This is a private company, based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company does run a great number of seminars nationwide. If you visit their website (www.pryor.com), you'll find roughly 20 major topic categories—ranging from stress management, to customer service, management skills, professional development skills, time management, and women’s seminars. Most are aimed at employees and how they can improve their work skills, rather than seminars oriented to the general public. If you click on each category link, you’ll find subcategories totaling more than 130. You can find a schedule of the next session in your area by clicking on each state. When one does this, it’s obvious that Pryor runs thousands of sessions per year, nationwide.

Most of these are held in small hotels such as Holiday inns, Ramadas, and Best Westerns, and usually attract 30-50 people. Typical admission fees for a 1-day seminar range from $39 to $195, depending on the topic. An Evelyn Wood speed reading course may cost $159, for example.

Fred Pryor Seminars and CareerTrack, divisions of PARK University Enterprises, Inc., create one of the most respected international providers of professional seminars. Since pioneering the one-day seminar in 1970 as Fred Pryor Seminars, this organization has built a reputation for high-quality, convenient, and practical business-skills training around the world, in every industry and sector.

Fees: $79 to $199

Partial list of public seminars available:

Can’t be there in person? One can chose from more than 100 online training courses from Fred Pryor Seminars and CareerTrack as well. They are priced from $59 - $69. They offer: 24 hour availability,  flexibility,  self-paced,  reduced training expenses

One can take advantage of a wealth of training content by purchasing an On-line Training Subscription for the whole team, department or organization.

Fred Pryor and Career Track stumbled in late 2001 and into 2002, with the last recession, 9/11, etc. Public seminars were suspended for a while. In fact, the whole public seminar business model began to be questioned as a viable model in recent years. With the cost of renting space at hotels in a variety of cities, travel costs, speaker fees, and substantial advertising/promotion costs for direct mail pieces, print and radio ads, it became difficult to make a profit in this business. Even stadium type public seminars run by Peter Lowe International ran into financial difficulties and had to cease operations.

During this tough time, other companies rushed in to fill the void, with their own versions of book, tapes, and courses. Even people affiliated with Kevin Trudeau’s infomercials (Howard Berg, from “Mega Math” fame) were getting into this area. His package (Mega Speed Reading) included 6 audio cassettes and a 30 min. video, and workbook, for $59.95.