I am in a hall full of 250 odd trainers at Arfeen Khan’s ‘Make a Fortune Teaching What You Love’ train the trainer seminar. The advert had popped up on my Facebook feed.
Facebook’s research team knows I am in the training business, like all my other online activities it tracks. 1,400 people clicked and enrolled on Khan’s advert. A subsequent telephone call and form screened the 1,400 down to 250 who now sit around me in the hall in Juhu Tara Road, Mumbai on an early Sunday morning. The seminar is free. He is confident that 5 percent of attendees will sign up for the one year paid program based on conversion rate number rules.
There is a buzz in the hall. Khan is a celebrity coach, and the gimmicks are full blast on. Music, dance, fans and the related jazz. But it’s not all fun and games. There are three priceless nuggets I walk out with at the end of the day. Read on if you would like to know more. 🙂
Takeaway 1
Hesitant of coming across as me-centric, but since it is part of the classroom exercise replete with guided meditation accompanied with music et al, I scribble my ETR (Earn the Right) on my notebook. Khan calls it WHY someone should want to have me as their trainer. He assures us the me-centricity is needed.
It has become a common fad for everyone and anyone, in the world, especially in India, to become a trainer. The perceived glamour, independence and money is way too attractive to ignore, although it also makes everyone in the industry equally and easily replaceable. Unless I have a convincing ETR, I really cannot expect anyone to sign me on and keep signing me on.
So what makes a good ETR. Khan calls it our personal story unique to us, our passion ingrained in us, and the conversion of these two into killer content which has had a track record of success. Earn the Right has, thus, to be earned. Earn the Right should not take more than 2-3 minutes when said out aloud.
Takeaway 2
Khan’s ‘time up’ wakes me up from my reverie with a new-found insight on how to better market myself. Yes market. Arfeen Khan, Bollywood’s most sought after success coach and currently the third highest paid trainer and coach in the world is essentially a brilliant marketer who has no qualms admitting it.
When he started 11 years ago, 6 people came to his seminar. Twenty odd years later he has helped over 500,000 people in 43 countries create personal and professional transformation through business acumen, sales and marketing. And this is without a college degree or trainer certifications.
Charming, suavely dressed, with a guileless grin and Sheffield accent, he has his pulse on exactly what sells, and is unabashed about sharing it. True to his cause, the workshop pushes me next into identifying my ‘market’ which he calls the ‘tribe’.
To create content for ‘everyone’ is easy, however when something is for everyone it ends up for no one. To create content that is generic is just as catastrophic. Khan instructs us to choose our tribe based on our own personality; those who are like us, and will turn to us as their leader. This creates a sure-fire connection to our audience. The demographics of the tribe, their economics, age, emotions should be the frameworks for the design and delivery of content.
Takeaway 3
My third and final takeaway from the workshop is content and delivery needs to be built on a cause, and guided by passion. Or else it is doomed. What most ‘trainers’ do is learn content and then deliver it. Almost like machines. It has to be the other way around to work. Find your core skill, turn it into niche content, and then give it away to transform other people’s lives. “This has to be about people. Move away from you to others. This industry is not about you. It is about contribution.”
Arfeen Khan listens to everyone in the hall. I love his responses to the tricky situations we often go through as trainers. My favourite: How do you charge an X amount. “‘Ask’ for it.” How do you deal with your coachee/trainee who doesn’t perform. Tell them, “I don’t care. Coz if you don’t care, I don’t care!”
Post program, surrounded by starry-eyed dreamers, he concludes “It is easy to be famous in India. Too easy. Take advantage of it. India is obsessed with movies and cricket. Latch on to them in some form as clientele. India is also deteriorating as a society. It is desperately looking to be saved.” I laughingly tell him I am going to quote him on this. He laughs back.
He indeed has the route clearly marked. ETR, tribe, content including authoring a book and putting together video clips, and from there on strategic marketing, particularly Facebook marketing citing today’s example itself, all of which he covers in his one year paid program of clear-cut targets and deliverables.
Am I going to do his program. Nope. He does not believe I am his ‘tribe’. I am disqualified. His program is for those who have a dream and want to make it real. I am too old, already established and hence ‘set’ in my ways. What I take away, nevertheless, are three nuggets of knowledge, which he generously and freely gives out, on self-realization and fine tuning my service, market and delivery. Wrapped in a brilliant marketing strategy his wisps of committed giving to a cause, raise Arfeen Khan above sheer business to a teacher. Is that not what all training ultimately amounts to ?
Thank you Mr. Khan for a Sunday well spent.
PS. Takeaway 4: Facebook marketing and freebies PR tactics work. 🙂
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The ‘Make a Fortune Teaching What You Love’ train the trainer free seminar, a prelude to the one year paid program, was held on 28 June, 2015 in Mumbai. To know more about the full program, write to Support@arfeenkhan.com
[Images courtesy Arfeen Khan and Rama Arya]
Note: The above post forms part of my blog’s Giving Back series which explores giving back initiatives in India.
rama toshi arya's blog 
excellant
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Thank you much. Glad you enjoyed reading it.
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the one year paid program…may i know what was the cost?
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Please contact on this number for further details of
1 year program-7045697778.
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Hello Ashfak, My apologies, but I am unaware of the costs. It is best you get in touch with them directly. Arfeen’s team is very helpful. You could write to them at the email address provided.
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Now that i have read your blog with your take aways. i can thank both of u.
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Thank you! Was reading your blog. I thoroughly enjoyed going through your posts. Very well written, and some rather thought-provoking questions you have asked through them. 🙂
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i am going for the seminar on 17th december…..
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Hope you enjoy it! Do share your experience, if possible. 🙂
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Nice and elaborate article. Ever since I saw a shot of Facebook ads being displayed on the screen in one of his event albums, I had an inkling that his upsell would have to do something with that since it’s such a huge topic. Almost took me 3 years to get the hang of. The guy is clearly influenced by T. Harv Eker in every way though it’s definitely commendable whatever he’s done and achieved. The trouble with the free PR strategy is that these days you literally see every snake-oil salesman with their typical and ridiculous pumped fist photographs claiming how they can “take your life to a new level” when they can’t manage a single grammatically correct sentence in their ad copy. I don’t kid when I say that just recently I saw a landing page for such a seminar, the ad copy for which ended with – seats on first CUM first basis! …Pretty sure I won’t regret missing the chance to take my life to another level.
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Arfeen’s events are very much a PR strategy, but since he does them with much panache he is able to carry it off effortlessly. Sadly, not everyone can. Nowadays, yes, everyone is a life coach, and everyone wants to help us take our lives to the next level, as they claim. My response, though not often voiced so as to be politically correct, is it helps to preach by example rather than by rhetoric. 🙂
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Hi, I attended Arfeen’s seminar in New Delhi, around March’17th, in response to his Facebook ads and a reference from my mumbai HR friend. Yes, he is smart, suave, got style & charisma, white skinned & UK accented, is that one requires to fleece and make a sort of fool of others? Okay, one can, we are free!
He tries to sell his own journey of becoming rich, inspire others to become millionaires, got a blueprint for all this fantasy. Phew!
Basically he is selling a pure capitalism dream, if I can be rich, then why can’t you? He get this aspect ingrained within all his audience, through his seminar (certainly carry himself with confidence for an entire day) and wannabe paid customers.
When inside the Blueprint seminar, he is busy convincing his paid attendees (saw the youtube videos) to simply be ever optimistic in life, keep dreaming big, think bigger in every aspect of life, focus on your monetary personality, charge a bomb to your clients (nothing wrong!) and love money like anything! Shares his Bollywood connection, his huge global presence. Is also philosophical, claims, money won’t give you everything in life, so be satisfied at some point of life and do not be greedy.That’s it. This is his SMB Program, how to be a millionaire!
Further, His PR team, is always doing a great job, in spreading his name, celebrity connection(Hrithik Roshan’s endorsement has great value), his book, he got Ferrari’s, charges 5lacs for an hour’s session and et al stuff about his achievements. Fine, nothing wrong. I met & interacted the audience, some of them did not had any clue or iota of an idea, to what he was teaching & preaching. To say, what the heck he was talking about! It was a mere loot from him! It was a musical, theatrical show, mix with on stage interviews to realize audience of their mistakes and presenting success to losers (sorry to use this word). His technique in achieving such landmarks, were basic and consisted of natural principles of money economics. Be aspirational, focus to earn more in life, save, don’t splurge, invest, strategize on passive income, keep on dreaming big, like him, numerous other examples and Voila! now you can start your own millionaire’s journey. Sign up for SMB and Call of Destiny programmes & he would get his new Ferrari’s.
Wonder, I have wasted my life, in gathering sense, intelligence & ethics.
Thanks Arfeen.
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Its very simple. The title is very clear. So if you have an idea or dream but fails or not sure how you do, this will help to build your confidence to pursue. just as its mentioned as free and if you go naturally nothing comes out and you wasted your time and trainers time. There are lot of people who has great ideas but hesitant to take it forward. For those, these seminars will be useful and if you pay for an year you enter into commitment and that forces to push your dream. Period
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Maybe everyone has their own opinion and experience. I recently attended Arfeen Khan’s event in Mumbai which was on 14th Jan 2018. I had a very good experience. Have purchased one of his courses which seems to be very helpful. I think one should be open when attending these kind of seminars. There was nothing such as cheating I felt. All the refund policies were explained properly.
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Hi Rama,
I recently attended a session of Coach to a Fortune program. Now they want ₹1.5 lacs + 18% GST for the course. What is your opinion on the authenticity of the whole program? I saw more than 5 comments online accusing the organisers to be fraudulent.
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Hello Remya. To be honest, I don’t know. I simply attended the free train-the-trainer seminar. The session was very interesting and well put together. But as I wrote in my post [last paragraph] neither Arfeen nor I felt the full program would be of value for me. 🙂
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I hope you are a genuine person who is writing this because my experience has been nothing short of disturbing. Request you all to not abuse people’s money and time.
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Hello Abhimanyu, I can understand your reservations. I myself was swindled by a fraud online marketing company this past week which goes by the name Teekart India and has a fake front called Red Crate. They send damaged goods and once returned don’t give a refund or replacement. Rs. 2,700 down the drain because of their clever online marketing.
Anyways, coming back to your query, I have nothing to do with Arfeen Khan or his programs. I don’t even know him personally or professionally. I attended his free seminar. Found some valuable nuggets of knowledge in them and wrote about it for my Giving Back category.
I believed, and still do, that the nuggets shared in the free seminar were of value. Post the free seminar, I did not enroll for the full program since it did not offer what I needed. I am a travel and art blogger, and only write about Giving Back initiatives which have enriched my own life. Please note, this post is about his free seminar and NOT about his program. 🙂
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Hi… would like to know more about Giving Back Category.
The Blog was
to the point.
Clear.
Not Biased
Thanks.
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Hello Yogesh, welcome to my blog. Glad you enjoyed the post. 🙂 The Giving Back category is merely part of a classification method I use to file my posts. Those that fall under the Giving Back category are posts I have written on community initiatives in India. The reason I put the above post in this category is because it was free, and key techniques were shared generously with the participants at the seminar.
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I attended Arfeen’s seminar in Mumbai. The way he takes control of the entire audience is amazing.
But I doubt how many of the people who join the training , are able to convert it in money?
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Yup, he is a great performer, first and foremost. I agree with you on that. Your question on how many people were able to put it to use — I’d say putting any knowledge or learning to use depends entirely on the learner. Some need to be spoon-fed and still fail. Others take a tiny little strand of hay and build on it to make a nest out of it. He shows you the ropes, and he does it well. No better or worse than any other coach. His strength is not his knowledge. There are loads of others teaching the same thing. His strength is keeping one engrossed through the seminar. The rest is up to the participant. Don’t you agree? 🙂
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