At the same time, occasionally a single person telling you just the right thing (and you having the faith in them to believe they are right) can change the face of your business completely. It isn't about a logo, time with your accountant, or listening to podcasts- but having someone that's really in-tune with the market thinking about your product critically and passing on just the right single piece of advice to you that stops you from running into a wall.
I've run technical training sessions that cost this much before, and I think everyone in the class felt they were worth it.
I wonder how much of that is related to the psychology of the cost. That is, the more a product/service costs, the more the user is likely to assign value to that product/service that they otherwise would not note.
Psychological studies have been done that people who pay for something - anything at any price - always look more favourably on it than those who do not. One such study involved payment to see a film. Those who paid their own way ALWAYS had more favourable reviews of the film than those who were provided with a ticket for free.
Obviously, there is a limit to the psychology, but I wonder how much the feelings of a class' attendees can viably count toward evaluating the value of the workshop. Price is naturally where the willingness of the buyer to buy meets the willingness of the seller to sell, so the price of the workshop is beyond dispute in a free market context. But there are limits to what is rational, and I suspect there will be a significant percentage who will feel the workshop to be worth it merely because they paid a grand to be there. This "prestige" factor, after all, is one of the main components of a premium pricing plan.
That's a great point. The perspective is much different between hiring people to do the best job possible in certain areas of your product/company (design, copywriting, accounting, etc.), and getting external advice from peers.
You're mentioning a piece of advice that changes your product, but even just having someone like the 37signals team say "sounds like a good idea", "looks good" can be enough for someone to keep going.
I've run technical training sessions that cost this much before, and I think everyone in the class felt they were worth it.