OK — that doesn’t exist — at least not yet, but Sally Hershberger is now charging $800 for a trim.
[May I remind my faithful readers that I got the best haircut of my life for $5 at a local, non-descript Chinese place recommended by my friend Brian?]
The reason I bring it up is because I’ve been having such interesting discussions lately of how one’s value relates to what one charges and, of course, what the market will bear.
Specifically, I’ve been getting such tremendous value from David Neagle’s MIRACLE OF MONEY program — he’s a coach whose niche has been that he gets you from six figures to the millionaire level. Obviously that’s worth … well … a million dollars.
But what’s amazing is the amounts these coaches charge, ranging from hundreds to thousands, to even tens of thousands of dollars an hour/day. David on his CDs talks about charging something like $30,000 for a day of his time, and I know there are yearly coaching problems at several times that amount. I’ve no doubt that sometimes it’s totally worth whatever you’re paying someone like that. What’s astonishing, however, is that almost every coach I explore has almost no substantiated value to their coaching; depending on how you look at it, they’re just charging either whatever their concept of worth is post self-improvement workshop/whatever they can get away with.
Part of me as a die-hard capitalist loves the fact that, since this is America, you can charge whatever you want and if someone is willing to pay you for it, bully for you. And if you go to my press page you’ll see I did an entire bizarre segment for the TRAVEL CHANNEL about yoga in Fantasy Penthouses that start at $18,000 a night.
But I do think this kind of thing often lends itself to a kind of hyped-up insanity.
For example, Sally Hershberger did create Meg Ryan’s signature haircuts that helped propel her to icon status, particularly her shag in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. And I’m sure the day will dawn when Sally will be charging a full grand to take out her scissors and razors and work her magic. But I just don’t think (in our lifetime) she’s ever going to be able to get away with a $10,000 haircut. [I could be wrong.]
I’m actually a big fan of coaching. In fact, my first coach was right after college with Henry House, who went on to found the Coaches Training Institute, the mothership of coaching. I think there can be a tremendous amount of value in it.
But it’s also an area fraught with potential hysteria, where compelling personalities can make all sorts of unsubstantiated claims and run roughshod over people’s lives.
The first time I saw something of this was right after college when I took a weekend intensive acting workshop at the Actors Institute. It was team-taught and one of the leaders was kind of an evil genius who was able to immediately isolate someone’s vulnerability and zero-in on it, sort of like Hannibal Lector first meeting Clarice in SILENCE OF THE LAMB. He’d hear a weird trace of an accent, or spot a phony affectation, or just see some false note, and he’d call it out and then you’d just watch the person’s entire (manufactured) persona crumble onstage. It was amazing, brilliant, and terrifying.
Those kind of self-improvement weekends often have this incredibly ecstatic effect, which almost always leads to a crash-and-burn syndrome. That doesn’t negate the breakthroughs — those can be very real — but something about the high and the sudden intense realizations and freedom have aftershocks. I loved when I took my first Henry House workshop weekend right after college — suggested by my friend Jessica Tuck, a recently decapitated head vampire on TRUE BLOOD — that to his great credit he warned us about this phenomenon. And sure enough, right afterwards I was soaring and felt I could do anything — and then I remember a big emotional crash as well.
It has been a few years since those college days, and so I’m much more cautious about the “quick fix” and the “instant breakthrough” but the lure is still so powerful.
And sometimes, it very well may be that one tiny little tip/adjustment/insight can completely transform a person’s life.
Nonetheless, particularly as I’ve been invited to do some “Miracle Coaching” with people, I’m trying to find what is a fair value, without a grotesque level of inflation.
This is the kind of thing that does amuse me — but it suddenly occurs that it would be a fascinating social experiment to film my next $5 haircut and then — with the benefit of my next book advance — splurge on one with Sally Hershberger herself. I’m willing to be totally wrong about this — a Sally haircut may turn me into an instant icon — but I really wonder if there would there be any discernible difference? I would love to share the side by side photos and see which hair cut is 80 times better (note, it’s 80 times and not 160 because for the $5 cut I leave a $5 tip; I think as Sally’s the salon owner, the tip is not expected.)
Anyway, perhaps the only solid coaching/advice that is indisputably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars may have been to have bought 100 shares of Microsoft on March 13, 1986 for $2,100 and sold then on Dec 1, 1999 for $1.4 million dollars at the stock’s peak.
That’s measurable, specific, and accurate.
Unfortunately, no one — not even Sally Hershberger or Pat Ryan or David Neagle — really knows everything.
In fact, more and more, every single day, I take comfort in the advice of screenwriting god William Goldman — and this may make me the best but perhaps least employable potential coach in the world: “No one knows anything.”
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