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Updated almost 4 years ago, 01/14/2021
Mentoring Cost $20,000
I went to the 2 day Life Styles Unlimited class this past weekend with the goal of learning and finding a multi-family mentor to begin investing with. Like a typical sales funnel I quickly learned it was a brief overview to get the juices flowing, tell you about all the stock market failures and pain points that have let you down in the past, then build you back up with the millionaire mindset and that for only a mere $20,000 that LSU can mentor you to become a millionaire and live the millionaire lifestyle that you and your family so deserve. And to ad a sense of urgency to close the deal, they say you must sign up today or next month the price will be $25,000.
My question to everyone...is there anyone out there who genuinely is willing to mentor someone in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area? I have the passion and the funds to invest in multi-family, I just have no interest in being run thru a sales funnel and someone collecting $20,000 - $25,000 first. They are in the business of making huge money off selling information and dreams via sales funnels first, while teaching the secrets of investing second.
I am looking for the kind of mentor that is not part of trying to run people thru a sales funnel and collect there money before you learn the “secrets”. Is there anyone out there that exists who is willing to let someone shadow them, while in return working for free just to watch and learn the process that truly make there living investing in multi-family and not running a sales funnel?
@Omar Khan Thank You....
BP is a great source when you have specific questions. If you haven't already, find your local REI group. Long distance mentoring can work, but there is nothing like being able to walk and talk through a place with someone. My local group is very generous with their experience.
Why MF? Do you have any experience with Mult Family housing? Do you live in an apt and think it's all that?
If you have 25K to spend on a weekend scam job, that must mean you have 5-10 times that amount to invest sitting in the bank. Find someone in DFW that owns and manages MFs and pay him/her 25K to let you work for them.
You don't need a mentor, you need to be an apprentice. Go to RE clubs and get to know people who are grinding it out in RE. NOT the big fish, but the husband/ wife or 3 brothers who are spending evenings and weekends cleaning out rentals, painting, driving to pick up rent and screening applicants. Find them and then offer to help them out. Spend a day shampooing a soiled carpet and scrubbing out a stove or shower. Don't ask for pay because what you will learn is worth more than money. Then go buy a duplex and house hack it for two years. That's how most of us started in RE. We didn't have money to start out buying 20 door MFs
You said you "have the passion and funds to invest in multi-family". But passion and money won't buy knowledge. that comes from experience over time. I have the passion and funds to ride a motorcycle, but I can't ride a bicycle. I guess I can buy a Harley and pay someone to teach me to ride it, or I can buy a decent bike at a yard sale learn to ride that first. I would rather fall off the bike a few times than a new Harley.
If you truly have a passion, then you should understand that REI is not about more, bigger and better. It is the journey, with friends and family, sweat equity, late nights and long weekends. Sacrificing going out to eat, or buying used cars so you make the mortgage each month. Learning from your mistakes and grow your business.
I wish you the best if you decide you really want to live the real estate life.
Michael Burks if you’ve got the Money for a deal, I’d do your research lots of reading and podcast listening and then go do a deal on your own.
The first one is the scariest anyways. After that they get much easier. I was a newbie on this site just over a year ago. Fast forward to now and I’ve done 3 deals in two different states. This whole business is a long, slow game. Start with a single family or two, then do residential multifamily, then maybe participate in a syndication, then do your own syndication (if these are your goals) and go from there.
Empires weren’t built in a day.
That's too high @Matt K.. @Michael Burks, $4,999...I accept bitcoin only.
@Jay Helms @Matt K. The irony is that there's a darn good chance that spending $5K to be mentored by either one of your would likely be a better use of money and time than either, a.) looking for someone to help for free, or b.) paying $20K+ to a guru program.
Half of the time I think that people should pay for mentorship or coaching just so they have *some* skin in the game. It's like the people that make up excuses to skip going to gym but they'll pay a personal trainer (in part) because they know they won't skip those days because it's costing them money.
Not to mention you then have someone (as a mentor) who should feel some obligation to help you. It's easy to "skip this weeks coaching call" if John Doe has given you nothing. Assuming you have an ethical compass, it's a ton harder to skip it (or not prepare for it) if John Doe is paying for your time.
@Michael Burks
The number one thing I learned early on is most successful people are willing to help you as long as you take their advice and act upon it. Reach out to someone in the REI field that is where you want to be in 5-10 years and just ask them to coffee or lunch on you. Sure their time is valuable, but anybody that is willing to be a mentor should not ask for anything in return. My mentor never asked for anything from me. I did send him a thank you with a nice bottle of whiskey because he offered me a drink during our first meeting, but he never expected anything monetarily from me. What he did expect though was action and growth on my part. Never waste someone's time by not acting on their advice.
Michael Burks I’ve met lots of people off this site and I’ve had some show me their rentals and flips just by asking (including detailed number walk through) all for free. You just have to ask and add value to Them. My value has mainly been buying property from some of them and now I’m just helping others with the things I’ve done myself. (A good example would be visiting turnkey companies in Memphis). If you don’t want to do that yourself (even though I’d recommend it) you can just ask me as I did it myself.
Even if your first deal is a mediocre one it’s better that just sitting on the sidelines for years while looking for a “mentor”. You’ll make mistakes and that’s okay.
I made the mistake of paying an out of state attorney 900 bucks to file an LLC for me. Probably costs 200 to do it myself. Now I basically don’t even use it. I see all these people get stuck on the llc debate instead of actually buying stuff.
Hey @Michael Burks,
I just ran through some of the comments/replies here, and I have to agree that there is some merit behind the whole "What would you bring to the table" argument.
HOWEVER - I would strongly suggest not spending $20,000 to "get woke" or "learn" free information.
Here's what I would do:
1) Network - use BP, go to REI meetups, etc. Try to meet people who are already in the multifamily game.
2) When you find someone that is doing well and have become acquainted with he/she, tell them "Hey, I really like what you're doing, and I've wanted to do the same thing for some time now. Would you be interested in going in on a deal with me where I would provide the funds and you would help find/manage the deal and mentor me along the way? I would finance and you would get a portion of the profits."
That is what you could "bring to the table"; that being a percentage of profits of a deal.
He (or she) gets an income without any financial obligation/risk, and you get help with the deal, profits for yourself, and mentorship along the way. And being that person has a successful track record, it would probably be a successful deal.
Just some food for thought
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#2 Multi-Family and Apartment Investing Contributor
- Rental Property Investor
- St. Paul, MN
Hiring a coach/mentor can be a good path to higher achievement and a help you get there quicker. I don't know anything about Lifestyles, but the right program can help get you to where you want to go. For me, I am self taught. I have done very well for myself with my self learning, but I don't doubt that I would be miles ahead if I would have paid money to take a course or been mentored at an earlier stage. Just paying that type of money alone would be reason enough to motivate you.
Someone told me this weekend that Tony Robbins charges $1 million to have him as your personal coach. Very successful people pay him and others like him to be their coach even after being successful.
You can do this yourself and become successful. BP is a great resource, as well as books, podcasts, youtube, etc. If you can be very dedicated to learning on your own and surrounding yourself with others that are successful and doing what you want to do, then a paid mentor may not be for you. You just need to really think about where you want to go and how you can get there.
@John Ellerman @Todd Dexheimer Thank you both for taking the time to post. Your advice is very much appreciated.
These kind of topics always make me scratch my head.
I came on this site long ago. I didn't know as much back then about a decade ago. I spent thousands of hours reading through this site. Way back when it first started there were a lot of 30 and 40 year investors so just about everything they said was gold. These days it is a lot of newbies asking the same questions over and over.
People that are successful are making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year for their time. They do not have time to mentor people for free folks. People that go to these seminars thinking someone is going to hand them something for free with no ulterior motive needs to rethink that rationale.
Now I do help people understand commercial retail investing BUT they have money and I make a buyer brokers fee for the property they are purchasing which can be in the six figures in fees for a deal.
I have agents wanting to join my company all the time. They have no money but want you to show them everything and then 90% won't follow the steps. If someone is making thousands per hour for their time then to take someone and spend hours with them cost a bunch of money. You can find investors who are toward the end of their life cycle such as 70's in age. Those investors are not as active directly anymore but tend to invest in projects passively. They might have more free time to mentor or help someone get started they take an interest in.
Generally a persons life cycle has them learning like crazy when they are starting out and working hard on the business. Then mid career they want more family to business balance and ramp things down to stabilize. When they get more toward the end of their career they start focusing more on legacy and helping others. It's not always this way but tends to run this cycle. I look at things very differently at 43 then I did in my 20's and 30's for age.
As you get older you start seeing more and more people that you knew pass away and it cements in your mind to really think and decide what you are going to do in every moment of your life.
I have some colleagues from time to time on something complex I want perspective on but I am very mindful of their time and take maybe 10 minutes or so to get an answer to a question.
Anyone that has developed a system typically wants to monetize that system for a revenue stream.
You might want to look at a partner where you invest cash and in exchange you get some knowledge from them. You could also maybe look at investing in a syndicate and see how a sponsor does things with a property. The person helping out if a partnership might want to take a retainer so if you do not do anything they are compensated for their time.
I believe people have to have (skin in the game) with cash so that if they do not act on the knowledge given to them and time spent with them then it will be painful for them to walk away. If someone is just given everything with the hope of doing something that rarely works out.
If people want something for close to free then read through the tons of posts on this site and read a bunch of books to learn. You will spend time but if you do not want to spend much money it might be helpful.
- Joel Owens
- Podcast Guest on Show #47
Not disagreeing or agreeing. But for MFh where partners and peer group are required to get Fannie Freddie non recourse loans a group is part of the game. You have to pay to play.
I've been to the LUI 2-day seminar for single/multi family investment about a year and a half ago. I thought it was worth the $400. Because I had already been researching and doing podcasts and listening to talk radio guru's I felt like I had gotten most of the info they gave at the seminar, but it took me a long time. However, that's the way I learn. I did hear the pitch for the single and multi-family mentoring for around $9k/$20K respectively. No one is going to give you anything valuable for free, but I felt my money was better spent on my first investment. Now I have 3 SFR's. On the multi side, I kind of see the $20K as buying you entry and proving you're serious. For legal reasons LUI doesn't do their own syndications, they just put you together with other investors/leads and do their own brokering/consulting etc to their members. For the original poster, I think the biggest thing you bring to the table in the multifamily space is probably money. If you have the wherewithal to get into a private deal as a passive I think there's groups out there that would have you. It's just a question of whether you want to pay a "guru" firm like LUI to introduce you....and to some extent to screen the people they're introducing you to, or if you want to do it yourself. I don't have $20K laying around to pay someone to (theoretically) do due diligence and consult on deals, but if I was putting $500K equity into a big syndication, I might. Perhaps when I'm done with my SFR empire... 3 down, 197 to go.... ;-)
Originally posted by @Jay Helms:
That's too high @Matt K.. @Michael Burks, $4,999...I accept bitcoin only.
I should raise my price, I means these votes don't pay for themselves. To make it easy though, Doge coin is acceptable.
Originally posted by @Lane Kawaoka:
Not disagreeing or agreeing. But for MFh where partners and peer group are required to get Fannie Freddie non recourse loans a group is part of the game. You have to pay to play.
So why not spend to build your own portfolio of smaller stuff... that you can practice on. Not only will you have a track record but you'll also start building those relationships.... vs walking into a room and paying 20k for what? He'd have no idea if the info he was getting is valuable or worthless... and the people he's handing over money to are more likely to see him as a easy mark to get more money from.
@Michael Burks If you believe that $20k is too high, how much do you really believe would be a fair price? After all you will be taking away some of his/her time. Also, how many hours are entailed in those $20k? Is this for 1x1 sessions or group sessions? The reason I'm asking these questions is because not all mentorships are equal. There are different levels. There are some levels where $20k is really low. There are some levels where it is really high.
In addition, if you were to really quantify where you want to be at the end of this mentorship, could you actually write down that target in words clearly? And what would your your timeframe for reaching that goal?
I'm asking all these questions, because I believe your overall question is really vague. Once you start breaking it down further and trying to find answers to subquestions of your overall question, you will be able to answer the question you asked yourself.
Regardless of our experience and knowledge, we all need mentoring to improve ourselves and get to our goals faster and better. We all pay a certain price for it. Good luck.
I was in your shoes a few years ago when I attended a weekend seminar by a competing program based in Dallas (if you've done your homework at all, you've surely heard of him). I walked away discouraged because I didn't even want to pay the lower level cost to become a passive investor (a fraction of the $20K charge for being mentored). In fact, the whole experience was posted in a thread on this site and it still comes up in a search.
I suggest you do what I did. I told myself that if joining a program is a good idea now, it will still be a good idea three months from now. Keep going to other events, network, explore other alternatives, but after a few months, you'll have enough information to know what you really want to do, so make a decision. There are indeed multi-family investors in town who won't charge you to invest with them, and some host educational events for low or no cost.
Me, I ended up deciding the particular guru's program was a good fit for me after all, and today I am a multi-family investor. That initial cost seems trivial compared to what I have invested today, and I do believe I got value out of the money spent. But that's just me. Maybe you'll meet someone you click with who isn't a paid guru. Just know that they get requests all the time to be someone's mentor. You'll need to stand out. Perhaps having money (as you say you do) will set you apart from many of the others.
Also know that you are sure to cross paths with students of these various mentoring programs, and some of them will swear to you its worth it. They are not getting paid to say so (at least not the ones in the program I joined), so at least hear them out and make an informed decision.
There are multi-family networking events here in DFW just about every week. Get out there.
There are no secrets to real estate investing. Don’t overthink bit and just purchase a property.
It doesn’t matter how much it cost, what matters is how much it makes...it’s all about ROI.
At the end of the day it comes down to how much effort you put in it. Many pay for gurus and never do anything with it, while others make millions without attending a ‘program’.
If you can bring value (capital, connections etc.) you will find a mentor just by networking without the need of shelling out big bucks.
I paid for mentoring before (not as much as $20k) and it was and absolute waste of money.
Unlimited mentoring and education from successful real estate investors is worth a lot to me. Continuing education in general is worth a lot to me. Not everyone finds value in the same things.
I'm a LU Preferred Investor Group member and feel I have gotten good value. The membership has paid for itself with over $100k in equity gains, a 90% cash-out refinance and several thousands in distributions from the two deals I've gotten into as a passive investor, which I would not have found without the network of LU members and lead investors. Plus, I think of my membership as buying into a club of like-minded people that I enjoy being around because we share common goals.
That said, there are no guarantees that anyone will get the same results, just like anything in life. Actually doing it requires some effort. Not all deals will turn out well, either. I agree there is a lot of hype to sell people on LU. However, I know several people who are either multimillionaires or well on their way as a result of investments they made as LU members.
Originally posted by @Todd Dexheimer:
Hiring a coach/mentor can be a good path to higher achievement and a help you get there quicker. I don't know anything about Lifestyles, but the right program can help get you to where you want to go. For me, I am self taught. I have done very well for myself with my self learning, but I don't doubt that I would be miles ahead if I would have paid money to take a course or been mentored at an earlier stage. Just paying that type of money alone would be reason enough to motivate you.
Someone told me this weekend that Tony Robbins charges $1 million to have him as your personal coach. Very successful people pay him and others like him to be their coach even after being successful.
You can do this yourself and become successful. BP is a great resource, as well as books, podcasts, youtube, etc. If you can be very dedicated to learning on your own and surrounding yourself with others that are successful and doing what you want to do, then a paid mentor may not be for you. You just need to really think about where you want to go and how you can get there.
Lifestyles is a legitimate organization, having said that, unless you have real wealth, spending 20K to get into a place to buy into a deal is just not worth it imo.
I think as a new investor there are better ways to figure out how to invest, diving into the materials, podcasts and books here at BP imo are a great way.
If you want a mentor put in some work first. Have some success and failures so you know what you are looking for. But most importantly look for deals and analyze them. If you are looking at opportunities and analyzing them quit now. If you find an actual deal you’ll be able to find a partner/ mentor. Nothing happens without the deal. Define your target market and start pounding the streets. Make connections with agents. Do something to deserve a mentor... or go pay $25,000 for it. That’s what people who want a hand out do.
If the $20k is 20% of your investing funds then it's not worth it. If that $20k is only 3-4% then it might be worth getting the right education that can compress your timelines. That will have to be up to you to decide. I did end up going with a mentor because I knew I would overanalyze things and not start unless I had the mental safety net of a mentor watching out for me. And I knew that it would take me longer if I tried to go it myself. I was determined to speed up my progress and felt a mentor would do that for me. I could have gone out and networked and hoped to get lucky enough to meet someone to take me under their wings. That would have taken longer. So I took the surer way of just paying for one.
So far it has proven to be well worth it. The equity gained from my sponsor overrides and cash distributions have paid that cost back many multiples of times. But I've put the time and energy into achieving it. Getting a mentor is no magic bullet. Be prepared to bust your hump either way if you want success.