I've read the article that started this thread, and I say its pretty much spot on. Now, you all ready for this? I confess. I am a Nouveau Riche member.... dun-dun-DUN!! So, any die-hard Nouveau Riche member that says "but you haven't attended, you don't really know." Guess what? I have, and I do know.
Anyways, I didn't pay $16,000... I paid closer to $24,000 after all was said and done to actually attend some of the classes down in Arizona. I tried all the tricks they told me to make money to pay for the student loan I got to pay for the "college". None of the tricks worked. You wanna know what their response was? Not in these exact words, but effectively, "You need to work harder (at the marketing)". @#$%ers! My "mentor" eventually told me that he was not my real-estate coach, but my marketing coach. W-T-F-!-!-!-! Can any of you imagine the things in real-estate that could have been done if I would have spent $16,000 on real marketing? My "mentor" will still call my wife from time to time to try and sucker her into doing his recruiting for him. He won't call me since I told two of his potential recruits the whole truth about Nouveau Riche and they never signed up because of what I said. I won't be renewing this year even though its only $75 yearly membership fee. Of course, you'll never hear about the people that were members, but left. Nouveau Riche will never publish those stats. It'll be interesting to see if they try to re-recruit us. I did make sure to download all the class audios. Those do have value, although, not worth $16,000, 1+ year of time spent, plus long-term damage to my marriage. The typical marketing minion at a Nouveau Riche hang-out will talk all day long about selling more Nouveau Riche, but they have little to say about investing in real-estate, much less any of their own. Don't expect to find good real-estate deals from them - they all want to sell at retail and above. Don't expect to find any buyers for your real-estate - they all want to buy at less than 50%. There are a handful of people at Nouveau Riche convections that actually do (or have) invested in real-estate. I never could really understand why they were hanging out at Nouveau Riche, though, instead of out working more real-estate.
Watch out. The typical members will never ever stop not ever incessantly never ending non-stop without a pause bug you over and over and over again and never stop bugging you about how your "real-estate business" is going. What they really mean is how much Nouveau Riche did you sell that week or month. I've actually had typical members warn me to not invest in real-estate because it is too dangerous. They advised me to just market more Nouveau Riche. That's the safe "strategy". And this from the company that has the sales-pitch slogan of "We create real-estate investors".
However, if you're lazy, and just want someone to spoon feed you everything, then Nouveau Riche is perfect. And its expensive. I do have to say that I am quite impressed with the instructors of Nouveau Riche, though. They have taught me many things that I know I would have probably not gone out and gotten myself. Again, it was expensive. Now that I've looked around a lot more, I've come to discover that I probably learned 40% - 50% of what I know about real-estate investing from the Nouveau Riche instructors (but not from the typical Nouveau Riche member), 35% - 40% from this real-estate investing websites, and everything else from everywhere else.
Looking back on everything, I'm not sure if I would have done it differently. I do wish that I wouldn't have racked up so much debt to "get on board", "move forward", or all the other sales-pitch catch phrases Nouveau Riche will use to sucker you into forking over your money to fill the wallet of your sales and marketing mentor. Now that I've been on the inside, I've come to realize that the majority of everything Nouveau Riche is a lot of sales and marketing static and little meat and potatoes real-estate investing. I guess my overall feelings for it are disappointment; in both Nouveau Riche and myself. Disappointment in that it wasn't what I was led to believe that it was going to be. Disappointment in myself that I jumped when I really wasn't prepared to make it what I wanted it to be.
One thing that I'm really torn about is that I have been focusing on short-sales. I was finally able to complete my first one after two failed attempts and no, I'm not fluffing numbers when I say this, I made 100% net return on every dollar that I invested into it. Where did I learn how to do that short-sale? From what I learned from the instructors of Nouveau Riche. I can't deny that. I seriously question whether I would have been able to complete that short-sale without what I learned from their short-sale audio class. But it cost my $16,000 and about 1 year part-time learning and studying. $16,000, though? At this point in my real-estate investing career, that's expensive.
So, anyways, Nouveau Riche. If you want to be spoon fed, fork over the $16,000. And the additional thousands of dollars for travel and lodging at the college. Oh, and the additional hundreds of dollars for the repeat presentations they have from time to time. Or, if you are truly ready and prepared to succeed at real-estate investing, you are already that way whether or not you are a Nouveau Riche member or not. Thus, just get out there and start investing in real-estate with those tens of thousands of dollars. And become a regular here and at your local real-estate investing club. Or start one of your own. You'll learn about real-estate investing just fine and probably have several thousands dollars left over for more investing in actual real-estate as opposed to hanging out at what is technically an encyclopedia sales and marketing club.
Now, this could probably be the biggest killer of Nouveau Riche. To actually get everything Nouveau Riche offers, you have to pay the $16,000 (not to mention all the side costs for travel, meetings, conventions, yearly membership renewal, etc.). However, everything that you do get with that initial $16,000, it all expires after 1 year. Granted, you can repeat any classes taken within that first year, but you only have 1 more year to repeat attend. At the end of those 2 years, you get nothing. To get anything else from Nouveau Riche, you have to buy another "tuition" package. How fun!
So, if someone does decide to buy the $16,000 training, be sure to hang onto everything you get with it, and make backup copies, because it will cost $16,000 to replace.
Like I said, I'm a member.... well, not technically. I haven't renewed for this year. Don't plan on doing it, either. My membership was supposed to expire on January 31, but, they extended it to February 28th. Then, they extended it again to March 15th. Haha! How cute. I have to wonder how long they will keep extending the renewal dates.
Now, don't nobody (nice double-negative, huh?) worry about me trying to spam you about Nouveau Riche. I decided long ago that I'm a real-estate investor, not a marketing recruiter. That's where I still stand today, and I'm excited as all get-out everytime I get involved with a new real-estate project. :)
