Finding Good REI Teachers Makes All The Difference
When Ashley and I got started in investing, we fell prey to one of the big-name teaching circuits. What I mean by that is we went to one of the free seminars, that led to the $100 class that was really a dog-and-pony show to sell their overpriced, and as I later found out, somewhat antiquated classes on how to become a real estate investor.
The reason this happened was we had no idea where to get quality education on how to be a real estate investor. It was 2009, and back then in-person seminars and the infomercial home study classes were the only means of education that we knew of.
I’ll never forget sitting in that hotel conference room while the speaker was instilling a sense of urgency and fear of loss into the crowd. The way he made it sound was if we didn’t act today, not only would we never be investors, but we would be slaves to our jobs for the rest of our lives.
I don’t typically fall for sales pitches. But because I had just read Robert Kiyosaki’s famous book “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” and had had the massive mind set shift that the book tends to give people, I was willing to jump in headfirst into whatever I could to get into real estate investing and start working on our financial freedom.
By the end of the night, they talked us two broke kids into maxing out the two credit cards we had recently worked so hard to debt snowball off and bought two of their courses for $12,000… at an interest rate of 24%. Not the best financial decision. But at least it got us started.
Soon we found our way to a local REIA, real estate investor association, and found out that we had overpaid for our classes. Back then you could take a 2-day weekend seminar with a real been-there-done-that teacher for around $400. As a matter of fact, the going rate today is somewhere between $600-$1,200 depending on the course material and if it is 2 or 3 days.
Ashley and I went to every event we could afford. We were able to learn from teachers like Bill Cook, David Tilney, Peter Fortunato, and Dyches Boddiford. Each of them teaches various subjects. Bill is an amazing creative deal structurer who has courses on that as well as how to use options effectively. David teaches property management along with a sub class about master leasing. Pete teaches courses on all kinds of creative deal structures and creative financing tactics. And Dyches is known for teaching on entity selection, land trusts and hard money lending.
One of the great things about learning from these people is they are active investors. And when you attend one of their classes, you are fully prepared to go do whatever the subject was once the class is complete.
Them being active investors is important because as laws and markets change so does their tactics and the curriculum they’re teaching. And since they are doing deals right now, they’re not just making their living selling classes. That was a stark contrast from the educators in the $12,000 courses. What we found was those classes didn’t give you everything you needed and led you to sign up for the next class.
I’m very grateful for all these teachers. And they help us to do deals today. For instance, we just closed on a house where we had to combine a long-term option, a master lease, a land trust and a subject-to deal in order to get control of the property. That’s a lot of moving parts and is not something most investors know how to put together.
Once we closed, I made sure to call David, Dyches and Bill to tell them thank you for teaching me how to do the individual parts of this deal. David and Dyches were both glad to hear that their classes had made a difference for us. And when I called Bill, I found out that He and Kim had just closed on a very similar deal, with the same number of moving parts, down in Florida.
When I hung up the phone with Bill, I couldn’t help but smile. I felt so grateful to have these teachers and to know that they’re still out there doing the impossible deals and helping sellers with their real estate problems. And what’s even better is they are still teaching people how to do the same.
If you’re new to investing and are curious as to where to go for good education, I would like to point you to a website called CashFlowDepot.com. Bill and Kim run that site and you can find prerecorded seminars from the teachers I listed above and more. But you will also be able to locate live events like Bill’s What Box Seminar coming up in September about creative deal structuring.
Sites like this were not available to us back when we got started. Had they been, not only would we have saved that $12,000, and all that interest, but I feel like we would have gotten to the good teachers more quickly. Go check it out because finding good REI teachers will make all the difference in the world to you and your investing future.
Joe and Ashley English buy houses and mobile homes in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com or call Joe at 678-986-6813.