Thanks, Nords. If you thought he was a standup guy, that means a lot.
I still can't help but wonder if K&A is now somewhat shady. One of their workshops is six days at a luxury resort in San Diego and costs $4000. Yikes. Do ordinary people really fork over that kind of money for hand-holding? Wow.
The Klemmer pitch I attended was an hour in a Waikiki hotel conference room, and about six of my shipmates dragged me in saying "You gotta see this guy". Brian himself did the pitch, and he was perfect. (I've had eight years of instructor duty-- I know perfection.) He made fun of all the other motivational speaker stereotypes and explained how his workshop would be different. It was all about setting goals, breaking big projects down into increments, and staying on track. Pretty basic stuff, but Brian was doing it before "4 Hour Workweek" and "Getting Stuff Done". Back then we were still dialing up to read about these newfangled HTML pages called "Weblogs".
At that pitch, one alumnus of Brian's earlier workshops talked about his experience. He ran a carpet-cleaning business. He said that he'd used Brian's techniques to improve his own sales pitches and his services. He made back the cost of the workshop in a couple weeks, and he'd roleplayed enough during the workshop to conquer the stress he usually felt during sales presentations.
But it was a lot lower-key than what you're seeing. I think I attended Brian's pitch in late 1999 or 2000, and the workshop was something like 48-72 hours for $495. The reason I remember that was because it was set up so that people could do it from Friday night through Sunday afternoon, and Brian said that everyone was so excited on Friday nights by what they were learning that they'd end up going to the 24-hour coffee shop across from the hotel and yakking until 4 AM. Brian said that he hated facing a bunch of hypercaffeinated & exhausted clients the next morning.
Another reason I remember the Klemmer pitch is because a guy in the audience in front of me turned out to be Scott Waddle. At the time I just knew him as a fellow USNA alumnus who'd been a cheerleader, so everybody in the classes of '79-'84 recognized him from Navy sports. We'd lost touch over the years and all I knew that night at the Klemmer pitch was that Scott had taken command of a Pearl Harbor submarine. It turned out that he was CO of the USS GREENEVILLE, and not too many months after the Klemmer presentation Scott screwed up a VIP ride with an emergency blow demonstration that collided with the Japanese fisheries vessel EHIME MARU. He killed nine people.
Klemmer must have made motivational speaking look pretty good, because today Scott is... a motivational speaker.
http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com/2011/02/japanese-continue-to-mourn-their-loss.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svXhG85mRHAMaybe the pricing you're seeing is just a reflection of the demand. I think ordinary people are employed by corporations who hire "consultants" like Klemmer & Assoc to deliver their advanced training. If a corporate client can raise their sales by $5000/year just by sending someone to a Klemmer seminar, then Klemmer's going to be able to charge $4000. The six days at the resort probably costs $1500 just for food & lodging... but maybe they have free coffee & WiFi too!
Capitalism. Is this a great country or what?
