Complaint Review: Wealth Intelligence Network

The Teach Me Foreclosure student acquisition (us) started with a free meet-and-greet in Burlingame, CA at a hotel. This initial meeting featured Jessie Conners from Donald Trump's Apprentice as a speaker. I asked one of the organizers who was the instructor. He said he didn't know. And, I thought there must be a number of instructors who can do this class. It's not a good sign because it means it's canned material.

The 3-day class occurred last September in San Francisco, CA in a downtown hotel. The cost for the 3-day seminar was $199 for 2 people. Bradley Sides was the instructor.

These are my takeaways:
-Class behavior was carefully controlled, including breaks. We were not allowed to leave for lunch before permission was given. And, he would call attention to the individual whose behavior he didn't like or noticed (ie. talking while he was talking, leaving the room early, changing seats, etc). The meeting room was kept cold. And, if he had material he wanted to cover, he didn't call a break. He noticed everything around the room, and was a little frustrated when we didn't stand, clap, say his phrases aloud, etc as enthusiastically as he wanted. He did not like interruptions at all.

-In the beginning, he stressed financial responsibility and assigned the class homework. The homework was to find alternative sources of money, whether it be asking family and friends, increasing your credit limit on existing cards, or applying for new ones. The goal was to use "Other People's Money," (but it really isn't). What was unconscionable was he stopped talking about living within your means and started peddling the sale of other classes. The cost of the classes and material varied from $1,995 (notebook & cd) to $63,990 (not a typo). He compared the value of the classes to a 4-year Ivy League education, which is just wrong. The exercise in increasing your credit limit was to buy their materials. After that exercise, he didn't stress financial responsibility again.

Brad Sides also mentioned that he was proud of a woman who borrowed from every resource available to buy their classes and material. However, it sounded like it was her last dollar. Her last dollar will not allow her to invest in real estate investment (down payments, mortgage points, closing fees, etc).

-Also, toward the end of class, rows of people were systematically moved to the back row so that the salesmen and women would give you personal attention and opportunity to buy their stuff.

-The class was informative. I felt I got my $100 worth (my friend and I split the cost). It's comparable to community class tuition. However, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much money he made using assumptions in the local newspaper article (link below). I made a lot of assumptions, but it does show that he makes much of his income running these classes, rather than doing real estate full-time.

Seminar attendees = 160 people with 20% fall-out rate
30% success rate in selling at least one item
Average selling price product = $2,000 (this is their lowest-priced product)
=$96k collected
minus $24k recruitment cost (8, 4-hour classes run twice a day at hotels, with 4 WIN employees are present)
minus $18k class facilities (hotel, drinks, etc)
plus $18.7 class tuition (what students paid as a group)
=$72.7k profit/class

Assuming the speaker makes 10-15% (see article below), Brad Sides got $14.4k profit minimum for 3 days work.
WIN (Wealth Intelligence Academy/Network) earns $58.3k/class in gross revenue.
Run this once a week for a year (50 wks/yr) means they earn $2.9 million/year/class. Mind you, they run other classes as well.

Now, this is probably on the low-side because I used $2k as the lowest-selling price. The average-selling price is most-likely higher, perhaps $8k.

-The content was good; however, if you subtract out the hard-sell of their products, everything could've been taught in a day or day and a half. We spent an inordinate amount of time listening to their pitches. I thought the average student (40s-50s, blue-collar and white-collar) could ill-afford these multi-thousand dollar classes. Just be careful, and do your research.

-Here's an article on "Teach Me Trade" classes that the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper ran the week of our class. "Teach Me X" is a series of classes, and WIN is a machine.

"Stock-picking infomercial experts indicted for fraud" by Matthew Barakat
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/12/BURGVI062.DTL&hw=teach+me&sn=001&sc=1000

Felicia
San Mateo, California
U.S.A.