The other night I was up late working and I saw the infomercial for a big “Guru” in real estate investing. Everyone knows who it is.
I had several reactions as I watched this:
1. As an investor, it still brings back memories for me to watch these guys and feel like “Yes – If I buy your product – I too will be a millionaire investor!” This is why so many good people end up buying into this bullcaca.
2. As the Club Manager of one of the largest REIC’s and who knows this “guru” pitch very well – I’m completely turned off by the “come to our FREE 1 ½ hour seminar and learn how to make a million dollars” song and dance. It’s hogwash! What they’re really saying is: “Come to our FREE event and we’ll pitch you for 1 ½ hours on our product or upcoming seminar that sells for only $3000K and then once you buy that we’ll pitch you on our mentoring program that is only 30K” “You will probably learn some things, but don’t count on the majority of you really doing anything with it, since we don’t give you much support unless you pay for it big time.”
3. Finally as an owner of a real estate club – I’m so o-v-e-r this tired strategy of pitching product and mentoring programs in seminars like this. Way back in the Days of Yore this was one of the only ways to get information from “experts”, but now there are many avenues to get quality training and education - and when I say educated – I mean educated AND supported by a real network of your peers and colleagues.
There is nothing FREE about these seminars. Of course, if you want to learn from these gurus –will have to buy something. However this is not what’s upsetting. I believe in buying education. Heck I buy mentoring and coaching all the time. What I don’t appreciate is the continuous up sell for their 20K, 30K or even 50K mentoring programs.
If you don’t buy their most expensive product, you will receive continuous annoying calls from sales people selling their “mentoring” program. Listen, I understand this process from personal experience. I was getting calls for several months from this same infomercial guru’s sales people about 2 years ago. I’m telling you – the only thing that saved me from signing my life away and buying a 20K program was that I started working for REIC of LA and learned very quickly that all that pitch was a just that – a pitch to sell you more! I got the insiders view of this world – and as many of you know – I didn’t like what I saw.
There are good gurus out there. But they are probably 2 out of 5. We just need to be careful not to fall for all the hype.
It’s important to have continuous networking, education, mentoring and coaching AND you have to go out and do deals while you are learning.
Bottom line: Find a good real estate group or club that you can trust, network with people, get yourself educated in specific areas, go out and do deals and fail forward fast! Don’t listen to the guru’s own hype in order to decide if their program is right for you. Ask people that you network with to give you recommendations on which product or mentor they like and have actually learned from. Don’t just buy blindly. And please – don’t go to the big named infomercial “gurus” and just start buying their entire product! Not unless you know a handful of people that have personally invested in their services and have been successful. PLEASE! I beg you!
