Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of Ask Marco where I answer your investing related questions.
Today’s question comes from Joey, is it worth paying a coach or mentor? He says, hello Marco. My name is Joey. I’m currently 24 years old and looking to get into passive real estate investing. I’ve been looking hard for a mentor recently I found a local company, I won’t mention the company’s name here in Arizona, which is where I currently live. They will have open houses Saturdays for the rehabs they are doing and we’ll have many events during the week. I attend, I attended one and found out they are partnered with a company called Renatu’s, I believe that’s how you pronounce it, R E N A T U S and they didn’t seem to be a part of that company, but they show their prices ranging anywhere from $2000 to $20,000 prices as in like a tuition is what I believe he’s saying here.
What am I asking is what’s the best way to find a mentor and is it worth paying for this type of coaching? They seemed legit and the people who were leading this as well as the members seemed like they were enjoying working together. I don’t want to pay an amount, I shouldn’t just for networking. Thank you for your time.
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Joey, this is a great question. I actually did a Google search for Renata’s and I just wanted to learn about them and I don’t know much if anything at all about who they are. In fact, I think I came across them years ago, but I pretty much never hear about this company. And again, I want to be very clear that I am not saying it’s good, bad or, or otherwise I am indifferent. But when I did a Google search, the first page of the search results were a bunch of things about people asking is Renatus a scam.
The Better Business Bureau was one of the first things that came up. Renatu’s reviews is Renatu’s the real deal or a scam on Bigger Pockets, uh, Renatu’s LLC complaints at the Better Business Bureau, all that kind of stuff. But that doesn’t necessarily suggest that, you know, the are a bad company. I want to be clear that I’m being very indifferent here. You need to do your own due diligence and research and check online to see what other people are saying and what you can find out about them. However, having said that, I want to comment on a couple of things. Uh, first of all, I don’t want to talk about Renatu. I want to answer your question, but I do want to point out that although some people feel that the company is a bit of a pyramid type system, they really have people who join Renatu’s that get paid to recruit and bring in other people.
So they have a very high tuition, but it looks like a good percentage of that tuition is paid back out as a referral fee or commission to you as a member to bring in other new students into their education program. And it actually says here on the about us page on their website that you will get paid from a $1000 to $10,000 in commission simply for helping them grow and enroll new students into their education program. So whenever I read that, I get a little bit suspicious, you know, my, eyebrows go up and uh, I pay a little bit more attention because I realize that there is another motivating factor to bring you in. It’s not always about the education or the mentoring or coaching if that even exists. It really plays heavily in people, psychology, and psyche when they’re getting paid up to $10,000 in commissions for recruiting you.
And that’s why it can feel like a pyramid scheme, if you will, to some people. Again, I’m not saying, you know, it’s good-bad, I’m being indifferent. You have to do your own research. Personally, I would not pay that, uh, that $20,000 to join, which is what I’m going to get into here. To answer your question and your main question is, is it worth paying for a coach or a mentor? What I’m going to say is this, first of all, regarding networking, networking typically, and usually not always, but usually, it’s free because you can put yourself into social events and situations where you’re around other people, whether it be virtually online, in online meetings or in live events, whether they’re local real estate investor club meetings, special events related to real estate, whether it’s um, the IMN, a single-family forum, a bigger pockets event, a local event, a meetup group.
There’s so many different types of real estate groups that pop up or exist or meet on a weekly or monthly basis because so many people love real estate and everybody’s eager to learn and share and network, so there’s no shortage of networking opportunities. If you look around, especially if you’re in a larger market, you’re an Arizona, I assume you’re probably in Phoenix for one of the major metros, and even if you’re not, you can drive, so look around. You probably have all kinds of networking opportunities, both live in person as well as online. The other thing I want to mention is that education is widely available. There’s tons of information. In fact, you can bury yourself in information overload, and not only that, education, for the most part, is cheaper free. Just look around. I mean, you’re listening to this podcast. There’s no cost to you for this.
There’s other podcasts, there’s audiobooks, tons of audio books. There are hundreds of books online you could just order from Amazon, and these books range from probably 99 cents to $20 #25 the average probably being about $15 $16, there’s all kinds of free reports that you can download. There’s a lot of blogs and forums you can read for months if not years with the amount of content out there. And I’m not suggesting you spend that much energy and time educating yourself. You could get, you get to a point where you know enough, you know enough that once you start assembling the team around you, the right team of people around you, you’re going to have the team and the knowledge that you need in order to be successful and get moving and moving quickly and achieve your financial goals and whatever other goals you’re trying to achieve.
So networking is typically free. Education is widely available and it’s cheap or free. And my third comment here is that I’m not generally speaking, not a big believer in paying for mentoring or coaching unless, and this is the keyword unless it helps move you forward because you actually need the help. And it provides a lot of value. That value is both in the form of, uh, education, networking and, uh, educational content. And those three things are really what you get in mastermind groups. You know, and I belong to a number of mastermind groups. The reason I go, and then the reason I join and pay of course is because I get the networking, the education, the motivation, and inspiration to move things forward. I really have everything I need within those groups. But if you can’t attend or join those types of groups, no problem.
Like I said, a lot of that networking education is widely available and out there. But you know, for $20,000 or more, you can take that $20,000 and put it towards your first down payment on your first or next property. So if you’re building your portfolio and you’re just starting, maybe save that $20,000 or whatever it is to join this group and um, and pay for that type of education, I can guarantee you, you can find most if not all of that education elsewhere very inexpensively and even free and take that $20,000 that you have saved and put it towards the down payment that you’ll need in order to purchase that, that rental property, that investment property, whether it’s your first or your fifth or whatever. That’s really the answer to your question. Personally, I would not spend $20,000 for a, you know, a coaching or mentoring and it’s not because I don’t need it again, you know, I’ve joined many mastermind groups, so I get what I need from those groups in other ways.
But I think for you at your age and with what you’re doing, you can get the education and networking you need from all the resources that are out there, uh, widely available and in great quantity. And I would probably put that $20 or more towards that rental property, that first investment. Just get a good property, a nice, good property in a very good neighborhood and you’ll be very happy with it and you’ll get a lot of experience from that. It’s not just the education but you’ll gain experience that you can only get by actually doing it, by actually pulling the trigger and taking action. Experience doesn’t come from coaching or mentoring. It’s the, that comes before the actual experience. But the experience is a great teacher. And you know what, if you’re really, really, really looking for a mentor coach, you probably won’t need it a year from now.
But sometime within the next six months to a year, I actually have been having conversations with uh, a great friend and colleague of mine to put together some sort of mentoring or coaching program. I don’t know what that’s gonna look like yet. I know it’s going to be a very rich environment. So I know there are people who have asked me for mentoring and coaching and I just didn’t want to do it cause I don’t have the time and I have other projects on the go. But I’m starting to realize that there is a need and the demand for it. So it’ll be a select group that I will allow in all provide those details in the new year when I have them. Cause right now it’s just very um, high level. It’s really more a conversation about an idea than a plan to move things forward.
So, Joey, I hope that has helped you. If you have any further questions about that, just reach out to me or my team here and that’s it. So I’m sure other people had the same question. So thanks for sharing that and asking. And if you have a question about anything related to investing finance or real estate, and you’d like me to try and answer it on the show here, just go to passiverealestateinvesting.com, click Ask Marco at the top. Submit your question and I’m going to start recording these on a faster pace as I’m doing right now today. And remember to subscribe to the show. You’ll get notifications every time a new episode is released. Help us share the show with other people. Visit us on iTunes. Leave us a rating and review, and again, thanks for listening. I’ll see you on our next episode.
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