The Guru or the Coach?

I don’t care how much education you’ve had. When you’re first getting started in real estate investing, you realize pretty quickly how much you don’t know. You’re probably going to spend a lot of time telling yourself, “Boy, I wish I had known this before I got myself into that.”

Unfortunately, real estate or even financial investing isn’t taught in most schools. Many investors know up front that they don’t want to learn from the school of hard knocks, so they begin educating themselves by signing up for a real estate boot camp. Have you ever been to one of those? Did you get all three days filled with lectures, manuals, and handouts? Did you feel like you paid $4,000-$5,000 just to hear how much money they’re all making?

We know a lot of people who do make more money after this type of training, but we know even more people who come away from the boot camps staring at all the manuals and asking themselves, “Okay, now what?”

One problem is that the boot camps are often one-shot deals with little support for the attendees afterward. If the students need in-depth help afterward, they may be out of luck. The boot camps will offer enough material to get you pointed in the right direction, but if you need any amount of reinforcement, you’re probably not going to implement any of their ideas. It’s pretty overwhelming without that ongoing support.

Problem two is that the boot camps tend to teach the same material over and over again, with a lag in the latest developments in everything you need to stay current. It’s not a big deal when you’re talking about rehabbing an ugly house, but when you’re talking about short sales and foreclosures, regulations are changing more often than they used to – and outdated information doesn’t help anyone.

Seminars and boot camps can be great motivational and learning tools, but when they’re all too much of “Look how great we became!” and not enough of “Learn how to make YOUR business work TODAY,” they can leave you wondering why you spent all that money to be there.

Problem three comes when you realize that, due to problem two, the gurus usually don’t practice what they preach! They’re so focused on selling their boot camp that they don’t have the time to actually get out there and do deals. Here’s how that usually works:

1) Guru has event.
2) Guru teaches students.
3) Students use information and realize that some of it is flawed.
4) Students teach Guru.
5) Guru adjusts presentation and uses new material at the next boot camp.
6) Repeat as inefficiently as possible.

And there you have it. Now you know why I have a problem with most real estate boot camps and gurus. They end up relying on their students for real-life problem-solving. The way they go about teaching doesn’t seem to work as well as it should.

This is why I like coaching. A coach is more likely to know what’s going on in the real world. A coach is going to have more practical advice for building a real estate investor’s business. A coach has a better chance of being able to help when another real estate investor runs into a tricky situation.

If you don’t believe me, click here. I love sharing stuff like this because it makes so much more sense than the guru system. My partners and I do all types of real estate deals, both personally and with our students, and we work all across the country.