All Forum Posts by: Nate Marshall

Quote from @James Wise:

Quote from @Jay Hinrichs:

Quote from @Christopher Stevens:

Quote from @Chris Clothier:

I'm still not going to post at length here as there is clearly more to come out, but the past few posts are interesting to me. 

I think one critical piece is being overlooked.  It is my opinion, that in order to get investors to look to the left while you are showing them on the right what the investment entails, you have to have a brand with a good reputation using their list to raise money.  If investors believed, as most emails I have received from this company going back to 2012 have made it appear, that this was a real estate company doing real estate business, then many investors may have simply let their guard down.  Many may not have known or understood what they were investing in.  They may have been looking left and preparing for a 12%, 15%, 17% return and never paid attention to the risks on the right.  Many were clearly caught off guard by the detail that their distribution could be halted and their investment converted to stock.  

I would think you have to have a very specific audience to go for this type of investment and pre-existing trust is at the top of the list.  An audience that has been built over a long period of time and with a lot of faith and belief in the personality presenting is one that is most prepared to invest without question and most likely to be attracted to the high returns.  The audience is pre-disposed to believe. 

 100% correct, Chris! Well said. 

Chris this also reminds me of the first real estate crowd funders like Realty Shares that imploded spectacularly.. A tad different with them but there was so much hype that they would put an investment up and literally fill it in 1 hour.. no way anyone did DD on them or the deal.. it was massive FOMO and whatever trust they had built. So like you said I think folks Jut basically trusted the Sponsor and for whatever reason did not realize the risk in unsecured Notes..

The trust one can build up over the years on platforms like BP, Youtube and others is insane. As an example, and I have had it happen multiple times; we put a property under contract with a new investor and when we send them the wiring instructions for the EMD to be held in HoltonWise's trust account, they get so excited they (unprompted) just go ahead and wire in the full $100k or so purchase price amount instead of the $1k or $2k EMD. Then I need to go back and explain the escrow process and how they should never send that money to a seller and it should only go to a title company etc etc....

So you take a cat like Marco who's been around every day for a long long time, it's not surprising people would blindly buy whatever he was selling. Same thing with Clayton Morris and any other well known operator really.

YUP buyers  can be quite gullible and simply not understand the RE and escrow process.
I funded a operator over in Philly.. And he was getting foreign investors to wire him 100% of the purchase prices direct to him.. Created false settlement statements ( criminal of course) so these folks thought they owned the property when in fact I owned them.  Much like MOrris guy having all recorded docs sent to his office so the buyers had no clue of all the liens etc ..  As you can imagine his rob peter to pay paul imploded on him just as spectacular as Morris.. He just did not have the same SM presence.. But there were big articles in teh Phily paper and Baltimore sun.

Quote from @Christopher Stevens:

Does anyone know how we can write this investment off to help reduce our tax liability? Can we obtain a special form or document to show the loss?  

 Have you never filed taxes before? Your profile has several investments on it so theoretically you should be generally aware that business income and expenses are accounted for on your taxes even if you have a CPA do them and don't pay much attention to the details.......

I'm really thinking that that you are a Norada paid plant. Or I am thinking you might actually be a Marco ran burner account trying to change public sentiment and trying to get everyone to move on from suing him (you, Marco on your burner) lol.

Had a conversation with both Peter and Julie today. Julie was engaged, knowledgeable, and seemed genuinely interested in what we were discussing. Later in the day, I was set up with a call with Peter because we raised concerns about paying $10k–$15k upfront, especially since we’re supposed to be “partners” in these deals. Given my 20+ years of experience in real estate, sourcing and underwriting deals is second nature for me—I’m not looking for mentorship or education.

Again, i didnt request to talk to him.. his team set it up. From the start, Peter seemed annoyed to be on the call. His comment, “You talked to Julie and me on the same day... that never happens... this better be good,” was unexpected—I initially thought he was joking, but it quickly became clear he wasn’t. It was obvious he valued the upfront fee more than the potential of a real partnership where we could collectively earn substantial profits (hundreds of thousands of dollars vs 10k) in a matter of weeks. He prefers to walk over dollars to pick up pennies? It just doesn't make sense. 

Quote from @Nate Marshall:

Quote from @Tonya English:

Nice cordial people who mean well, but had the program for a year and they didn’t produce even 1 hot lead let alone a contract.

 Yep. I have people in my organization who have experienced the same mis treatment. All nice and cordial on the sales pitch but deliver NOTHING! 

 Yep, they even did prayers on the phone with me. LOL!!!

Hope for the best, but plan and budget for the worst!

@Eric Marquez

Top three things for any program that people should run far away from

1. They discuss earning X amount of dollars per month.

2. They promote a lifestyle versus how to actually do something.

3. They’re spending money on Facebook or Google ads.

These are just Marketing ploys to try and get you to sign up for a program and the odds of being successful are pretty much zero. The people who are successful, probably are already in the business or have some background and really do not generate any more knowledge from the training. Atleast not for what they pay.

I don't think BiggerPockets itself has opinions on specific gurus. Generally speaking, it has and most of us on BP have a pretty negative view of most gurus. That's a bit of a blurry title though, I'm not against coaching or paid coaching. But I have a very low opinion of guru types (high priced, lots of upselling, big promises, selling a life style in their ads more than information, etc.) 

I wrote a piece about them a while back: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/pushing-back-against-real...

And I'd also check out James Jani's great video on gurus:

That being said, I don't know anything specifically about Thach Nguyen or Jake Leicht so I don't have an opinion on them specifically. Asking for $5000 upfront is a real bad sign though.

Thach Nguyen's program is very bad! Filled with the basic information you can find in books and is very unorganized! He charged me a few thousand dollars for information that is repackaged and rebranded, because you can simply find it on the internet! Stay away! You are so correct @Nate Marshall! Something needs to be done with fake gurus out there!

Thanks for your feedback, Nate. Can you say more about your comments on Pace? What is your experience with his program? What makes you say gators are unprofessional? And what are the solutions to Pace that you suggest?