I'd like to come in and mention that perhaps it'd be good if we could give Steve some feedback on this idea as opposed to essentially grilling him.
(Although I'm sure Steve can see the forest from the trees here and knows that most of the reactions in this thread are indeed feedback about the consulting, just heavily tried to a subjective viewpoint.)
I too think that raising price is a silly way to filter potential customers--but that's not what Steve's doing. Steve
explained what he's doing, he "gets it", and he also has many other projects in the works that will cater to people who aren't able to benefit from his consulting services (I bet you'd like to know how I know what Steve is going to do in the future without Steve having told me.
Let's just say that patterns extrapolate).
I can also understand why Steve wants to avoid the needy and clingy people. I too avoid dealing with such people by not even bothering to attempt to offer consulting services even if I know they'd be of use to people (as a rule, zero people believe I'm useful, but whenever I use my ability on my own personal projects, I enjoy wild success and praise from others). Right now, in terms of measurable value, I'm probably nowhere near Steve when it comes to the value I can deliver, and even I'm taking efforts to only spend time on things that are really worth it. In general, the more time you spend on things that aren't worth it in the long run, the less time you have for what's really important and the less impact you can have. Sometimes some sort of barrier, even if it is in the form of a clever system (or even a simple system, like a high price tag) is the best way to be most effective (as counter-intuitive as that sounds).
* * *
Anyway, here's my feedback on some of the ideas.
Public consulting
I liked the "public consultation" option. I think it'd be great to give people the option of having their consultations recorded and shared somewhere--probably on StevePavlina.com--as a sort of public archive. Not everyone will opt to share their consultation, but for those who do, it seems like it could help a fair amount of people. Steve might say that he doesn't want to share such things, but if people actually want to do it, I don't see why not (it's not like Steve needs to hide his ideas). Of course, I can understand if Steve doesn't want to offer this, since I often opt to do seemingly illogical things because that's the way I want to do them (usually it has to do with a preference or a talent of mine).
Certified training
Training people to become certified in the things Steve teaches is interesting, but it seems kind of... well, it would take a certain kind of person to be able to do that. You couldn't just go learn some knowledge--you'd actually have to embody personal growth, which would put you on the same path that Steve is on, even if you aren't quite as developed in him in terms of level of consciousness, skills (such as being able to read your intuition), polarisation (i.e. certain people are more effective at working with polarity than others), etc. I'm sure Steve could find such people (although I still do wonder how he plans to hire people for Pavlina LLC; my guess is that he'll draw on existing connections and familiarity with certain people... any other means seems to make it challenging).
Internal Pavlina LLC consulting
It might be pretty darn effective for Steve to focus some consulting on his future employees of his company--at least, those who need it, or those who would make significant improvements if they were to get consulting from Steve directly. From what I've seen of Steve managing the moderation team for the forums, while Steve can certainly do a good job when he needs to, either (A) he isn't very good at managing people compared to managing himself, or (B) he doesn't have much time to devote to managing the moderation team (which, essentially, is a team, just like a business team), which gives the illusion of point A. Whichever it is, I think Steve might be wise to direct at least some of his efforts inwards into Pavlina LLC since he has a degree of influence there and enough certainty to know that his efforts will be put to good use. In this case, though, you'd be perhaps trading profit for impact (since Steve wouldn't really make much cash from doing consulting with his own employees, although that may not be the case--it depends on what the employees are doing).
Holistic, "effective integration"
Steve is a master planner, and his ability to take everything into account and adapt to things on the fly continues to amaze me (although I've deconstructed his model and am busy integrating it, and I can see how he's able to do it; it's not magic, just intelligent focus and leverage in the right areas), but what I think is most important with this consulting practice is that Steve integrates it effectively with everything else he'll be doing (speaking, blogging, book writing, audio program creation, more large-scale altruistic projects).
I don't know what 'effective integration' looks like--that's something Steve will have to decide, and will probably mostly arise from intelligent reviewing, intuition, and the ready-fire-aim approach--but I think without really making an effort to focus on prioritising that value or some sort of high-level guiding value as this project relates to all his other projects, this could potentially balloon out of control a bit mainly because I can see there's going to be a pretty crazy demand for Steve once people hear about this consulting service and how good Steve is (people know Steve is good, but I'm not sure most people know quite how good Steve is; when they do--which will probably happen gradually, then really quickly as he reaches a critical mass of influence in various mediums--he'll be getting money thrown at him from many directions).
This might sound awfully high level and even simplistic, but hopefully Steve can appreciate the subtlety in what I'm trying to say (since he's equally high level, heh, and has that great "big picture" vision; you could say we speak the same language).