Nigel W
Reply: 1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1
From: Mike .
Show us the money! (long post)
From: NigelW
Date: 15 Feb 2001
Time: 19:35:33
Please excuse my cynicism but these expensive seminars are, in my view, a complete waste of time for 99.9% of people - and particularly if you're a newbie.
Thus, I call upon everybody who's done one of these $3K+ courses to step up to the plate and say how much they've made by using these strategies. I rather suspect that a comparison will reveal the experienced players using tried and tested methods will beat their returns hands down.
IMHO most people would be far better off buying a range of property investment books which cover a variety of strategies (say the Somers books for buy and hold, maybe the 7 steps to wealth for its twist, burley's australian book, some renovation books, talk to their lawyer about the lease/option concept if that appeals etc) at a TOTAL cost of probably $500-600 bucks tops rather than spending 5-10 grand on some "hi energy" glitzy seminar.
Then use the rest of your $5-10K for a deposit once you've read the books, digested and evaluated them, decided your goals and strategy, and done your suburb and price research.
Whilst I can't (and won't) make any comment about any particular "guru" presenter the environment in which these presenters give the information is not conducive to 99% of people critically evaluating it and are often flawed or excessively risky.
Whilst I'm the first one to agree you need to work on your attitude to wealth creation and believe in yourself, what tends to happen at these seminars is that anyone who criticizes the "guru's" strategy is either howled down as some sort of "negative - close minded chicken little" whose "attitude" blocks them becoming wealthy or worse the legitimate flaws in the plan are brushed aside by a few glib responses.
The other response from people will probably be "but I'm spending on my financial education and that is the most valuable thing I can do". (BTW this is usually expressed with almost religious fervor by the people who've read the Kiyosaki books etc and not done much else) I agree - financial education is very important but so is experience and if you "educate" yourself into the poorhouse you'll never get to put that knowledge into action.
Have I been burnt by these seminars - NO. But I've spoken to a number of people who have. They wanted to fly before they could even crawl when it came to property investment. They didn't understand the basics like the difference between P&I and I/O loans but wanted to jump into wraps/flips/trading/massive gearing and off the plan deals. This is just another example of the fast buck-greed approach that trips people up when the seminar brochure has the guru pictured with their luxury car/house/yacht/island etc.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be a 90yr old millionaire when I'm too old to enjoy it - but you can't implement advanced fast track strategies without the fundamentals and I don't think the place to learn the fundamentals is in a 4 day class. The most COST EFFECTIVE method to do that is get some basic knowledge under your belt from good old fashioned reading and bloody invest in property and learn from the process rather than just talking about shifting stuff to your asset column blah blah blah.
These supercharged seminars might give just one useful tidbit of info to experienced players but like every other investment, you've got to look at the return on investment. For these expensive seminars that Return is very low in my view.
Excuse my ramblings...Perhaps I'm speaking out of turn but I think its CRIMINAL that people are paying so much money for information which they are not experienced enough or capable of putting into use.
ps. why is it that the Kaye promotional material never lists names and ACN's of the companies he has established, listed on the ASX, supercharged their revenues etc?
"overpriced Guru" advocates please show us the money! (Remember I'm not asking what the guru has done - we want to know what YOU have achieved through implementation of the strategies you paid a hefty sum to learn.
Cheers N.
