DASH founder responds to disgruntled life coaches with mixture of belligerence and charm

by Ken Winston Caine
In an hour-long phone call with 39 somewhat disgruntled life coaches yesterday, DASH Systems founder Eric Aronson:

• Acknowledged the failure so far of the DASH infomercial.

• Encouraged coaches to stick with DASH. He said the infomercial would be tweaked and would be airing again within 60 days and hopefully would provide hundreds of clients for coaches who stayed on.

• Agreed to send full refunds, as DASH cash flow allows, to coaches who sign the release language DASH provided and return all materials and copies of all commnunications they have had with DASH, including emails.

Some coaches had objected to these conditions prior to the call, in particular the release language which they said amounts to a “gag order,” but they did not strongly press Aronson about this on the call. Most seemed to accept his explanation that the release is necessary because his attorney said it is, and because he needs to protect the company’s reputation. He said the release is necessary because:

“You have to understand my position. Being in the situation that I was in prior to coming out and writing this book [in prison for a securities fraud conviction], I have to make sure that I dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T.’ And my general counsel, who is my attorney, has instructed me, ‘Mr. Aronson, if you want me to be your attorney, get the release.’ So all I am doing is, that is why I pay him $495 an hour. To protect me. And protect the company. And for the coaches who do stay on and the infomercial does air and you end up getting three, 30 or 300 clients from this, you know, I have to protect those people as well.

“I’m not asking for anyone to jump through any hoops. I’m just asking everyone to go through a simple three-step process in order to receive your refund. I’m not asking for anything out of the ordinary.”

• Agreed to meet again with coaches Friday, June 2, and provide firm dates for issuing refunds. Yesterday he said only that it would be “first in, first out” for those who complied with the DASH conditions for refunds and the speed with which refunds would be made would be dependent upon company cash flow.

• In response to a question about how coaches were supposed to return e-materials and e-commnications, he said “print them, return them, and delete them” from the computer.

• Told coaches he had heard that some were going to the state attorney general with complaints and others were talking about hiring legal counsel and that some had had an offer of free legal counsel. He seemed to belittle that and told the coaches it would cost them more to pay an attorney to represent them than the “$495 or $695 or $895″ they had paid to DASH.

• Said that he didn’t feel he was in breach of the guarantee which stated that DASH would provide coaches with three paying clients in 90 days or refund their money because there was no timetable stated in the guarantee for when the refund would be made and that he fully intends to make refunds to those who meet his conditions.

He disputed the nature of the guarantee — whether it was to provide coaches with three prospective clients or with three paying clients, and seemed to suggest that different representations had been made by different DASH employees and that this was why some of those employees were no longer with the company.

A flyer distributed by the company to coaches in September guaranteed “at least three paying clients in three months.” And the contract coaches were expected to sign stated that coaches would receive up to an 80 percent refund “if the fees earned by the Coach under this Agreement for the three calendar month period commencing with the first full calendar month after completion of [the Coach's first Client Service appointment](the ‘Guarantee Period’) does not equal or exceed the Training Fee…” so long as the coach met some additional conditions.

Aronson admitted that coaches who had signed on more than a year ago had been waiting much longer than three months. He said, “All of you have done an unbelievable job when it comes to patience and that will be rewarded one day.”

He told coaches, “I’m not taking a paycheck until people get their refunds back.”

• Insisted he had no ill intentions and said that if he had intended to con the coaches out of their money, “I understand that I could have easily had friends and relatives call you and referred you to just bogus people to fulfill my obligation from the financial burden of paying anybody back.”

But, he said, “I would not do anything like that. And I coud have easily gotten out of this. I want you all to understand that. I coud have easily had three people call each and everyone of you and not had to pay anybody any money back because I delivered what I promised which was three prospective clients. Whether they worked with you or not it didn’t matter. But I didn’t do that. And I will rest with that comment. … And so my level of integrity is still in tact.”

• In response to a question, said coaches could keep the $89 product that was sold on the infomercial that DASH manager Barry Laub had encouraged them to buy during the infomercial test period and for which DASH had reimbursed them.

• Told those coaches who had never signed a contract with DASH to talk with his attorney, Lloyd Weinstein, regarding what kind of release language they would need to sign. They would still need to sign a release in order to get a refund, he said.

• Said he had much more at stake than did the coaches — that he had spent $600,000 filming the infomercial.

• Was asked why coaches who had been given refunds before the current group made their requests had not been required to sign a release. He said, “From the best of my knowledge I do not think we have sent a refund to anyone to date, from the best of my knowledge.” Some coaches who had talked with Mind Body Spirit Journal earlier were of the belief that there had been a wave of resignations of coaches in December and that those coaches had received refunds.

Aronson wasn’t asked and didn’t address whether there had been resignations in December but at another point in the call said that no earlier refunds had been made because the release language had not yet been developed.

• Several times referred to the coaches demanding refunds as “a lynch mob” and likened them to someone “screaming ‘Fire!’ in a theater.”

• Seemed to alternate between being belligerent and being charming, between letting coaches say their piece or cutting them off and talking over them.

• Responded to coaches complaining about non-returned phones calls, lack of communication during the months following the initial airing of the infomercial, questions about why key employees are suddenly no longer with DASH, saying:

“I opened up two anti-aging centers, I opened up a magazine, I went on TV, I’m around the world giving lectures and speaking and I am just one person and I tried hiring people to work for me to handle this and obviously they did not do the right job and that’s why certain people have been let go and certain people have decided to move on in their careers.”

He admitted that DASH Chief Operating Officer Lisa Rosenthal, who had been the key contact for the coaches and who was fired last week, had not been privy to executive decisions and therefore had been “stymied” in her efforts to communicate with coaches. He said:

“One of the biggest mistakes we made was the lack of communication amongst the coaches and we realize that and we tried to fix it last time but obviously Lisa is no longer with the company and hopefully going forward, you know that, Lisa was not abreast of a lot of things that went on and she was stymied in her responses to most of you because she could not answer honestly or accurately and I don’t ask anybody to say anything that is not appropriate and for her not to make a representation that was 110% accurate, I commend Lisa for not doing that.”

This report is based on a recording of the call. The call was recorded with Aronson’s and coaches’ permission.