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Garrison Johnson
  • Atlanta, GA
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My review of the Rich Dad Learn To Be Rich Academy

Garrison Johnson
  • Atlanta, GA
Posted Dec 11 2011, 20:12

I attended a Rich Dad “Learn To Be Rich” Academy this weekend, and while it was fresh on my head I wanted to comment on my experience.

It seems that the response across the board has been that the training is a scam, or gives people the wrong impression, or is just high powered sales pitching, and although I hear you guys, that’s not all it was for me.

First off, I wasn't even interested in going. My fiancé was the one who wanted to go to the free 2-hour pitch, and drug me along with her, although I resisted a bit. I smell sales pitches a mile away. But the reason we ended up at the 3-day training was because I was convinced that for $199, there had to be SOMETHING I could learn about REI that I had no clue of the day before.

Let me pause for a minute. I’ve fell for the best of scams. I know what it’s like to be down on your luck, down to your last, and hoping that this little bit of money you put into something is the end of your problems. I’m not like that anymore. And have been lucky enough to be blessed to know that the problem starts within. If you don’t start with having a winner’s mindset, then you’re going to lose. All day. Every day.

I look back to complain about the faults of my situation and want to blame someone else, but the truth is I made some bad decisions in the past. That’s why those “scams” seemed so good to be true at the time. Anything would be better than where I was.

I was never going to get forward thinking like that. So I’m glad I did some things in my life to change my mindset, so I can get better as figuring out, “what’s in it for me?”

Back to the 3-day training, after talking with my fiancé, who has always wanted to get into REI, we agreed that there had to be something we could get out of the 3-day training worth more than $199. If we didn't see it, we would have asked $199 worth of questions to make sure we got something out of it. You got me?

Heck, they gave us the Unfair Advantage book (which was a great read by the way), and a workbook full of Real Estate info at the free 2-hour session when we signed up for the 3-day. We spent some time with those books milking everything we could out of them before the 3-day training. The knowledge we pulled together from those was more than what we knew before walking into that training. And although it was mostly information (the books) and not a hand out, it at least got us to the point of understanding where our questions lie. We weren’t going into this 3-day session believing $199 would get us access to everything. Even looking the Rich Dad Academy up online told you there were Advanced Classes. So I we knew a sales pitch was coming.

We had Alan Swails in Atlanta, GA. In fact, I’m glad we had him, because him being from Georgia, he felt compelled to give us some extra tidbits. Trust me, the sales pitch was still there, but that’s his job. But when I look back over the entire three days at everything I learn, you have to be freakin’ kidding me listening to people on the internet complain they didn’t learn anything.

I just can’t see that. We learned millions of dollars worth of information. But I guess it’s where your mindset is from the beginning.

True, the training didn’t tell you how to CLOSE A DEAL, but guess what, if $199 told you how to do that, and you ran out and did it, but did it incorrectly or just in such a rushed state of mind because of your situation, then you’d be hurting worse off than you are now.

I knew you weren’t going to get the secret nuggets for $199. NOTHING in life is that easy. I take pride in my career as a film editor, but there is no way I’m going to be comfortable with some random guy off the street jumping in the game with a camera and a computer taking a $199 seminar on video production thinking he can jump in at my level with my years of experience and hard work. You’d have to be f’in kidding me.

But let’s get to the meat of why you’re really reading this, because you want to know if we jumped in the Advanced Training Boat.

No. But let me tell you why before you make the wrong assumption, because we had the money to buy in at the level we were interested in.

As with anything I always do my research. Research after research after research. Once I get enough information to satisfy myself to make a decision, I make one and am great with it because I took the time to research. I’ve been burned too many times in the past to know I can’t be making emotional decisions.

I spend the night of the second day of the training, after hearing the start of sales pitches of course, looking up info on the computer.

I seen the tons of negative comments about the expectations of the three days, and in some of them I seen exactly what I would have thought years ago when I was at a different mindset. I seen the Canadian news video, and I even read the complaints about Tigrent Learning.

Let me take it a step further, I checked the WHOIS information on TigrentLearning.com and it was Private Proxy domain registered on GoDaddy. (eyebrow raised). You mean to tell me this company handling this level of production can’t even spring for their own servers?

When I looked at some other major companies’ WHOIS info, they have their business information listed. That just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth about TigrentLearning.com. As if there were trying to stay anonymous. And from experience, anonymity to me meant you could take my money and run. D*mn that.

Then, watching the interview with the Canadian news video talking to Robert Kiyosaki, he blatantly admits that he’s received complaints about his educational partner, and he wants to get out of it. So I thought, if they aren’t cutting the mustard, get them out of there! I felt as if Mr. Kiyosaki could use a bit of training in the PR clean up department.

And of course watching the trainer mentioned in the video (Mark Mousseau) didn’t help the matter. He was definitely portrayed as a world class jerk. But I have to admit I didn’t experience my trainer that way. Alan was a great guy in our three day training. But if I was Kiyosaki, and seen that news clip, me and Mr. Mousseau would have had a nice conversation and there would have been at least some type of Rich Dad public statement saying something to make me feel comfortable about seeing that report.

I did a quick search for Mark G. Mousseau and came across his Facebook page saying he still works for Rich Dad. I might have felt a little better if he didn’t.

Even other major companies release statements about news reports that slander thier business. How many times have we heard, “the company released a statement this afternoon”…?

At that moment I had made the decision I couldn’t move forward giving Rich Dad my money. This whole funneling through Tigrent Learning seemed messy. Tigrent used to be Whitney. Whitney used to teach Russ Whitney info. Kiyosaki isn’t happy with Tigrent. Huh? That’s too much going on for me to feel comfortable dropping tens of thousands of dollars.

If they weren’t giving a d*mn how they were representing themselves, how could I expect them to care about my money or what I was going to get out of the situation?

But I wasn’t satisfied just yet. I had to try and find SOMEONE out there that actually took the plunge into the Advanced Training.

And I did.

But here’s the biggest problem, all of the bad comments I’ve been reading come from the people disappointed in the sales pitching, but I’ve already expressed my opinion on not expecting the world for $199. I understand how business works, so I wasn’t offended by it. I knew it was coming. Because on the first day they tell you don’t expect to become an expert for $199, then on the second day they told you how much the Advanced Training costs. If you didn’t like what they had to say, you could have gave them the finger early and kept it moving.

But for me I had to know was jumping in at the $10,000+ level worth it. I could listen to all of the naysayers talk about what they expected and didn’t get, but that’s not how you win. You’ve got to hear it from the source.

So I finally found someone (that didn’t sound like an obvious Tigrent troll) telling about their experience in the Advanced Training. I’m not going to repeat what they said, but they basically said that they were using tools from a lot of different sources to stay successful. The Rich Dad training was a big help, but it wasn’t the only tool they were using. They were in the game a bit before jumping into the training.

I had to be with that. Because I could feel where they were coming from.

When I took my certification to be a certified Pro Tools Engineer to go along with the film editing I do, I had already bought Pro Tools, read about it, used it (very amateurishly), but knew I needed to learn more. Several thousand dollars of Pro Tools Training later, I became a Pro Tools pro. BUT, the training was so much more valuable to me because I had the real world experience to bring to class, and ask about and really tap into the power of the software. Plus, some things that the instructor was talking about I understood because I at least had had a chance to mess with it before and I was going to learn how to do right. (if you don’t know what Pro Tools is, Google it)

So I walked away from the post I read feeling like I didn’t have to make a rushed decision off the bat. I had some resources I could tap for info, some new knowledge I could leverage, and all the time in the world to sit back, figure out a game plan, and go for it.

When I woke up that next morning headed to day 3, I still had some questions, but knew what our decision was.

Unfortunately, the pretty ditsy lady completely fumbled our questions and didn’t get to a concrete answer, which made us even more comfortable with our decision.

Rich Dad needs to work on their PR and business relationship with Tigrent. I don’t know who in the world is in charge over there, but this sell sell sell tactic is killing their business (in my opinion).

There was lots of talk of trying to help the little guys achieve bigger goals, but it comes across as unbelievable. People in bad situations are going to be turned off, people in desperate situations are going to go all in and lose. Not because of the system, but because they aren’t really ready to be successful. They want it to be easy, and are going to get overwhelmed with the amount of work it really takes to do these real estate deals and are going to have to change their mindset.

Let me say this. I believe wholeheartedly that behind those Rich Dad curtains, there is some VALUABLE information. I see the info they gave me for $199, I know they have some goodies for me at $10k. But I can afford to lose that, most people can’t. And by the time we take Advanced Training, we’re going to be set to get every penny’s worth we can of info at Advanced Training. But Tigrent has to do some housekeeping.

Now I know some of you want me to pick a side, but the truth is, I see the situation from both sides. Rich Dad has to get money, we’re trying to get money. Someone was destined to lose going in.

I say what I say about mindset because I’ve been where some of you are. Spending $199 hoping to make a million. Man please. That’s not the way. We were playing the CashFlow 101 game on the second day of training and 4 out of the 6 people at our table COULD NOT fill out the income statement sheet correctly. Do you really think investing in real estate is a good idea for them? I’m glad they didn’t buy-in. They need some time to figure out basic finances 101 before they end up in more trouble than they started.

But it’s situations like watching those people that has me saying that you have to be ready for the next step and what it takes to maximize that. I’m sure they were probably upset because Alan didn’t tell us where to find a property, where to find a buyer, where to finance the deal, and when to pick up the check. In other words, he didn’t do the job for us. There are always some of us that want something for nothing, and the rich will stay rich while you keep that attitude.

All in all, my fiancé and I had a wonderful time. We came home and compared notes, typed them up into Word, talked about a plan moving forward, and made some meetings with some people we want to meet with to discuss a few more questions and start mapping out a strategy. And if something comes up, we still have the money in the bank to make a purchase.

Will we eventually jump into Advanced Training? Probably. And probably sooner than later. However this weekend was not convincing enough to us. We’re going to crawl before we walk instead of running before we fall.

My advice if you’re thinking about going to the 3-day training? Change your mindset. Go in with an open mind. Be smart enough to know that some of the info you’re getting is priceless (when you know how to use it), and you won’t learn everything you want to know about real estate. Make the best decision for you, know it’s going to take time to get out of any situation and into another, and don’t expect something for nothing.

See you on the investing side!

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