In today’s competitive society, people from all walks of life are looking for deeper meaning and greater opportunities to advance as well as gain more control and balance in their lives. The enormous range and demand for books on health and wellbeing, motivation, personal and financial/wealth development attest to the size of the aspirational and self-improvement market.

Empowernet International Limited is one of Asia Pacific’s most successful promoters of professional and personal development programs. Empowernet has staged and marketed world class events in the fields of management and leadership, sales and marketing, personal development and wealth creation, to over 1,000,000 participants throughout Australia and Asia Pacific.

Since 1993 Empowernet has worked exclusively with best selling author and the world’s leading success coach, Anthony Robbins, as well as Brian Tracy, providing training programs, workshops and consulting services that dramatically enhance personal and professional outcomes in the areas of sales, motivation, leadership, teamwork, communication and life management skills.

Empowernet’s specialty is implementing proven programs, getting results, empowering people to take action on what they have learned and producing results far beyond anything ever experienced before.

Empowernet’s business model has been, until recently, centred on the hosting of multi-day, content-intensive seminars. However, we have begun shifting from the event-based model to an on-going program and membership-based model to expand the company’s revenue possibilities while substantially increasing value creation for clients.

The Anthony Robbins programs are signature headline events that have, over the past 15 years, proven to be a powerful and differentiated drawcard that have placed Empowernet at the forefront of the personal development industry in this region. We are now leveraging that leadership position to expand our own proprietary programs and services. For more information on these programs and services, see the 'programs' page.

Industry overview

Personal Development

The United States is home to many of the world’s leading programs, each having its own particular target market as well as distinct delivery model. However, their appeal is proven worldwide in a multi-billion dollar industry.

According to research firm Marketdata, the market for personal development programs in the US was worth $5.7 billion as of 20001, $8.5 billion in 20032 and by 2005 had grown 24% to $9.59 billion.3

The report forecast 11.4% yearly growth through 2010, to a value of $13.9 billion.4

The research found that the largest growth area in the industry (18% per year6) was in personal coaching, with some 40,000 people in the U.S. working as life or work coaches within a $2.4 billion market.7

According to the Marketdata report, previous negative associations around having a coach have all but evaporated, "It’s becoming a status symbol to have a personal coach".8 This indicates a potential for a surge in the overall market size as the hesitation to acquire assistance subsides.

The report also points out that "no [coaching] license is required and the field is largely unregulated"9 which certainly creates an opportunity in the market for coaches [and programs] with strong brand name recognition.

One of the fastest growing segments of the industry is spiritual development11, which can be seen particularly in the phenomenal success of ‘The Secret’ over the last two years.

The biggest issue within the personal development industry, however, is the lack of follow through from people who purchase personal development products. They go to many seminars, buy billions of dollars worth of books and audio programs and yet many never follow through on what they have learned.

A recent survey in the UK found that 55 percent of people buy books for decoration with no intention of actually reading them.12 

Try these US statistics on for size:

• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.13
• 80 percent of families did not buy or read a book last year.14
• 70 percent of adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.15
• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.16
• Only 26 percent of people identify and focus on specific, tangible targets of what they want.17
• Less than 15 percent of people write down their goals.18
• Less than 12 percent of people regularly set a whole series of related daily, weekly and
  long-term goals, complete with starting times and completion dates.19
• Only 11 percent of people put time aside to visualise the attainment of their goals on a consistent basis.20

Empowernet is ideally positioned with brand name recognition in a fragmented and dispersed marketplace and an established, long-standing relationship with its clients and prospects who are awakening to the acceptance of on-going programs without the prior stigmas and apprehensions of the past. This is expected to expand both the number of clients who are ‘open’ to the possibilities and opportunities we offer as well as increase the per client revenue potential within streams of expertise (business, wealth creation, personal development) as well as across them.

Business Management Training

This is where Empowernet is developing and expanding its service offering – the development of on-going follow-through programs to ensure the mastery and deployment of the strategies and techniques by participants. Making them accountable and holding them to a higher standard of discipline to ensure greater results which will build loyalty, referral and testimonial endorsements.

The business landscape is not all that different.

Business failure statistics in Australia do not paint a pretty picture. Of the 1,868,969 businesses operating in June 2003, 35% had gone out of business by June 2006.21

Of the 325,935 new business startups during 2003-04, 41.7% had closed down by June 2006.21

Of these businesses, the most at risk are those whose turnover is between $50,000 and $200,000, with 48.6% of these businesses who began operations in 2003/04 going out of business by June 2006.22 In each financial year from June 2003 to June 2006, the largest percentage of companies to go out of business were in this range, followed closely by those in the $200,000 to less than $2 Million range.23

These SMEs with the most at risk and with the most to lose are Empowernet’s target market clientele. That is one of the reasons the initial acceptance of Empowernet’s new on-going support and development programs has been so positive.

Worldwide, revenues from coaching were US$1.5 billion in 2007, with Australia’s share of this approximately A$118 million, according to a survey carried out for the International Coaching Federation by PricewaterhouseCoopers.24

The Australian Institute of Management confirms that over 70% of its members hire coaches.25 Businesses are increasingly turning to coaching [on-going support and development] as a preferred method of skills acquisition.