Forum Replies Created
Pisces
My gripe?
Their motives. These people are such successful investors or in businesses, yet they feel the need to charge exorbitant prices to come to their seminars. They claim they have secrets – their newspaper ads are all the same – big print jumping off the page to suck people in. They have no secrets. All the information is readily available in a much cheaper form elsewhere.
What are they really successful at? Outside of investment and personal improvement type seminars, what others charge thousands for a few days training? Probably none because they know that a few days training is not that expensive.
If a person is a multimillionaire through investment, what is it that drives them to want to make $1 million for a two-day seminar, say? Why would you bother? Your investments are making you all the money you need and more, aren’t they? How ethical is it? If there are any seminar presenters reading this, tell me. I’m very interested in your motives.
If you are a successful investor, I respect your right to run seminars at a reasonable price. Wouldn’t you be happy with $20,000, say, for a few days work? You would be helping people and making extremely good money.
I don’t want to indicate that all seminar presenters are driven by greed. However, in my opinion a lot of them are and they need to take a good look at themselves.
Let’s face it, most of us could do the same thing as the gurus through the knowledge we have built up – not necessarily that we have put it all into practice. However, most of us don’t have two vital ingredients to carry it off: lack of ethics and lack of salesmanship. You really need to be able to sell yourself, don’t think a lot about your ethics and have the hide of a rhino. Then you have a good chance of making it work.
So, Pisces, I continue to challenge seminar presenters in what they’re doing. If you don’t you take things at face value and will be taken advantage of. We all need to challenge ideas and do our research so we don’t get hyped.
Salubrious
I love it! Cutting sarcasm with a serious message. [thumbsupanim]
Wez.
Yes, Mel, I suspect you are correct in your assessment. So, while the stories are inspirational, they are not entirely indicative of what can be achieved in the current market.
1HotValuer
You still haven’t given me any reasons why my suggestions aren’t reasonable. Whether it be property or shares many people have a habit of overcomplicating matters. Please tell me all the intricacies of valuation that I’m not aware of.
Thanks, Jeff, for your constructive comments.
Back to the properties in “Success Stories”.
I listed all the property deals that were done by the people in the book: purchase prices, rents and yields. Here is what I found on 27 deals:Prices from $35,000 to $770,000 for a variety of properties, including houses, apartment complexes and even a medical centre.
The average yield was a staggering 17.8%, with a range from 8.6% to 34.6%.
One propery was purchased at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane with a yield of 33%, so it’s not only in America.
I don’t know if we got the full story about how they achieved such high yields in doing their deals. Anyone could finance +ve cashflow property with yields like that. It’s a no-brainer.
I say finding property like that is almost impossible. However, prove me wrong and tell me you own a property yielding upwards of 15% like most of the ones mentioned. I’d love that. Then I’d know it is a realistic goal to search for them.
I pretty much agree with your thoughts, Kay.
I think pressure should be placed on seminar presenters to open their books and show us the hard evidence they are successful with their investments – not give us some glossy blurb in a newspaper ad.
Robert Kiyosaki has done a lot of good. However, I believe he is now carried away with his own success. How much is enough? Book after book essentially saying the same thing over and over again. It is a great message to motivate people – no question of it, but has it required all these new books? The last one, “Success Stories” was a useful addition I think, but some of the others don’t really add much to his first book. But boy is he getting richer and richer!
These seminar presenters are not Gods. Many books can do the same thing as long as you get the motivation to do something. And it is much cheaper. Also you can never really replace trial and error as a means of learning.
It’s fine to be positive and pumped up to be a successful investor. But after the hype fades, it is only your dedication that will see you through. Remember, there are no guarantees in investing. It’s not like a Mon to Fri job where you collect regular pay.
The whole of the northern coastal area of WA is very cyclone prone. Exmouth has felt the full brunt of at least one cyclone within the past 7 years. I lived in the Pilbara region and experienced the effects of at least 5 cyclones – some more damaging than others.
If you owned property there it is something to consider and might worry you somewhat. Generally the houses stand up OK. It just depends on the severity and whether the eye passes through your area. I know that when I was there I worried a bit about my car being only in an open car port, and also if the roof of my flat might disappear. Nothing bad happened to me, but it always could have been the next one that might have caused problems.
Thanks for all suggestions. I appreciate your feedback.
It’s one thing to say you’ve heard about high yielding properties, and you are all pumped and excited about how you are going out to find them. It’s great to be motivated.
However, it is completely different if in reality you can’t find any. If you actually own properties yielding 10 – 20% – fine. You are giving me evidence of your practical experience, just like “the Philosopher” has done. There are always exceptions to any rule, but that also happens every week when someone wins the lottery.
I’m not interested in hearsay. It’s been done to death on many forums. People should pass on wisdom from what they have actually done.
If there are “many” high yielders, I guess they won’t be hard to find then. I’m still thinking they are pretty scarce, but I could be wrong.
A lot of spruikers become wealthy by running seminars/selling educational material and telling people how to become wealthy, without practising what they preach. I despise this group because their greed has got the better of them.
You have the people who run seminars/sell educational material and practise what they preach. What I don’t like is the high price put on the stuff they sell. They have a right to sell useful information, but not for thousands of dollars. Again this suggests greed is taking over. Afterall if they are so successful in the field of investment, they don’t need to be making a fortune selling educational products.
Then you have the people who are just plain successful investors and never feel the need to profit by selling educational material.
We must never part with our hard-earned money without research and simply claiming it is all in the name of education. That money has to be reclaimed before you make any progress whatsoever with your investments. We must continue to question what it is seminars really have to offer us. Is the information readily available in a cheaper format, for example? Maybe we can get the info from books and magazines, and apply it ourselves.
I think there are probably some good seminars out there. But don’t get hyped by all the blurb telling you you will amount to nothing, unless you part with thousands to discover their secrets that will lead you to riches.
Finally, no-one ever got rich by doing nothing (a lottery win being the exception) – it takes a lot of effort in some form or another. Building wealth takes time and certainly will not happen for you overnight. If that was your thinking, you need to take a dose of reality right now.
“Once you get into the mindset of running your life (not just your finances) as a business you tend to become a lot more results focused.”
Well put, Liz, that’s exactly what I was getting at. We can all tend to drift unless we get order in our lives to give us the focus to achieve things.
To 1HotValuer
Plenty of 10% yields? Not so sure about that. What’s plenty?
I agree with Scott in that the underlying value of the asset is very important. A similar situation exists in the share market: no good buying a share for its high dividend if its price is “sliding down a hill”. People try to convince themselves it is paying good dividends. So what. That’s useless if the share price has lost 50% in the past year, say. Have to apply logic. You still have to buy property based on the idea that it will increase in value.
A lot of the examples in “Success Stories” have enormous yields around 20%! I’m guessing you have to look long and hard to find something like that. Tell me, have you bought a property yielding 20%? Some of the people in the book talk of buying houses to flip at 50% under market value.
Of course, all this is theoretically possible. I’m not doubting their personal experiences because if that’s what they did, then that’s what they did. Don’t get me wrong. The deals don’t have to be as good as that to be worthwhile. I just think that inexperienced people can start to believe they can walk down the street and find deals like that.
Interesting comments.
Yes, the $300k is net, i.e. unencumbered. $30k may not sound like a lot to live on, but people always misunderstand me on this point. $30k is a starting point, not an end result. Also if a single person can’t live on that much, they really are messing up managing their money.
The reason I proposed this scenario is that much of the info (in seminars/books) indicates you can start with nothing and be financing property deals straight up. OK, then I am saying if you had $300k it must be a breeze because you’d have a head start.
To gmh454 – Que? You don’t make it clear what you are on about.
I’ve read his book, “The One Minute Millionaire”. There’s certainly a bit of inspiration there, but how practical is it? I’ve also had emails telling how he had a challenge to make $24,000 in a few hours on the internet, or something similar. That to me smacks of a rip-off…you know, advertise and sell a bit of flimsy info about how to become rich and get people to pay $29.95…you know the kind of stuff. It’s an age old ploy. Even scammers on the street do it when they ask you for $2 to buy a cup of coffee…a bit here, a bit there, until they’ve accumulated a tidy sum.
Go to the free seminars to motivate yourself and maybe pick up a few ideas, but forget parting with thousands of dollars, unless you are sure you will really learn something you can IMPLEMENT to recover the cost. A seminar shouldn’t cost any more than a few hundred dollars. Why is their information so valuable that it should cost thousands?
An old line that is always trotted out is: if you think that’s expensive, try ignorance. Don’t fall for this crap. For example, I could say my seminar costs $100k and give you the same old line. There is a limit to what information is worth. And most of it can be found in books anyway, as well as using your own trial and error.
Lot’s of people are looking for the Holy Grail at these seminars. It ain’t gonna happen. We could all do without the hype that goes along with them.
You need to change your mindset! 10 is the highest ranking and 1 is the lowest, i.e. 10/10 is a brilliant recommendation and 1/10 is a dud – get it? You might want to now go back and review the lists again.
Felicity and Wayne
Thanks for feedback on your trading. I see myself more as an investor than a pure trader, although as I get more experience I would like to combine elements of both.
ryanmel
You, and sometimes others, are missing the point I am trying to make. Education and learning from experienced people from books and so on is a good thing. No problem. Good on you for becoming enlightened.
I feel Robert Kiyosaki has gone overboard with his educational material – INXS. His motives are not as pure as they once might have been. He is a money-making machine when he really doesn’t need to be anymore. How much is enough?
The other point is if a “guru” says, “I am an author and sell educational products as a main source of income” then fine, at least that’s being honest. But when people do it and try to convince you they are gun traders, I despise that. The best example are the scammers running expensive options seminars. If they need to do that, they are not gun traders. They are shonks using people to fund their lifestyle.
Felicity, Karen and Wayne
Can I assume you all make your living through trading, i.e. purely trading without selling education and other material? If so, what sort of capital do you allocate to the market to achieve this. Of course, there’s no way you are in paid employment. Would you maybe give a few numbers to show the sorts of returns you are making. What about your favoured strategies for bear and sideways markets which enable you to make gains? Look forward to your feedback. Thanks.
Many of you would have probably noticed Robert Kiyosaki has his next book on the shelf, “Success Stories”. I won’t be buying it to fund his multimillion dollar lifestyle. By his own admission he has sold over 10 million copies of Rich Dad Poor Dad (not to mention his other books). Now if you had that sort of wealth behind you, would it really matter if a few property deals fell over? I don’t begrudge anyone making money from their knowledge. It’s the excessive amount and the denial that it’s where a lot of their income comes from that I have issue with.
Kiyosaki is a great marketer though. You can’t take that away from him. And at least he makes us think about what we are doing with our lives and gives us a wake-up call. For anyone interested, you might like to check out a critical article on him in the latest copy of “The New Investor” magazine at your newsagent. Food for thought.
All your discussion in this post has been interesting. Everyone needs a healthy level of cynicism to survive in this world. If you don’t, you will eventually be taken advantage of. There’s nothing surer. That’s the way the world is – many good people, but also many crooks – and today it is more difficult than ever to tell the difference.
One of the original points I was driving at is there is far too much hype in the investment world. There needs to be a good dose of reality to neutralise it. There are too many spruikers telling us how we can make a killing out of this, that and the other, e.g. the theory says you can make money no matter what the share market is doing. Yeh right. Big money is made in a bull market, not a bear or sideways market. Lots of people wax on about all these fancy strategies. They probably have never even used the strategies they talk about, or have only read about them. Reality and theory are poles apart.
It’s fine to be motivated to become an educated investor. That is my aim, but I also understand it takes a lot of ongoing work, study and trial-and-error, and even then that doesn’t guarantee me a thing. I am becoming more aware of the reality and the risks. No-one ever got rich doing nothing – winning a lottery being the exception. Anyone who thinks differently will come a gutser, that is for sure. And herein lies the danger. Young/naive people come to believe they can get rich with little effort and this is where hype goes to work. It is human nature to want to get rich quickly, but it can’t and won’t happen. You are dreaming if you think otherwise. Better get ready for the long haul.
Yep, Mount Morgan is a bit of a dump – old copper and gold mining town. Have been through there many times. Funnily enough I’ve always said it’s the one place I would never want to live! So that may give you an idea of its potential.
My comments about the cheap property were simply that – comments. Having read Steve’s book it just took my notice that some of the properties were so cheap. I had only ever seen them that cheap in little country towns. Of course, it’s all a matter of doing the research and numbers to see whether a deal would stack up.
Alexander
Whatever you do, don’t pay thousands to attend a seminar – a few hundred dollars maybe. These “gurus” charging thousands are conning people. They don’t have any secrets. It is all known and available in books, such as Steve McKnight’s. Also you will see another post that lists many great books to study before jumping into property investment. What’s more you can get most good books through your library so you don’t have to keep buying them.
I’ll leave you with an age-old thought. If the people running the seminars are so successful at property investment, why do they need to charge an individual thousands of dollars for a few days? 100 backsides on seats x $3,000 = easy money. Why in God’s name would I ever need to invest in property? Think long and hard before you part with your money.
