@Jim K., thanks. I can't say that I really disagree with anything you said. I also, used to be a teacher. It's amazing how that low teacher salary PLUS the addition of wife/children forces you to look for income opportunities.
I can't say this is based on popular advice, but its based on my own personal experience. I started an indoor sports arena in the New Orleans area about 10 years ago. I am similar to you in that I can kind of piece together information from a variety of places (although I haven't found a blueprint for stocks or amazon products yet). But I first started trying to build the arena based on my own business acumen, researching various facilities around me, examining their processes, etc. I got burnt pretty bad on not buying the "blueprint". Like, $50,000 in debt burnt. It was humbling. I decided to go with the notion of Socrates when he said, "I know that I know nothing"....or something like that.
Then I hired a $25,000 consultant with a second mortgage on my house, and that was the best money I ever spent (considering my college education was $20k per year and didn't give me jack crap). So when I read that comment from John Assaraf about following a blueprint it really resonated with me with my personal experience, and I found it to be true in all my other endeavors. I've spent too much time in my life and wasted too much money speculating and figuring out things on my own. So now, it is my personal philosophy to pay for speed.
What you say about social proof is true. It can definitely be manipulated. In fact, they say the first 15 reviews on every amazon product is from friends and family of the seller. I can tell you, across any industry I've ever been in, that people are 20 to 30 times more likely to give you a review when they are upset. And if you get them tremendous results, they are happy, but not "I'll record you a video testimonial and spend time writing you a review" happy. So most positive testimonials, unless paid actors, need to be incentivized to some extent. Doesn't make them any less true or valuable. But there is an ethical way of doing it. For me, when someone thanks me for getting them a result, I just say, "hey, the best way to thank me for that is to give me a review".....
Personally, if I'm skeptical of a review on a high dollar product, I will actually look that person up on facebook and see what their relationship to the product owner is and message them. So, it's not an airtight metric for evaluating someone's effectiveness to get you results, but it is "A" metric to look at for anyone who feels they would achieve results faster with a mentor.
Altogether, I completely understand the skepticism of the masses of anyone who offers real estate education. But I do find it interesting and ironic the level of skepticism that is involved in real estate education. Most real estate education is under $1000, and mentorships are between $10,000 and $25,000. Most college education (3 credit hours) is $1783.38. But nobody bats an eye to pay for college education.
Like I said, I paid an average of $20,000 a year for my college education, and all I got was a lousy piece of paper saying I passed some tests, a year of unemployment, and a job as teacher. I didn't think twice about paying $1783.38 for a blow off class that would yield me 0 returns in life. So, from that perspective, I've been happy to pay for real estate education over the years. Roberty Kiyosakis $20 book made me more money than $80,000 worth of college education. I don't mind investing in stuff like that.
So, I do think there is a little bit of a lopsided approach and skepticism to anyone who provides private education, because we have all experienced a much more costly and less results driven institutional education without any sort of scrutiny. But there are some metrics to cautiously approach for sure when looking into "guru" education. And ultimately, no guru or education will yield results for you. Only you can do that by taking action. So my opinion is, for action takers, its worth it to pay for speed.
