4 Unspoken Lessons We Can Learn From Dan Price
Unspoken lessons from an alleged sexual abuser moonlighting as a social justice warrior for wage equality.
Any Dan Price follower has been bamboozled at this point. For many of us, we were enamoured by his quotes, logic and lessons that he passed down over the years on wage equality, feminism, corporate greed, and other social issues.
I like many others, enjoyed his refreshing stance on Twitter about many of the problems that corporate America continues to perpetuate. It was nice to see someone who was this multi-millionaire CEO actually fighting back and saying that the status quo is wrong.
For many of us, we were oblivious to his checkered past. The sexual abuse allegations and the fact he hired a sexual predator to ghostwrite his posts starting in 2019.
For me personally, when I saw that he was stepping down as CEO on the 17th of August, I didn’t think much of it. I figured he was going on to other things while dealing with those “false allegations” — whatever those happened to be.
But as more news is being dropped about allegations and some of the writers I read on the regular have talked about Price — such as Jessica Wildfire and Shannon Ashley — the more I realize that Price isn’t who he claims to be and has been meticulous in building his image for years.
Plenty of articles — including Jessica’s and Shannon’s — go into detail about what’s wrong with Price and the story behind his rise to fame. But just because the man is terrible doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from all this.
#1 Separate The Thoughts From The People
Even though a lot of the evidence of how terrible he is isn’t difficult to find, many people — like myself — took his stepping down in a positive light. People are wishing him well, feel sorry about what’s happened, and so on.
Why is that?
Part of it might be ignorance — which I admittedly had. My only exposure to Price was through his tweets on occasion about corporate greed, plenty of those posts resonated with me as a business owner who wants to help other people in various ways.
In other cases, it can be that so much positivity makes us doubt the bad stuff about people. Even though we all feel a compulsion to do bad things — especially when we’ve done a lot of good — when that bad actions are revealed, it can be hard to believe that.
With more people realizing and coming to terms with this, the important thing to keep in mind is that what we assumed Price to be supporting doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing.
The idea of a CEO keeping their wages on par with every employee sounds like a good idea.
Being opposed to corporate greed is a good idea. No one likes price hikes or having to pay the same price to get fewer goods or amounts.
Yes, women should have rights and really shouldn’t be a point of discussion because women are humans.
A lot of these views are populist views and things that many people want. What Price realized early on — and why he adopted them as his own — was because they were popular with the people.
Even though he used that to create a false persona doesn’t mean that the ideas themselves are bad. This is one of the thoughts Jessica Wildfire left in her article as well and I agree.
Over the years there are plenty of people who present good ideas, even though they may not be that great of people when you look at their actions. We still quote Abraham Lincoln despite many issues with his own views for example. Some of the quotes he presented were good thinking. Mother Theresa is another despite her views on poor people.
#2 Pay More Attention To The Critics
Especially in the case when the other person is getting a lot of positive coverage. Price was brilliant in being able to craft a positive image of himself and use that image to project all kinds of notions.
When there was criticism about him, he was able to dismiss it easily without any problem. Once he became incredibly popular, fans jumped in instead.
It’s easy to dismiss the critics of people, after all, we all have views that other people don’t agree with. And projecting them out into the internet is bound to get people to voice their disagreement.
But the rules tend to change when we’re talking about celebrities or people that spread beyond their niche. Price is an entrepreneur, but he appeared on several talk shows and weighed in on a variety of things beyond just business.
He was making the rounds similar to Dr. Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor who somehow is an “evolutionary biologist” and talks about politics, wage equality, climate change, and lobsters like he’s an expert.
It’s here where it’s well worth paying more attention to critics. To question to some degree the image that they are painting.
In the case of Price, any coverage of him was overly positive — both about him and his company. And yet even in those pieces, some things were off about him and some of it can be hiding in plain sight.
Like the fact he lives in an expensive house, takes lots of vacations, and is on a yacht quite often despite claiming to make $70K a year. Either he is super frugal or something isn’t adding up.
The point is not to flip flop between opinions all the time, but to recognize that we have biases and that it’s important that we see the entire picture. The critics of big-name individuals should be giving us pause and shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.
In the case of Price, Doug Ford, a journalist who has been tracking Price for years now, has a blog called Hundred Eighty Degrees and it details a lot about who Dan really is. Even with all of his evidence though, he has a list of the networks that have denied his articles after revealing piles of evidence and great journalism.
#3 Power And Wealth Make Us Complacent In Growth
One thing I’ve noticed when it comes to great people that we celebrate is how little growth they do after they’ve reached the top. The Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Rachel Hollis, Bill Gates, Jeff Bazos, J.K. Rowling, and Dan Price’s of the world are pretty content with keeping things the way they are once they reach the top.
It does make sense in the grander scope. Self-improvement doesn’t talk about cultural issues because those at the top hold certain views and they have a much larger reach than small-time bloggers. They make up most of the narrative and other people make echo chambers around them. After all, many of us got into self-improvement by learning about Tony Robbins, Rachel Hollis, or someone other big-name person.
They don’t want to change because who they are got them into these positions. Why waste a good thing?
It’s more convenient to see growth when you make it that far as being able to spread your message around. And it’s here where being a good person is what will attract more people.
Anything they did that was dubious or bad has to be buried or dismissed. The problem is people can only keep up that persona for so long. People’s views will eventually come to light. Or they’ll make a slip-up that turns into a scandal.
The issue with all this is growing to them means being the most saintly and pure person ever while spreading a good message. Therefore, anything that can sully that pristine image is a threat to their very image and message.
Price didn’t want to be acknowledged as the “guy who chokes women or rapes them.” He’d rather be all the other titles we recognize him for, “the 70K CEO”, etc.
Any person who seeks that level of power and wealth behaves in this fashion where anything bad about them is a problem best covered up. They don’t take a page from the many self-help fanboys who praise them and actually grow like they encourage their base to.
Recognizing this is important as it helps us make better judgements about these kinds of people. It’s better to look at their own actions and to do some digging rather than think they’re a cool guy based on a handful of posts and pics.
#4 Be Humbled By Your Origin Story
Let’s be honest, where we ended up in our lives today isn’t always that fantastic. Our “origin story” in many cases tends to be pretty bland.
For me, I got into writing because I was broke and I needed something cheap to start up. This was especially the case since my cousin’s fiancée at the time was leaving me hung out to dry and I had to take matters into my own hands.
I got into self-improvement specifically because I was involved in a few network marketing companies that naturally encouraged the idea of investing in yourself and delve into self-help.
And that’s it.
But whenever you’re thinking of those who rise to fame and fortune and get public awareness, origin stories tend to change. Or we place pressure on ourselves to change the origin story.
With Price, he changed the narrative to how we see it now. He lowered his wages down to 70K and is now a hero. He did something no CEO would ever do to begin with. People bought it up without a second thought and never once thought about how much money he was making before or whether it was appropriate considering how small his company is.
Price’s true origin story is well documented by Doug Ford and the fact that Price wanted to change it in the way he did goes to show what kind of guy he is.
This isn’t to say that nobody in the public eye shouldn’t have a checkered past. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes and have flaws. But it’s one thing to accept them and to redeem yourself from those things and another to sweep it under the rug.
All of our origin stories aren’t public knowledge and most people aren’t going to care about them unless you or I end up becoming incredibly famous. But even if we don’t Price’s actions show that it’s better for us to accept our story for what it is and not try to change it around. There are redemption arcs in our stories if we screw up.
As more information is going to be published on Price and this scandal, we’re going to understand more about him and his past. More importantly, what he is really like. Regardless of the outcome, it’s important for us to be more critical about the people that we look up to.
In my case with Price, I found him more appealing in the sort of ideal he did project. Though now I’m a bit betrayed by that. After all, he hired a ghostwriter to project those views — and the worst possible one at that — and he was mostly all talk.
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