Chapter Eleven - Welcome to the Machine, Brother

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Welcome to the Machine, Brother

I GOT BACK from the cruise, still half-drenched in the fake paradise glow, and I was like:

“Okay. Now what?”

I was broke, sure. But I still had momentum.
I didn’t want to stall out.

So I started thinking about what I was good at, like, really good at. And honestly? I was a damn good landscaper.

A year and a half in the field. Knew my shit. Could run a whole install start to finish. So I decided:

“Screw it, I’ll launch a landscaping company.”

I called it Legacy Landscaping.
Clean. Sharp. Like something that was meant to exist.

I built everything out. A pricing sheet, sales pitch, branding, QR codes for digital flow, and even a full sales framework.

And then?
I hit the streets.

I started knocking doors.

Not for long. A couple hours a day, here and there. I got rained on, got ignored, got shut down. I wasn’t closing any deals, and I was broke. But I kept going. I wasn’t just practicing landscaping, I was practicing sales.

I knew what was really coming.

Like I said, I was pretty commited to this sales job.
You get trained up, memorize a script, and then sell contracts door to door. 50 bucks a sale. Whole summer job. Easy, right?

So Legacy Landscaping? That was my training arc.

And then came Blitz Weekend, the real kickoff.

We were flying to Austin, Texas.
This was the big one.
The company had hyped it up like a trailer for a Marvel movie:

All the new reps come together, get hyped, train hard, and crush sales.
We blitz the neighborhoods. We close deals. We make money. We build brotherhood.

I thought, “Alright. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

I’d started memorizing the script on the plane ride. Not word-for-word yet, but I had the rhythm. I hacked memorization like I always do. Repetition, writing it down, saying it aloud, locking it in paragraph by paragraph.

We landed.
Airport was trash, as always.

But when we stepped outside?

They picked us up in a Mercedes and a McLaren.

I’m not kidding.
That’s how this started.

We got driven through Austin like we were rappers about to shoot a music video. And I’m not gonna lie, for a few hours?

I felt like the realest motherfucker alive.

We pulled up to this mansion-style Airbnb with a pool, hot tub, fire pit, all of it. It was stacked. But it wasn’t where we were staying.

We were headed to the other Airbnb, the one for the new guys.
Smaller. Cramped.
Six dudes. Three bedrooms.

I shared a room with Caleb, Zack’s cousin. Chill guy. I liked him.
But right away, I could feel the energy shift.

We weren’t here to train.
We were here to be indoctrinated.

The first night, they sat us down on the couch.

“Who’s got the script memorized?”

I started talking about how I was already learning to deviate from the script, the stuff I had already built from real-life knocking. Objection handling and fundamentals. I figured they’d be impressed.

They weren’t.

They snapped back fast.

“You can’t sell until you know the script. Sales is the script.”

Nah.
That’s not how sales works.
But I stayed quiet. These were the “big dogs.” I played along.

Then came the food:
They took us to Jack in the Box.
Nothing screams “future millionaire” like a fast food drive-thru.

Then they brought us to this warehouse. Full of asbestos, graffiti, and makeshift dodgeball courts.

Like some kind of dystopian rec center designed by an MLM fever dream.

The next day, we got up and… studied.
No Blitz. No sales. Just waiting.

They gave us “free time” later.
We went for tacos. Authentic Mexican, it said online.

Worst tacos I’ve ever had in my life.
Absolute dogshit.

Fake food for fake freedom.

I was broke.
Still hadn’t made a sale.
Still hadn’t even gotten access to the sales app.

But I was holding on.
Because I wanted to believe this would work.

Then we hit the gym.
But I didn’t lift.

Because why the fuck are we lifting on a business trip?

It wasn’t about fitness. It was about identity control.
You’re expected to be the guy. The grinder, the shark, the winner.

Not because you want to, because that’s the role.

So I ditched it.
I went to the pool in my underwear and swam like a kid on summer break.

It was one of the best decisions I made that whole trip.
Caleb joined me.
Because he got it. He felt it.

This wasn’t a trip.
It was a trap.

They took us to a barbecue joint, probably a tax write-off.
Then we hit downtown Austin.
Half of the group wasn’t even 21.

I tried to hang with the “leaders,” the big dogs.
Empty talk. Nothing real. All superficial.

Only funny part?
Some girl doing a bar bingo challenge needed a condom to win.
I had one.
We took a pic. She got her square.
Boom. Chaos magic.

We headed back to the Airbnb for game night.

And this is where shit got creepy.

They started with a psychology lesson.
PowerPoint presentation. Neural pathways. Persuasion. Obedience.

But it wasn’t education.
It was indoctrination.

They weren’t teaching us how to help people.
They were teaching us how to convince people to buy things they didn’t need.

Then came the financial gospel:

“When you make all your money, invest in rental properties. It’s the smartest move.”

Not create.
Not build.
Just extract.

This whole lifestyle was built on extraction.

Sell pest control to the lower class.
Use that money to buy up their neighborhoods.
Become the landlord.

And suddenly, I saw it:

It’s not just one scam. It’s a ladder of scams.

Each step is sold to you as “freedom.”
But each step just makes you the next tier of parasite.

And then, the final day, they waited until the last 30 minutes before sending us the sales app.

There was no Blitz.
No actual sales training.

The entire trip was a honeypot.
A performance.
A live-action commercial designed to show us the life we could have if we obeyed.

Then they Ubered us back to the airport.
Said goodbye like they’d done us a favor.

And just like that…
Austin was over.

But I came home with my eyes wide open.