Gerald Samuel Duran (Courtesy of Cana.global)
Meet Gerald Samuel Duran of Cana.global
This is Gerald. He and Pastor Scott Ray Fairchild formed www.Cana.global prior to the demise of Crossroads Church in Gardena, California. Gerald was operating a full-time accelerator program for small businesses in Milwaukee before collaborating with Scott. CanaGlobal, Inc. is set up as a church.
Gerald has been a businessman since graduating from high school. He is a proud serial entrepreneur and has enjoyed a very comfortable life with the usual ups and downs that go along with being building businesses and with consulting. He is a well-followed influencer on most social-media platforms.
In his turnaround practice he charged ongoing concerns $150,000 in advance and 10% of the increase in revenue after that. For Cana.global, he made the 8-visit Accelerator free, in order to upsell the equity-free, 5-figure Incubator. I bit first in July that first year by applying to the Accelerator.
I paid $75 for this string in Christmas, 2019.
My $75 String
It was during the Cana.global Accelerator, that I was invited to buy my way into the Incubator because Gerald convinced me of the “scarcity.” It was not a decision made in haste to pull the trigger and splurge with that much money without guarantees, but I took the calculated risk.
In the first two and a half months, Gerald let me pursue my own plans for an in-person promotional event and workshop. When that fell through was when Gerald actively started mentoring me on what he saw as a surefire digital-marketing strategy with a completely separate target audience.
He surprised me with homemade cookies wrapped in a kitchen towel and tied with string.
I remember working hard to basically apply what he taught us during the Accelerator, but never explained in detail. It was encouraging to me that he saw how peaceful I was while putting in all the hard work. He viewed it as proof that God was at work with His Purpose for me.
I worked through the holiday season, always meeting at his office on the Crossroads campus in Gardena once a week for about two hours. At Christmastime I wanted to show my appreciation, so I gifted him a $75 bottle of single-malt imported whiskey. He surprised me with homemade cookies wrapped in a kitchen towel and tied with string. I still have that string.
Eight Buildings and One Dying Church.
Opaque
Gerald would enjoy showing me around the campus and pointing out how it was being converted into co-working spaces with elaborate equipment and content-creation studios. He shared his vision for companies in the Incubator program to be housed together in the re-imagined community.
I felt that I belonged and looked forwards to meeting the other members of the cohort. I was never invited to Pastor Scott’s services, but showed up at Sunday Service only to discover that in-person services was being halted. I got the impression that Pastor Scott felt embarrassed by my presence as well.
That was as close as I got to feeling any semblance of community at Crossroads/Cana.global. Gerald would allude to other Incubator businesses every now and again, but I never met any. I never questioned his organization or structure. I focused on my work since it was challenging enough.
Ephesians 3:20 is another favorite verse of Gerald’s.
6,000 Promises
One of Gerald’s favorite sayings is that there are 6,000 promises in the Bible. For believers, you just need to ask God and it will be granted. In other words, God wants you to live an abundant life. He wants y-o-u to be rich, but only if you believe, follow and worship Him. To everyone else, He couldn’t care less.
When I paid for the Incubator, Gerald said that he expected to grow the CanaGlobal portfolio up to at least six startups by the end of its first year. He then assured me that mine was the only 6%-deal that he would make. Every new portfolio company that he invited to sign up would be paying 10% of revenues. Even so, I worked out that I might still do as well or better than swapping equity for funding and swapping back, by paying to join a portfolio.
I witnessed firsthand the aftermath of lavish parties that Cana.global held over Christmas and New Year’s, but I, after having paid so much, was not invited. That hurt because I felt like I paid for those parties. However, I said nothing. I just accepted that it was a two-class system at Cana.global and that I was definitely in the lower class.
I lost count of how many times Gerald repeated that ‘6,000-Promises’ claim. It took me a while to understand that he always followed that up with the statistic that only 5% of “Christians” read the Bible. Then I looked up the number of pages in the average Bible. Only 1,200 pages.
That hurt because I felt like I paid for those parties.
That would mean that there should be approximately four promises on every page in the Bible. From what I know, that cannot be anything but an exaggeration, but Gerald is really fishing for people who can go toe-to-toe with him quoting Scripture. Pretty clever, right?
After doing my own research, I decided to ask him for a few of those 6,000 unique Promises every time we meet. What I tracked was that he repeats the same Promises. He has shared with me the short list of his twenty favorite Promises, but I’m guessing that the whole list is closer to 600 than 6,000.
'My mentor.'
Never Commit
I noticed early on that the hallmark of Gerald’s mentoring style is subtlety. He says that the ones who succeed are genuine learners. He is proud to say over and over that he has 37 years of experience, but he won’t tell you what to do explicitly. He hints. Then, he waits for the light bulb to go off over your head.
Lately, it has been easy to see that he finds that ‘throttling his mentorship’ has its own challenges. I can almost see his whole body struggling not to tell me something that he clearly wants to. It’s like he is holding his breath. There is a disconnect between his mind working and what comes out of his mouth.
He believes that God is his partner in coaching. What he doesn’t explain, he believes that God will reveal to believers. In his video course, he put the coaching split at 90% Gerald and 10% God, but I think that that is fluid. The range feels more like 50% to 75% Gerald in practice, depending on the case.
For someone accustomed to shelling out $1,000 for the smallest digital test-ad campaign, I can’t blame him.
I think that there are areas where his experience may genuinely be limited, such as earned media. For someone accustomed to shelling out $1,000 for the smallest digital test-ad campaign, I can’t blame him. The bottom line is, the game of deciphering Gerald has take priority over learning any marketing.
One tip that Gerald gave me about workshops has to do with assigning work. He says that he is careful never to set an expectation of evaluating it. That sounds consistent with this style of doing as little as possible to foster learning. Gerald may say that I have access to all his knowledge, but I have my doubts about that now.
I needed a new way to remind Gerald to hit the Record button.
Box of Chocolates
The arrival of the shelter-in-place order was also when I was no longer invited to meet Gerald at his office on the Crossroads/Cana.global campus. It was a long drive for me, but it was worth it having Gerald’s attention for a full two hours. We promptly switched over to using his Zoom account.
It worked out better for him maybe because the meetings only lasted 30–60 minutes. Most of that access was spent chatting about anything other than marketing, in retrospect. He would never remember to record the sessions unless I prompted him to do so although it is a single checkbox in Zoom.
Near the end of June, his demeanor ‘cracked,’ I would say, and became erratic. He started being critical of me, of my content and not “leading” the mentorship. We would have action items from one meeting to the next, but he would not follow through and want to move in other direction.
He started being critical of me, of my content and my not “leading” the mentorship.
When I asked repeatedly for two recordings in particular, he finally gave me the links that I asked for, but deleted them “in error” before I could use the links. I wrote e-mails expressing concerns about wanting to revisit his complaints. I included reference to his lack of empathy and sense of urgency.
Gerald did not respond in writing. Instead, he remarked at our next online meeting that I misled him on my application to the Accelerator a year ago on July 10th. He gave us a plan for helping me with paid ads and new content, but so far that has never materialized.
I felt that rather than “teaching me to fish,” he would prefer to “fish for me.” Then he suggested that he needed access to my Eventbrite-account so that we could begin co-hosting my workshops. In doing so, he admitted that if I became an affiliate on his digital platform, he could start taking a small cut.
Gerald is a big fan of Producer Michael. (Signature from https://www.Cana.global)
What To Do?
One word.
Pray. Pray very hard. Pray often. Who else can I blame?
The clues as to why this is happening are shrouded in mystery. I have tried to be consistent throughout. He says that we are friends, but when I tried sharing my problems with him he accuses me of contempt. So, I cut that out right away. I don’t know what to think. It’s like having a vampire as a friend.
I would like to believe that a year has gone by and that he needs me to pay up for any more of his time. Our agreement was for 6% of revenue after the down payment with a grace period for the initial ramp up in sales. I have a record of him saying that he has never left any of his students behind. I am hoping that that is true. I want to believe that.
“Be in it - to win It” for who?
Luxury watches interest Gerald now more than flashy cars.
News Update:
CanaGlobal, Inc., Gerald, Pastor Scott and G. Brandon Duran were served in August-2020 with a civil complaint listing them as Defendants. On the exact same day, Gerald re-filed CanaGlobal, Inc. as an L.L.C. in Arizona, in order to begin transferring its assets out of California.
After the court hearing in February-2021, the judge entered a judgment within minutes of the hearing's conclusion for the entire 5-figure claim plus costs in favor of the Plaintiff. However, Gerald had somehow managed to get Pastor Scott dismissed to ensure that the judgment could not be enforced in California.
As of August-2021, the award against Gerald et al has not been paid.
Gerald re-filed CanaGlobal, Inc. as an Arizona entity.
Luxury watches interest Gerald now more than flashy cars.
Gerald's original filing for CanaGlobal, Inc. when it was based at Pastor Scott's campus.
What's This?
I received an interesting e-mail message last week. As far as I know, I have never received this kind of message before. I contacted the sender and confirmed that there is no record on their end, of them sending it. During that call, a vulnerability was discovered, so it was good that I called.
The real risk is that by responding to such a message from a bad actor commissioned by another possible bad actor, they could uncover the credentials needed to release this domain into the open market. In doing so, they could take down this source of truth at no cost to them.
Suspicious e-mail message that looks very official, authentic and expensive.
Cana.global and Gerald Samuel Duran are not to be messed with (https://youtu.be/3Mg0ZmCaHu4
and https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTUmBa2IXgtaNkOmZE_Og6o3mllFRbegf).
Gerry Duran screams, "Why haven't you
run out of money yet?"
Why So Serious?
You would think that asking someone who sold cars, why you weren't getting an engine with your car, might not be going too far. Think again.
That kind of question is enough to drive Gerry ballistic.
When Gerry warns you about not getting into a battle with him, he sure means it. During the civil hearing under oath, Gerald gave the impression that he never knew that I questioned his delivering on our agreement. So when the Judge saw the video above, he looked to Gerry for an explanation.
Gerry's response to the video presented in Court was that he did get upset, but only about how and why I was asking him about our agreement. The Judge didn't need to hear any more. If you're really 'In It to Win It,' that definitely includes being willing to lie under oath in a court of law in front of a Judge for a full hour.