macguy said:
I think I have to agree with all of you. Even with the most optimistic projection this thing may/will be years away from any real visible success if at all. But if they have to shop around the product for who knows how long, maybe years as John said, while at the same time supporting a multi million dollar tour, covering all expenses and production costs with no return. Based on how things initial go, how long are they willing to do it, that's really the million dollar question.
I don't think anyone thinks this thing can be done over night and that's the problem. They, (the IPT), don't seem to be wanting to take it a step at a time, their plans are so overly ambitious that they may sink themselves before they get started. It also seems there is a dependence for everything to work perfectly because all the ingredients are reliant on each other for the parts to fall into place. In other words if any one part fails the whole plan can fail like a mission impossible plot..
I don't disagree with this. What I think though is that KT has really committed many millions to this venture and if it flops then so what?
Let me put this into perspective;
When I was running Instroke I could afford to spend $10-20,000 at any given time just to try something. In fact, I spent $10,000 on software that really didn't work for my needs and after being told I would need to spend another $10,000 to buy the add-ons and support packages I just wrote the 10gs off as a loss and continued on down the path.
One of my friends who has extensive real estate holdings keeps about $200,000 throw away money for interesting projects that come along. This includes loaning money to friends without any form of security. He told once that he probably only gets back about 50% of the money he loans but he doesn't worry about it because he is busy making much more than that and the friendship is more important. Some people might see him as a sucker. I see him as a triple smart human being who invests his capital wisely in real estate and business AND in his fellow humans. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, said that "profit equals resources". Meaning that in order to be in a position to do good you need to make profits to do so.
Let's assume for just a moment that Kevin Trudeau sold just one million copies of his book at an average of $20 a copy. I would bet all told that there is not $10 in cost of goods in that book and this includes all the advertising and logistics surrounding the sale. This leaves 10 million in clear profit to play with. And that's just on the book. Not to mention the website's subscriber base and sales of related alternative health care products.
Also, money attracts money. Since we can't see behind the scenes, we don't know if a bank is financing any part of this venture, whether Kevin has partners, investors or exactly how it is structured.
Right now - all we can go on is that Kevin has produced two successful events. Successful in terms of slick and elegant production values, talent depth and character and a general feeling of exuberance from the participants.
Kelly Fisher told me that when she was on the way home from the KOH tournament she truly felt like a professional player for the first time in her career. What she meant was that the atmosphere, the way they were treated and Kevin's outline made her feel like her efforts to become one of the world's best were being rewarded.
I hope the IPT succeeds because the trickle down will be more action for all other tiers of the game. Won't it be cool when the local tire company kicks in $20,000 added for a local tournament? Because the owner sees pool players getting $200,000 paydays and he wants to be in on the action...
It doesn't cost a thing to be positively speculative.
John
