Russ Whitney

I recently attended one of those Russ Whitney real estate workshop's. The workshop itself consists of a very slick two hour presentation of the various techniques that can be used to profit from property but only really scratches the surface.It's also a sales pitch for the 3-day course offered by Russ Whitney for anyone prepared to part with over $2,000(later reduced if you booked up on the spot). I must admit I nearly succumbed to the temptation to part with my money in order to find out how this guy does it but I decided to hold back as I'm not entirely convinced if these techniques will work.

Below is a post from a gentleman I found on Google News. This is what he had to say:

"Need sleeping pills? Forget them, and pick up a book by Russ Whitney. Russ will put you to sleep, but forget about him when seeking any Real Estate insight.

Not worth a nickel. Russ seems very nice on tv, but niceness, by itself, just doesn't cut it. Niceness, a look of sincerity and down-to-earthiness, does however draw people like a baited hook draws fish. It's frightening when someone appears overly nice.

Maybe I should give Russ the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps his aim is high and his intentions are grand? Unfortunately his impact falls short. Having read a book of his, my first doubting impressions of Russ were soon well-justified.

First of all, Russ spent 30 boring, worthless, nauseating pages to tell you about the rotten life he had and then another 10 pages of useless positivity. I'd rather read a phone book! It would also yield more valuable information. The book is sufferably slow. I could have wrapped fish with the pages and had better results. You could put the first 40 worthless pages in one paragraph, but not Russ. He makes you sweat it out in agony just to find something remotely close to the focus of and purpose of his book. I got that impression, after the second page. I knew right there that Russ was just another paper-wasting seminar idiot. If you treasure time, keep Russ off your bookshelf.

But what's in Russ' book anyway? you ask. Basically Russ got lucky with a few properties way back when and from that, he built an entire book on! He tells you how he did it, but there's really nothing earth-shattering that will hit you on the head with. You can read just about any other Real Estate book and get more detailed ideas from it.

His infomercial is way off. Not only can you NOT turn $1000 into $4.7 mill in just 18 months without luck, extreme knowledge, and all it takes, but certainly you CANNOT do it as easily as he will have you believe. Russ will have you believe "if you can walk and chew bubble- gum" you can fall over making money. He will even have you believe that somehow dealing with tenants is fun! So Russ isn't being honest. This DOES frustrate me.

Look, bottom line, it doesn't matter who the author is; we don't need ideas. You don't lack ideas. What we need and lack is the many needed step-by-step hard details of those ideas. This is the important stuff! Ideas are important, but we all have many brilliant ideas already. But like programming a VCR, with home buying or any procedure, we need to know how EXACTLY how to do things.

I got the impression that Russ didn't care beyond getting your $35. There were only about 6 points I learned from the entire book - hardly worth $35.00. I agree $35 is not much, but if you had to pay $35 every time you needed to learn 6 (six) things, to accomplish your goals, you'd eventually go broke.

I guarantee that Russ will not teach his children his techniques the same shallow way he writes his books. If you want to learn anything in life, you MUST have ALL the details. Anything less and you are going backwards. You will have just the right amount of information to really make yourself dangerous to yourself."

Obviously, I don't recommend Russ Whitney