The most expensive coach / plant medicine facilitator ever?

Virgil Klunder says he charges his 'really high-end clients' a million dollars a session

Well, it had to happen eventually. The logical consequence of taking plants that grow out of the ground and putting them at the centre of a multi-billion-dollar hype-machine has arrived: a 59-year-old Nashville business coach named Virgil Klunder (pictured above) says he charges his ‘really, really high-end clients’ up to a million dollars a session for his plant medicine coaching service.

Klunder doesn’t have any medical or therapeutic training, he doesn’t have a website (so I was unable to contact him for comment), he’s never spoken at any psychedelic conferences, but he recently appeared on the podcast of wealth coach Al Thomas to talk about his business. This is Al Thomas.

On the podcast, Virgil Klunder talks about his career-pivot to plant medicine:

I can’t really talk about it too much publicly, but it was my true ‘Paul on the road to Damascus moment’. And everything changed about my life and I sold all my companies and I just disappeared for a few years and studied everything I could about particular plant medicines and jungles around the world and dedicated the rest of my life to repairing my relationships that I had damaged and hopefully helping anybody else that had done the same…And over the course of several years, it turned into something to the point where I have the privilege of being able to to work with directly and help some of the most powerful people on earth.

Al Thomas says to Virgil: ‘You and I talked about some of the celebrities that you coach right now and people in the White House…Give us an idea of how much that costs.’ To which Klunder replies: ‘Well, the fees start, per session, at $12,500 a shot and then it goes up to a million dollars per session.’

Selling flying marsupials in the mall

So who exactly is Virgil Klunder, who are his White House clients, what do you get for a million dollars, and, above all, why does he have a controversial reputation in the world of flying-marsupial breeding?

Virgil Klunder may be the world’s most expensive plant medicine facilitator. But he didn’t start that way. He was adopted into a poor family, and his quest to find his biological parents led to him founding what he says was the ‘biggest private investigator agency in the entire world’. I haven’t been able to find confirmation of that, but he did publish a book in 1991 called Lifeline: The Action Guide to Adoption Search. He also claims he worked on various TV shows like Oprah and Geraldo arranging reunions of long-lost family members.

Then he discovered his true calling: sales. In 1987 he founded a company called Comfort Zone Enterprises, which sold heat-therapy packs at kiosks in shopping malls. Klunder is quoted in various publications talking about the art of live product demonstrations and how to get clients to impulse-buy:

In the Noughties, Virgil set up a company called Pocket Pets to apply the mall kiosk direct sales model to a new product - sugar gliders, a small, furry, flying marsupial commonly found in the rainforests of Indonesia.

Klunder and his network of sales-people would set up booths in shopping malls across the United States and put on demonstrations of the cute little creatures flying from one of them to the other. The American consumer, reassured by Pocket Pet’s sales script, snapped up the marsupials on impulse, or two of them - Klunder offered ‘buy one for $600, get the second one half-price’ . He recalls: ‘It just blew up and became this huge massive business’ and his family ‘made a ton of money doing it’.

But the mall-marsupial sales business was not without controversy, and the company was criticized in local news:

If you Google ‘Virgil Klunder’ and ‘sugar gliders’ you’ll come across many in the ‘sugar glider’ community expressing concern and outrage at Pocket Pets and Klunder’s sales tactics.

His plant medicine conversion

After that, Klunder became an executive coach. At some point he had his psychedelic Damascus conversion:

I can’t really talk about it too much publicly, but it was my true ‘Paul on the road to Damascus’ moment. Everything changed about my life and I sold all my companies and I just disappeared for a few years and studied everything I could about particular plant medicines and jungles around the world and dedicated the rest of my life to repairing my relationships that I had damaged and hopefully helping anybody else that had done the same.

Al Thomas asks him: ‘How many different jungles have you been in looking for this plant and the things?’ Klunder replies:

I have no idea. It was endless for many years. It was 20 hours a day, seven days a week. I would just sleep and keep walking and sleep and keep walking. And it was crazy. I’ve been really, really fortunate to be able to be guided to some true masters in this world that became my teachers, and I thank God every day. Over the course of several years, it really turned into something to the point where I have the privilege of being able to to work with directly and help some of the most powerful people on earth.

He was walking for 20 hours a day, through jungles, for many years?

You have to wonder who believes this stuff. But you only need a few rich, clueless people to buy your pitch if you’re charging a million dollars. Even if no one drops a million on a plant medicine session, setting the top range so high makes $12,500 seem like the basic, cheap option. And what high-end client wants to go for the basic, cheap option?

Business coaches can of course charge what they want - the most expensive reportedly charges $100,000 a session, while Tony Robbins reportedly charges clients one million dollars a year. So Virgil is breaking records here, charging one million a session.

He’s somewhat coy on the podcast about who his ‘really, really high-end clients’ are, but he mentions ‘one of the most successful people in the music industry’ in his home-town of Nashville, as well as the son of a company president, and some people in the White House…

More after the paywall, including Virgil’s inside info on the White House, the cryptocurrency market, and UFO disclosure. Plus Zappy Zapolin’s new psychedelic concierge training course; and a recording of our seminar on psychedelic-induced recovered memories.