All Forum Posts by: Jason Mathews

Well, I hope your wrong, remains to be seen.

People who DID NOT make money from the courses they purchased didn't make money for one of three possible reasons.

1. They never put what they learned from the course into action.

2. They did put or at least tried to put what they learned into action and it didn't work, and

3. The course was just a bunch of theroy and/or stuff that is out dated, or worked great in the part of the country that is was created in but doesn't work in the part of the country it was purchased in.

I am not sure that people who purchase REI courses are just looking for a way to get rich quick. I think people purchase REI courses because they think RE is a way to gain independance and long term wealth or at least that is what they should be looking at.

Often times people are led down rosey paths by all the Nugu's (people who think that short periods of high profits from specific niches make then experts) - Thus the title of my original Post.

The last statement in your reply post states that in your "experience most people that take courses never translate the material to real-world success".

So, I take it that you have some experience with people who have taken courses and either didn't put the material into action or did put it into action and it (the knowledge they gained) didn't translate into real world success.

It would be great if you would tell us about those experiences.

I just took a look at your blog over at 123flip by the way and I like it. Great concept to allow others to follow your progress and see things as they unfold. I wish you continued success.

Jason

Mat

Thanx for the post, but, and I don't mean any disrespect, you sound like an Agent..

The problem is that many novice investors don't know what questions to ask the agent and we live in an instant gratification society. People are searching for answers and they want them yesterday.

There is nothing wrong with courses and if nothing else, a good course will give one a list of questions that they can then seek the answers to either from an agent or from other sources.

The problem is in figuring out which course is good and which course is a bunch of hyped up BS. Many courses introduced to the market over the last five years are created by Information Marketers who turned from selling e-books on "How to teach your Parrot to Talk" to how to "Make Millions in REI".

What many novice investors may not realize is that the number of REI Websites grew after the bubble burst by 10,000 fold. That tells me that many a Guru went from Investing in Real Estate to selling How to's on Real Estate Investing and learned their marketing skills from Internet Marketing Gurus like Frank Kern who did in fact create and market the e-book on "How to teach your Parrot to talk.

Many of the Guru Course Websites are just filled with Testimonials from people who are happy to tell us how much they "WILL" make after having taken a particular course.

What I am looking for is responces from people who actually DID or DID NOT make money from a course they purchased.

In this way, I hope to find out if the information being marketed is fact worthwhile or is in fact just hyper BS.

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

On that point I have to differ. I am not a shrew for Phill and I don't even think I have mentioned his company's name, but I have hit the ground running! Has it paid off yet, no, but I am confident that it will. I have two deals already. 1 was easy; a cash purchase on a killer little buy and hold rental property for less than 50% of value. The other I would have had no idea how to begin structuring a deal on it. I would not have even known what questions to ask in a forum such as this one. I'm doing things that I had never heard of before his course.

Will it all pay off? We'll see and I'll let you know soon.

Bob

So, Bob, Your comment above was back in June. It is now November. In June which was shortly after purchasing the course, you were still excited about it and your comments Positive. How about Now. It has been 5+ months since you were working on that first deal. Are you still pleased with having spent the money and taken the course and are you still following it's teaching and doin deal specifically related to having taken it.

Bob,

Did you ever buy that course and if so, did you benefit from it? If you bought it, can you comment on it.

I am really getting tired of hype. Every body has TNBT (the next big thing) and everybody with a list of hype buying prospects gets to market it and a nice commission if they make the sale. One of the things that facinates me most about all the real estate gurus is how quickly their websites die. Preston Ely for example uses referals in most of his product sales mailings that list their web sites and when you do a search for those web siytes, they don't exist. I do beleive that P.E. did in fact make lots of money flipping houses in the early 2000's through 2005 when I was introduced to his first e-book. I find it interesting that at a time when flipping began to die the slow bubble bursting death, he began selling an e-book about flipping and since that time has come out with every sort of RE investing product he can think of, It's called feeding the frenzy. Find a Frenzy and feed it, keep it going and you'll make money in the process. Simple formula. Problem is, the only one making money with the worthless info is him.

Now we have the new Freedomsoft. that will probably do a great job of organizing everything and make it easy to find.

I watched several of the pre launch video's and they expalin almost everything except where the buyers come from. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be organized, but if you have no buyers, you make no money. Finding good quality under valued property is almost too easy today. It is everywhere you look, but finding buyers for that property is the hard part. Think about it. Joe seller tries to sell his house By owner for 2-3 months with no success, so he lists with the local real estate pro for 6 months with no success, then the seller stumbles upon a one of the 1000's of web sites Freedom soft is about to create and goes under contract with one of the web site owners who then turns around and flips it to whom?

Their are no secrets to investing in real estate people, It's real simple. In a down market, Buy low and sell high or buy low and hold until you can sell high. In a loose market, buy High and sell higer and all the hyped up e-books and software products in the world won't help you do either.

Unbelievable! BEWARE THE NUGUs

The number of NUGU'S calling themselves Real Estate Experts these days is absolutely UNBELEIVABLE.

The newest BS "BALONEY SYSTEM", my nice term for utter "BULL SXXX" INFORMATION SYSTEM,
is being offered by some guy who's movie starts out with a great voice over intro about his starting as a "widowed single dad on unemployment" and now he has become the nations "Foremost Authority" on Commercial Real Estate Investing. OH PLEASE. Why then do I find nothing about this Nations Foremost Authority when I search the internet using his name. The only thing I find is information that he created.

Shortly after receiving the information from him, you will begin receiving the same information from every other NUGU on line, They will all tell you how WONDERFUL this new product is, They will use lead ins like "Hey, my friend Jason" is ready to release his Totally New System for creating mega wealth in real estate or some other such nonsense.

What is worse is that they all push exactly the same NONSENSE. This is known as affiliate marketing for those of you unfamiliar with the concept. It doesn't even matter if the stuff their pushing makes any sense.

Forget the current Real Estate Market for a minute. This has nothing to do with Real Estate. This is called Build A List and market every last product under the sun to that list. Good, Bad or Indifferent, doesn't matter, just market, market, market.

There is a major difference between buying a product, using that product and if you get good results from that product, telling all your friends or subscribers about it and pushing a product good or bad just because you are being paid a commission for doing so. In the first case it's called referring and in the second it's called prostitution.

This Skeptical investor has stood silent for too long. I have been investing in real estate for more than 25 years, and yes, I have made many multiples of millions of dollars investing in real estate, In fact, my claim to fame in my inner circle of friends and fellow investors is that I have never, ever lost a dime in any of my Real Estate Investment and neither has anyone who has ever followed my advice, but that is a story for another day. Being an avid investor, I often take a look at the various offerings being advertised all over the Internet. Heck, there may just be something out there in cyberspace that will increase my profits even further. I guess I ended up on in lots of different marketers lists .

I watched this new Nugu's video, felt my "heart strings tugged" at the idea that he was not only widowed, but a single dad, and unemployed to boot, then felt the RA RA SIS BOOM BA go off in my head when I heard he was an ex Marine, Semper Fi baby, and so I waded through the intro to get to some of the meat. Well, let this ex Marine, Viet Nam Vet, single dad, who went from unemployment to owning 16 single family rental homes and 28 multi family properties in less than 4 years, while attending college to obtain not one but two bachelor degrees while raising two young children tell you my reaction. "OH MY GOD, I have never heard such a crock of Baloney."

But, the point of this post is not to talk down about him personally as much as it is to warn all of my fellow investors and all of you investor newbees out there to be very skeptical of all these NUGUS all pushing the same nonsense. This newest program hasn't even been released yet and every NUGU on the planet is trying to convince the people on their list that this is the answer to their commercial investing prayers.

I will admit that I only watched the introduction video, which included two techniques for making major income with no cash, but I gotta say, I have never seen such HOG WASH. The thing that upsets me the most however is that I am now receiving mail daily from NUGU after NUGU advising that their friend is about to release this great new system. They haven't even had time to review the material yet.

Let this skeptical investor tell you in no uncertain terms, "There are no secrets to Investing in Real Estate".

Jason Mathews, The Skeptical Real Estate Investor