Property Tales
When we hold free training seminars at hotels, we get all kinds of people coming in. Look around and you'll see what I mean. Some of you come just to have a place to be, and some because this is your day's entertainment. But I can see most of you are serious. I'm good at reading body language, and I see most of you want to learn how to get rich quick from investing in real estate. So, wake up. Let's get started.
-Kevin Dagleish,
Russ Whitney Education Group Trainer, New York, August 12, 2004
12:30 P.M. Westin Hotel Times Square, Mezzanine Level. Several hundred people mill around, anxiously awaiting what they obviously consider to be the chance of a lifetime. They're here to attend Russ Whitney's Free Real Estate Training Seminar and learn how to get rich quick from real estate investing. Some people jockey for first place in line. Most stand on the periphery-speaking on cellphones, reading newspapers, eyeing the competition. Several munch lunch. All of them look hungry.
The demographics are interesting: women and men of all ages, although most of the women seem to be in their 40s and up, and most of the men seem to be in their 30s. Two-thirds are African-Americans and Asians, the remainder is Hispanic and white. Most are dressed to impress. Many have accents indicating they're not native-born.
When the doors open, the crowd rushes into the meeting room. Militantly, Russ Whitney's staffers instruct them to slow down and to proceed single file into the seats, filling one row and then the next. The throng obeys. These staffers know crowd control.
On a large screen at the front of the meeting room, a promo video blares a message similar to the one that brought these people to the seminar: Russ Whitney got rich quick by investing in real estate, and he can teach you how to do it, too.
Most of the people who've come to take today's Whitney seminar met the self-proclaimed real estate guru and self-made millionaire during the wee hours, when Russ was touting his training program on late-night tv and they were still wide awake-perhaps because they were fretting over their finances or engaged in an overnight job too dull to command their full attention. Either way, they were sufficiently swept away by Russ Whitney's story to call a toll-free number and sign up for this free seminar, one conducted around the country on a regular basis.
Whitney himself isn't present. This roadshow is handled by his staffers under the leadership of Kevin Dagleish, who proclaims himself Whitney's partner- another self-made real estate millionaire. He's been leading seminars for five years.
Dagleish really works the crowd, involving people by having them repeat slogans and answer questions. He doles out copies of Whitney's "best-selling" books to several who answer correctly.
Talking faster than Superman flies, Dagleish recounts how 25 years ago an impoverished Whitney began his ascent to real estate wealth with $1000 of OPM (Other People's Money, or Whitneyspeak for a bank loan) with which he secured second, third, fourth and fifth bank loans totaling $5000 in OPM, with which he made a down payment on a rental unit property that gave him income to "gingerbread" the building and "flip" it at a profit.
Talking of pre-foreclosures, fair market value mortgages, MAI appraisals and such, Dagleish makes the crowd feel smart: "You can do it if you know technique, strategy and mathematics."
Heck, Dagleish virtually guarantees anyone can do it.
And, everyone wants to-so badly that when Dagleish pushes Whitney's three-day course for $1790 (it's $1990 if you register later by phone), people rush to the sign-up desk. It's hard to know how many actually register-or whether they're just picking up free Whitney pins dispensed by staffers.
One tidbit Dagleish never mentions in his rap is that the Better Business Bureau of Florida (Whitney is headquartered there) has received 150 complaints within the past 36 months about Whitney's paid-for programs. o