BiggerPockets

Hello Everyone,

My name is Sean Henderson and I am fairly new to the investing community and biggerpockets.com. After searching and searching through these forums and through different search engines online, I cant seem to find any objective opinions of Bill Bronchicks mentoring program. I am hoping that someone here has some personal knowledge of his program or knows someone who does. If anyone does, please let me know what you think of it in terms of the three levels offered and if you believe it is worth the money.

My biggest concern is that I have read that most of the learning is in the first few months and then the rest of the time will be spent making things happen by applying what you have learned. Because of this, is it worth paying for the full year of the program or just paying for the 6 months and working hard to make things happen early enough that you can have the guidance early on. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I do live in Denver Colorado so I would be able to apply his knowledge of the local market to my plans and goals. That being said, part of me wonders how much information you can really get from a mentor because in essence, if a mentor teaches you all they know, wouldn't that be counter productive to their succesful business because now they would have strong local competition? just a thought!

Thank you for your time!

Sean

Bill actually runs the largest of our REIA's, CAREI - Colorado Association of Real Estate Investors. He's a pretty savvy guy who does know the local conditions and laws, and does actively invest here. Whether or not its worthwhile to pay him to mentor you is another question.

Denver is actually a very competitive market, especially in the range where rentals make sense.

Go to some CAREI meetings and you'll meet him in person. There's one tomorrow night on the NW side. His brother's speaking, so I think he will be there. This is a smaller meeting, so its a good chance to meet some people.

Is there another way that I can learn the legal and paperwork end of the deals that you can suggest? I would love to hear any ideas of suggestions that you can offer.

You can make friends with the successful investors in your area, starting with the successful investors at your REIA. I'm absolutely sure that several of the investors there will be happy to share their paperwork with you and help walk you through a deal (maybe even Jon).

In the mean time, ask questions here on BiggerPockets!

Good Luck,

Mike

IRR has a meeting on Thursday (tomorrow, now). That's also a smaller, though not exactly small, group.

I'd have to agree. The CAREI meetings have become to "pitchy" for me, especially the big one. Nevertheless, I have made several useful contacts via CAREI.

I've only been to one IRR meeting so far, and it was very good. The speaker was not selling anything, and gave a great presentation on raising money.

To answer your question, Sean, Bill sells a set of courses that contain a ton of forms. The material is pretty good, too. Tends to be pretty basic stuff, but covers a lot of detail.

John, the thing that I am most concerned with is exactly what you said, "tends to be pretty basic stuff, but covers a lot of detail. The thing that I keep noticing over and over is that everything that I have seen that is for sale doesn't seem to have all of the info. If I were to purchase the courses I would be looking for something that has a complete in depth lesson on how each transaction works and the paperwork necessary to accomplish this. I know that these courses will not make me money them selves, I have to go out and accomplish that on my own. Which I have to say I am excited to do!!! What I want is something to fall back on the way a writer can fall back on a dictionary. I want to have all the information that I need to make deals successful. I want to be able to understand that part of the industry like the back of my hand. My ultimate goal is to focus all of my time on real estate and create a business that has great growth potential with a solid foundation.

Now with that being said, do you feel like the course are more like a flyover of the information, or is it down in the dirt where I have all the facts and it's my job to put them into motion?

If you know of other options for courses or in depth books like this please tell ;)

Also, thank you Richard for the suggestion about IRR. I will check them out also

Sean,

You need a hands on mentoring program with someone in the field - someone who invests day in and day out.

I recommend a guy at IRR called Andy Bacon. He spends every day in the field and has become a wily old pro at fixing those sub 100K junkers. His old partner John Fisher is also very good and runs a monthly sat morning breakfast meeting.

Go to CAREI for intial networking but spend most of your time with Andy at IRR and John Fisher. The website is www.irrofcolorado.com.

I would like to know if the REIA has a purpose (other than funneling customers into their business)? I thought helping REIA members (for free) was the purpose of the REIA. If they're charging for "mentoring", it sounds like they're just a business peddling their wares!

Mike

Most REIA's are focused on platform sales. The speaker gives them between 25 to 50 percent of the gross. There You also have national speakers who run club in the area where they live. Most REIA's are platform sales oriented because that is where the money is. You can make more money with a good selling speaker in a day than on any fix and flip. At least you could before the debacle hit. I have not see a fresh idea on the speaking circuit in many, many years. Its all the same stuff. They attend each others seminars and take notes. I think its called research!

I am not bashing all speakers, There are some speakers that are worth seeing and buying their course. Pete Young's comes to mind, he has a great course on rehabs. Every new investor should take his one day. I sat thru his one day course. I learned some great tips. I already had 30 rehabs under my belt when I attended it.

You really have to weed out who is worth doing business with at a REIA meeting.

There are 3 types at these meetings (life in general as well)
lemmings
looters
business people

avoid the top 2.

PS I have run off most of the top 2 from the SWFL REIA

The stories of these groups could make a great book. Locally we have a guy who runs a group called the "forever wealth club" , funny part is, his own house is currently in foreclosure....... We all have our scar tissue. IMHO, one should allow your wounds to heal before performing surgery on others. :) I found other examples in Ohio as well.

The best thing to take from any REIA group, is find out what the investors did that, did not work. If you play this game long enough you will earn some scar tissue. Try and find out what current deals make the experienced investors scar tissue ache, when they do their DD. I feel mine ache when I see anything listed in East Fort Myers currently. There are houses listed at 15k, that in the late 1990's I used to buy anything for under 30K. I can not find a reason to buy anything in that market at those prices. I sure have tried to find a way recently. The scar tissue aches a bit as a manipulate the spreadsheet :)

In all the cycles, the people who worked as if there was no work to be had tomorrow fared the best. Very few came through any of them unscathed.

Funny thing about humanity and those cycles, no matter who tries to change their outcomes...

Most REIA's are platform sales oriented because that is where the money is.

I agree and that's very sad. I believe that REIAs are most effective when they are non-profit and formed for the purpose of sharing information rather than making money. The local REIA that I belong to is non-profit and we don't take any money from speakers. We do have speakers at some meetings, but they are usually local people that affect our businesses - like a local Section 8 officer; a local title agent (to discuss title issues), etc. Personally, I enjoy the meetings more when we don't have a speaker at all and simply have a roundtable discussion. Our REIA is an anomoly in that we have a high percentage of active investors and very few wannabes. Almost everyone in our group has done at least a few deals and several are larger landlords.