News broke out on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 on the arrest of James Arthur Ray for three counts of manslaughter stemming from the October 2009 incident at Ray’s Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, Arizona. Three people died during an intense 2-hour sweat lodge. This is like being in a sauna for two hours but in a more claustrophobic setting.
James Arthur Ray is the author of “Harmonic Wealth” and has appeared in the movie, The Secret. His Spiritual Warrior retreats cost upwards of $10,000 per person. My response to this matter is not on the criminal aspects or whether or not Ray is a fraud. That is up to the jury to decide. My response is on the self-help business model of up-selling.
Nearly every single self-help guru up-sells. It’s the business model of the industry. It usually starts with a book. The book purports to give you the secret of success. At the end of the book, there’s the first up-sell: learn even more secrets with the audio program. The up-sell continues with the DVD home study course. Then, if you really want to learn the “real” secret of success, you need to attend the seminars and retreats. So, from a book that costs $25, you can end up paying thousands of dollars to learn all of these secrets. Now there’s a trend to provide “coaching” services. I’ve posted my thoughts on coaching earlier. For a yearly or monthly fee, plus an initiation fee, you can have one of the guru’s associates–never the guru himself–act as a coach to help you achieve your goals. It’s just another up-sell.
It’s obvious the bottom line of the up-sell is to increase revenue. They can’t make enough money alone on book sales and speeches to have the lifestyle they sell you on. A big reason people spend thousands of dollars on these guys and gals is they want to the live the life of the guru. They want the big houses, fast cars, exotic vacations and all the trappings of wealth. If the guru isn’t living that lifestyle, then his customers will question his teachings. Image is everything in the self-help industry. A prime example of this is James Arthur Ray’s supposed difficulty in securing $500,000 cash to post bond after his arrest. If he is as rich as he claims, shouldn’t he be able to access $500K in cash? This also shows the propensity of many “wealthy” people to be asset rich and cash poor. For me, cash is always king.
I’m not totally condoning the up-sell, but it always has the slight stench of distrust. If you hold back what you know in your book because you want to sell me something more expensive, why should I trust you in the first place? Look, I don’t mind you selling me products that focus on a specific topic, i.e., finance, health, etc., but don’t tease me with a book that supposedly gives me the secrets of success, but not every secret you know. For that I’ll have to fork over some serious cash. It’s disingenuous and makes people skeptical of you.
Since I write about success, productivity, health and well-being, I run the risk of falling into this category. Let me reassure you that I do not up-sell. I write what I know and what works for me personally. I want to share what I know with you, dear reader. My upcoming book is everything I know and use personally to lead a happy life. I don’t need to up-sell you anything else. You can read my blog and my book and take with it what you want. There are no other secrets. It’s entirely up to you to become the success you want to be! And that is the real key! No amount of reading, listening or watching will make you a success until you get off your ass and take action. There really is no secret, it’s the best marketing ploy around. If you really want to be successful and live the life you dream of, you’ll do whatever it takes to get there. You don’t need a guru’s 3-day seminar at a cost of $4995 to be a success.
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