I have been wholesaling since the beginning of the year, but I am still at the point where I have not closed a deal as yet, and looking forward to the day when I can write a post in the "Success stories" section of this site. With that said, this forum post isn't coming from a point of view of an experienced investor but I have seen a little bit of what this business has to offer via networking, etc.

Let me get to the point here... (and I would love to hear others chime in to help answer my question...)

My question is: What makes a guru a guru??

I have read a few posts on the blog and a couple of member blogs here and there and it seems like people say "a guru is someone that tries to upsell you"...

But doesn't anyone that's in the selling business (houses, shoes, cars, appliances, whatever) do that too? And if not an upsell, isn't there always going to be a low (or free), mid-level and high cost option of a product to make it available to everyone? And won't that higher cost option always come with better amenities than the others? I think of the example of a car company. Is not the Acura an upsell for a Honda? Or the Audi A8 and upsell from the Audi A4? From what I've read in some sources, an upsell is a marketing tactic to get people to go with your company. There's a guru that I hear speak sometimes that has a three-offer system and she states "They never think to not pick one of the three offers" and they sell.

And then I've read other peoples opinions state "a guru is someone that tries to sell you courses and bootcamps".

But there are people on here who do that and they wouldn't necessarily be considered "gurus"...

Is the simple fact that they are selling a course what makes them bad or is it the fact that their course is going for the infamous as @Joshua D. loves to say humorously " for only $997!!"? Or is someone that's selling a course for $97 a guru as well?

Others will say that a guru is someone who has coaching students and charging them hundreds of dollars per month. But there are lots and lots of people out here who have coaching students. What makes them any different than gurus? Is anyone that teaches people how to do something involving real estate a guru or does it have to be that more than 51% of their income is from selling?

Keep in mind that I am NOT guru friendly and have had my share of "cheap $997" courses and 2-day "all-inclusive" workshops that contained much less informational value than what could be found in a 2 hour search session here at BiggerPockets... So I am quite snake-oil saleman (or as my father would say "flim-flam artist") ADVERSE and wish I would have known about the real quality of this site back in January and I'm certain I would have closed a deal by now. But, on the other end of the spectrum, there were people in those guru coaching programs who are/were making money.

But hey, "you live and you learn, and then you get Luvs"...

If I would have never done those other things, I would have never learned about the REIA's or BiggerPockets, or at least not as soon. So it may be a zero-sum game when my investing career is over 100 years from now, but who knows...