I'm not sure this is not beating the horse to death, but what I am getting out of this discussion that is directly to the question Matt originally asked is:
- There is considerable fear that if one attends a seminar that they will not "get their money's worth", in that what is shared will be general, and otherwise easily obtained, information.
- That the presenter, or presenters, will not know as much about the topic as the attendees and/or the presenter is, in some ways, a failure or they would not "waste their time doing seminars".
- Some people are "penny-wise and pound foolish" when it comes to investing in their business. They are more comfortable investing hours and hours of their time to come up with mediocre answers than investing money in the solutions they need.
All of these have merit, but...
Apparently in the real estate investment business, there are many unqualified people teaching preposterous get rich quick and easy schemes that may not work as a way of making a living.
However, as a counterpoint, Lonnie Skruggs developed seminars and materials that made many, many people quite a bit of money until the SAFE Act and the Dodd-Frank Act made his methods illegal without considerable investment into licenses and compliance management systems that were too expensive for a small operator.
The way Rishel Consulting Group is organized, most of our teaching staff have years of experience in what they teach, or consult on, and many are still working in the areas they teach in.
Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds have a manufactured housing boot camp that is manned by instructors all of whom either work directly in the industry for Frank and Dave in their large operation of operating or owning manufactured housing communities, or they are operators themselves of manufactured housing communities known to Frank and Dave.
So, while unscrupulous seminar folk exist, there are also many, many individuals or firms that do offer real value. Rather than simply stating that seminars have no value, people would be better off learning to separate the good from the bad, and then figuring out where the holes are in their knowledge base, and looking for someone qualified to help fill that hole.
Now to another point that was limitedly addressed in some of the posts.
Some people need more help than others making use of the information they get out of a seminar or even a workshop for attending to have any real value to them.
Bill Carr of RainMaker Consulting has the A List of manufactured housing retailers as clients, and he has had them for years. He holds frequent meetings in the form of 20 Groups and other formats for which he charges real money, and he rarely holds them in inexpensive venues. In addition to attending his meetings, they all pay him big additional money on an ongoing basis, which some here would sneeringly call "upselling". He recognizes that, in order for his clients to be successful, he needs to hold their hand on an ongoing basis because otherwise, they would not take the necessary next steps to actuate what they learned. I have to believe he has a valid point because out of the top 100 manufactured housing retailers in the United States, 80 of them are retainer clients of his and have been for some time.
The truth is, many people that complain about seminars they have attended needed that handholding. Because they did not get it, they wasted their time and money in attending by not following through on their own and, as a result, did not get the desired results.
This is a danger for both presenters and attendees, and it is difficult to know who needs what for both. It is also difficult for an attendee to walk up the presenter and offer to pay for additional help.
Given what Rishel Consulting Group does in the way of workshops, we have three where this is a potential problem. We have one for people who are interested in setting up a captive finance company they own to handle their seller finance efforts. About 30% of the attendees need no more help that what they get at this three day workshop to get their operations up and running. The other 70% are going to need some additional measure of help from us to succeed. About 85% of that 70% do contract with us for whatever additional help they need. A very few never get their operation up and running, and those are the ones who might feel the workshop was not worth their attending.
The question is, "Whose fault is it that a small percentage of our attendees to that program do not truly benefit from attending, RCG's or the attendee's? Because a small percentage don't actuate, is that a reason to condemn workshops we do, or workshops in general? I don't think so, but others might.
We have another workshop on capital acquisition for funds to lend that runs five days, and has considerable after the workshop consulting and assistance built in to the price to attend. We refuse attendance to over 60% of the people who ask to attend in order to make sure that the people who do attend are capable of doing what we teach. We have 100% success with this workshop. Screening is the answer, but if someone is only charging someone $1,000 or less for a seminar, the time and effort we put into that screening isn't practical. (If it was, we would do for our Captive Finance Workshops as well.) It should be the job of the person spending the money to be honest with themselves about their abilities and their capabilities before attending. Personal Responsibility?