Mega Memory by Kevin Trudeau Scam or not?

1.4 • Mega Memory

Does It Work?

I haven’t ordered the Mega Memory kit myself, but by now enough people have sent me Email that I have a good idea of what it’s all about. Additionally, recently I stumbled across a Mega Memory book in one of my local bookstores (“Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory: How to Release Your Superpower Memory in 30 Minutes or Less a Day” – I hopethat’s an accurate title… I was in a hurry and had no pencil or paper with me, and I’m embarassed that I didn’t do a better job memorizing the title!), so if after reading this you’d really like to try Mega Memory and you can’t afford the kit, you can at least try to find or order the book (or even see if it’s in your local library – you might be surprised).

Anyway, in this document I’ll do my best to tell you briefly what I know about Mega Memory and the person who developed it. Hopefully it will be able to clear up some misconceptions and at least give you a good idea of what to expect from the product.

What People Have Said

Mega Memory users Liz Johnston, Leslie Rogers, John Whittle and a couple of others have told me that Mega Memory is a lot like the memory techniques presented in these web pages (and in many books). This is exactly what I expected. Obviously, Kevin Trudeau, the creator of Mega Memory, isn’t inventing some bizarre new suspicious technique, but he is simply reviving memory techniques that have been around for thousands of years. But now it’s in a nice, new exciting package with booklets and cassette tapes. And since information on memory techniques is hard to find these days, people don’t even know that such techniques exist, so when they see Kevin Trudeau on television it must be a godsend.

John Whittle wrote to me about his specific experiences:

While his claim of a photographic memory is a stretch, I have found it very useful. I use an expanded “Tree List” as he calls it and a modified Phonics List to memorize just about anything. I can easily remember names, and phone numbers, but I find it especially helpful in memorizing lists. I have memorized the 42 Presidents and the dates they took office and also 55 of the major battles of the Civil War and their dates, (History is my Hobby) and many other shorter lists. I can go for months without using the lists and recall them easily.

I have found that by using Mega Memory regularly my everyday memory seems to have improved. By the way I borrowed the Mega Memory and Advanced Mega Memory from my local library so it didn’t cost a dime. I didn’t find Advanced Mega memory as helpful as the first, I don’t think I would spend the money for it.

Should You Get Mega Memory?

Now that you know you can possibly go to the library and get Mega Memory, or that you can read these web pages on memory to get a lot of information, should you still order the kit? I would say that it depends on what kind of a learner you are. Here in these web pages you can quite possibly find everything you need. But if it’s really hard for you to get motivated, the kit might be a great thing… cassettes, flash cards, full-color booklets… essentially all kinds of stuff to take away your fear, make it look as easy as possible and motivate you to do the “work” (yes, improving your memory does involve “work”: i.e., practicing memory techniques until they are second-nature to you).

I have been told that Mega Memory has been used by many large corporations and it is the world’s #1 selling memory improvement course. Several people have told me that Mega Memory has worked for them. Does this mean it will work for you? Not necessarily, but as I’ve stated earlier, Kevin Trudeau did not invent some revolutionary new techniques. It’s just that with this course they are packaged in a more exciting way.

 

Kevin Trudeau: The Master Salesman

 

For those of you interested in Kevin Trudeau, the author of Mega Memory, an interesting article about him appears in the June 1999 issue of Brill’s Content Magazine. The article does not talk about memory techniques, but it focuses on Trudeau’s character and his amazing ability to sell products.

The article is pretty fair, and the overall impression that you get after reading the article is that Mr. Trudeau is a master salesman and doesn’t mind bending the facts and appealing to your emotions to make the sale.

The article mentions some products which Kevin has sold which have not lived up to their promises. In particular, Mega Speed Reading is mentioned: The author of the article bought it, tried it out, and concluded that it didn’t increase her reading speed at all. I have not sat down myself to do a deliberate, patient effort to try speed reading, but the author’s conclusion is consistent with what I know. I am a bit skeptical about speed reading. (My own thoughts about speed reading (or reading too slowly) appear on another page.)

An interesting question comes to mind: If Kevin Trudeau allegedly sells products that don’t live up to their promises, should we distrust Mega Memory? Let me point out that just because Kevin Trudeau sells something does not mean that the product is bad. Indeed, as I’ve stated earlier, Mega Memory appears to be very helpful to many people. Mr. Trudeau could very well sell both good and bad products. (Indeed, he probably could sell anything!) Also, Mega Memory seemed to be his big success, the product that made him popular and a lot of money. He founded the American Memory Institute. As for Mega Speed Reading and Mega Math, I’m not entirely sure, but I believe that these products were not developed by him, but rather sold and endorsed by him. Also, there isn’t any Speed Reading Institute or Super Math Institute that I know of.

Finally, I can tell you myself that the memory improvement techniques posted on the Memory Page work. Mega Memory utilizes many of these techniques, I’m sure. But there are also books available by other authors, not just Trudeau. Essentially, there is good, scientific information to support memory improvement.

Final Comments

One more thing: around January 1997 I had several people from Australia Email me and tell me that they saw an advertisement for Mega Memory on television. They said that one of the advertised benefits of the product was that it didn’t use “word association.” This baffled me because others were telling me that Mega Memory was very much like the techniques in these web pages, and foundational to those techniques is association. Was this true, or was it smooth-talk by salesman Trudeau? Well, finally, Mahlon Inksetter (Thunder Bay, ON) wrote me with this explanation:

This is one of the things Kevin says early on. He uses “Basic Association” but claims that the course is not a basic association course. He does a lot of work with “pictures” becuse we “think in pictures”. When I say “Elephant” you picture an elephant, not the word E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T. … this sounds like he’s just splitting hairs, …

I guess that makes sense. Well, when I myself refer to association in these web pages, I am assuming that you will think of pictures in your mind rather than words. For example, to associate “car” and “cookie jar”, it would be too hard to try to remember the other word based on the letter C, but it would be very easy to picture both objects in your mind… perhaps the cookie jar is on top of the car, and as the car drives away, it slides off and crashes to the ground. That’s a very memorable picture. Of course, this is just a hypothetical example; in practice the objects that are linked together are not arbitrary (maybe in this case you were trying to remember that Dr. Carr lives on Jardot street).

Anyway, that about wraps up what I know about Mega Memory. I hope it helps!