Locked In with Ian Bick - Inside a Cult: Ex NXIVM Member Reveals How He Escaped & Took Down the Leader | Anthony “Nippy” Ames

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Anthony "Nippy" Ames, a former college athlete and aspiring actor, became involved with NXIVM, an organization that presented itself as a self-improvement group. Over 12 years, he advanced within NXIVM, becoming a teacher and establishing centers in New York and Vancouver. He met his wife, Sarah Edmondson, through the organization. Upon discovering NXIVM's illicit activities, Ames took decisive action to expose the group's misconduct. He played a pivotal role in dismantling NXIVM, contributing to the arrest and conviction of its leader, Keith Raniere, who received a 120-year prison sentence. Ames and Edmondson co-host the podcast "A Little Bit Culty," where they discuss their experiences and engage with fellow survivors and experts. #NXIVMCult #InsideACult #KeithRaniere #CultSurvivor #TrueCrime #MindControl #EscapingACult #JusticeServed Thank you to ROCKET MONEY for sponsoring today’s episode!: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://rocketmoney.com/lockedin today. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Anthony “Nippy” Ames: Podcast: https://alittlebitculty.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonyames11/ Book: https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLR16M1R576DP/checkout/25UI2OVABMV3RD4YF55WQ755 Sarah’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Scarred-Story-Escaped-NXIVM-Memoir/dp/1452184267?crid=3VKO3ATEWIZW5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LGohkNM1Vz3domFxEXQrtGeRdu1IqScyhq8Wc8MVd-mtYnC6efnh64SWUduYU3lzcZ8UluANFQUZISC98JnZPr6ubRrIscdIcgjS6XqHvgXFqECKYx5MLaa0Qp-Qm9lz.s6r-1UYF5MSxKJHB0JdLz58RvIq_gqoUaVRzsHSQB0U&dib_tag=se&keywords=scarred+sarah+edmondson&qid=1731523277&sprefix=scarred+sarah+edmondson,aps,130&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=sarahjedmonds-20&linkId=89fd660197d38e393dc847948da8908a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://www.ianbick.com/shop Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Meeting Travis at CrimeCon and Spotify Connection 00:05:23 Understanding Coercive Tactics in Cults 00:11:15 Uncover Hidden Subscription Scams with Rocket Money 00:16:27 The Impact of Puberty on Young Athletes 00:21:52 The Struggle with Losing Direction 00:27:44 Introduction to Nexium and Personal Reflections 00:33:11 Joining the Organization and Moving to LA 00:38:40 Understanding Growth Through Rules and Rituals 00:44:12 The Psychology of Cults: Us vs. Them Dynamics 00:49:52 Understanding Gaslighting and Its Impact 00:55:20 The Cult Perception 01:00:39 The Exploitation and Indoctrination of Women 01:06:21 Personal Reflections and Seeking Justice 01:12:19 Achieving Personal Success Through Self-Discipline 01:18:02 Moral Responsibility and Consequences 01:23:22 Turning Negatives into Positives: Michael Jordan's Family Motto 01:28:54 Final Thoughts and Farewell Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit mopar.com for complete details and a copy of the PowerDrain Limited Warrantee. Cummings is a registered trademark of Cummins, and Graham and Hemmy are registered trademarks of FCAUS LLC. Nipy, welcome to Lockton. How you doing today, man? Ian, great to be here. Yeah, thanks so much to Spotify for connecting us, Travis Morningstar. Travis is great. We met him at CrimeCon last spring. We were just looking for an area to get outside and get some air. And people were out there smoking. We got away from the smoke. And he came over and started talking to us. And here we are.

Wow. Oh, so that's when you guys signed up with the Spotify program. Yeah. He knew who. he had heard of our podcast. Sarah and him started trading emails and that's how we got here. That's so cool. Yeah, he told me about it and I was like,

I know that name because I look at the Apple charts a lot and you guys are always in the top ones on like society and culture. Society and culture, isn't that funny? Yeah, we're talking about culture, right? Well, that's what actually

they told me to put mine in. Our rep was like, hey, put it in society and culture because it'll stand out and there's less competition in a way than the true crime world. Yeah, because true crime, I mean,

you're dealing with an enterprise. eyes. They've been around since, you know, I was single digits, you know, unsolved mysteries and all that stuff. So, yeah, I imagine. Also, if you're not going into the true kind of space to dominate it, like, in your peripheral, society and culture would be appropriate, I guess. Yeah.

Well, it's really cool. They connected us. Likewise. And your wife is also the author of this book right here that you guys sent me, too. Yes. It's called, I call it scared. You know, a teaser. It's called scarred.

Okay. Oh, I didn't even realize it was the same. Oh, it's just two R's. for the us card. So I always misread it. Actually, I think I thought it was scared too. It's funny. And our son is seeing it.

I was like, it's scared. It's scared. You know, I tease her about it. Yeah, well, hopefully we'll have her on the show too. Yeah, absolutely. I'll come out to Atlanta. And she sends her regards and she's, sorry, she can't make it, but it just worked out. I was going to be in New York.

And Matt said, why don't she could do that? Come up to Connecticut. And I was like, let's do it. And you guys are a part of the vow. too, which we'll get into later in the app. But yeah, that's the other thing he mentioned that I remembered because I remember seeing bits and pieces of it. Have you seen that?

It's a big commitment. I got to watch the whole thing. But it's fascinating. I watched the other cult documentary that came out this year about the TikTokers. Yes, we haven't seen that yet. That's really good. I mean, we get inundated with like, you should watch this, you should watch this, and we have like a rolodex of docs we need to get to.

We have not seen that yet, but that's on our list. Yeah, that was my first ever, like, really. real cult documentary that I actually sat through because it was common with like TikTok. Yeah, you have crossover. Yeah, so I was interested with that. Well, yeah. I mean, look, there's going to be crossovers and anything that kind of can capture people and has a coercive aspect to it.

So ultimately those things come on our radar and we get a lot of emails about like, you should check out this. You should check out that. And I go, we're not cult busters. We normally interview people who have been on it. So maybe that's another avenue we can go. at some point. Yeah, definitely plug in your podcast too before we dive into this one so people know what it's about and what you guys do. So yeah, my wife and I have a podcast. We started

on Axel Rose's birthday, February 2nd of, I think it was 20, let's see, it'll be four years, 2020. And so every February I put on my Guns and Roses t-shirt. That's how I remember the date. It's called A Little Bit Culty. And it came to us, our associate producer, our producer, is a woman named Jess Tarty, and she found Sarah through LinkedIn and pitched us a whole season. And I was in the inertia of, no, I'm fucking done talking about this shit. Sarah was like, yes and maybe inertia. And I saw the season, I was like, that's actually not a bad idea. And it was during COVID.

They put a mic in front of us. And I was like, look, I'm not doing anything creative anyway. And we did about six, seven episodes. It did well as far as I knew the metrics of how a podcast. I should do. And here we are. Four years later, drop an episode a week. And it's been great. It's been, had a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of very interesting people. And is it just surrounded around cult? Well, yes and no. I mean, the title, a little bit culty, kind of gives it a pretty big umbrella of domains we can cover. So I kind of talk to people about

like this. The abuses of power and the coercion that go on in cults aren't proprietary to cults. Right? So while you may not think you're in a cult or think that you've been coerced, if you can kind of build an awareness to what the red

flags and the precursors to coercion look like, cults don't exist without coercion. So we call it a little bit culty. So I kind of go, if it's a little bit coercive, it's a little bit culty, right? And that can be anything from as benign as I don't know soul cycle to Scientology right so there's a spectrum of like

coercion culty tactics and so I think the title allows us to go into other fields and go ah that sounds a little bit culty and it's tongue and cheek because it's it's a lot of serious content right and got to have humor you know at the appropriate times because we can have anyone from like an episode on Ray Dally and how he runs Bridgewater, the hedge fund, to a lot of churches with, like, sexual behavior and all that stuff. So that's not where we use our humor on those episodes. So it hits a lot of notes, serious, funny, day-to-day, and all that stuff. But the overall theme and that the why of what I want to do is if I can just get one person

to get sensitive to what these coercive tactics look like, like, sound like, I think I've done my job, right? And I kind of look at us. I wish it was a podcast and my wife and I are writing a book right now about our experience in the podcast. It's kind of the podcast or book I wish I'd heard before I got involved with Nexium. If that makes sense. Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm sure a lot of people will be into that too because it's kind of like you're starting a new career within your same career in a way in the entertainment world. But it's a whole different path that no one really knows much about, but there's so much information on it. And there's not one way to do it. There's not, and it's not, there's not a lot of, it's not one way,

only one way to do it. But there's also, like when you think about, most people don't go about their days thinking that a coercive mind is out there trying to capture their mind. And that's really what these groups do. They do, they do have maniacal intent and they do prey on you. And most people don't have the capacity to project into that and think that's going on until it's too late. If you can just recognize what it may look like or sound like beforehand, then you're just making a more informed decision. And if you can do that and that lane opens up to you like it has for us and you can get people more informed to make really good decisions about how they're going about things, then I think that's a lane you should stay in until something else opens up

either to help other people or something else in another field. So, and Sarah and I take that pretty seriously. I mean, obviously we're raising kids and nothing's more interesting to me than that right now. And the podcast, I'd say, is our third kid, you know. But we take it seriously and we try to have fun doing it. Yes, the content gets a little bit redundant because after you've heard so many stories and the playbook is exactly the same for all of them. you want to keep it kind of fresh, as you probably know.

Yeah. So that's pretty much how I program my psychology going about doing what I'm doing. I love that. Now you go by the name Nippy on the podcast. How did you get that name? So this is, you'll appreciate this. So my full name is Anthony Nippert Ames. Oh, that's your middle name, Nippert.

with a T at the end. Wow. And that's my mom's maiden name. And so I guess my dad, my dad's Anthony Ames as well, and he didn't want to do junior. So he just gave my mom's maiden name as my middle name. They thought they'd call me Nippy. And I was like six or seven when I found out my real name was Anthony. So it was like, what?

But I've got brothers whose names are Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and I have a little sister named Daisy. So she's the odd what out, what the kind of stuff I normal name? It goes, Huey, my mom's first marriage, and she married a guy named Huey, and then me, Nippy, and then Louis, my brother, and my mom had a stepbrother named Louis. And then Dewey, I think, was my dad going, let's just go for the gold here. Let's do the whole thing. And then Daisy is my youngest. I'm 10 years older than 10 years older than she is. Where do you guys grow up? Atlanta, Georgia. So I'm born and bred in Atlanta.

What did your parents do for work? So my dad's an architect. So his work actually had him teaching a lot as well. And then when I was about 9, 10 years old, we lived in Rome, Italy for a year. Oh, wow. It was amazing. And my mom was just trying to get us to school on time, plus her heart. And so, yeah, I got to see a lot of architecture as a kid.

Was that harder on you, you know, taking that year out of the U.S. to go live out there for school? You know, I was devastated the night before we moved because I wasn't going to be able to play sports. So, you know, just a little sidebar, all of us played sports in college. Like we were all, like that was our household. It's what kept us out of trouble, I think. And then I remember being there and loving it. And my dad took us to this park called the Doria Panfili, which is up in, a hill in Rome, Italy, and we'd throw the ball out there, so we got our fill there. But it was a

great experience. I mean, I had great memories of it. And then I came back, I don't even remember the transition. So, no, it was great. I mean, it's always hard to move for a minute, but kids have short memories. And, you know, I just moved two years ago back to Atlanta because we were living in Vancouver. And I was really concerned about my kid. My kid was fine within two, three weeks. Oh, yeah, I was reading somewhere that you guys were, because I think a couple of bios on your wife's a Canadian actress. Yeah, she's originally from Vancouver. Okay. And we lived there up until August of 22.

After COVID, I kind of wanted to move before COVID, then COVID hit. And Vancouver was a great place to be during COVID. It was very, like, calm, placid, didn't really have to deal with, like, the political crossfire that was going on here. And my kids were five and one. at the time. So it ended up being, we started our podcast out of that apart.

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RocketMoney.com slash locked in. One more time, rocketmoney.com slash locked in. Don't let these companies hustle you. Take back control of your money with Rocket Money like I do. Now let's get back into today's episode. With you guys having so many siblings growing up, was it a strain on your family financially? No.

In fact, I grew up upper middle class, went to private schools. If the term white privilege has any sort of like, I think it's a marginalizing comment. I don't think it's necessarily a positive comment, but like I grew up in privilege, went to school. So it wasn't, I was never in any sort of financial need as a child. And I don't remember it if we were.

So we were fine in that. Did you ever go to public school or was it all private? Nope, went to private school growing up. Yeah. Do you think that had a big impact on your childhood, like looking back on it now? Here's the value, I think, of going to a private school versus a public school. And there's upsides and downsides. I think private schools get you around a certain kind of psychology of success, connections, wealth in certain aspects.

But I also think a lot of private school kids are shielded from reality in a way and they don't get certain rights of passages in terms of what it takes to earn, learn, learn, and do things on your own. Daddy's going to bail me out. Daddy's going to pay for things. They don't understand the origin of where things come from. My dad didn't come from that. And he kind of ran our household, kind of like Clint Eastwood. Kind of looks like Clint Eastwood. And so, no, it was like, I tell a funny story.

I played football in college. And my dad would come into my room during my summers. And this is if I'd been out, you know, with my buddies to late. He'd go, Troy Aikman isn't sleeping right now. I'd be like, fuck you. So, like, there was a, there was a constant drive and a constant push for us to perform. And the downside to that is you link your self-worth to your capacity to perform, you know, which I certainly did. And I identified with performance a lot.

Like, I would only feel good about myself if I felt like I was performing in my life. And if I didn't feel like I had something to thrive in, my value seemed to be in question at the very least. and I was motivated to quench that thirst, so to speak. I think that was kind of a precedent my dad set early on. If you're going to do this, you're going to do it well, kind of thing. Was the end goal sports for you? Did you see that as your career or your future? I read a book when I was 14 years old by a guy named John McPhee.

John McPhee's been on Rogan's podcast. He's in his 90s now. And he was writing it about Bill Bradley, who was the senator of New Jersey up until about, 2000 something and he played basketball at Princeton took Princeton to the final four in 1965 and he played the New York Knicks won two national two NBA championships with the Knicks and the book was about following him through his season when it's called a sense of where you are and I remember I was 14 years old and I remember thinking fuck I'm going to go play basketball

at Princeton that was in my mind I want to go to an Ivy League school and I want to play basketball And that was just, you know how goals are? Some people want to be a fireman. This was like something I really, really believed I could do. And it was just always in the back of my mind to whatever I was doing. I was good in basketball as captain of my team, but quarterback ended up being something that emerged that I was better at and ended up playing football in college.

But that initial goal and that initial drive that got me on the journey to strive and perform was, kind of culminated and started in that book. Like it was kind of the end of my childhood when a lot of the athletes at 13, 14, 15 that were good in kids, when there were kids kind of get weeded out at that age. Puberty is a great neutralizer, obviously. Like if you're 7th, 8, 9 grade, 7 to 8th, 9th grade hero, if you don't hit puberty and grow to a certain size, it's probably not going to happen.

I got a little bit of size and kind of went. with it and then that became kind of like my life until the sport kicks you out eventually as it does everyone right and my brother's followed suit right my brother had one brother who played a year professionally in Canada and another brother who played in Europe so it was kind of a that's what we were doing with our summers when we went home in the Ames household right give me a second so yeah how do you think your classmates would describe you if we had them here today back then? Depends what age.

High school, I'd say like, yeah, he was unreasonable about his sports. Yeah, could be an asshole maybe a little bit about it. But that's how I felt like I had to be to be successful. Right? Like that kind of felt like I was getting pushed in that direction. That's how I was going to be. And then, like,

I'd have fun. I was always fucking around and having fun. And I liked that atmosphere. And I figured out how to how to thrive in it, particularly quarterback. Like, you look at something, not to make this about quarterback and all that stuff, but I could talk for hours about it. Quarterback was interesting to me

because it was physically demanding, emotionally demanding, and intellectually demanding, right? And then to get good at it, you got to learn how to get along with a whole demographic of people from a lot of different places. So, yes, I grew up upper middle class, but when I was playing football,

that shit didn't matter. Like I was down at, football camps talking to a kid from a public school and we were finding a common ground and where he had to be where I had to hit him with football. Like your problem solving with him, you know, I would go, I got to get on this kid because he's not living up to what I think he can do. Don't get on this guy. That's not going to work with him. Pout him on the ass, encourage him. He drops a pass, go tell him I'm coming right back to you. Right. You can be pissed, but you also have to lead at the same time. Right. And in order to earn that, you've got to show up

be the first one there, last one to leave. Right? You've got to earn the right to be able to tell your teammate something, right? And that's, you know, I remember being 14, 15 years old. And I don't know if you remember in high school, but like the difference between being a freshman

and a sophomore is a hierarchy and it's a pecking order. And it's pretty rigorously enforced in high school. Yeah, it is. Right? Like you don't get out of line. And I remember being a freshman on the JV team playing quarterback.

and having to tell a guy that would otherwise give me a nogi in the hallway, he's a sophomore or junior, hey, this is my fucking huddle. Be quiet. And the coach would say that and back me up. And I go, oh, God, I don't want to do this. I was scared of the power a little bit because also I didn't want to deal with the ramifications in the hallway the next day. So, like, I didn't know this at the time, but I was like, I was being given some power

because I was maybe good at something, but I also was, like, not comfortable with. it. Right? And I remember always thinking about that moment, like, how is it that you can ensure that you earn the power that you're given? So it's, you can say certain things with that power and it's earned. It's not fraudulent. It's not out of sort of integrity with the world, if that makes sense. Like, I can say that to you as a junior and you can go, yeah, this guy's earned it. That was always a hard thing to kind of get a pulse on, if that makes sense. But, but, but, but, it's a junior. And you can go, you can go, yeah, this guy's earned it. And that was always. But, It's also a great problem to have at 1415. A 14, 15 year old kid, reconciling those questions is a positive thing.

You're not going to get that in the classroom. It doesn't matter what school you go to. So sports to me is one of the things that grounded me and was a great place for me to get to know myself, establish my self-esteem, established. This is where nippy begins and the rest of the world doesn't. And, you know, there's downside you can identify too much with it. You know, there's other things that you come with it. But sports to me was like, I always knew where I stand it in one domain. The ball don't lie is the joke, right?

Like you're either the ball's going in the hoop or it's not. And if it's not, you got to change. You can't blame the hoop. You can't blame your coach. So sports is that thing, one of the last things in our culture and society, which is somewhat not tainted by politics and stuff like that. It still can be, but you still have to perform. And I like that.

So how challenging was it for you when sports ended, did it kind of uproot your life or mindset at all? I have a very specific story. So I was in New York City. I just moved there. It was June of 99. And I was taking acting classes that were going from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays.

And I remember going out on a Monday, waking up at like 9.30, 10 a.m. on a Tuesday with like in a sweat because I was a little hungover. and hearing the horns, and my heart was going, and I was like, what the fuck is going on with me? I don't know if it was a panic attack or if I could say that definitively, but I remember thinking, like, I've got nowhere to be today for the first time

and however long I can remember. It was 24, 25, almost 25. And I didn't have a direction. I didn't know, like, because like, if it was June in any other year, I go, oh yeah, I've got a season in the fall. I'm going to do this. I know everything's planned out. My purpose felt very clear, right?

And when I had that moment of like the death of like one lifestyle and the death of knowing where I'm going to be, knowing my plan was no longer, it was a huge void. And it was also, I mean, I understood it intellectually. I didn't have the language for it. But I also knew like, I don't have anywhere to be. I've got nothing.

It felt like I got no response. responsibility, which meant to me, no purpose. I'm not building. I'm not creating. Like, I didn't have the understanding of myself at that age, the emotional intelligence to put language to it. But it was like, I got nowhere to be. I'm not good at anything anymore. It's kind of like, I'm not performing to my standards. And so it was hard for me to feel good about myself and anything that I was doing. And I remember thinking that and going, is this how everyone else felt? Is this how everyone else feels? Because it was one of the first times it was revealed to me. I'd never really known that was my motor, so to speak, but it was being revealed that it wasn't being fulfilled in any sort of capacity, and it was done.

So all the skill sets and I had put all my time and energy into, from seven, eight, nine years old, felt obsolete, if that makes sense. And so I had to build myself. How did acting come about? I knew my sophomore year in college that I wanted to do something in acting, do something creative. I went to an advisor at my college and they said, well, you're probably going to have to quit football. And I thought, I was waiting for like the laugh. And she's like, because you have to do this. These are the requirements.

And I thought, you know, I'm at an Ivy League school. I don't think I'm going to take an acting class if it doesn't. And I'm not going to leave here with an acting degree. And I knew I was always interested, like, in world leaders. I was always interested in Kennedy, American history. So I ended up being a history major there. And which was a great decision because the best professors there, you know, and I got a lot out of that.

And so I figured if I'm serious about this, I can do this after college and go to New York and figure that out. So I knew kind of my sophomore year that I was interested in doing that. But then I felt like right now that football is what I'm doing. It's very time consuming. A lot of time demands on my time. A lot of my related. That was my world. And I decided I think I'm just going to focus this and get my history degree and get out.

How did your dad react to that? To you leaving sports and switching to acting and history? He was supportive. No, he was supportive. I mean, he thought I should, I had a couple opportunities to go play maybe in Europe or in the arena league after. And he's like, yeah, you should go do it.

I go, dad, listen, I'm going to be making, whatever I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be doing because of my mind, not because of my body. And I don't know if you know anything about arena league football. It's like playing football on a pinball machine. And it's, it's, and the pay at the time was like $600 a game, $800 if you win.

and I just wasn't I wasn't going to do that I was done. Is that pretty good pay back then or no? No. That wasn't good? Not for me to do it for two or three years and then and then try to do what I was going to do.

Do you know what I mean? Like I was 24, 25. I was like if I'm going to start doing this I need to start figuring how to do it as opposed to starting at 28, 29. You know, and I didn't really see any jumps from the arena league to the NFL and I think I'm pretty in reality

about my skill set, and I don't think my skill set's translated to the NFL. Maybe my capacity to throw the ball, but in terms of like the athletes at that level. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts.

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Well, okay, I'll start with. I'm there auditioning, getting jobs here and there. And then I think it was the summer of 99. I don't remember which or 2000. I run into my old high school girlfriend, who I still had feelings for, kind of like was still thinking about her. She had gotten married

and I run into her when she separated and get in touch with her. And she was going through a divorce at the time and she takes a class that her mom got for her. Now understand, I had known her family since I was 15. Her father was a brain surgeon

with a Yale, very smart guy. And she told me about this class that she was taken that her parents had gotten for her. And I was like, great, good for you. Right. And she stays on me about it for like a year. She's like, I really think you love this. It's like all the stuff you talked about when we were dating, you know, like I had books,

I had books like, you know, in high school about Kennedy, quarterbacks, athletes, Jordan. I was reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. I wanted to be the best I could be what I was doing. And she's just on me. And I even say to her, I go, I'm not doing your fucking cult, all right? You can stop, right? I can even say it to her.

It sounds like a lot of reverence to this one person. She was calling him the smartest man in the world because this is Keith Rennery, who will get to. And I'm just, I'm literally like, stop, right? And after I would book a job or I would shoot something, you know, I think it's important to celebrate your successes. So I would do something, go out to friends with, go out to dinner with friends, something a little bit big to denote like, hey man, this is like, because it's hard to measure your success in acting. You know, if you don't get a role, you don't know why, right? And it's hard to have that kind of structure. And I would always go do something, maybe go see a friend from

college. And I had just gotten finished shooting a film. And she calls me. And she's like, Are you going to come take this training? And I kind of said maybe I'll do it because I was still interested in her. I was really interested in her, not the training. And I go, no, I'm probably going to go out to see my friend in Los Angeles. She goes, well, you're just going to go out there and chase women and drink. She's like, is that what you want to, like, be doing with your time?

And I was like, she's right. She's right. And she got me. That was the line if I remember, like, she got me. And I was like, all right, when's the next one? When's the next training? it ended up being like a month later. I go up, take what is now in the zeitgeist nexium,

was called executive success programs at the time. This is about 2000, 2001. I take a five-day training. In my mind, I'm just going to go take it. Hopefully, maybe have some groundwork to, like, see if there's anything going on with us. And I'm deuses. I'm out.

I take it. I liked it. There was nothing wrong with the curriculum from my perspective at the time. It was about responsibility. It's about communication, all practical skills. And it had a goal setting thing. And I'll say, this is actually pretty cool. This is good stuff.

This is, you know, I was saying acting is one of the harder things to measure your career in. This kind of gave some tangible things for me to go out and like, you know, here are the things I can control. Here are the things that I can maximize my success in and all that stuff. And I really like that. So I'm in for her. but I also kind of like the curriculum. So there's enough there. There's enough points of susceptibility, I'll call it,

where like, okay, I don't see anything wrong with it. This is weird. The sashes, the ranking, all that stuff. That's weird. But, like, my old girlfriend is doing it. Her parents endorsed it. Like, I had buy-in from other people that had credibility in my mind, right?

So what I was seeing in front of me, I was like, this is fucking weird. the curriculum's good, but like the people are a little bit. It was in upstate New York. It was all being New York. And at this time, the organization was really young. And it felt like it, I hate to use this term, but it had some people that felt like weren't doing well in life.

Let's put it that way. I think saying losers is mean, punching down. But they really didn't feel like, you know, they weren't inspiring in nature. It's me being diplomatic. And so, but there was also some cool people that liked it. So it was a hodgepodge. And a lot of people want to get it started in New York City.

And I was like, look, I'll help out with the New York City Center because I'm down there and I can get maybe like some coaching and goal setting stuff that I like. And I don't have to commit too much. And I don't have to be in Albany, New York. And so it was about a year and a half or two of doing that. And finally, I was just like, look, I don't have the energy. There was no pay. And I don't have the time to spearhead this.

It's not what I'm passionate about. And I looked around the organization and there was no one there that was really doing things at a high level in my field that I could go, okay, that's a great example of what I want to be doing. Normally like, you know, when you pick a field, you go, oh, this guy's doing at a high level. What's he doing? You know, if you want to learn the attendance of basketball, there's Michael Jordan as an example, you know, whatever it is. I didn't really see that in the organization. I didn't really see it growing and I felt it. stagnant. And I didn't care. It wasn't my problem. I got what I got out of it. And I didn't leave

the organization in any sort of negative. Screw you. You screwed me. And the organization wasn't big enough. At the time for it to be anything controversial. You know, it had a couple controversial articles about Keith Ranieri in Forbes, I believe it was. I read that and was kind of like, okay, I think that was enough for me to go, I'm done here, but like, I didn't think it was bad. I didn't, and I didn't consider that Keith was this monster. So I keep in touch with maybe one or two people in the organization over the years, but I don't really like use any of the curriculum. I don't really care.

And I get cast in something in L.A. So I moved to L.A. in August of 2005. Great experience got there. auditioning a little bit and I decide when I come back east for Christmas I'm going to see if there's like an extra curriculum because I'd been in touch with the president's daughter Lauren Salisman throughout the years and she said hey there's a level two training around Christmas why don't you take it and I took five thousand dollars and took a training and when I had taken that training I came back the organization was totally different

about two or three years it spread to Mexico it had a filmmaker and he had a filmmaker and Mark Vecente, who's in the Vowl as well. And it was really key in taking down Keith Renary. Had a lot of people in the acting community, a lot of directors, a lot of creative types, and it had grown immensely. And in a lot of ways, I was kind of eating my words about this organization isn't going anywhere. But I was happy to eat my words.

It was great. I was like, oh, this is pretty impressive. Three years, you guys have grown and it felt more professional rather than kind of rag tag. Although it never really peaked, it never really hit a professional pitch that I feel like it should have. It was always a little bit like mom and pop, which is one of the things a lot of people hated about it, especially people that were running it. So I meet Mark. I meet some really nice, cool, interesting people in there.

I go back to L.A. And then Mark flies out to L.A. in August of 2006 and says, hey, look, I got a project I'm working on. Keith thought of you to be in this project. and I was like, okay, great. And he's like, you're going to have to move back to Albany, and we're going to shoot it there this fall. All right. So they pay for me, move me out there, bring my car,

move everything that they pay for me, and they move me out there. I go into pre-production. I get on a helicopter up in Albany Airport, fly down the Hudson River, go to Bergdorf-Goodman, get suited for pre-production for my costume, and everything we're getting ready to shoot.

I have no reason to think this film going to happen. But this is how I think this guy Keith works. He knows what people wants. And they basically, maybe it was going to happen, but I don't think it ever really was. But that's where I think I got conned back into the organization. All that said, I come, I'm back East Coast. I'm back in the organization staffing certain trainings while we're waiting to shoot. So this is kind of how they looped me back in. They promised me with work. So cut two It's about

Six months in I kind of dawns on me I was like this fucking film's not happening And you know my plan all along was I was going to shoot the film Go back to L.A. And like I'm going to feature film With by the way other actors that You know are working as well

And it's it's kind of like Hey man this is a great opportunity for me You know and that's my mentality Throughout the entire thing And that's really how I related to the organization for much of the time. I realize it's not going to happen. I go in, I have a couple of conversations

that were like, you know, I got a lot of runaround. And I'm like, all right, look, and they were paying for me to be there. So I wasn't, the only thing I was losing wasn't money. Well, it's losing money because I could have been making money other places, but I was losing time. And I was pissed.

And I decided to move back to New York City to keep auditioning, and the New York City Center is just being built. and I start working there. And then I start dating Sarah in about 2010, 2011. And we're doing trainings pretty much all around Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York City. We have a center in Mexico, two centers in Mexico, Mexico City in Monterey. Excuse me. And the organizations are doing well.

They're running five-day trainings all the time. And I feel, kind of that feeling I was talking about earlier about, I feel like I'm purposeful. I'm on point. I'm doing stuff that's helping people in their personal lives, helping them achieve their goals, and I'm getting a little bit of work here and there. My aspirations weren't ever really to be in the organization. So I always kind of had an arm's length approach to the career paths in there. I really liked teaching the goals curriculum.

So that kind of became my bread and butter and what I like to do. And I ran what was called the Goals and Values Lab. And I ran those. And that became where I worked most eventually. And that's ultimately how I had a career path within the organization, but I was always kind of looking to like get work outside of it. And you got paid for that. That was a role that was paid.

So the way it worked is there was a ranking system, similar to that of like a dojo. In fact, in our first module was called Rules and Rituals. And it's like to denote someone's growth, they had to earn certain sashes. And there were certain requirements that you had to do, which in hindsight are arbitrary and bullshit ad nauseum.

It's like your life issue, things that you have to evolve and demonstrate that you have evolved in order to earn a sash. And if you got to what was called the Proctor rank, you could then earn money by teaching the classes, running the weekly classes, and enrolling. those were the areas that you were now qualified to make money.

I wanted to get to Proctor just so I could teach the classes. I didn't really care about enrollment that much. Although I spoke to a lot of people about enrollment. It always felt, I always felt like I was getting someone to do something they didn't want to do. You know, sometimes it was easy. Some people will sign up for anything. Some people will never sign up for anything, right?

but I always felt like uncomfortable in the enrollment process this wasn't my thing you know Sarah who's really good at and she loved doing it and Sarah grew a center out in Vancouver and she had a lot of incentive to do it I wasn't a particularly strong enroller because I just didn't enjoy sales that much

you know it's it's awkward yeah I don't like sales yeah it's it's awkward I liked getting in there and solving the riddle of people in their lives and asking them questions and helping them see this particular pattern is keeping me from something that I've been pursuing for a long time. That was really interesting to me. It was solving a problem. It was solving a problem and then seeing them solve the problem and have an awareness of how they can make an informed decision,

which is in a lot of ways what we're doing now with our podcast. We're putting language to what things look and sound like in small sound bites. some people go, oh my fucking God, that's happened to me. Someone's done that very thing to me in my life. Did you see yourself in a lot of these individuals that were attending these, you know, seminars and classes? Because that's how you kind of join them to begin with. Here's what I'll say.

Tell me if this answers your question. When people would come in, it got to the point where, by the way, people were walking, they repelled themselves, I could probably tell you what was going on with them. Like I could tell like there's certain, there's certain, like I was saying in the hallway, people aren't that mysterious, right? The reason that they can and can't do things

is normally some sort of irrational fear that they have. I'm not safe. Someone's not going to like me. I'm not valuable enough. And oftentimes when you get people down, you elicit what's going on with them, It's something as arbitrary as like, yeah, I do that because I just want approval from, I didn't get approval and I never felt good without approval. Or, yeah, I do this behavior because I don't feel safe.

Or I do this behavior because if I don't, I can't feel good. And that's a very relatable statement. We're all in a human body. we all have fear, we all experience fight or flight, we all handle it different ways. What scares you might not scare me and vice versa. But there's always going to be something

that's going on with you that I can elicit through you in conversation and bring to your awareness. So did I see me? I mean, I guess inhumanizing your own kind of version of what's going on with Ian Bick,

I can humanize I'm sorry, in humanizing my own, I can humanize you, right? And is it kind of like a holistic approach to people's issues? So I guess so, but it really, it really wasn't what I was interested in. Yes, that became interesting to me. And yes, I became like, I could be interested in, but a career in doing that wasn't interesting to me. and I wasn't interested in talking about my issues all day,

and I wasn't interested in talking about yours all day. I was interested in helping you see it so you could go on, move your life, and prove that our curriculum worked. That was the biggest gift to me. So if you came into the training and you got something out of it, I was like, great, glad I could help you. Every person's relationship to the organization is case by case. Some people were more all in, and it was dogma,

and I had moments of like, you know, this is how you should do things, was certainly certainly did that some people just related to it because they wanted the tools to make them more successful in our life and lots of people had different variations of that at different times no you had used the word cult to your ex-girlfriend when she first told you about this yeah what did you know about cult in general at that point number one not that much number two i said it kind of tongue-in-cheek to her because it but it sounded like you were following this one guy you were calling him the smartest man in the world you had said

ashes, what the fuck is going on? Natural response, right? Like, cult to me was like you were doing something weird and you were following someone weird and you were isolating yourself. Come to learn there's a lot of other things that constitute that too. But there's always sort of a feeling I got from people who taking the training that they were morally superior or they had some secret that you didn't, which I fucking hate it. And it really made me kind of go, hey, look, it was really, really.

reason why I left it first. That in the article, I was like, yeah, like, you guys condescend people who aren't in. So it had kind of that us versus them, which is always, it's in every cult. There's an us versus them. You have to, you have to have the juxtaposition of it's you against them or their ideology, which makes it ideological, which makes it kind of tribalism. And I didn't like that at first. And when I didn't get what I wanted from my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend at the time. And I looked around. It was like, okay, I'm out.

I didn't get what I was coming for the first time. They came, knowing what I wanted, and promised me a film. So they actually became the perpetrators. And I'll never know the true origin of it, but like, it's pretty convenient they offer me, I'm out in California looking for work. They offer me work and bring me back.

I don't think that's an accident. Why do you think they wanted you? I have no idea. I'll never know the answer to that. I mean, Sarah will say like, oh, you know, it's good to have someone who's like, you know, Ivy League in the front. And I'm not going to say that about myself because I don't really know. I think they wanted people. I don't think they had a lot of men in there either.

You know, there weren't, it was a lot of, they needed more male figures. They sent Mark out there, someone I respected to come out and get me to work on a film. And I think they just wanted as many people as they can. And also, I think if we're going to get into kind of the psychology of what these cult leaders are like and all that stuff. someone said something when we first got out they said oh yeah Keith is a collector of souls and that always stuck with me

it's like he wasn't yeah he yeah it was the money sex and power thing but I really think he liked to find people that had a light or any sort of like thing going on with them and dim them and turn them down that's the psychology of these kinds of people they enjoy

and relevant and other people's demise. And they help facilitate that. And they'll wait and they'll do the long game. And as many people he can have on the line doing this, he just has a bunch of bulbs that he's dimming at all times while he's pretending to help them. And then gaslights them into submission.

You know, well, and he's very soft, spoken. The devil greets you with a smile, right? He's not coming in guns and blazing, you know. A lot of bad ideas throughout history, come in through the heels of altruism, right? And promises of good. You can look right now into the world that's going on right now with the political stuff. It's going on right now.

So the same tactics of coercion that went on to get me and other people loyal to Keith or nearer going on right now. And these people, John Lennon had a quote that I read when I was 28 years old. It was something to the effective. I think the world is run by maniacal people with maniacal intent. And I remember thinking, fuck, that's pretty cynical for a guy who wrote Imagine. I remember reading that quote and going, huh, that's really like, surprise he wrote that. As I've gotten older and as I've seen what's been exposed to us, even politically what's going on right now,

I think those people thrive because people like you and I don't know what it's like to project into that kind of psychology. so they can walk amongst us, rub elbows with us, mimic us, mimic what it looks like to be emotional, but really be dead inside. And that's the psychopathy, I think, that was going on with Keith Reneery. I think he was dead inside. He learned to mimic people. And he learned to figure out what was going on with people and doesn't have a conscience and doesn't have feelings. And it's hard to figure out who those people are, particularly. when they have so much buy-in around them.

A lot of people vouching for them. So I can be sitting here looking at Ian Bick that everyone loves, but you might be that guy because you know how to pull those strings and buttons. In a lot of ways, you're not limited by your feelings and your conscience, so you can be whoever to anyone.

And that gives you an advantage in that field to do what you want to do to them, which is, you know, collect their soul, promise them things. future fake. It's a great term called future fake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. We're going to shoot the film this spring. We're going to shoot it always promising but never delivering. And I saw a lot of that out of Keith Renary. That's kind of like gaslighting. It is gaslighting in a sense of gas sliding is like I'll give an example of gas sliding. You come to me with a grievance. Like hey, Nippy, you didn't do this. I go, what's going on with you where you feel like, you know, you're. Why you upset? You should look at your reaction to that. And then you'd go work on it.

But really, you and I had an agreement. I didn't deliver on it. And now I'm making it, I'm making our interaction your problem because of how you came and held me accountable on it. So not only is my end of the bargain not being upheld addressed, now you've got to go do work. Right. So gaslighting's a term that's kind of thrown around.

Especially in dating, social media. Yeah. And, well, it's also true. Like, you know, I think it's good that this word's coming up. I think, you know, words get bastardized a lot. But the fact that gaslighting is becoming into the kind of lexicon of understanding, I think people can settle on, yeah, like, at least they'll know what it looks like. And it's a term that can at least temporarily stop the abuser from gaslighting because now his tactics been outed.

And people are talking about it. So there's positives to it. obviously like we hear it thrown around a lot you know and sometimes it's not gaslighting not everyone's gaslighting you um but back to the point with keith um is i think this is what he was doing to a lot of people now i was it's important that i say all this and be like i was targeted differently you know i wasn't like sarah i wasn't like all the women that he was targeting and he spent a lot of time and energy coursing. Right.

I was somewhat peripheral. I don't think he thought about me much, right? I think he worked Mark a lot. And then through Mark, he leveraged the relationships through Mark. So it wasn't Keith necessarily saying anything to me. It was coming down from someone else who Keith had it under his thumb. And they would be his enforcer. So that's someone who's kind of gone to the next level of it.

They figure out how to work through other people and leverage other people's trusts. Right. So if I see that you have a relationship with someone and I know that you have a trust with them and I know that I can get you to do my bidding and I want his value or I want something from him, I'll do it for you. I'll go, Ian, how about going and talking to so-and-so? and you'll go talk to them. If I get pushback, I'll work with you to handle the pushback.

And because you're aligned with me and what I'm doing, you're in my cold, not only have I created a strife in the relationship that you all have, I now have you as an agent for me. So back to the Lennon quote, like, I think that's, I think the people that are running a lot of things have this kind of psychopathy. Not all of them. I mean, but I think it goes on more than people know. I think people are coerced more than they know.

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or contact your local travel agents. Conditions apply. Building awareness around it is vital, knowing what it looks like is vital. When you rejoined, when did things start to get weird again like it did the first time you joined? Okay.

So if people know our story, I'm going to give the audience a little bit of a background. I'd say, I'd say things were weird the entire time in his inner circle. And his true persona, his true persona and his true nature, the true nature of Keith Rennery, was protected by 15, 20 women primarily, maybe a couple guys.

They knew his real persona, and this is someone who didn't work, was lazy, was fucking all the women around him, was coercing them, was abusing them, was having kids out of wedlock, and then lying that it wasn't his kid. And they protected that image. So anytime something came out in the press, right, or anytime something came out that was like, I would read and go, hey, what the fuck? What is going on?

Like, I don't see this. And mind you, I'm peripheral to Keith. I'm not in his day-to-day life. And I didn't want to be. But I was peripheral to him. So anytime I do that, I would go to someone like that was around him that I had a friendship with that I would assume would tell me the truth about who he is. I go, what's this?

And they'd give me a story and I'd believe it. And if I can go back and look at, you know, times when I could talk to myself and go, no, press that more. Because I would accept the narrative and I underestimated the people around them's capacity to lie. And I didn't understand that they were coerced and abused by him as well. And they were in protecting his lie, they're protecting theirs. Right. So they, he had abused them, sexually abused them. Right.

They didn't sign up for a personal professional development course to get fucked by Keith Reneery. That's not what anyone came to do. So how they found themselves in that situation years later is by his bidding and the people around him facilitating it. So I was never in that inner circle. And so for me, like, when I look back, you know, I made major life decisions based on a lot of people's capacity to hide who this man was. from everyone. Like if you look at 99% of the people that were in this organization, they were

there for good reasons, the goals aspect of it and got some good stuff out of it. The people that were in his immediate circle are protecting who this guy was and kind of running his racket. You know, were the ones A, that were abused the most

and kept people loyal because they had something to gain from it. Does I answer? Had you and Sarah talked about it at all when you first started dating, like what you guys were actually involved in? Had there been broader discussions? Have you used the word cult when you guys first met? We knew that people saw us as a cult and laughed at it.

I was like, I get it. I get what looks weird about this, which would be great. You come to me. I go, yeah, and I get it. But it's like based on this, it's based on a dojo. It's a ranking system. And it's like, do it or don't. We normalized it.

We made it kind of like cool, right? behind the scenes, I would talk to Sarah. I was like, there's so many problems we had with the organization. We were putting out fires all the time with like, like admin. There was like admin problems that went on all the time. Like people couldn't paid on time. It was like stupid, petty shit that a lot of people were always going around and putting out these fires. It was a dysfunctional organization run by people who had never run anything.

And the people that were outgrowing it were constantly have to fight battles with admin. and stuff like that. So morale was low, so to speak. If it was a, if it was a platoon and we were fighting a war, like, it was hard to put up the persona of like, hey, we're winning the war. It's like, hey, man, can we get it together here? Can we get paid on time so I can go run the training? Like, it wasn't a well-oiled machine, and it never was, and I don't think it was ever intended

to be. I think, you know, as long as the metaphor I like to use is, as long as Keith had people putting out fires around him, they were never going to be. putting him out. In the same way, as long as the politicians can have us arguing about race, gender, and all the stuff right now, we're never going to get along and they can get away with their abuses of power over the American people. I kind of look at like, that's how these governing bodies work. They need the people to be divided a little bit so they can be squabbling over that as opposed to looking at the real coerciveness and the real abuses of power.

And I think Keith was a master at that. I think he would go, oh, Like, if Ian Bick was starting to catch on, I could go to so-and-so and just be like, hey, do this and it might cause a problem for you. And you'd be dealing with that problem for three or four days, and then you'd forget about whatever other real grievance you might have. Like, that's how I think this guy worked and these types of people work. What was your connection to the outside world while you're involved with the organization? I was still auditioning. You know, part of the reason I wanted to be involved with the Los Angeles and Vancouver centers is because I knew that projects were going. on and creative stuff was going on. Oddly, about three to six weeks before the shit hits the

fan in the organization, which was June 1st of 17. I just started shooting a web series that I had written. And I had the first episode done, the pilot episode done. And I had a three-year-old. So there were things that there were natural life things and benchmarks that I was hitting in my own life that were conflicting with my commitment to the organization. Similarly with Sarah. Sarah and I have ambitions to produce things. We wanted to make things we were producing my web series. We already had kind of one foot out and we were pulling back a little bit in our commitment to just flying to New York and L.A. all the time to run these trainings. like we were and we would have conversations about like we're helping a lot of people achieve

their goals what happened to ours right like and I remember it I was originally I originally came back here to film a movie I wasn't doing that work I was helping other people do it so I was like I still want to do this and we did it and we were starting to produce and then the shit hit the fan and had to put a lot of projects on the back burner so do you think it's a misconception then that some people will think if you're in a cult you don't have any access to the outside world like we do see in some of those cult documentaries it's it's not a misconception it's just important to know that people are indoctrinated case by case right um the people that were in keese inner circle kind of here's what made this one kind of unique in a sense

um it could look normal to the outside person right like it could look like just a personal professional development program and you're really committed to it you know and there was a lot of normal people in it and we had in hindsight i think these are the worst advocates celebrities but at the time it felt like hey if this person is doing it it can't be that bad the dalai lama had endorsed us you know we had a lot of groundswell of cachet so to speak that might be important to other people and might not be to others, right? So again, it's case by case and people are indoctrinated case by case. Sadly, in Keith's case, is he targeted women because he, I think he has a sex problem, a sex issue, whatever it is, which is probably a power issue. I think he had, I don't want to use the term mommy issues because I think it's kind of derogatory, but I think there was not a strong attachment with his mom and he didn't like women

while professing to champion them. You know, he exploited the hell out of women. Women were targeted the most. So unfortunately, a lot of the people that were abused the most around him were women. And they were indoctrinated the most. And to this day, there's still people that claim he's good, that were highly abused by him. So it's important to not underestimate the power of what someone like this can do and that they yield. Remember the question again?

about what was a question? Oh, the misconception. Sorry, the misconception about. Oh, so, yes. So, yeah, to me, the inner circle kind of looked that way to me while I was still teaching the curriculum, simply because I related to the organization, I related to it as a job. And, you know, I had some friends that I spoke to after I got out who knew me while I was in. They were like, yeah, I just thought you were going up and you had a job teaching.

teaching goals and curriculum that seemed pretty normal to me. But when I went up there, there's people that hung on Keith's every word, went to his volleyball games two, three nights a week. To me, that was not what I was interested in it. And that looked weird to me. But not to the point where I felt like he was sexually abusing them and doing all those things to them. When you look at, and this is an important question,

that's why I asked, when you look at how a lot of documentaries portray, you know, like Oshow and all these people and they look really weird doing it, I think it does a disservice to explaining the power of the coercion simply because people can look at that and go, oh, that would never happen to me. And you know what? You might be right. Right. If you look at mine, it didn't happen to me in that in the traditional sense. I had a girlfriend I still had feelings for, right? I liked goals. Like, it was a multi-varied, multifaceted way I was coerced. And then they came to me with the final one and offered me success, a film project, right? That's where I was susceptible in hindsight, right? So to look at

people and go, oh, that never happened to me. Well, it might, and you might, or you might be fortifying your blind spot by saying that, right? You don't know where you're susceptible until it's revealed to you, right? Some people might go to their whole lives and never put themselves in a situation where their susceptibility is revealed to them. Fine, you're probably not living because we all have an experience where we got coerced into something. We all have an experience where we felt like, how did that happen, how to get myself in that situation? That's not me. Right? And this was mine. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you It wouldn't happen in some other capacity had it not been through nexium.

You know, maybe I take a project that I shouldn't have and I learned the hard way. I don't ever begrudge myself for the reasons I went to do what I was doing and why I stayed in. The principles and ideas around it were what I thought I was getting behind. It was revealed to me that they weren't. And then I went and opened a can of whoop ass on. Yeah, share with us the downfall. The downfall, first, the first thing I said, and all this stuff.

And I think this is very important because for two reasons. There was a lot of people that, how do I put this? Ultimately, it looks like the vow and what Sarah, myself, Mark Vesente and his wife did, if you watch the vow, was the thing that took them down. But you have to understand, we stand on the shoulders of a lot of people that came before us that were knocking at the foundation for a while, that I remember I ignored at one point. And I was like, they're actually acting a little crazy.

He's not this. But that's what he was effective at. He was effective at making his accusers look crazy. And they had kind of gone crazy because he gaslit him so much. Right. So if you're complaining and I'm making you look crazy to everyone else, when I'm the diabolical one, I get everyone against you. So there was a lot of people that came before us.

And then when I was in the situation of 2017, of like, oh, this is going to happen to me now, all their stories became true in an instant. All the accusations became true in an instant. And I saw this man for who he is. And it was scary. So we had a situation that's documented in the Val where we have a little bit of a strategy and how we're going to leave. We're able to do it.

And then Sarah, myself, Mark and Bonnie get interviewed for the New York Times article, which came out in the fall, October of 2017. And once that article came out, I knew that their organization was done. I knew they had bigger things to worry about than litigating Mark, myself, and Sarah for the rest of the time. They had a lot more problems. They were internationally in the crosshairs of a lot of people.

And that's kind of like when someone's gig is up, everyone comes out. And it's like, yes, they did. this, Harvey Weinstein. Great example. And once that happens, I have a term that I've used in my podcast and I use it in our book. It's coming up. I was in sniper mode for about

three to six months, protecting my family, right? It was a very scary time. It was a very, I felt very primal. Like I really wanted to go fuck someone up. They had physically harmed a family member. They came after my fucking family. They came. They

He came after my family and felt entitled to my wife, put his initials on her. Like I wanted primordial justice. When I really think about like, and this is something I say in my book, like, I'll never get to scratch that itch of no one was like to open that guy's fucking head up. But it lives in me. And I still have moments of like, I'll catch myself sometimes when I'm in the gym. I'm like, I'll be like talking to the dumbbells or something like that. It's like, and then I snap out of it. So once I kind of had the article came out, I was like, I think we're safe.

Safe from like litigation stuff. And there's more to the story and it's way more nuanced. I'm kind of giving broad strokes at this point. But once that happened, it was safe. And then it was somewhat vindic. everything that came out of the organization about me, my wife, Mark, and everything was a total lie that I was like, oh, I don't even really have to do anything else. Because if anyone with two eyeballs can see this right now that know us and know the organization, I knew they were done.

I knew they had bigger problems because they couldn't make up what they were making up about us and have it stick. They just had to get more and more absurd. And ultimately, Keith did what Keith does. He ends up getting arrested in March of 2018. Very quickly, right? Moira Penza, the attorney on it, read the article and decided to take the case on. And they arrested him in Mexico, brought him back to the United States. And by June of 2019, he was convicted to 120 years of prison. Happened very, very quickly.

Did you testify at trial at all? I didn't have to. He took a plea deal or? No. He took it to the trial. trial, they thought Sarah was going to have to testify. It was a big thing. She was pregnant. We just had my second child in April, no, sorry, March of 2019. And they were afraid that she was going to have to testify. So many people came out to put him away that she, her testimony wasn't

even needed. Like, and the, and the, and the, and the attorneys kind of shifted their gear of like, okay, we got your story, but like, there's way worse than you guys. And at a certain point, At a certain point, it was pretty hard for me because the stories I started to hear once I got out and once I started calling people that had been in and hearing all the stories, it just added to my fury. Like, I was friends with a lot of these girls, and I had no idea he was doing this stuff to him. So in a lot of ways, Sarah and I felt really lucky. you know we went from being horrified to like oh my god what's happening all the emotions and then going oh my god we got off easy from this guy right like he was doing some diabolical thanks to these girls friends that we knew friends that i would go to albany take trainings with laugh with you know really good

people he was abusing them in ways that like well you know if you follow you'll see and then we kind of felt like spectators to the sinking ship that we didn't know that we didn't know was sinking. Does that make sense? Like the organization was never what we thought it was. Right? And there's a there's a book I read at the end. It's called um take back your life by yanya lalach and there's a there's a segment on it. It's called moral injury. I'll sum up moral injury in a way I think your audience can understand. Think of being a soldier and going over to fight in another country. for freedom and democracy

and recognizing you're not doing any of that. In fact, you're accelerating someone else's agenda, political agenda. Similarly with Keith. We're all doing these goals. We're all doing this stuff. Really, he's just trying to get women and abuse them. So there was that, like,

I felt like I was an agent for that in a moment. I just remember thinking, like I was aligned with that. Like, I was helping that. So I had to kind of reconcile, like, how that felt and then I wanted to do something about it. And I think, you know, the punches that Sarah and I threw were the requisite ones. I threw the punch that I could throw to take that guy down.

Sarah threw hers, Mark through hers. And everyone previously rocked the foundation so that our punch could be the final one. And then once law enforcement came in and did their thing, justice was served. When did you finally feel free if you ever felt free? Well, I told you, I felt relieved when the New York Times came over. Like I felt like we were out of harm's way. Free is an interesting one.

I never did not feel free. I felt when I started creating my next thing, betting on myself and creating what I wanted, unencumbered by whatever someone else we're talking in the hall about working for someone else i did always feel like i was working for someone else and wasn't creating my own thing which is why i wrote my own web series i still wanted to create and i do think like if you get into like the feeling of being successful the feeling of building your own thing and building your own idea and bring it to fruition is what i think self-esteem is and and something i think is important and something that you can drive

and you can be in control of. Once I started to have that is when I started to feel like, okay, now I'm a causative agent in my own life. I can attribute it to my capacity to discipline myself. Because discipline to me is the root of anything that A is worthwhile allows you to have self-love, self-awareness,

And those things started to come into fruition. The first thing I did was work out and lock down my body. I felt like I got to take care of. Not that I wasn't anything, but I don't really drink that much. But for me, it was like I knew I was going to have a lot of stress and a lot of the literature that we've been reading is find something that you used to like or like to do that can ground you. And working out and playing basketball or the kind of the things that kind of grounded me.

And then I had my kid. I had my three-year-old at the time. And Sarah and I saw people that didn't have those things, start small, that didn't have those things. And they were constantly in kind of what I would say, fight or flight trauma, because the joke I kind of tell is like, it was about a six-month-long flight with bouts of turbulence.

Your fighter flight goes off and you never know when the turbulence is coming. and I would have moments at like 3 a.m. waking up, my fighter flight's going off, right? You can call it trauma, whatever. And I remember being in New York after it happened, after we blew it up and going, I need to go tire my body out to the point where I can't wake up so I can sleep. So I, like, would go work out and then I would do the loop, the central part, six miles, just so I could tire myself out so I could sleep. and I'd still wake up at three or four in the morning. Like, you know, it'd eat well. I didn't drink.

I didn't do anything for a while. And your central nervous system is different. Because once you get shrapnel thrown into your central nervous system, as you probably have experienced in your life, it's a different beast. It's not something diet and exercise can handle, right? I mean, maybe diet and exercise can help you absorb a punch or two, right? but when your central nervous system is stressed out in the ways that it was for a short time

for us, it's very hard to reset it. And it was hard for Sarah. You know, so there's a lot of us handing the torch of leadership off to each other. And then having your kids to ground you and remind you of what's important, human life, the circle of it, those sorts of things. Kind of spiritual nature of things, which I wasn't really particularly into, really helped settle me. and then I just kind of remembered this is not going to be forever. Right?

It's not going to be forever. And that was a real blanket to have and I also leaned on our families, our requisite families, they were there for us. So any sort of problems we had, you know, my brother's helped out. So I had a lot of resources to lean on. And being in Vancouver during COVID was like

the universe kind of going you're in neutral don't try anything for a while take care of everything and then slowly you know the project the vow that was on HBO

was something we worked on I was a little reluctant to do that because I knew I was in trauma I also knew that I didn't want to have my personal life as other people's entertainment and I wasn't particularly with a three-year-old child

and in the state that my wife was in I was still protective turned out to be a good decision because we had some really good directors and HBO with Nancy Abraham and Lisa L. Lisa Heller, the documentary department were very reasonable when I spoke down with them. I go, listen, here's a deal. It's like, this is my life. This is my wife's life. This is my kid's life. And, you know, I want that to be protected. And I'm not going to do anything to put them in any harm's way, like, or I won't do the project. And they were, they were great. And they told the story I think really, really well.

The directors ask really good questions. You can tell what people are about by the questions they ask, right? So, and they were really mindful and the universe kind of. Ready to buy a car, a home, or just want to take control of your money? Your FICO score matters and 90% of top lenders use it to make decisions. Check your FICO score for free today without hurting your credit score. Visit myfico.com slash free or download the MyFICO app today. My FICO gives you the score lenders use most, plus credit reports and real-time alerts to help keep you on top of your credit.

Visit myfico.com slash free and take the mystery out of your FICO score. I took care of our story and told it and allows us to continue to it today in our podcast. When you realize the depth of what he was doing to these women specifically that joined the cult, how did that make you feel that you might have influenced someone to join? I was pissed. I mean, yes. I didn't, here's my thing. I don't think, I think my responsibility is by advocating for him,

contributed a little bit, not as much as like the women trying to get the other women in. And I didn't, like for instance, if I saw someone try to go get someone in to go work with Keith, I go, good for you. Great. Enjoy it. Like I had no way of knowing that this is what he was doing. So I can't, what am I going to get mad at myself for not knowing? I mean, sure, I could supposedly do that, but like, you don't know what you don't know.

And when I did know, I handled it. I handled it in the best way that I could, I knew how. Whatever I got to do to stop this. I'm going to stop it. So I threw all the punches I could throw knowing what I know with the knowledge that I had. And I got no problem with how I handled that. I don't like that I was aligned with it. That's where I go back to the moral injury.

It's like I thought I was advocating for something good. And in doing so, I brought people in harm's way. That's a hard thing to reconcile. But I don't think I did it to the level of, I don't think I really did it to that bunch of level because I wasn't that much of a player in getting people involved with Keith. It was more of the organization. I brought people potentially in harm's way. And it wasn't really hands-on with the women because that wasn't my field.

But just being a part of an organization that was hard. hurting someone is enough for me to be pissed off about. Also, like, you know, there was a point where like, great, I'm 40, well, how old does that the time? I'm 43 years old. I've got sex cold on my resume and no job. Like that's what, that, that was the optics of my life at one point. Before we done a podcast, I'm like, how am I going to, I'm like, what the fuck am I

going to do here? It's like, this is a stain on my life right now and I don't know how to get it out. let alone like what I participated in. Like I had to, there's a lot of things that I had to go reconcile. I mean reconciling your delusion about how you get involved with anything, you don't know it at the time, but it is wisdom if you do it right. If you lean into it correctly and you take responsibility for what you were going for in certain moments, you can learn a lot about yourself.

If you don't do that, you're just going to keep fortifying a blind spot. So I knew I had to lean into it. I knew, like I told everyone that was involved that was like, didn't want to. I go, you're going to have to take a bite out of the shit sandwich. You got to do it. I told Mark, we spoke a lot. I go, look, there's a scene that in the vow that people have DM'd me about the whole time. And Mark's like, I go, listen, Mark.

I said something to the effect of like, you know, we're going to have to unfuck our minds on how we got involved with us. And I just kind of, I knew that was going to be my process until it wasn't. And the best thing I can compare it to is like, you ever had a hard breakup? That kind of heart pressure that hurts? When that's gone, you've reconciled it. You know your buddy's over his girlfriend when you go out with him. He doesn't mention her anymore. Right?

Similar with this. Like, I don't think about the things that I think about seven years ago. You know, I go to bed thinking about my kids and I wake up thinking about them. I go out thinking about how I'm going to make this podcast better. Like my problems are different and they're all problems I'm moving forward and I'm in control of. You know, I don't think about Keith Reneery anymore. I'd like to kick his ass. I still want to scratch that edge.

But he's in jail for 120 years and I hope he lives a long time. He's got five years probation. He's checked on to that 120 years. It's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, that's where I am. And, you know, when we speak to people on our podcast, I tried to hopefully get them there. You know, I think I'm fortunate enough where the worst thing, like I really sat and thought,

I was like, what's the worst thing about this? And I was like, I'm just fucking embarrassed. I'm embarrassed. I got, like, my whole thing was embarrassment around, like, how I got conned. And embarrassment around people that I approached and were like, dude, nippy, this is kind of, I'm like, it's not. I was dismissive. I was a little bit smug in my dismissiveness.

It's like, what, you believe everything you read online? Not everything, but this sounds pretty, you know, I was that in terms of thinking I had something good and being so wrong. That was embarrassing. And then I thought, you're going to go the rest of your life without being fucking embarrassed. You know, I was like, if the worst thing out of this is you're embarrassed, take it. You know, you're going to be embarrassed again. Right?

have been, by the way. So, you know, to me that's life. And then I spoke to a lot of friends from school. A lot of my old teammates texted me. I'm like, dude, what the fuck's this? They're teasing me. And I knew when I was in the teasing phase, I was fine. And then people were like, hey, man, like really appreciate what you did. And then I started going, okay, it's not all bad. Nobody's thinking about me and my cult. You know what I mean? And then, there's an opportunity here and then you know slowly you get back on your feet and it doesn't last and you know I was watching the last dance that yeah with my kid during COVID Michael Jordan's family motto was turning negative into a positive and I told my kid at the time I was like your mom and I

are turning a negative into a positive and that's been the podcast and that's been you know the book that we're doing now and I think that's so relatable to this yeah for sure and you know that's that's kind of like, you know, when I look at my journey of anything, like in sports and all that stuff, I've done this before. I just didn't do it with a documentary that was documenting my personal life and having my wife branded. I never foresaw that, but one sec. Sorry, I got that scratch in my voice.

So look, and that's kind of, you know, once you start to do it, it kind of gets inertia, right? Like, there's no way I can go back to feeling embarrassed. And, like, I don't even, like, I look back at the seven years ago and I get where I was, but I also knew that it wasn't going to last and I was right. And so it's just one brick every day, you know, and move everything forward every day. And now I'm starting to sound like a cliche, but it's true. How does a cliche become a cliche? It's like, you know, tough times don't last.

Tough people do. I'm not saying, you know, I'm a tough guy, but I think I endured something, turned it in to a positive and had a lot of help and made a lot of really good decisions in a short amount of time to put us in a position where we could help other people and warn them. Kind of send the red flags up so they can understand them and make informed decisions, which is great. I love doing it. I get to meet all kinds of people doing it. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine recently about like, you know, what I'm doing now. And I was like, we had a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of interesting people when they would take the curriculum because it was a very interactive group of people. So I got to meet a lot of people and learn a lot about the human psychodynamic and how people work.

I did that in the organization. Now I get to do it out. So my job, my job, I put air quotes around it. What I'm doing with my time now is still very similar in a lot of sense being in that organization, interacting and talking with a lot of people prepared me for what I'm doing now, but I didn't really know that's what I was preparing myself for. I'm having a lot of interesting conversations with interesting people to this day. And I like doing that.

And, you know, the journey of going out and wanting to be. and wanting to change the world or help people. You know, I started with that, and I'm doing it still to this day. And I don't think that's an accident. You know, I just got behind the wrong horse, and I recognize I'm the horse to bet on, not Keith Renary's horse.

That makes sense. Yeah. Right? And, you know, I said something in a podcast, and a friend of mine from high school texted me after she heard it, and she's like, The line, I don't remember where I said it.

Just like once I started betting on myself, my world opened up. And that's kind of the lesson I've gotten out of this is I had someone else's guidance that I thought might be better than mine. And I didn't need it. If I bet on myself 26, whenever it was, I took my first training, I think I'd be probably in the same place. Doing something, creating something, enterprising something. And hopefully I'd still be doing it with my wife somewhere, somehow.

Absolutely. Well, Nippy, thank you so much for coming on the show today, man. This was a great conversation. I'm glad we got to do this. Likewise. And looking forward to connecting with Sarah soon. Yeah, that would be great. To get her perspective.

Her story is way different. Yeah, that's why I think it's so cool. It totally is, yeah. I've been doing, like, on some of the episodes, I've been doing like crime victims and then you actually have like the perpetrator that committed that crime. Oh shit. Yeah, I just did a really interesting one that came out the other day where her husband was murdered. And she agreed to have me interview the guy that murdered her husband that only got 11 years.

They saw the clip. Yeah. So it's crazy. He's going to come on the show. Oh, so you haven't had him yet. I saw her story. But I did hers because he had given a platform. someone gave him a platform and they were doing that.

And it's really hasn't really been done before in that setting. That's crazy. That's a great idea. And it's interesting because, you know, we give a platform to a lot of people that were in prison. So everyone wants multiple sides to the story. And I think that's cool. And I want to get into more law enforcement ones too where you have the guy that like what Welfa Wall Street did. He had his ex-FBI agent that brought him down on the show.

So I think that's another avenue to explore too. I love that. So I think getting, you know, your perspective and, you know, your words at the same time period and then hearing your wife's perspective will be incredible too. Yeah, also she, you know, she was in the inner circle of women that got abused.

So you're gonna get a totally different take on, she was someone who was specifically targeted. That was peripheral to that, so. But I also think too, like, you know, the lane that's opened up to me is like a lot of guys don't feel like they could fall for this, you know, because they're, and a lot of them already have.

in a lot of ways. And they're not open to sharing about it either. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I figured if I'm going to be embarrassed about it, I might as well. You got to run with it. Yeah, lean into it. Well, I appreciate you, man. And safe travels back to Atlanta.

Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I'll see you soon. I appreciate it.