025: Gurus

Warning: My Medium daily writings can be freeform rants. Like this one.

Guru:
–a teacher or guide that you trust
–a person who has a lot of experience in or knowledge about a particular subject

I really enjoyed the Tony Robbins documentary on Netflix. He is an extraordinary person. Like many others, I never knew anything about Tony Robbins other than he was that infomercial guy who was probably a huckster. I did not like or dislike him, just assumed he was a motivational speaker who made a lot of money off broken, vulnerable people. Tail between my legs as I now realize Tony Robbins has dedicated his entire life to helping people have better lives.

Tony is not my guru or your guru, but Tony is a guru. People who are experts do not need you to call them an expert. They just are. It’s like authentic and genuine. You do not need to tell be you are, just be authentic and you are.

Trailer:

Would you pay a guru $5,000 for a better life?

Success, happiness, fulfillment, love, etc I think it’s fair to say are priceless. If you were guaranteed some or all of these things for the rest of your life and all you needed to do was to take one week off of work and invest $5,000, I think most people would try to make it happen. I would.

Yet, naysayers first reaction is to say __________(insert name), this guy charges $5 Grand for a webinar and is laughing his way to the bank. I hear it all the time in the podcast and online marketing community. I’ve heard people criticize Cliff Ravenscraft for charging $2000/4-week session to learn how to set up a podcast which anyone can learn for free on YouTube and John Lee Dumas is making a fortune charging people for Podcaster’s Paradise which is only a bunch of podcast tutorials, etc. Both are gurus by definition. They do not call themselves that likely, that is the label people place on them because they are making money teaching people. Guru should be the label placed on them because they are teachers that people trust and they have extensive knowledge in one particular subject. Not a bad thing. There are people charging for bad advice. I do not like that either, but charging a lot of money for high value is not always a bad thing. You get what you pay for is a cliche for a reason.

Much like I threw Tony Robbins into the mega-church con artist camp for no reason whatsoever, there is a lot of assuming online that successful coaches, guides and consultants are in it for the money or they are just another guru selling courses and ebooks….I am guilty myself of using the term guru to describe online marketers who are loud online. I’m not going to play a game of semantics with the term guru as I get it. Not everything is literal, but it is the assuming and ignorance that bothers me.

The price tag of a course or ebook or webinar is not enough for us to judge the teacher. It’s why I’m a fan of value-based pricing vs. hourly. Value based pricing is charging by how much value my product or service will provide. If I charge you the seemingly outrageous price of $10,000 for a simple website, but that websites delivers you 5 new clients per month at $2500 per average client, was the website worth the up front investment? All day long.

Tony Robbins charged $833 or per day to transform people’s lives forever. With 12 hour days; under $70/hour. What is your hourly freelancer rate? I understand there are no guarantees and attending a Tony Robbins seminar or taking a webinar or class is not a guaranteed magic bullet, but the ROI (return on investment) for many can be life-changing and that is not for us to judge. If the featured case studies in the documentary were real and not sensationalized by the video,$5,000 was not enough for what Tony gave them. In some cases, he spared their lives. Priceless.

I have no plans to attend a Tony Robbins event, and I will probably not pay for high-ticket courses or webinars anytime soon, but every course or ebook or coaching package you see for money online is not a sham. The ‘gurus’ might actually be giving people what they need in their life. That’s not to say there is a lot of ‘bad gurus’ who are hucksters and shams, but let’s not assume all are across the board.

There is a lot of good people in the world doing extraordinary things. How about we give the benefit of the doubt and try to take the positive approach whenever possible. Myself included.

p.s. watch the documentary. it’s pretty darn good.

My name is Mike Murphy, I’m a one man band and podcaster.
Learn. Create. Move Forward.

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