To me his plan sounds a little dated. Steve has to be commended for creating a way for people to have access to a rich source of information about personal development. The interaction with his readers is different from many others mainly because he offers his services for free. Offering paid services seems like a strange move. It does not have to be if he applies the same or similar principles as he used starting his blog.
Clearly, Steve’s personal growth is going strong, but one could argue his site and forum have stagnated. However the latter will soon change with his book coming out. For his site to grow along with Steve he needs to professionalize his online presence and services. To do it with personal consulting seems like taking a step back. He will not be able to keep this up for long without neglecting his other work, especially if it grows as fast as everything else Steve has touched. The lack of durability seems to contrast with his ideas. Perhaps it is good for his personal growth and the few people who benefit from it and maybe even the larger group of people benefiting through the pay forward idea, but the largest group only benefits from less or no adds on the site, not very impressive.
To give an example of Steve’s short term thinking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina  If you could help shift the mindset of a corporate CEO vs. a broke college student, which person would you choose to work with for an hour? Where could you make the biggest positive difference? Your answer may be different than mine, but I'd choose to work with the CEO because the CEO will likely have a lot more leverage than the student. Being able to afford a certain price is a good sign of leverage. |
Is it not more interesting to work with the one who has the most potential? Perhaps helping to shift the mindset of a CEO would have some direct effects and even lasting ones on the people he works with, but what if this broke student has more potential the CEO. Who knows, maybe a talk with Steve would shift the mindset of the student and set him on a course to change the way business is being done in general and would affect more people as a result. It might take longer for a tree to grow, but with the right support its base will be stronger. You can only prune a CEO.
Perhaps there are alternatives.
For example, to get real leverage on the people wanting consulting Steve should ask for $1000 for two hours. One hour for the person who paid for the consulting and one hour for someone Steve, or an assistant, has selected to get a free consultation. I realize this is probably not a very good idea either, but what I am trying to say is be more original.
Another example could be consulting a group of people with similar questions. They might pay a small fee to participate a web conference. Imagine Steve spending as much time doing conferences as he plans on doing personal consultancies, how much more people he would reach. Perhaps not making the same amount of money and perhaps not being able to remove the majority of the adds, but would that not be worth it? I cannot stress enough that Steve should explore these kinds of alternatives. I hope he will before making his decision.
By the way, whatever Steve decides to do, maybe he should go back to polyphasic sleep! With the increase of his time he could not only remain active on his forum (which I think contributes greatly to the credibility he enjoys), but he could also have telephone consulting (or perhaps an alternative or both) with people who live in other time zones then him. Just an idea.
Then, Jeff Lilly, you talk about Buddha and Jesus, rather strange in this context. These people did not accept payment for their services. Especially Jesus, he encouraged people to give their money back to who it belonged to, the Roman emperor. Buddha was different in the sense he had way more followers during his life. He let wealthy people give him land and build him temples for his followers. After Buddha’s death these temples did not disappear.