How to Start a Cult | Lulu Cheng Meservey

**Ti Morse** (0:00)
Today, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Lulu Cheng Meservey, the founder of Rostra. She helps some of the best founders in the world basically tell their stories. I want to start this off with the idea of like, how do you start a cult? Because many of the best founders in the world are incredibly good at building, like, a culture that other people want to believe in. So how do you start a cult?

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (0:18)
Every cult needs a cult leader. You know how to destroy a terrorist group.

**Ti Morse** (0:22)
Go on.

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (0:23)
You ever done one?

**Ti Morse** (0:23)
I've never done that.

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (0:24)
A way to destroy a terrorist group is to make it acephalous.
Acephalous is this. Acephalous means you cut off the head. Without the head, the group has a very hard time to survive.
That is why anytime you're going after one of these decentralized groups or movements, you just go straight for the head. Say, when Alexander the Great was battling Darius, he ignored everybody and just went for Darius, and won the battle, where he was outnumbered, they were losing. So how does this translate to a founder starting a cult? Is you just signed up to be a cult leader. You didn't sign up to start a cult. You signed up to also run a cult and be the person that Alexander the Great is going to come charging for. You are the person that takes the slings and arrows. And so what does that mean in turn? Like, let's just unravel this whole chain of logic. What does that mean? You are the one that sets the vision.
You are the one who has to recruit the first few members. Recruiting the first few members is the hardest thing you will ever do, because you've got nothing and you look crazy. If you were going to do something normal, you wouldn't be starting a cult. You'd be getting a freaking job. If you're starting a cult, you're doing something that doesn't exist, and it doesn't exist for a lot of really good reasons, which is that nobody is unhinged enough to try that. So now you're going to try, and you're going to convince the first person that it's possible and that they should leave their comfortable and lucrative lifestyle to come be with you, probably damage their friendships and family relationships for an indefinite amount of time, sound worse than unemployed, probably not be able to get a date, with meager chances of success for equity that feels faker than an NFT. And you're going to convince them that you're going to do this? And then you have to do it a few more times. Now, if you do it enough, the cult recruits the cult. Today, Christians recruit Christians, right? But imagine being the first. So, it's like kids. Like, you have enough kids, the kids look after the kids. I've heard that after, like, five, they start to really scale. I think with a company, after 10 or so, the people recruit the people. But the first few, the only way to do this, and there is no shortcut, is to sit across from someone, be willing to sound like a madman, and to be so committed to the bit that you're going to look them in the eyes, and you're going to essentially swear on your life, that the thing you're telling them is possible, can be done, must be done, and will be done by you.
So it's not a normal undertaking. It's very unnatural.

**Ti Morse** (3:02)
What makes a really good cult leader?

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (3:04)
So some people, I'll tell you what it's not.
Some people think it has to be traditional charisma. I would say someone like Palmer has traditional charisma. He walks into the room, like he walks into a room behind you and you feel it. President Trump has this. I was at an event with President Trump the first time he ran when nobody took his candidacy seriously, and he walked into a room, and I realized he was in the room without seeing him. I was seeing the other people, and I realized he had entered. There is that, but there are different types of charisma.
So, for example, Reiner Pope, who runs Maddox, and if he watches this, will be totally mortified, has a really quiet, but deep and substantive kind of charisma that if you are listening to him talk about this mission, you walk away completely convinced that it's real, without the flashiness and without any of the salesmanship. Another type of charisma is just being extremely high integrity and trustworthy. Scott Wu, in the very early days, young kid looked even younger than he was, pretty introverted and quiet, the thing he was setting out to build was so ambitious that even after he had built it, people didn't think it existed. But yet, every tiny thing he said he would do, he always like over-delivered, not just on the product, but on personal things, matters of business, kind of like old school Sam Walton would do. There are these types of non-traditional charisma that make people believe that their future and livelihood will be safe in your hands.