A little more than a month ago, Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Dave Taylor announced Elite Retreat. There was a lot of buzz, a lot of linking from bloggers, and even I pondered whether I should go. All of these guys rock. What held me up was the price:
$4850, not including airfare or hotel.
That's steep. Now I'm not one to say that Aaron, Lee, Jeremy, and Dave don't know their stuff. They very well may know many things that I don't; but I do believe they've committed a cardinal sin:
Thou shalt not price people out of your product. (And all of us know what revenue maximization is.)
Here's my theory: They don't carry the institutional weight that SES does -- even if people "in the know" realize that it's a much better deal. It's a hard sell to an employer for that when SES is a third of the price. Employers won't be able to justify the price difference -- and the individuals who understand what it offers will still likely have difficulty burning that big a hole in their wallets.
They started with a limit of 35 slots. According to this page, they are down to only 22. 35-22 = 13. Yes, only 13 people are going. You can argue that the lack of the other 22 people may get you more personal attention. But the fact remains that they didn't do as well as they could have. Sorry guys, I think you've priced yourself out of the market.
That said, I won't say signing up is a mistake. Not at all. If they let me go for free, I'd love to pick their brains. I just still have trouble justifying the price personally.
December 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
While they probably wouldn't classify it as a roaring success, I think they're still glad they did it. Even if no one else signs up, they're each getting about $15,000 for two days' work (plus prep time, minus expenses). That's not bad. Plus, they've gotten a great amount of buzz from it and have continued to build on their reputations.
Knowing these guys, too, I could see them absolutely pulling out all the stops so that people kill themselves for not being there. I'm still thinking about going--more so now even than before.
December 14th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
"According to this page" .. perhaps no clients, just friends on that page.. that was a big price, but worth trying.. 35x5000 and that buzz on those blogs, good idea..
December 14th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Y'know, just because we announced that we'd have 35 seats, that doesn't mean that we wanted that many people to attend... And, for that matter, we realize that we couldn't have picked a worst possible date for an event than the week between Hannukah and Christmas. I will say that the people who have emailed us saying "any other time, guys, I'd be there in a flash" far exceeds your projections.
And, yes, it's going to absolutely rock and we're all very excited about what we're going to be doing in San Antonio next week. Shane, join us! We'd love to have you involved.
Finally, the other cardinal sin of marketing is to focus on price, not value. If you don't think that getting two days of our undivided attention AND the synergy of the other attendees isn't worth about $300/hr, then you just aren't thinking clearly. I assure you that my time alone is considerably higher than that, not to mention how much Lee, Jeremy and Aaron charge for their consulting.