For what it's worth, I just completed the real estate insiders summit, Fortune builders' three day workshop in Romulus Michigan which is in Metro Detroit. Overall I'm glad I went. With some reservations.
I wasn't able to attend Friday morning, but three people told me I didn't miss much. Friday afternoon was worthwhile. I should say that I am fairly brand new to real estate investing have done some reading, listening to BiggerPockets podcasts, etc.
Generally I would break the workshop down into three roughly equal thirds.
- one third was motivational speaking which I liked.
- 1/3 was useful information.
- And 1/3 was selling fortune builders mastery program.
As I said, Friday afternoon was worthwhile; I took a lot of notes. All day Saturday was a waste of my time. All they did was talk about the various features of Fortune Builders system once you buy in. You can buy in at three levels, from $20,000 to 34 or $35,000. So Saturday sucked and I was angry about it.
Sunday was much better with a lot of information. The presenter spent significant time on exotic deals that were nowhere near what I was interested in at this point, but the day was still worthwhile.
The presenter's name was Gerald Martin, and he was excellent. If he breaks out to become a motivational speaker on his own, I would probably pay to see him.
So yes one day (Saturday) was a waste of my time, but overall I'm glad I went. He spent a lot of time teaching the "make money"/success mindset and getting over your fear, which was helpful to me.
They passed out cards for people to fill out so they could be interviewed for the very expensive Mastery Program. I simply didn't fill out my card so they didn't call me for that. So I can say that besides the waste of an entire day talking about the features of their paid system, the overall sales was not a very hard pitch. In other words you didn't have anyone trying to corner you into doing something you weren't comfortable with.
At the end, on the survey, they asked what I thought the value of the summit was. I said it was about $150, less than the 197 I paid. That's all due to the wasteful Saturday. Also my wife was not able to come so it was just me. So I'm not entirely unhappy that I went. I expected the sales pitches so I wasn't too surprised. I got some solid information and perspective for a real estate beginner.
Oh and one more thing about the Saturday when they went over all the features of their online fortune builders system that you can buy into. Although they didn't give me any information that I can use (because I'm not going to buy that system), it was interesting to see all the things that their system does. It gave me a good sense of all the functions I will need to tend to one way or another. It really is an impressive system if it works as well as it was presented.
Hope this helps.
Jon
