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Quote from: I D Shukhov on March 23, 2018, 10:35:26 am

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Tuition is $6,700, inclusive of a $300 refundable deposit due at the time of application

This isn't the cost of a course that teaches you how to fish.

This is the cost of a course that teaches you how to teach others to fish for $$$ - quite lucrative.

They're probably setting you up with some branding swag that identifies you as a life coach in this area.

That's what it is.  I found out about this because I got a Meetup notification that announced a  "Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program 2019" in my area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kornfield  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Brach are prominent Buddhist authors and teachers who between them have written a ton of books.  Not sure how they are involved with Greater Good Science Center, Sounds True and Awarenesss Training Institute.    It would be the equivalent of some well-known, legitimate Christian writer and teacher, like C.S. Lewis, sponsoring a program to certify "Prayer teachers".   At least that's how I look at it.

Maybe this thread should be moved somewhere else.  It's starting to get into social commentary territory, or a rant.

Personally, I don't think this course is meta enough. 

There should be courses on creating courses for people who wish to become trainers or coaches. In other words, who trains the expert coaches?

Another fine product of DoucheCo - liquidators of IRAs, pensions and 401Ks for today's income-desperate retirees.

There's infinite room for expansion of this concept. Lots of money to be siphoned offmade.

The healthcare industry will eat this course up.  It reminds me of when I worked in big pharma.  The entire IT  department from several branches were sent to a Teambuilding course that lasted several days.  That was the big thing back then, today its Mindfulness.  The people that ran it made lots of money, but it was just a bunch of hooey that had no tangible results.

They spared no expense.  I was flown on a private jet with my co-workers down to Memphis, TN, where we met up with our counterparts for 4 days.  We all stayed in a fancy hotel.  We participated in board games where we were grouped together to compete against each other.  We had to scale a wall and help our team mates over the other side.  You get the picture what the activities were like.  It was a fun time.  I was there during Memphis in May and had some great barbeque on the Mississippi River, visited Graceland and hung out on Beale St. at all the fun clubs there.  I even got to see the duck walk at the Peacock Hotel.

Great experience, but big waste of money for the company with little payback for them.  Not long after, they downsized our department and outsourced mine to India.

I guess if you can come up with something like a Mindfulness course and sell it to big pharma (deep pockets) you can make a bundle.

Folks, let's get back to a far more useful topic, which is what I D came up with:

I think discussion of paid courses that individuals take in order to be qualified to conduct a new line of business are really interesting.

Not mega health insurance or other certification processes that don't affect me, you or anyone who could use this board.

So let's discuss real people stuff, not high dollar corporate meta I don't give one shit about.

So I'll toss in my experience and field observations:

I had one web design client last year - a supposed "freelance writer" - who had paid for expensive courses from this organization and also some writing "coaches":

https://www.awai.com/

The person I tried to build the site for (she canceled the project after many painful discussions where she leaned on me to prove the written collateral for her idea which she never successfully clarified or even stated coherently) said: "I've paid over $25,000 for copywriting courses and retreats and coaching and I don't have ANYTHING to show for it."

If you go to that AWAI site you'll see all kinds of rosy case studies and stories. But then go to Google reviews for this company:

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&q=awai

And only one of the 10 reviews states that the person is making a consistent living and he started in 2004. But important to note: the popularity of people saying "I am studing copywriting" exploded since 2004. It's mainly traceable to AWAI placing ads in the magazine Writer's Digest for years.

Every single other review is talking about how wonderful AWAI is without much or any reference to actual business they're doing.

There's a culture with this company of having big events that are feelgood dog and pony shows that are generally their own internal competitions. They tend to anoint favored writers for a few months with guest blogger postings and then those people vanish from view, to be replaced by other recent graduates. I know this specifically because I've followed some of their "star students" on social media groups, and seen them post when they were "dismissed" from writing lead blog articles.

They build a culture of everyone creating confirmation bias for everyone else, and it's mainly wannabes telling each other how great it's gonna be. You never see two or three successful copywriters from these programs talking among each other, unless it's a staged meeting of "famous" writers who are the trainers for this place.

About 20 years ago I remember franchises like Subway (literally the sandwiches) and other opportunities you could allegedly buy into for a $50K or under investment were all of the rage with second incomers and retirees.

I think what has happened is that as real estate and other operating costs have increased, training stuff like AWAI has replaced that niche of low end starter buy-in business.