Inspire, Achieve, Repeat: A Grab Bag of Killer Motivational Speakers

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Motivational speakers started really gaining popularity in the 70s and 80s, the golden age of “self-help.” And in recent years, they’ve been even more in-demand, especially in the business world. You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting some self-proclaimed entrepreneurial guru who claims to have the formula for success and would be happy to share it with you, if you sign up for their seminar for the low-low price of thousands of dollars. Or buy their TikTok course. But you don’t have to get certified or trained to be a motivational speaker, and their industry is almost totally unregulated—meaning, anybody with a megawatt smile and a catchphrase can do it. And according to a Harvard study, most of these guys focus more on entertaining you than teaching you the way to win. It all makes you wonder—are the ones who claim to have all the answers really so enlightened? Well, today we’re gonna tell you about two who most definitely weren’t.

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Sources:
True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, S3E4, “Chosen to Kill” https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/nyregion/25speaker.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/nyregion/man-seeks-plea-deal-at-retrial-in-assisted-suicide-of-long-island-counselor.html?searchResultPosition=2 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/nyregion/new-trial-for-man-who-helped-motivational-speaker-kill-himself.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/killer-of-l-i-motivational-speaker-is-sentenced/?searchResultPosition=6
CNBC's American Greed, Episode "Making a Killing"
Court papers: https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914e231add7b049348ef740/amp
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/national/2009/08/02/several-questions-remain-in-investors-disappearance/2a3002f5-3c83-4c8d-8e1a-c0f115273394/
https://patch.com/california/sanclemente/shawkey-admits-his-stories-sound-unbelievable

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire.
0:04.8	We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney.
0:08.1	And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction.
0:12.0	We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.
0:19.6	Motivational speakers started really gaining popularity in the 70s and 80s, the golden age of self-help.
0:25.6	And in recent years, they've been even more in demand, especially in the business world.
0:30.3	You can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting some self-proclaimed entrepreneurial guru
0:34.9	who claims to have the formula for success and would be happy to share
0:38.5	it with you if you sign up for their seminar for the low, low price of thousands of dollars,
0:43.5	or if you buy their TikTok course. But you don't have to get certified or trained to be a
0:48.7	motivational speaker, and their industry is almost totally unregulated, meaning anybody with a megawatt smile and a catchphrase can do it.
0:57.2	And according to a Harvard study, most of these guys focus more on entertaining you than teaching you the way to win.
1:03.4	It all makes you wonder, are the ones who claim to have all the answers really so enlightened?
1:08.7	Well, today we're going to tell you about two who most definitely
1:11.3	weren't. This is Inspire, Achieve, Repeat, a grab bag of killer motivational speakers.
1:32.0	Case 1. Hired Hand, the killing of Jeffrey Locker.
1:37.9	So, campers, for this one, were in New York, New York, July 15, 2009.
1:43.8	Lois Locker was at home when she got a call from her husband, Jeffrey, at about 10.15 p.m. He wanted to let her know that he'd gotten
1:45.8	a flat tire just before getting on the Triboro Bridge, which connects Manhattan to Long Island. So he was
1:51.8	going to be late getting home, but Lois shouldn't worry. There was someone there who was helping him,
1:56.2	and he'd be home soon. Jeffrey wasn't home soon. When he hadn't shown up by the early hours of the morning,
2:03.3	Lois called the police to report him missing, but he wasn't missing for long. Early in the day,
	...

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