Comment by drats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drats | Hacker News Reader

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I don't read most of the 37 signals stuff, but it feels pretty cult-like for people to be paying $1000 for a one day "master class". I mean seriously, for the same cash you could get all of the following: a professional logo designed for your business (~$100?), a 3 hour consultation on your pitch with a copywriter or speech writer (~$100?), 2 hours with an accountant ($200?), 1 hour with a lawyer ($200?) and then flying out to nice weekend relaxing listening to business podcasts and with two nice business books from Amazon on a south American beach (insert nearby cheap holiday destination, $500?). Also, putting your app/idea/code/whatever onto an "Ask HN" costs nothing. But if people are paying, people are paying I suppose. Furthermore, they must be masters of something to be getting people to pay that much and selling out the tickets so there is obviously something to be learned from them (although attending the event might not be required to learn it).

$1000 is cheap. If you're willing to pay a lawyer $200/hour, why would you be reticent about paying one of the pre-eminent web product design teams half that rate for a day of consulting?

I don't know why it is, but there seems to be a certain resistance that many people in our field have to considering ourselves professionals, deserving of the same rates that other professionals charge and subject to the same types of standards that other professionals have.

If IDEO were charging $5,000 for the same thing, I don't think many traditional product designers would complain; they'd simply wish they could afford it or ask their companies to send them.

In the management/money-making/etc. field, I think many people are skeptical of the other experts as well. Sure, tons of companies will pay more than this to send MBAs to management classes, but it's not necessarily money well spent. This seems pretty similar to the quite standard management-guru book->speakingtour->workshops circuit, except that in this case the management guru is someone the HN community has heard of.

In technical areas, the courses are generally cheaper. For example, one day of SIGGRAPH tutorials costs $375. Of course, there you really are buying a tutorial from experts, whereas here you're probably buying networking as much as anything.

In other professional fields, people do not pay $1000 a day for a session necessarily. The only ones who do (usually) are those requiring continuing education credits - therefore, the consultants get to charge outrageous fees because they have a captive audience/market. Otherwise, the only entities that I know of who regalarly drop a grand or more on a day with somebody - or even a team - is a medium-to-large business for whom it is a tax deduction. And such decisions frequently come down to a management type who is trying to justify his/her existence by being seen to do something.

For perspective, we had a marketing workshop here in Edinburgh that basically offered intensive, MBA-level instruction on marketing. It was taught by a former head of marketing for a major North American firm who had buckets of experience and now has his own major marketing consultancy here in the UK. Around a dozen of us worked with him for 8 workshops and had three extended consultations with him about our particular business circumstance. The cost to the company? £750 ($1200 USD at current exchange) for the first person, £500 ($800 USD) for each additional. Consequently, unless these three amigos are going to ensure the success of every company who signs up, I fail to see how a price tag of $1000 is justified.

I think a lawyer has a bit more utility, in terms of avoiding massive potential liabilities, than telling me that amazing wisdom - until now unknown entirely to business people anywhere on earth and not to be found in any book on business - that "meetings are toxic".[1] Get real, and this isn't one-on-one it's going to be with many more people than most teachers consider optimal (20 or less), so $1000 is not cheap.

[1]http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php

Of course, if you think $100 pays for a professional logo design then $1000 would be too much for just about everything.

>a professional logo designed for your business (~$100?)

An amateur logo designed for your business.

FTFY

With $100 you can hire a very good designer in China for a week ...

Overseas design is great for production stuff like "make me more pages that fit this style". It's horrible for logo design where the key is to reflect your brand's identity.

how do you define good? and how should one do it?

That's what GAP paid for its new logo.

At the same time, occasionally a single person telling you just the right thing (and you having the faith in them to believe they are right) can change the face of your business completely. It isn't about a logo, time with your accountant, or listening to podcasts- but having someone that's really in-tune with the market thinking about your product critically and passing on just the right single piece of advice to you that stops you from running into a wall.

I've run technical training sessions that cost this much before, and I think everyone in the class felt they were worth it.

I wonder how much of that is related to the psychology of the cost. That is, the more a product/service costs, the more the user is likely to assign value to that product/service that they otherwise would not note.

Psychological studies have been done that people who pay for something - anything at any price - always look more favourably on it than those who do not. One such study involved payment to see a film. Those who paid their own way ALWAYS had more favourable reviews of the film than those who were provided with a ticket for free.

Obviously, there is a limit to the psychology, but I wonder how much the feelings of a class' attendees can viably count toward evaluating the value of the workshop. Price is naturally where the willingness of the buyer to buy meets the willingness of the seller to sell, so the price of the workshop is beyond dispute in a free market context. But there are limits to what is rational, and I suspect there will be a significant percentage who will feel the workshop to be worth it merely because they paid a grand to be there. This "prestige" factor, after all, is one of the main components of a premium pricing plan.

That's a great point. The perspective is much different between hiring people to do the best job possible in certain areas of your product/company (design, copywriting, accounting, etc.), and getting external advice from peers.

You're mentioning a piece of advice that changes your product, but even just having someone like the 37signals team say "sounds like a good idea", "looks good" can be enough for someone to keep going.

Charging at the pain point can Make people feel like its worth it. Also makes them take it seriously, and listen proactively.

You can get a logo for $100, but you can be sure as hell it won't be a professional one. Real logo design will cost you a lot more, think $5k-$10k. Being a graphic designer myself, it's not uncommon for me to spend a full 30h on a logo. Sure, I could fire up Illustrator and get you a logo that will work in 30min, but that's not what real professional logo design is about. When designing a logo, you have to come up with many different directions, explore all the connotations of the symbols you're using, explore the logo in all its different applications (it needs to look good on print, on screen, on t-shirts, on business cards, at half an inch, at 20 feet wide, etc.).

I'm sure a 3h consultancy with a good copywriter will cost you more than $100 too. This isn't a day-job where it's ok to be paid $33/h. Professional freelance copywriters make (or should make) at least $100/h, if not more.

I imagine the $1,000 people drop on this conference isn't money they're taking form their logo/copywriting/accounting/legal budget.

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