control technique is phobia indoctrination, where people have irrational fears that terrible things will happen to them if they exit. The amount of attention that people give to you, praise surrounding you, looking for commonalities, oh yeah, I grew up there. Or oh, that's your favorite music. Mine too. Even if it wasn't to create a sense of bonding. And then the behavior modification, withdrawal of reinforcement and outright punishment. If you're doing things that violate rules or doing things that you're told, it's not appropriate to bring that particular question up. We live in an era of such incredible knowledge of the human mind and human interaction that is being used against people's best interests and is not being channeled only to bettering people and helping people who've had tragic lives get functional and better because there's no money in it. Unfortunately, family and friends who watch somebody they know change and get radicalized into this, into this cultic like group, try to wake them up and yell at them and rationally argue with them and tell them that they're brainwashed. And that has the exact opposite effect of the person feeling more defensive of the group, doing more thought, stopping getting polarized, feeling persecuted. People need to process so many disillusioning thoughts and experiences, so many things that had happened during those five years. Let's say that they can unpack it and then they can process it. And it's an unfolding where people become Empowered to take their life back again. How do you talk rationally to someone who's in love with somebody and tell them they're a cheater? I saw them with another guy an hour ago. If you're in love, you don't want to believe that because of emotion. It's not because of intellect, it's because of emotional need and desire. So what I do with my families who are worried about a loved one as I teach them how to understand the mindset of somebody who's been indoctrinated. I bring along former members of mlms, for example, and I show them videos of other cults and I really then teach them how to have respectful conversations where you're asking questions that are very strategic. And they're designed to empower the person to feel good about themselves, to reconnect with who they were before they were in the group, to to even imagine a future outside of the group in order to take a time out and research the whole issue of social influence, undue influence, cults, and with love, with respect, with timing, it's a very successful strategic, interactive approach. When families care that much to bring me in to do something like this, it really creates a platform because they're educated, the family and friends understand mind control. They don't say the hurtful things that almost every normal family would say to someone who's coming out of a mind control experience. Like, how could you be so stupid? I told you it was a cult five years ago. Why didn't you listen? You would have saved so much money and so much headaches. And they don't do that because they understand what the person was subjected to and they're compassionate and that creates the foundation for a healing and an exit that's really important for somebody to move on with their life.

[Jane Marie]

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[Jane Marie]

One of the things I wanted to talk to Steven about was something I found while reading an interview he did a few years back. In it, the interviewer focuses on something Stephen developed called the BITE model, which describes the specific methods cults use to recruit and maintain control over people. BITE stands for behavioral, Informational, Thought and Emotional Control. Behavioral control includes things like regulating how much a person eats or what they wear or who they can talk to, and creating a system of rewards and punishments to help with behavior modification. Informational control is a way of regulating a person's connection with the outside world by monitoring or distorting the information they're allowed to see. Thought control is instilling people with that black and white good versus evil way of thinking that Steven was talking about earlier, like changing people's names and asking them to dissociate from friends and family. And finally, emotional control is basically nagging and guilty the shit out of people.

[Stephen Hasson]

Enormous number of people from different cults as well as multi level marketing groups have looked at the influence continuum and the byte model and reflected over what their experience was and went holy mackerel. This is a destructive end of the continuum and the byte model. We're doing most of these things and it gives them a wake up moment to say you know what? You can be free. You don't need to do this anymore.

[Jane Marie]

Do you feel that Most or all MLMs are cults?

[Stephen Hasson]

Well, MLMs by definition are using deception. In my understanding of MLMs, they're all using deception, fraud and BITE model techniques. Destructive groups will either omit critical data, distort information, or outright lie and MLMs do all three. There's usually that one on one relationship where the person tells you stories of how great their life is and how wealthy they are. And they're typically lying, as they were lied to by the person who recruited them. If you have invested heavily into something, you emotionally and intellectually align to justify that. And unless one steps back and looks at the big picture and realizes, you know what, if I stay in this another year, another year, another year, I'm still not going to make the fortune, I'm just going to get deeper in. There's a tremendous amount of investment of time and energy, often listening to lots of time tapes, reading books, going to meetings in order to inculcate this proper 100% commitment of thought that's very much in most mind control cults, there's manipulation of sleep. Often because you're pushing yourself so hard. There is often a manipulation of diet, especially if you're in an MLM that's selling products, you're using a lot of those particular products. So it's capturing people's hopes and dreams and short circuiting their critical thinking by telling them that it only works if you believe 100%. It installs phobias in people's minds, irrational fears that if they share their doubts, if they even think the doubts take, terrible things are going to happen to them, they'll be an utter failure. So in my worldview, there are ethical, constructive cults and there are destructive cults. And I say any group that's using deception and manipulation to make people dependent and obedient, that's exploiting them socially, financially, emotionally, psychologically, is a destructive cult. This is a vacation with Chase Sapphire Reserve. The butler who knows your name. This is the robe, the view, the steam from your morning coffee. This is the complimentary breakfast on the balcony, the beach with no one else on it. This is the Edit, a collection of handpicked luxury hotels you can access with Chase Sapphire Reserve and a 500 Edit credit that gets you closer to the all of it. Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.

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[Stephen Hasson]

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[Jane Marie]

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[Jane Marie]

so turns out Stephen's been working on getting people out of MLMs for years in much the same way he's helped people get out of Colts. He told me there was probably too many people to count at this point, but he did give me the names of a few MLMs he helped people get out of. Some of them sounded pretty familiar, like Amway and Herbalife. So is the process similar when you're trying to get someone out of an MLM as opposed to a cult?

[Stephen Hasson]

Or, like, how does that work with people in mlm? When I'm meeting the person they've already agreed to meet with me, they think that their parents are crazy. It's typically their parents. Sometimes it's a husband, sometimes it's a wife. And I just say, listen, I'm here because they love you and they're worried about you. Let me tell you about myself. And then I start talking about the Moonies, and they're almost always fascinated, like, how could you believe in the moon? You bow to the floor with your Korean billionaire who made automatic rifles and I'd show them a BBC documentary about the Moonies and they're like, holy crap, how did you. How. What is this about? And then I start explaining about social psychology. I explain about how the mind works. And so people are fascinated to learn this stuff. I'm not attacking the mlm. I'm just creating a frame where people are learning valuable things about the way the mind works. And then I ask them to tell me their story. Who were they before they met the group? And I really want to hear from them. What was it that caught their attention? What made them think this was a good thing?

[Jane Marie]

What Steve is asking here feels very familiar. We had the same questions throughout this series when listening to people involved in MLMS. If all the statistics point to a 99% failure rate for new distributors, why join and why stay?

[Stephen Hasson]

Often, I'll say, you know, I'm meeting you now, it's five years later, you know, your wife's left you $30,000 in debt. If you knew then what you know now, if you could go back in time to that moment where the recruiter was inviting you to hear this wonderful opportunity, what do you think you would do? In their face, they go. And there's a long silence. And they often say, I don't think I would go. And I say, you know, when I was in the cafeteria, Queens College, and those women were flirting with me, if I could go back in time knowing about cults and knowing about the Moonies, I would have told them to get lost. In fact, I would have called security to have them thrown off the campus. And so we make. We join in that moment of, you know what? Life happens and you just got to move on.

[Jane Marie]

You just gotta move on. As Steve knows more than just about anybody, that's easier said than done. But Steven is going to continue the lonely work of trying to get people out from under undue influence one person at a time. Recently, several people from the FTC reached out to Jane to tell her they were listening to and enjoying season one of the Dream over at the actual offices of the actual ftc. Apparently, they're ready to reassess the way they've been handling MLMs. And the FTC employees who reached out told us that they had even asked the chair of the FTC to listen. Apparently, the chair's first response was, what's a podcast? But there is some hope that they will listen and maybe even take some action on behalf of the 18.2 million distributors, who we know 99% of will lose money this year. In the meantime, Steve is staying positive, so I will, too.

[Stephen Hasson]

Yes. You may have to be embarrassed to say to your folks, I should have listened to you. Or your friends who said, hey, that's a scam or that's a cult. So there's a certain amount of face saving that we want, always want to do, but it's, it's, you know, we're human and we didn't know what we didn't know. And, and that's part of what I'm trying to do with my life. Work is role model and say, hey, I got sucked into a cult. But life doesn't end. You know, when you're in a cult or you get out of a cult, you, you use it to enrich your, your appreciation of being free. You use it to, to improve yourself and your ability to, to learn how to trust yourself and others based on critical evaluation of data and behavior and not just trusting wishful thinking.

[Jane Marie]

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported by me, Jane Marie and Dan Gallucci with help from Lyra Smith. We're edited by Peter Clowney. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon, Dan Gallucci and me. We have a brand new season coming out in a few months, so don't forget to subscribe. And we also appreciate you rating and reviewing the podcast anywhere you listen.

[Stephen Hasson]

Sam.

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[Stephen Hasson]

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