On my morning walk, I listen to podcasts and 1 of my favourites is Andy Frisella's The MFCEO project. As you can probably guess from the title, Andy often rants... and today was one of those times.
His rant today was about a subject close to my heart - the seminar sell fest. You know, the seminar that costs a lot, has lots of speakers who give you a taste of the answer BUT it will only cost $5k or $10k to get the rest.
It has been reported that Andy, as the keynote for these seminars, is paid up to $80,000 for the hour. His rant today was that the money wasn't worth it as everyone who attended was being sold another course to have a chance at success. Andy wasn't selling BUT at $80k probably didn't need to. Anyway, the rant was "why Andy wasn't speaking anymore!" and it was a refreshing expose of the industry.
Now some disclosure - I have been in the seminar business for many years - from 1975 in fact, but our model had always been, what you pay yo come should be all you need to pay. Over the years, our model faltered, as you could go to talk/sell fests like The World Internet Summit, and be sold lots of "stuff". People believed that "Free?" sessions were better value than $150 a day sessions because they could resist the urge to invest that $5k for the course that would make them rich.
The combined result was lots of credit card debt, lots of broken promises, and both the sensible seminar and the talk fest models being broken. At least in Australia, the seminar crowd woke up to the selling lie.
Unfortunately, the paid model is only just coming back but I am a little over the travelling.
The basis of Andy's rant was that he wasn't going to speak any more at sessions where it relied on a couple of big names [hime and Gary Vanyerchuck for example] to draw crowds to be sold the "secret sauce".
Let's hope that is the case - but in 50 plus years this seems like an endless cycle.
Originally Published in Rebootology
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