Quote from @Greg R.:
Thanks for the reply @Spencer Cornelia. To be fair, you're not an unbiased person when it comes to Graham if you guys are buddies and hang out regularly.
I put Graham under "honorable mention" and clearly stated: "you're not likely to get scammed out of a lot of money (yet) from following Graham. But you will waste a lot of time and watch videos that are 95% sensationalism to get a few small nuggets of information." - I consider this to be a very accurate statement.
I DO NOT think he is in the same category as Kiyosaki and the others. If he starts going down the road of paid mentorships, seminars with high-pressure sales, etc., he can easily evolve into those guys. Hopefully you can encourage him not to go that route despite the vast amount of money he can make.
I don't doubt he was a successful RE investor - I never stated that he wasn't. My statement was that he has made most of his wealth from his social media revenue streams. Is that not the case? If you are willing to personally confirm that a majority from his wealth is from RE investing and not from social media, ad revenue, sponsors, etc., I'll stand corrected.
And if he did make a majority of his wealth from social media, that's totally fine. He should be congratulated for his success as a very successful social medial influencer.
However, there are investors here on BP that have spent a half century (or close to it) focusing on nothing but RE, building a RE empire and have an incredible amount of knowledge that's impossible for a 20 or 30 year old to amass. I see people like that as the authority and much more qualified to be seen as the guru on RE.
For an aspiring social media influencer, Graham is definitely your guy - he's one of the best in terms of marketing himself, ad revenue, sponsorships, etc.
@Greg R. He covers recent news and a very small amount of his content is filler so not sure why you think people waste their time watching his videos that are "95% sensationalism". The titles of his videos are certainly sensationalist, but so is nearly every YouTuber's (and any print journalism for that matter). But his content isn't. His content is actually nearly the exact opposite of sensationalism as he covers news/finance/economy from public sources in a very dry manner. His content is very well researched and structured in such a way that the audience can learn a lot in the 10-12 minutes.
Keep in mind that once you understand certain concepts, you aren't going to re-learn them so when he covers them in a video, it may feel like a waste of time to you. This is like taking Spanish 1 every year in college and complaining that there's only a couple of nuggets of info in the course during your senior year.
Sensationalism is using excitement to trick the audience while not providing accurate information. His titles: yes. His content: no.
We've discussed this topic thoroughly as I've told him some of his titles push the lines of clickbait and he shows that there are more positive comments and a higher like/dislike ratio on his more sensationalist titles/thumbnails than those that are not. I understand the complaints, but YouTubers do what works. We have insane amounts of data at our fingertips and we adjust every day, as needed.
"If he starts going down the road of paid mentorships, seminars with high-pressure sales, etc., he can easily evolve into those guys." This is about as intelligent of a statement as "Greg R. provides good posts on the forums but if he starts hanging out with criminals, then he can easily evolve into those guys." Well yea no duh. But this was a completely random statement with no merit lol.
A majority of his wealth is from the social media income - no doubt. This is true.
I'm just confused as to how he even is considered a honorable mention fake guru. He's transparent about everything he's ever done in real estate and sells a digital course from his success in those fields.
"I see people like that as the authority and much more qualified to be seen as the guru on RE." --> using this logic, there should only be one guru in every industry because if someone is more qualified than you, then you shouldn't be given the chance to instruct.
It's possible I'm misunderstanding your argument. If you're upset that he's seen as a qualified real estate "guru", then I don't think that's justified. There's no doubt there's investors in this forum that are more experienced on the REI side than he is, but that doesn't make his content less valuable.
"you're not likely to get scammed out of a lot of money (yet) from following Graham" --> this is a pretty cheap low blow. You're implying that he's going to begin scamming, but hiding behind the veil of "I didn't say he was scamming, just that it's possible that he might." Well yea it's possible that you turn into one of the biggest fraudsters ever on the BP forums, but not yet. And maybe one day.
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As for the topic at hand, the most awesome fake gurus are the sports bettors. They're the biggest frauds. Or anyone who raised money to invest in crypto, but took the money just for funding a lavish lifestyle.
