I just attend the $495 3-day Rich Dad Real Estate Academy and they tried to get me and my mom to cash out retirement, max out our credit cards, & take a new loan on our homes to spend $12,00-$65,000 on “Advanced Training” class that may or may not be in our area, that may or may not be full and open to enrollment.

Please, do yourself a favor and just stay away. They’re crooks and they dpn’t care.

For those of you who have complaits, I’d encourage you to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

They have a F rating under the company’s previous names Whitney Information Network, Inc., & Tigrent Inc, and they keep changing their name to try and hide their corrupt past.

We need to protect others from these types of predators. Sooner or later these people are going to end up in jail.

Look at your local bookstore too. They give ‘real life’ examples, and expect you to do the same.

If you can afford $12k – $75k, go to UNIVERSITY and be a doctor, engineer, accountant. Who spends thousands of dollars without thinking/researching? You shouldn’t.

I’ve read/listened to most of Rich Dad series, and I take it all with a grain of salt, but also read other books.

Overall, I do own real estate for investing, but I did it my way that worked for me. You have to find a method that works for you, because every situation is different.

I already had some experience trading stock (and wasn’t doing badly) and this class just really made a lot of sense to me about the potential for what I can do. I did sign up to take more classes and I’m excited!!

Was there a sales pitch? Yes. Do I care? No. I was willing to look past that and evaluate what I really learned and if I’ll be able to put that to good use and the answer was absolutely YES!

Basically this is the program that RK recommends in his books: Find a mentor to show you how to do it, someone who has done it themselves. The books are inspirational, but don’t show you how. This is the HOW part!

For everyone here who is complaining about their experience, I think they are having difficulties seeing the bigger picture (remember: “see money with your mind, not your eyes”!) and they don’t want to invest their time. RK never said it was easy. Of course it takes an investment of time and money, just like anything else that you want to be good at, like playing a musical instrument at the professional level – you have to practice and pay for lessons for years. The complainers here are the majority of people in society who aren’t able to get past their fears. They are the people who believe in security instead of freedom. They are more worried about losing $6000 than they are excited about the possibility of being financially independent. If that’s their approach to life, then the stock market and real estate are no place for them anyway because those are two areas where losses are inevitable. It goes with the game. I’m choosing to step out and take a risk for something different!

Could I learn this from a book? Maybe. But I know I will learn it faster, and better with the motivation of the program and the mentors who are willing to “show” me how to do it.

I’m excited!!

LOL.

The seminar, which went from 9am to 7:45pm on Fri, 9 – 7pm on Sat and 9 – 4pm on Sun, was sales manipulation at it’s worst from the get-go beginning with the fact that were were given only two short breaks and an hour to buy our own lunch each day.

Everyone was expected to chant things like “A mentor is the key to MY success” and there were continuous allusions to needing $35K or $50K for deals and how credit card debt wasn’t bad debt if it was an investment in something greater.

We were reminded constantly that the most important investment was in ourselves and our learning. And our homework for Friday evening was to call our credit card companies and read a script to them asking for increased credit limits.

I could go on and on and on. But, for me, because of my age and experience, it was transparent manipulation from the beginning. In addition, the get rich examples were all anecdotal. In most of them there were serious assumptions or low-probability events. For instance, putting a property down payment on a credit card. Trust me, lenders are smart enough to prevent you from getting away with that.

The very first exapmple was a hypotetical Mercedies dealer who had a $100K car on the lot but who was desparate for $50K for some reason. “Who, here would give the dealer $50K for a $100K car?” Not many raised their hands. “If you didn’t raise your hand you are thinking like employees not investors.” “Why didn’t you raise your hand?” People said they didn’t have %50K. “People! The car is worth $100K. Put $50K on credit cards or borrow from your uncle and sell the car for $80K.” I won’t go into all the flaws here.

That doesn’t mean these examples never happened but just that they are really low probability events. In addition, there was very little mention of down-side risk. We were being told how we could make millions leveraging our money. But leverage works both ways. That’s why there are so many people loosing their homes today.

Don’t get me wrong. The seminar was well presented, especially if you are fond of the snake-oil style of selling. And there was a lot of information that could be used as a starting point for further investigation, such as the difference between pre-forclosure and forclosure. But it was like picking rice out of a pile of dirt instead of just getting a bowl of rice.

The other shoe finally dropped at the end of day two when the instrucor said, “Some people over lunch asked me about more training and the cost of that. How many would like to learn more?” Hands went up. “Well, I see almost all of you want to know more so let me take some time to do that.”

He talked for the next two hours, from 5pm to 7pm about advanced training packages. What he made seem like an informal interruption of the course was obviously a planned two hour pitch.

“OK everyone. Take your course catalog and check off the courses on the contents page that you think you might be interested in.” (All my quotes are really paraphrases) I’ve had sales guys to this to me before. Of course you want EVERYTHING, before you hear the prices.

A single, two day, advanced course started at over $5,000. But, that wasn’t really a good deal “so let’s talk about the packages. How many of you checked off 12 or more courses?” “Ah ha! Those are the hungry people in the room!” “How many checked off 7 or more?” “Very good.” “So let’s start there.”

The “Wealth Acceleration Certificate” package included 8 advanced courses, a personal mentor for a fixed number of days, real estate software, an additional software key so you could use it on two computers, and two, “free” refressher courses up to two year.

That package retailed at $55,404 but wait! If you purchase before the weekend was over it would only cost $34,990. But wait! Just as you were allowd to bring a frind for free today, you can bring a friend for free to any advanced training. Not only that, but you know how you were told you weren’t allowed to network with other students this weekend (that was another mind-control technique IMO) or bring in laptops. Well, at the advanced seminars we EXPECT you to network and use laptops.

He then talked about other packages, explaining that some of the cheaper ones weren’t much use becuase they didn’t have a mentor and “A mentor is the KEY to MY success” but just make sure you buy everything you can afford because winners think big even if you have to split the payment between several credit cards (BTW they don’t let you pay over time).

The cheapest package was about $10K (more if you waited) and the most expensive was $65,990. The land development certificate was an additional $14,490 but you had to have other advanced courses as a pre-requsite for that.

I could fill a chapter but after finding out that the least you could spend was around $5K and the most over $80K and after being pitched to run up credit cards for two days I skipped the high-pressure sales pitch the third day.

I hoped to find some comments from people who have advanced classes, but I only found one (on another site) which was positive, but not very detailed. As Jeremy said, “I havn’t read a single person write a comment on here that HAS taken the Advanced Training Course. I guess they’re making the money to not even worry about looking this up online.”

I’d love to get my hands on the software, though. If anyone is selling it, please email me at npushkin at gmail. I’m in no position to buy into an advanced class at this point in time.

Best to all..

The 3 day workshop was also good information. Although we were getting sales pitches the whole time for their advanced classes, I was fine with that. In fact, I expected it. I was learning and I was interested in what I was hearing. The presenter was good. He presented information in a way that was easy to understand for someone with no trading experience. I was interested in hearing more and signing up for a class until they put the pressure on.

Look, I want more education, it is just hard when they hit you with prices for their advanced classes that are high. For example 2 classes can cost between 9400 – 11000 all the way up for packages costing between 40 – 65k for 10 classes with a mentor. Because I have money put away and could afford some of these classes but did not JUMP on it, I was called out. When I gave an excuse that I would like to take 1 class to start and I was not going to pay for it today, I was told that my excuse sounded like a “cop out”

I am talking about 5 thousand dollars and was only given a couple days to think about it, Give me a break, don’t put that much pressure on me. Seriously, I was going to try 1 advanced class for 6k, spending 1k more by not doing it that day and I was basically called dumb for not spending 5k in one day, even though I had my father-in-law agree to pay the other 3k if I would wait for him. (These classes are all designed so you can bring a friend for free)

I hate high-pressure salesmen that try and paint you in a corner, so I left right before the 3rd day of training started.

If they had given me some breathing room, I would have signed up at least for the one class. Now, I question if I would attend another class if I would just be sold to about another class, and another class etc.

I think I got a basic understanding of stocks and will continue to learn on my own. If you are interested in seeing what they have to say, I say go for it. You will learn basic things that will help you understand it more, but be ready for the sales pitch and be careful for the high-pressure sales.

Well, fortunately for me I can’t afford it. I am not sure if I would have taken the bait anyway with the amount of the classes, but circumstances are such that I can not.

I was okay with that, the team agreed on a certain path I should take, and that is ok.

About a week later, I received a call from someone at Rich Dad Education. He started by asking me would I like to receive one-on-one help from a mentor. I said i would.

But then it was a scaled down tailored hard sell of what I had went through at the class.
My circumstances hadn’t changed so paying a couple grand versus tens of thousands was still out of the question.

I talked to some of the other people who took the Intro class, and although i was told they were not offering the deal to everyone, well, they too were being offered the SAME deal.

So move forward some time, another person from the class and I meet weekly to discuss new things we have learned, people we have met and more.

classes or not, you still have to get out there, meet people (Build your Database) and keep it moving.

I know these classes fit in somewhere for the right person, just not for me and my circumstances.

As for the strong sales pitch it wasn’t that strong and very open and honest in my opinion. I have seen much stronger ones that were a lot more underhanded. I don’t know if it has to do with the instructor or the MarketPlace report with this.

This is not a get rich quick (insert whatever you want) it is a system that takes time and hard work, and that why it depends on the person doing it. You can take what I say whatever why you want, but if you want to do something different this could be an option. $500 is not much to pay to find out if this is something you want to do for the rest of your life.

I wish you all the best in all your life.