I meant to rant on this a couple years ago but it’s rearing it’s ugly head again. I thought the days were gone when the traveling salesman rolled into town with bells and sirens blaring, sold everyone a bottle of snake-oil, and then disappeared the next day. Apparently not.
The little scheme I witnessed a couple years ago was pathetic. Even more pathetic was the number of white collar “suckers” that were so eager to buy into it. It went as follows:
Snake-oil salesman send agents to “your town” to start selling tickets to businesses for the “big event”. An all day get motivated - make big bucks - be successful - believe in yourself shindig with several key bigwig speakers. They go to businesses with the tickets that show a face value of $300, but hey, because they love you so much, if your business buys at least 10, you can get them for $90 a piece you lucky dog you. Who can pass up a deal like this.
So they sell the rented convention center space to capacity and the big day comes. Every Bill Rancik wannabe shows up in their suits, laptops and notebooks ready to learn how to strike it rich.
What follows is each keynote speaker taking his turn giving a little 15-minute prep talk on how to “be positive”, “work smart not hard” , “make your money work for you” common sense mumbo-jumbo followed by a 75-minute info-mercial in which they try to get you to buy their books, software, cds, programs on how to really make it big.
And the crowd falls for it hook-line-and sinker.
One guy I remember had a software program that tracked stock prices and actually told you when to buy and sell to make millions. It was that easy. Price of software? $1000. Seminar you need to take to learn how to use software? $600. The crowd was forming lines to sign up as fast as they could.
So basically what transpired was a huge crowd of people that actually paid money to sit through an afternoon of info-mercials.
There’s not one sucker born every minute. There’s hundreds of them.
Fast forward to the current month. Donald Trump is coming to town with his “Think Big Expo” with George Foreman and the CEO of Caribou Coffee. And hey, your whole office can come for $47.
I’m sure it’s going to sell out. And I’m sure each speaker has something to sell to you. Well, more power to them I guess. If you can sucker white-collar folk out of there money i guess it’s better than taking advantage of the poor.
What gets me is when these convention types are using all the same strategies of the ‘snake oil salemen’ from time immemorial:
[ul]
[li]Offerring free* goodies to come to a free seminar that is really just an add for a paid seminar, later[/li][li]Saying that to get into the other seminar, the order has to be taken, now.[/li][/ul]
And people were lining up for that second seminar.
*When part of the draw for a free seminar is that everyone who comes will be given a free digital camera, I admit I’ll judge the seminar organizer’s honesty and integrity by the way they meet this obligation. Handing out a coupon good for a free digital camera if one sends it, and $9.99 for S&H to the home office does not endear me to your business values. (Especially not when they steadfastly refuse to offer any description of the camera other than it’s being digital. Oh, and that it will come without any warranty. :eek: )
So what’s the non-volume price on the Trump seminar, and is it $47 for the whole office or for each perrson in the office? Are you going, or did you blow your discretionary budget for the quarter on the $900 for 10 tickets on the other seminar?
What’s worse is when your boss thinks the seminar is a great idea, and buys tickets for the whole office. Then you’re compelled to go, and pretend you’re enjoying it.
Plus, the TV ads have insane people (or plants, I’m betting plants) holding up “Trump for President” signs. Any company that signs its employees up for this deserves whatever it gets.
I have it on good authority that my nephew is going to make more money than a college student usually does while on break at the think big expo.
He’s being paid some pretty good money to hand out fliers.
This reminds me of a tongue-in-cheek ‘Guide to America’ book I read a while back. It explained that America has a class system, but unlike England’s, it is based on behavior rather than birth or occupation. As an example, it mentioned “Katherine Hepburn has class down to her toes. Donald Trump, on the other hand, no matter how many millions he has, will never have class.”
Why would an employer send their people to something like this? Do they want everyone to become millionaires and quit? If I ran a business, I’d want my employees to work smart and hard, and I’d want to keep the pipe dreams to a minimum.
You know who should go to this? Triumph the Insult Dog. He’d have a field day with this crap.