While the principles (dirty tricks) presented in the seminar were probably legal, they seem to take full advantage of the system and prey on the naive and under-educated. And while you can take the approach that this is their problem, it’s still morally wrong and only feeds the desperate get-rich-quick cancer that has been plaguing our lazy society for years.

While I am glad I went to the seminar and picked up a couple of pointers, but not the whole story, my gut told me it was a refresher course in motivation and sales tactics that making a quick buck on the backs of the unfortunate and naive will always be wrong. Thanks, but no thanks.

From the start, I felt like I was at a timeshare presentation, meaning that I was being told how great everything was and how much I needed this program to change my life, and was waiting to hear how much it was going to cost me. The presenter (Lee Escobar) was a very polished snake-oil salesman who spent a lot of time giving us his background, complete with pictures of him in uniform (army chaplain, apparently), his mom (army major), his Bentley, etc., to establish his credibility. He also spent a lot of time talking about how well-regulated the RD company was by the SEC, and how we had to trust what they were telling us because all of it had been verified and survived scrutiny by various attorneys, the SEC, the IRS, and the Easter Bunny. Sorry, sport. Enron was a publicly traded company with SEC oversight, remember? So is Fannie Mae. So is Freddie Mac. The government couldn’t make a quarter if it managed a laundromat, so telling me to rely on government oversight really isn’t reassuring whatsoever.

Lee set out early ground rules, the most important appearing to be that nobody gets to ask any questions during the class. He graciously offered to stay after class (which ended at 7) to answer any individual questions, but the general impression I got was that he wasn’t going to be challenged by us “left-sided thinkers”. That doesn’t sit well with me, being told to effectively “sit down, shut up & don’t ask any questions because we know what’s good for you.” After all, if I knew what was good for me, I’d already be rich, right? Hard to argue with that logic, eh? And if someone actually did have the gall to ask a question, he would refuse to answer the question and talk to them in a condescending manner, letting them know that they were wasting everyone’s time.

Most of the day was spent with the class acting like a bunch of barking seals, dutifully raising their hands whenever Lee ended some leading question with “let me see your hands.” (“How many people want to be rich? Let me see your hands.”) It happened so often, that in just one 3-hour stretch, he said it 137 times. But people kept responding. (Oh yeah!) So he kept it up, making sure to chastise the class when he didn’t see enough hands. I told my girlfriend I was going to have 2 lb. wrist weights made and sell them outside RD seminars for $10 each and market it as the “LMSYH” workout (Let Me See Your Hands).

At the end of day one, he told everyone to go home, call their credit card companies, and try and get the limits on their cards raised, ostensibly because they would need capital for deals they were going to start making. Interestingly, early in day 2, he informed everyone that it was the people with bad credit who had an “advantage” in real estate investing, because they already were in a position financially that the “good credit” people would be soon enough – where they would have to “engineer” deals using no cash and no credit.

Well, if the credit card exercise wasn’t for deals, then what was it for?

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long for that answer either. By the end of day 2, we had the prices of the advanced training. Mr. Escobar told us how much he would have loved to give us all of the information he had on engineering deals, but it just wasn’t practical in the 3-day timeframe, so we all needed to have this advanced training and mentoring. The packages he recommended were between $25k and $35k. Um… Thanks anyway.

I didn’t bother going back for day 3. I read a number of reviews online and watched an expose of the RD seminars done by a Canadian reporter. The things outlined in that youtube video were eerily similar to what we were hearing. In fact, if you watch the report, pay close attention to the mobile home park portion, because Lee spent a ton of time telling us how he was making a half-million on a mobile home park and that we should be buying trailers at $5,000 apiece and renting them to generate positive cash flow each month.

To be fair, there was some good information presented, although I wouldn’t recommend anyone actually go out and act on it. At best, it was incomplete and might land you in some financial distress if you attempted some of the deals they were advocating. At worst, it might land you in legal trouble. I’d STRONGLY advise talking to some “left-sided thinking” attorney before you ran out and began using some of their one-size-fits-all contracts, because if you’re ever hauled into court on a breach of contract action, you’re going to be presenting your case to a “left-thinking” judge and a bunch of “left-thinking” jurors who might not appreciate your zeal for making shady deals just so you can buy more $5000 mobile homes.

One final note. Lee made a big deal about being “financially free” and being able to do “what he wants, when he wants, where he wants, any time he wants, with no negative financial consequences” and you couldn’t ever get to that point if you were an employee of a company. Then, he proceeded to tell us how he used to be both a teacher and a mentor in the advanced RD training, but had to give that up because he spent all but 30 days away from his home one year and RD told him he had to choose one or the other. He chose to be a mentor, but RD told him that he was going to have to teach instead. So Lee is no longer a mentor. Doesn’t sound like he has the freedom to do “what he wants, when he wants,” does it? Also sounds a heck of a lot like being an employee.

Bottom line: Do your homework. Ask questions. Don’t be talked down to.