After massive retrenchments affected ever-bankrupt Zion City, Lake found new employment around 1905. He later claimed that he maintained relationships with many of the leading figures of his day including railroad tycoon James Jerome Hill, Cecil Rhodes, Mahatma Gandhi, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others. When he began his preaching career he claimed to have walked away from a $50,000 year salary (around $1.25 million in 2007 US dollars), as well as his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade. Lake's biographer, Burpeau, reported no evidence outside of Lake's own assertions that Lake was connected to these wealthy financiers and industrialists. According to Morton, contemporary records show Lake never left Zion City at the time Lake was said to be making his name in Chicago; he instead worked in nearby Waukegan as an "ordinary, small-town insurance salesman". Lake does not appear in contemporary newspapers until 1907 where he gave an account of his experience of speaking in tongues.