Having Diarrhea - What's that got to do with REI??

[Jason Mathews]

Does having diarrhea make one an Expert on Toilets?

Just because one investor, in one part of the country, during a specific time period, uses a specific technique (s) to make money in real estate, does not make him or her a Real Estate Expert.

Over the last few years, I have seen hundreds of Guru courses hit the market on every imaginable topic. Many of these seem to be taught by RE Entrepreneurs who in a SPECIFIC MARKET, using a SPECIFIC TECHNIQUE may or may not have actually made money from the technique. . Either way, they package the technique into a course and sell it as TNBT (the next big thing).

After having created that specific technique, they package it with pretty video's, tons of written documents, nice web sites, fancy squeeze pages and other materials and call it "The New Secret Sauce" for Real Estate Investing and they market it nationwide.

There is a distinct difference between a Real Estate Investor and a Real Estate Entreprneur.

Examples:

The Realtor in South Carolina who prior to the bubble bursting sold 15 properties in 15 minutes to a list of buyers he had been building for years. After the Bubble Burst, he creates a course about how to pull this feat off and sells it all over the country. What he doesn't tell his audience is that in his little part of the country, the market had been depressed for several years both before and during the Booming 1999 to 2005 years and that the average price of those 15 homes was most likely under $30,000.

The Poor Marine Corp Pilot who gave up his commission, was out of work and collecting unemployment (sob, sob) who found a defunct multi family property and was able to make a deal with the seller (who couldn't give the property away) using a "Master Lease Option". He then creates a Course with lots of pretty videos etc and sells the course using a slew of JV partners and pays the partners a whopping 80% commission on his over $2000 course.

The orange haired kid from Florida who does quite well for himself with short sales in a Florida Market using a specific tecnique who joins forces with a local attorney who just happens to own a slew of real estate offices and then creates a course that teaches every one else to do the same supposidly in any market. Problem being that the Florida Market is entirely different than almost every other market in the country.

And there are hundreds if not thousands of other examples I could give.

At a time when most of the Gurus are telling us that Buying, rehabbing and flipping SF is DEAD, I personnally have bought, rehabbed and flipped or rented and held 22 single families using a specific technique that I developed and have been using for more than 20 years in every type of market. I guess I should create a course and sell it to others, but there is no way to actively invest in real estate (investor) and also create a course and all the marketing material (entrepreneur).

I have also followed several of the posts about those and other courses here on BP. Many comments both Pro & Con have been posted both about the need for paid education vs finding it for free and about the Specific Courses for which the thread was started.

It always seems that the Positive Comments come from one of two sources. People who have purchased the course recently and are excited about all the money "they think they will make", and from associates of the Guru that sold the course.

Many of the positive comments seem to come from members that I know for a fact (from having received offers from them as JV partners) of the course being written about

I chose the three examples above because they all are courses that were initially created and sold 2 - 5 years prior to this post.

Now, I would like feed back from anyone (preferably not JV Partners of any course) who has purchased a course of any kind form any Guru and had a good or bad experience with the course. If you purchased one of the courses above great, but in general I want to hear from people who purchased a course from a Guru and actually had time to use the course, time to apply the techniques taught in the course. Was the purchase worth while, did you make money with it, was it all that it was cracked up to be.

Please don't reply if you just finished the course and are still Hyped by "all the money you WILL make with the course"

I want to hear from people who bought the course and either DID or DID NOT make money with it and why in either case.

Thanx in advance.

:D :D