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I now had a correspondence course to train competent Book One auditors, an integral component in accomplishing the goals of my program. But more importantly, I had discovered a partner in John Galusha. Little did I realize at the time that this collaboration would continue for the next 16 years, resulting in innovations far beyond our Book One initiative and involvement with the CoS. From the outset, we just clicked. We would find that with the two of us working together, our collective accomplishments would surpass any expectations we had previously held. Indeed, our partnership yielded advancements that would not have been possible working individually, or even with an entire staff underneath us. On September 1, 1980, our company, Survival Services International, opened for business. A friend let us use his office in the evenings. I went to the local orgs and missions enlisting their support. I told them that I was running a special, field project under Diana Hubbard and asked them for the names and phone numbers of any people on their lines who these organizations felt were of no use to them. In other words, I was looking for the people who had no money for auditing and who were complete failures as students. I then starting contacting these public individuals, setting up interviews to be held in our "office". I designed a "briefing" that covered the pertinent points of my evaluation, John's valuable insights, and most importantly, the value of becoming a competent Book One auditor. The majority of these people bought the course, which I sold for $350, and started training with John, who supervised the course. People could come to our office at night to study their lessons or send them in by mail. Most of these public people would not bring their non-Scientology friends into the org or missions for fear that their friends might be mishandled. I addressed their fears and got them to bring their friends into our office where we held little "events" each night. In these events, I would give a short talk, then turn the floor over to John. He would talk to the group and then ask for volunteers to come up and do a session. He'd audit the volunteers in front of the rest of the audience. Most sessions were spectacular. And it wasn't just John's auditing, which was fantastic. It was his charisma. Audiences responded to him in an incredible fashion. In the Scientology events with "new people", I had always noticed that there were at least a few hecklers in the audience. Over the next couple of years, John and I would perform numerous events in many cities throughout the US and Canada. At some of these events, there were a couple of hundred people attending. NEVER did anyone heckle John. The small, initial events done at our office in the evenings produced great results. We'd get people on the correspondence course, pcs for our students, and pick up pcs of our own who paid $50 per hour. The "duds" we got from the org and missions turned out to be quite the jewels. They not only did well on the course, but also became confident and competent auditors. Due to the success with these org and mission "rejects", we soon were getting other Scientologists on the course, including org and mission staff. Within a month we moved into our own office, rented some furniture, and had a going concern. At Christmas of 1980, I went to Connecticut with my wife and kids to visit my wife's family who lived there. While on this vacation, I went into the local Scientology mission. It was thriving under a man named Peter Pinchot. I briefed Peter on what I was doing and he got very excited. A month or so later, I returned to Connecticut with John and did a large event, modeled after our successful office event. Peter jumped on the "Book One bandwagon". He, his staff and many of his public people got on to the correspondence course. Later, Peter designed a weekend seminar on Book One which he delivered to people to get them excited about Book One and then sold them our correspondence course. A few months into 1981, we had expanding operations in Denver and Connecticut. However, now that we were expanding, we started getting noticed and then scrutinized by the Guardians Office WW (Worldwide). I knew it was only a matter of time before the GO would start coming after me. We needed to get bigger, faster; in order to curb GO WW attacks. If I could launch my program internationally with enough momentum, it would be hard for even the GO to stop us. End of Part 4 of 25 |
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