A few weeks ago I noted on my blog how I had discovered a very cool motivational speaker named Mike Lipkin. I had e-mailed him and heard back from one of his grunt workers who noted that he could come to Kwantlen for $10,000 (his normal fee is about $15,000). I'd love to have the guy on campus, but I may counter-offer at say $5,000 and see where we land (somewhere in between). I'd look at charging $10 per Kwantlen student and $30 for community members and non-students. I already asked that if we had him, we do it at a time when he is already in Vancouver so that we would not have to pay his flight costs from Toronto. So that means I'd only have to find $3,000 if I sold out our conference centre that seats 200. I'm going to phone around and see if we can get sponsorships. We'll see.

Anyway, to get back on track --- in exchanging e-mails with the grunt worker, they offered to send me a package of information on Mike. And I received that package this week! They sent more product than I thought they would...

a copy of his DVD - "The Power to Persuade;"
a copy of his book "The Keeper of the Flame;"
a CD copy of his book (an audio-book version) "The Keeper of the Flame;" and
two information packages about the man himself - Mike Lipkin.

It's a dynamic speaker like Mr. Lipkin that Kwantlen needs. And it's why I really want to push for a dedicated events fee this fall. I'm thinking $4 - $5 per student per term would give the KSA approximately $80,000 to $100,000 per term wherein it could afford to bring speakers like Mr. Lipkin on campus.

So I'm going to see what we can do in terms of getting the school of business to sponsor this speaker, perhaps get a company such as Boston Pizza to help sponsor him. I'm sure we could sell out at $10 a ticket, if we approached and pushed this speaking engagement to the business students. Perhaps we could secure him for a day, where he speaks in Richmond in the afternoon and on Surrey in the evening.

We'll see!

- Steve