Elite Clubs – Do They Make Sense?
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013When I was a kid, I always wondered why rich people would pay SO MUCH money to play golf at a private golf course. It didn’t seem to make any sense to me. Ok, sure, they are rich, I know that. But even most rich people don’t like throwing money into the garbage for no reason at all. A lot of them are surprisingly careful with their money.
In Canada, you can play golf at a VERY nice golf course for under $200 per time. Sometimes it’s much less than $100. And I’m talking about really beautiful golf courses, not just average ones.
So why then, would any reasonable person pay $100 000 per year for a membership? It made no sense to me before. Now it makes perfect sense.
These guys aren’t paying for how nice the golf course is. That is only part of it. It’s a small part actually. What they are really paying for is the community. Think about the other people who go to those courses. Most of them are also successful business people. They pay for status and ability to meet these people. They talk and do business together. They make friends and get their children in this rich group of successful people. In some ways, the whole thing makes me sick. I wish the world were a more fair place. But the reality is that it’s not. It does make sense for these people to stay together, meet each other, and network together.
It’s MUCH more likely that you will meet someone worth doing business with on one of these super expensive golf courses than if you were to try to meet these types of people at other places where “regular” people can go.
I was thinking about this because I was thinking about a social networking website for English learning. These aren’t the exact same thing, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute…
People who speak English as a second language and are actually serious about improving their English, their business, their lives, etc, don’t have anywhere to go to meet each other online. There are a lot of garbage websites that allow anyone on there. If you want to speak with someone to “practice your English”, you can absolutely find a partner on a million free sites.
But the problem with this is HUGE. These sites that allow anyone to join, attract people who aren’t really serious about learning English or really serious about anything at all. Why? Because most people in the world are not serious about anything they are doing.
If you want to meet a partner to speak English with, share ideas, share stories, share culture, you will want to meet someone who is at or above your level. You want someone who can challenge you and you can learn from. It’s not easy to find these people, but they exist.
Imagine for a second that you wrote on your Facebook page, “I am looking for someone to learn from, talk about business and life, and really challenge each other to improve our English skills”. I can’t imagine you will find anyone. Maybe, if you are lucky, someone will say “Yes” to your offer, but they probably won’t be the type of person you are hoping for.
As you probably know, Add and I have been making a new free video EVERY DAY at www.LearnEnglish232.com
We are hoping to get people to get in the habit of going there every day for the new lessons. We want to grow that site to 50 000 visitors per day.
But many of the people who find this site or that site aren’t super serious about learning English. We also want to find the SUPER SERIOUS people and provide an opportunity for amazing English, business, and life learning that does not exist anywhere else on the internet. That’s our goal.
The people who are not serious will not pay a small monthly fee to join the membership part. And that’s great. Our plan is to build a membership site for serious learners. Everyone will have a great profile with an awesome photo, bio, linkedIn page, Skype number, where they are from… A lot of stuff. Then these people will be able to search through the other serious members and we can all have a really high level and private conversation. Also, the members will be able to contact each other and set up high level language exchanges and other things. It will be a real community. I’ll be on there providing reading material, movie talk, technology stuff, and a bunch of interesting and high level topics for group discussion. We’ll all push ourselves to get better and better in not only English, but in life too.
I want to have a lot of great free English learning content for everyone to enjoy, and a high level SUPER VIP program that is connected to this one and also adds a lot more. We’re still talking about how we want the site to be. And since some of you guys who are reading this right now will be interested in joining it, it would be great to hear your ideas now. We are building it for you and other high level people like you.
What do you think of this idea? What would you like to see in that program?
Help us design it with your ideas and then it will be much better that way!
And by the way, don’t worry, it won’t be expensive like an elite golf course! It doesn’t need to be. The only reason I used that example was to try to make a point.
Love to hear your thoughts guys. By the way, does anyone here already have the great habit of going to www.LearnEnglish232.com everyday yet? What do you think? Have you shared it with your friends, students, or teachers? What do they think? We’re still in the beginning stages of developing this, and we’re sure this will be the best yet!
It will be connected in some way with China232.com VIP membership, so don’t worry about that. We’ll take care of you guys and make it kick ass! There will be tons of amazing free stuff for everyone and an insanely awesome high level private English learning VIP club.
Sounds like a win/win to me! What are your thoughts on this whole topic? Even the part about rich people paying so much for golf. Does it make sense to you too?
Your comments are always appreciated. You guys have been great lately with that. Keep it up. I read EVERY one!!
