Peter Lowe's
"Get Motivated"
Seminars
Peter
Lowe has been in the high profile public seminar business for a long
time, and has been through his share of bumps in the road as well as
clashes with other big motivational speakers competing on the talk
circuit. Just when you think he’s down for the count, he resurfaces
and manages to organize another event and plan a comeback (similar
to another self-improvement guru, Kevin Trudeau). Lowe is the son of
a missionary and his events are laced with religious overtones. Lowe
is also loyal to tried and true old timers in the talk circuit, such
as Zig Ziglar. Many of his speakers have been appearing at his
events for 10-15 years or more.
Success Events
International, the firm that Florida entrepreneur Peter Lowe used to stage
speeches by former presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton, and other political and
business figures, went out of business. Lowe then went on to operate a new firm
named LifeWin Business Seminars, Tampa, Florida.
Lowe, the
self-styled “America’s Success Strategist”, during the 1990s emerged as a star
on the self-help entrepreneurial circuit, a rival of motivational guru Tony
Robbins. He headlined events at which thousands of wannabe successes paid up to
$200 to hear big-name speakers, product sales pitches and religious
exhortations. However, Tony Robbins is still big while Peter Lowe International
is not.
The complicated
saga began in late 1999 in New York bankruptcy court, where Success magazine had
crashed after more than a century of publication. Stanley Van Etten, working
through a new firm called The Success Companies, says he organized a group of
investors who paid $4.75 million for the magazine at an asset sale.
He moved the
publication to his base in Raleigh, North Carolina, and prepared to re-launch
it. Van Etten hoped to cross-brand the resurrected Success with new online and
broadcast subsidiaries, and with a live events component: Tampa-based Peter Lowe
International. Lowe, whose operation until then had been a non-profit, agreed to
join The Success Companies in August 2000. He headed a new subsidiary called
Success Events International.
But, the company,
in need of at least several million dollars of new venture capital to grow,
faced a rapidly worsening economy. Moreover, personality, financial and
management problems were emerging.
“Peter Lowe’s
Success 2001” sold thousands of tickets for speeches by Clinton, TV show host
Montel Williams, Mrs. Fields Cookies founder Debbi Fields and others in
Chicago’s United Center. But, the star attractions were no-shows. And the event
was shifted to the smaller Odeum Sports & Expo Center with little advance
warning.
The Better
Business Bureau of West Florida has logged dozens of complaints against Lowe’s
old companies, from customers seeking refunds for arena events and motivational
tapes they say weren’t worth the cost. Lowe, with creditor claims mounting,
unexpectedly resigned.
Who bears legal
responsibility for the mounting debts left by the collapse of the magazine,
speaking business and tennis sponsorship? According to Lowe, he became merely an
employee when he sold his firm to The Success Companies. Van Etten and the
parent firm made all the decisions, he says.
Van Etten calls
that response “absolutely not accurate.” He says Lowe served as CEO of the
speaking events subsidiary and had daily control, an assertion echoed by many
former company employees and vendors.
