Real Estate Guru Pitch Fest Seminars... You Bring it Upon Yourselves.

Well it’s true. Why do I know this? Because I run my own real estate club where we bring investors quality education and networking at an affordable price without all the hype. What this means is that my meetings and events stay away from the “pitch fest” that one might experience at other events. Sounds like a great plan right?

BUT – here’s the bad news.

Even while we remain a pitch free zone, we still have valuable information that is for sale at times. For instance, in the past 4-5 months I have promoted speakers with affordable education for sale. All of whom are my mentors and coaches and that I spend my own money on. One had a $395 product to teach due diligence with out of state investing and also had some great out of state deals available, one had an all day class for $249 to learn “creative real estate investing 101”, and one offered a free weekend of learning – which remained sales free, until the very end and even then it was such a “soft pitch” that I barely even knew he had something for sale. Does it sound like I need to hard sell these great classes? Everyone asks for affordable quality education. But when it comes down to it, it seems we are all so conditioned to go to those “pitch fest” seminars and buy buy buy, that we don’t seem to recognize or trust that we will get more value out of these affordable learning opportunities than from any sales fest weekend.

I’ve heard so many horror stories from investors about how much they’ve spent on terrible guru product and mentoring and say they “didn’t get anything out of it”. It breaks my heart! I ask you… why on earth would someone rather go to a pitch fest and drop several thousand dollars or more, than go to a low key pay-up front $300 class to learn directly from the teacher? Really. I’m asking you.

Well, I presented that question to at least 50 investors this weekend and their answers were as sad as I thought: “I got caught up in the frenzy”, “It sounded good at the time”, “Pressure to buy it then” and the best answer was “I don’t know”. All of them said they hated these kind of pitch fests seminars.

I asked a speakers coach WHY oh WHY do speakers keep having these pitch fests if the attendees hate the way the speakers sell like this? His very SAD but TRUE answer was…. because people keep buying! Ah duhhh… it’s not brain surgery. People keep buying, so why change what IS STILL WORKING. One of the most horrific answers that was heard from another speakers trainer was “watch what people do – not what they say”. Which – in a nut shell, means “so what if investors hate these pitch fests – they still buy… so why fix it if it ain’t broken?

So folks…in order for people like me who want and deeply desire to stop the madness, YOU must stop the madness first.

Don’t buy from these pitch fest weekends. Stop buying junk product that you don’t need. Stop signing up for junk $15,20,30K mentoring that never delivers. If you don’t know what is junk and what is good- WAIT to purchase, come to a site like BiggerPockets, go to the forum about Guru Product and ask your peers what they think. Always! If you don’t know for sure about something -get feedback and get recommendations first. We get recommendations for small things like restaurants, a manicurist, a car wash, a dry cleaner – but we don’t stop to get recommendations for expensive guru product and mentoring? Whass up with that?

Don’t get caught up in the Feeding Frenzy!

You don’t need to be afraid if you don’t buy the product right then and there that you will miss the “special price” they are offering! Believe me – you can get that same price the next day, the following week, or just wait until the next pitch fest and you can get it then! That “special price only NOW” is the biggest scam of them all. Well that one and the “we only have 10 left!” or “For the first 10 people only”… LOL. Scams – all of ’em! No need to run to the back of the room. You will still get that product for that price even if you ordered it next month.

Just slow your role, think about the anarchy that you might be contributing to and step away from the table…

Help me, help you! Help me, Help you! – Jerry McGuire

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.