Lead to Succeed 2013 – Mobile AL

When I received the full color pamphlet in the mail from Success Resources, I was instantly elated!  To see Les Brown and Brian Tracy in Mobile Alabama!  Of course, that’s not down the street but I would definitely make the 90 mile trip to hear these inspirational figures.  And then… the price… $4.95 per person (my mother was convinced that it was $4.95 per speaker, even after I paid and had my receipt, because she figured that deal was too good to be true).

Needless to say, during the couple of weeks leading up to the seminar I was very anxious and a little nervous.  The online ordering process didn’t flow as smoothly as I would have liked.  Once I placed my order, I never received an email confirmation however, I received a text message alert that my credit card had been charged.  After calling the toll free number several times and being on hold in excess of five minutes a couple of the times, leaving a message once that still hasn’t been returned, I spoke with someone who assured me that my registration had been processed and she would email my ticket information later that day.  Next day, no email.  I ended up emailing their customer service to receive the ticket information.  At this point, a part of me was wondering whether this was a scam… was it too good to be true?

Wednesday, February 27th after dropping my son off at school, I made the hour and a half drive to the Mobile Convention Center.  The seminar started at 8am and they encouraged you to arrive an hour early since the $4.95 ticket price was for general admission.  I arrived around 9am and Les Brown was speaking.  Great! I thought to myself as I settled in my seat, not knowing that I had already missed Brian Tracy 😦

Overall, it was a good day.  Some of the speakers on the advertisement didn’t show (or I missed them too being an hour late) and it was promoted that all speakers would be live.  However, Larry King‘s presentation was prerecorded.  I wasn’t extremely interested in hearing him as much as I was interested in seeing him not seated behind a desk – didn’t happen.

Check out a few nuggets from some of the speakers and if Lead to Succeed comes to your city, make plans to attend and stay all day.  Prepare yourself for the sales pitch.  I quickly realized that the reason the seminar was so inexpensive was because it’s a primer for the other seminars that each of the presenters are hosting – in YOUR city, at discount just for YOU, just for TODAY!

Bob Katel, Investing

• Message – don’t be afraid to fire your broker, buy his software and self manage your investments
• Take Away – sounds great in theory but as a former financial adviser, there is so much more to money management than the profitability of your investments, I was a little alarmed at the number of people rushing to sign up for the three day seminar that would essentially teach them to invest like a pro

Bob Harrison (Dr. Increase), Sales

• Message – The Increase Mindset: you can’t change a habit unless you change your mindset because your subconscious and conscious mind need to be in agreement.  Otherwise, many people start a project like saving but if they haven’t changed their thinking about money then they won’t be able to change the habit – going from spending to saving.
• Take Away – Same concept that I teach with My Money Matters, saw ways that I can apply teaching to other areas of life in my presentations

James Smith, Real Estate

• Message – becoming wealthy isn’t a bad thing, especially if you use your wealth to be a blessing to others, real estate investing can be a way to serve your community by developing housing for low income, elderly and disabled
• Take Away – do more research on buying foreclosed properties in my area, I don’t think this is a good investment strategy for everyone because even inexpensive properties can become expensive to maintain but in a down economy where real estate is being sold below value, it is worth researching
• Funniest Line – yeah, I have a MBA – a major bank account

Adam Ginsberg, eCommerce Sales

• Message – you can make money selling on eBay, many people don’t because they don’t think anyone wants their junk but your junk is another person’s treasure
• Take Away – consider selling some of the clothes that me and my son no longer wear on eBay, even if its only for $5 per item, that could turn into a nice seasonal shopping trip

Adam Markel, Wealth

• Message – The Millionaire Mind Intensive: most people will not achieve a high level of financial success because of their wealth psychology  they don’t believe they are capable of that level of success, they set their goals to low, they perceive wealth to be a bad thing, etc
• Take Away – continue presenting Mastering the Millionaire Mindset, didn’t realize how much of an issue it was until all of the people flooded the sign up for his three day intensive for the value price of $97 to change their mindset about being wealthy

Les Brown, Motivation

• Message – so many great nuggets but Les suggested focusing on 
  • Your faith in yourself, in what you want to do, in something greater than yourself
  • Having a larger vision,  our problem isn’t that our goals are too big and we don’t achieve them but that they are too small and we do
  • Being unstoppable, don’t let anyone else tell you what you can or can’t do
  • Investing in yourself, attending sessions like this to not only learn new stuff but to reinforce what you already know
  • Your talent, knowledge is the new currency
  • Total committment, whatever you choose to do, go all the way!
• Take Away – although Les was very aggressive in the beginning of his career, he platued and it took him fourteen years to get into motivational speaking because he wasn’t sure he could do it/ be successful at it – it’s normal to fear success but you have to overcome it and just do it

While researching for this article to add links for each of the speakers so that you can check them out for yourself, I noticed that almost all of them have some type of complaint or scam alert associated with their seminars.  Here’s my thing, you will get out of any presentation what you put into it.  If you really think that you can pay someone $100 to change your life, you better be willing to change your life.  As a motivational speaker, I understand the purpose of these presentations  they are to push people to think bigger, to do more, to grow and to give you new ideas to change your current situation.  Nothing will change if you aren’t willing to change your mindset and your actions.  Don’t ever go into any situation expecting someone else to change your life, no matter how much you pay them.

Knowledge is power, only if you put it in to action. ~ Zig Zigler