FortuneBuilders? OR FortuneTakers??

[Jody Sims]

[Note: This post was originally a reply to an OP from Columbus, OH talking about having been "Accepted" into the mastery program. I felt it needed to be disseminated wider than that so others can decide for themselves.]

I just returned this morning after blowing off the 2nd and 3rd day of their 3-day pep rally/sales pitch in Louisville, KY for which I originally paid $197. The entire session was a sales technique designed to get you accustomed to saying "Yes" so that when they set the hook, you will say "yes" again without much thought. They will have overcome all your objections, no different than the sales technique taught to all car salesmen.

The price quoted to me by Cassie, one of the assistants, was $30-50k for the *er-hmm* "mastery program" where "not everyone is accepted" (unless the mark is able to raise their credit card credit limit or have cash in the amount FB wants to suck out of your pocket, which they overcome the objection to by saying you'll recoup that amount in your first one or two deals. Why they think it's ok for me to turn over the profit from my first couple of deals to them is beyond my comprehension.)

There's an immediate tip-off about their sole purpose when you fill out the application. On it, they ask for your current income and credit card combined limit. They want to know just how much they can push you for to enter the program. I burned mine after I gave it a little thought. Then, got my refund for the 3-day sales pitch.

By the way, they also have you tell why you want to get into their mastery program and a few other questions. This is to determine your level of desperation and how far they can get you to push your credit limit.

During the 3-day, they consistently talk about their "back office", something they also did in the brochure they gave me prior to going. This is their term for the database system they've developed "costing MILLIONS of dollars" that you can only get access to by going through their mastery program. What they don't tell you is the system can't access the MLS without you or a partner being a real estate agent and that's a pretty key requirement to making any successful use of the deal seeker portion of their system. Why they paid "MILLIONS of dollars" to have this back office system developed is beyond me. I worked mainframe computing systems for 20 years and I know they showed an intense lack of business acumen if they paid that kind of money for something they could have done for a few thousand bucks. DB programmers and the hardware and software to support the system don't cost that much. You could build one yourself on a PC in your home office with many user-friendly programs at home, even using Excel if you don't want a terribly complicated relational database. What their database keeps track of is buyer and seller contacts as well as properties they've located. I am assuming they also keep track of the various contractors they use and expenses associated with each project, but I didn't hear that said.

There's a disclaimer put on their printed materials saying they're not guaranteeing your results will be like any of the highlighted students or their own success. This is to be expected from any financial education program. There's also a disclaimer that they are not qualified tax accountants or financial planners. While this is also to be expected, it becomes obvious why they make this particular disclaimer when you're in Day 1 of the 3-day. In it, you will hear the following: use your Roth 401(k) money to make the earnest money deposit and then put all the profit from the deal back into your Roth TAX-FREE. Admittedly, I have not consulted a tax accountant on the verity of this statement, but I find it more than extremely difficult to believe it's so. But, I WILL ask a tax accountant if it's true. IF it were so, that would account for Trump's ability to attain whatever real success he's had in REI (not counting driving an entire city into bankruptcy.) [IMO, his only real success is to get us to believe he's a billionaire. But, enough politics.]

My advice to anyone who is considering FortuneBuilders is to run... run FAR away as fast as you can. Nearly everything they're offering, including mentoring, can be gotten either for free or for a small share of your profits while you're gaining understanding through real hands-on deal making. What they're selling is a get-rich-quick scheme. The examples they give you aren't impossible, but what they don't tell you is that most of their success came in the years 2009-2013 when distressed properties were practically a dime a dozen and spread far and wide. In today's seller's market, those deals are not so easy to find. That's not to say they can't be found in residential and commercial real estate, but you are going to work your tush off to find them unless you simply get lucky. Getting yourself set up in business and marketing it isn't a simple walk in the park. Getting your business in front of eyeballs isn't simple, either, and mailing lists aren't exactly cheap, whether that's for email or snail mail.

They did give me one idea that could prove helpful during the sales pitch, which is to use postcards in your direct mailing. If you send email, it will likely go into junk mail and be trashed without ever viewing it. If you use snail mail in envelopes, even handwritten, it's likely to go into the trash without the receiver ever seeing what you're offering. But, if it's on a postcard, they'll see what you offer without having to open it. ;) The same could be said for billboards, but the expense there could be prohibitive, at least at first. (We've all seen the "We buy ugly houses" billboards, a company that sold for over a billion dollars, by the way.) I suppose you could also send addressed flyers, folded to envelope size, but you'd have to be sure some of your information was printed on the outside fold.

Anyhow, that's my experience with FB. BUYER BEWARE. Check the forum here for tons more information (read: WARNINGS) on FortuneTakers *heh heh*.

Additional note: They showed an interview with Warren Buffett in which he stated he would get mortgages on every residential property he could get his hands on if he was starting from scratch today. Note... mortgages, not paying cash out of pocket. THE man himself says use OPM in your deals. That's worth taking note of.