This entry by me years back, was buried deep inside another thread that didn't relate. But this is about the seminar business...
...actually the “Black Art of Seminar Sabotage," shockingly does include scheduling seminars the same time as others. Doing about 30 to 40 seminars a year for almost 15 years now I have seen it all and been victimized by it and the overall politics.
For one example, I have it on good sources that a certain JKD guy “down south” always had seminars on the same weekends I was in his region. This is not just meant to split the crowd as Nick Hughes mentions elsewhere, but rather an emotional reaction to keep his people…his people! He feared losing some students to other ideas and people. A few of these folks would see me secretly on Saturday and then see Sifu Dickweed on Sunday, telling me but not him, because Sifu Dickweed would get mad if he found out. Generally, it keeps his people from seeing other people. It’s an emotional reaction I think.
But, the most insidious (I almost hate to reveal this tactic) is to have the sabotage-seminar not on the same weekend, but first and a weekend before the one you want to sabotage! This has happened to me several times around the world. In one country, our host had to play hopscotch with a nearby, sabotage host to dodge his plans of sabotage. My guy kept emailing me telling me "we have to change" the seminar date. We’d change. He’d change, and so on. Like checkers. In the end it worked out though as he had 15 to 20 people, and we had over 70 people. But by God, his 15 people didn’t see me!
One particular JKD Concepts instructor learned late that I was coming to one his people’s schools in the USA. Suddenly, out of the blue, for the first time and the last time since, he suddenly called an emergency, mandatory, one-day, Saturday seminar the weekend before my two-day seminar.
Now what this does is take away discretionary “seminar money” from the students, as well as takes their free time away from the spouse and family. Money and time many students can’t handle two weekends in a row. Not many people can got to two seminars, two weeks in a row! I received a number of apologies from these absent guys that they simply HAD to see Sifu Snidely the very weekend before and they hadn’t the money or the free time to see me the week later.
Some conflicting dates are coincidence, and then some people do set seminar dates to confound you, whether on an emotional or "Scientific/Black Art of Seminar Sabotage" level.
Hock
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Topic: The Black Art of Seminar Sabotage (Read 370 times)