I just got finished with the 3 day seminar today. I took tons of notes and was curious to meet / network with anyone who actually chose the Mastery program to see where they are at now with REI.
On day one there were about 200 people and I thought that was a lot. I attended with my wife as we figured the $197 wasn't a bad deal. Right from the start I told my wife that we were being pitched something else. I had no idea what Mastery was but I had a gut feeling that it was something NOT included in this three day seminar simply because of the way "mastery" was presented, and boy was I right.
The night of day 1 I came home and researched the Mastery program and when I told my wife the cost, she was like; no thanks. The troubling thing is this, for a weaker minded person they would have not been able to recognize the setup. The entire seminar revolves around the Mastery program and seeing just how many people "might qualify to be selected". Before the end of day one the speaker did an exercise and asked us, how many of us could raise 100k cash in 24hrs, not many hands went up. The speaker seemed troubled, the number was lowered from 100 to 50k and so on and so forth until it was down to 10k; which isn't even enough to buy the lowest priced Mastery program.
On day 2, fewer people showed up and on day 3 less showed up than on day 2, so much so that they removed seats from the room that we were in so there wouldn't be the appearance of a ton of empty seats. To my surprise some people, about 6 or 8 actually signed up for the Mastery program. I guess from the day 1 total that's about a just shy of a 5% conversion rate which, I guess isn't bad.
I know this for a fact; just starting out is tough and having a blueprint to follow is great, I'm just not sure that blueprint is worth 25k. I could have also benefited from the walkthrough of a rehab job with a coach, I'm just not sure that walkthrough is worth 25k. Knowing exactly what contracts to use, what docs to file, what order to file the docs and use the contracts would be great. I said to my wife; man if this was 5k, we might consider it but then I said, if their system works so well; they should finance my first deal (a deal that their system will ensure is correct and that I would make money on) and take their 25k from the profit.
We knew before hearing the price from the speaker (because I researched it online) that the Mastery program was not for us. Not at this time. I told my wife, the only way to really learn this business is to do this business. Even if we don't make any "live" deals, we can go through the motions. We do plan on joining DIG (our local real estate investing group).
There was a lot of great "surface" info from the seminar, but nothing really in depth. The instructor did make some live phone calls with FSBO's he had us pull from the internet. That was very interesting however I was expecting to get hand held through an entire deal; from the buy and or sell side of things and that didn't happen. I would have to sign up for the Mastery program for that.
Do I think the $197 was well spent? I'm not sure because I don't think I'm in any better place than I was at the beginning of day 1. I could have probably read a couple of books and got the same info for 1/4 the price. There was so much info spread over the three days mixed with sales pitching the Mastery program blended with tons of inspirational speech that you leave feeling good about the seminar but not because you learned anything valuable but because you just completed three days of very good motivational speaking.
