Phil Grove Real Estate Guru

[Rick Via]

I'm at a seminar in Dallas . The guru is Phil Grove. The sales pitch is now happening. Does anybody know if this is worthwhile? A ripoff?

[MIKE HOUSTON]

I have been part of Phil Grove's Big Dog program for quite a time now, well over two years, and I have to say that I am REALLY disappointed with the program.

I would not recommend it to anybody. Phil Grove and Shenoah Grove have a business model based on education, not really on real estate investing, and they are simply interested in the big $$ that people pay to join their programs; and that is all they do, and this is how their system is organized.  They just only care for the people that have paid for the highest program, their "Apprentice" program. The rest of the members that paid other cheaper programs are not really given visibility in the group or invited to events that really bring value to their education. But even going through this program will not guarantee you much, as I have known MANY people paying for this program and not really doing ANY real estate deals their first year or more, and latter, they just struggle to get deals. Their system is extremely discriminatory to the cheaper programs, systematically excluding those members from the real quality education, while the premium program is essentially ineffective.

The program is extremely mediocre, to say the least. The initial training is a 12 week program where each new investor will be told to set up an infrastructure of a legal entity, business cards, phone numbers, web pages and miscellanea, to pretend to be a real estate investor, because all this, will not really make anybody a real estate investor. There will be homework, lots of yellow letters sent, and different weekly follow up calls from someone in Phil's team. The reality is that most people do not learn anything from this training nor will ever bring it to practical implementation. The quality of their education on real estate is not better than what you could learn from a few good books from Amazon, and at a fraction of the cost. Basically, in my opinion a total waste of time and money.

The quality of their marketing is well below poor, based on sending hundreds of yellow letters to essentially the pre foreclosure lists, hoping to get lucky with the deal of your life. No other advanced marketing strategies are really taught through this program.  They create the false idea that mailing the pre foreclosure lists will get you tens of deals and that deals are easy to get. The also encourage people to do door knocking on the pre foreclosure list, and the use of bird dogs to do it.

That is in summary their core marketing education, although Brent Mott, from their team, offers additional marketing education during some weekend every month, which provides some good quality education.

Their educational program also includes scheduled support calls with Shenoah and other people in the group, several days a week. Cases are discusses, under questions and answer sessions, which in general are good, but no better than reading a few good books about advanced real estate investing. Many of their questions are of legal nature, and probably a good title company could answer them for you.

After the initial three or four weeks of training, the only thing that people really know is how to send yellow letters, the 70% minus repairs rule and little else. No motivation, no action taking, no nothing else. Most of the people does not know how to run good comps, they do not have a clue about estimating repairs, they do not know any contractors, and over 95% are totally unable to find a good deal. The program is essentially a failure.

When Phil presents his Big Weekend Events it seems that results are typical and easy to get, although the CLEARLY makes a disclaimer, as advised by his attorney, that this is not the case and that RESULTS ARE NOT TYPICAL. People are ignorant enough to disregard this and they register in a program that does not guarantee any of the results that he promises and brags about, although he is really good at making it sound like if people are going to make hundred of thousands of dollars just after going through his program. He will try to justify that joining his program will be your best option, unless you have an unlimited amount of money and time to spend doing the research and learning real estate investing on your own, but the reality is that it does not take much time nor money to learn what he teaches, and even more; it will basically take a dozen of some of the best real estate investing books on Amazon and the time to go through them, subscribing to good sites as this one,  and joining a couple of good REIAs in your area, without having to pay for such expensive and useless mentoring. That is all it takes ... plus a lot of motivation and action taking, as any true real estate investor knows.

They meet twice a month in Houston, first Thursday and third Tuesday of every month, and they have two rooms, one for the "general public", which is basically a hook to get people interested to sign up for the "Big Event", and the second room for the Bid Dog mastermind. 

The percentage of people having actual deals among Big Dogs, is, in the best case, under 5%, probably 2% or less, and that could be considered their real success rate. During the "Mastermind", deals and strategies are discussed, but 90% of the time is allocated about doing "preforeclosures". In their group it seems that life does not exist beyond preforeclosures.  It is really tiring and depressing to spend almost 2 hours just talking about pre foreclosures. There are no real wholesalers in the group, and very few people doing free and clear transactions, at least that I know of, and the average level of the knowledge about real estate of any of those "Bid Dogs" attending the masterminds is very low, or almost non existent, as most of them are new members.

Phil preaches that they are experts because the know just a little be more about real estate investment than the average guy, but the reality is that is all smoke and mirrors, and they feed and prey upon people expectations to improve their lives, creating false expectations about people being able to make money the easy way, with no credit or money to start with. The reality is that if you speak to many Bid Dogs that have been in the program for over a year, most of them do not have done much or no actual deals at all, and they are very disappointed with the program.

Phil and Shenoah are surrounded by a group of assistants which, in my opinion, are just plain liars and fakes, pretending to be seasoned real estate investors, which is really questionable, and talking about incredible and fantastic deals that they are doing, in my opinion, most really in fantasy land. Brent Mott is probably the only accesible and genuine person in their team, he will listen to you and will not turn around and leave you hanging in the middle of a conversation like most of the others do. 

Among the useful people that work around the Groves there is Alan T Ceshker, their recommended attorney, which is very knowledgeable and a really good asset to know. He is not the cheapest, but he is probably one on the best attorneys for real estate investors in Texas.

Kimberlee Lado is also an extraordinarily helpful person, and will help providing good information about resources within the group to the members, but she mostly does all the back office work for the Groves. Like all efficient people, she has a very helpful and good disposition, but do not forget that she will not work for you, but for the Groves.

Phil rarely socializes with anybody at those events, and he is the kind of guy who will not look at you straight in the eye (not surprising, since he must be aware that his program has probably a 95% failure rate) and if you have not paid the full apprentice program, we will not even take 5 minutes of his time to talk to you. He either has very poor social skills or he just doesn't give a dime about people once they paid.

If you have paid the "Apprentice" program you will be eventually invited to spend some time with Phil some weekends, and play poker, smoke cigars and stuff like that, if you are into that, and some "private" events of the kind. If you have not paid the "Apprentice" program you will just be another sucker that paid at least $20K to finance the Groves lavish lifestyle, and you will get very little back from it.

I have been attending many of their meetings, and over the course of the months and years I have seen very mediocre people with very little experience or skills in real estate to be presented as real estate investors, many of them people that have barely made any money on their deals, and that have done very few deals. Once again, all smoke and mirrors.

I am amazed that people such as Nancy Gonzalez, Hector Suarez, Belkis Guifarro, Terry Knight or some others are anything but close to a seasoned real estate investor, could be teaching real estate investing seriously.

The meetings are also a sales pitch for all kind of vendors, specially people from Quest Ira, among others.

Within the Bid Dog group there is also people trying to sell memberships to marketing coops, such as Erick Rodriguez, Hector Suarez or Erick Beltran. In my honest opinion, the farther away you stay from those people the better, as they have very little to offer as real estate expert.

I have to admit that Shenoah is the only really knowledgeable person there, and that she really does her best in the mastermind sessions, adding a lot of value and answering many questions. She is the only real estate investor there,  but you have to take into consideration that she is fully aware of the low success rate of their program and that she is there to keep the engine going for their educational business, which is the real nature of their business, making money on the program. 

Finally, the really few seasoned real estate investor in the Bid Dog group are there mostly to get financing and money from the new investors and partner up with them, using their money to their benefit, and with very little interest in really teaching or mentoring anybody on and selfless manner. People like Nam, and some of the old timers there are actually good at doing deals, but not to help anybody new to learn from them. The "old dogs" there keep their mouths shut unless it is to ask for money.

My advice is to run from that program, and invest that money is online education, on well known resources such as the Kent Clothier reww system, this Biggerpockets forum, the cheap and inexpensive marketing programs from John Cochran, Chris Prefontaine or many others that will help you to get started without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on mentoring of people as little genuine as the Groves.

In summary, Phil Grove's program will not work for 95% of the people that enroll on it, and out of the other 5%, it will mostly help those that end up in Phil's team. A very rare 1%-2% will be really successful and you will not see them much in the meetings after a while, as they are to busy to go back to "school", and probably the masterminds will not be teaching them anything new or adding any value. It is incredible that so far nobody has actually initiated a class action lawsuit on the Groves yet.