My Beef with Gurus Part 1 of 5

If you've watched late night TV, you've seen the real estate gurus touting their real estate courses that you order for only $499 or the weekend "bootcamps" where they pack the seminar rooms then direct you to the back of the room to buy their courses.  Over the next number of postings, I'm going to discuss the issues I have with these people.  

The first things I want to address, is the idea of starting a business by reading a little booklet or watching a DVD.  Realize that the investors that are actually successful did NOT learn how to do what they are doing by watching a DVD.  They learned it from experience, mistakes, and making adjustments along the way.  They are successful because their investing is a business.  If you want to have a successful business, do you honestly think you can learn it from watching a DVD?  OF course not!  The information you get from those courses is nothing more than the THEORY of a particular style of investing.  Let's say you wanted to be a custom home builder.  But you know nothing about building, or running a business.  You're watching TV late at night and someone says, "Buy my course on how to be a home builder for only $499!" So you buy it and the DVD tells you that you will need wood, some nails, and a crew of construction workers, and that the house should have rooms, and a ceiling, and you should top it off with some shingles.  That's it.  Do you really think you're ready to start your own custom home building company now?  NO!  Yet that is exactly what the courses offered by the gurus give you.  Very basic information on the theory of real estate.  Certainly not enough to start a company with!