THE HONEST TREATMENT
THE WRONG PERSON
TO ASK.
This page has an obvious conflict of interest and it is better to state it in the first sentence than to bury it near the bottom.
Ben sells education. Take everything below with that in mind, and use the checklist at the end on him as readily as on anyone else.
What free material genuinely gives you
More than the education business likes to admit. Every mechanical fact in this trade is published somewhere for nothing. There is no secret step, and anyone implying there is should be treated carefully.
Specifically, free gets you: whether you are interested at all, the vocabulary to hold a conversation without being lost, a working understanding of the three strategies, the arithmetic behind an offer, and enough to start the valuation reps that stage two requires. That is not a small list. For a meaningful number of people it is the whole list, and they go and do deals with it.
It is also the right place to start regardless, because free material is how you find out whether someone's thinking is worth anything before money is involved.
The four things a good paid program supplies
What changed for Ben in 2017 was not information. It was four things free content cannot structurally provide.
- Sequence. Not what to know — what to do first, second and third, and what to ignore entirely until later. This is the one that matters most and the one nobody advertises.
- A person to ask. The value is not the answer. It is that an unfamiliar problem stops being a week-long stall and becomes a twenty-minute conversation. Multiply that across a year.
- Standards. Someone telling you the number you just ran is wrong, and why, before it goes on paper. Repetition without correction just makes your mistakes fluent.
- A deadline with a cost attached. Money already spent is a deadline. It is unglamorous, slightly embarrassing, and it is a large part of the actual effect.
Notice what is not on that list: content. If a program's pitch is mostly about how many hours of video it contains, it is selling the part that is already free.
This is one piece of a bigger picture; the full story behind this work has the rest.
When paying is premature
Most people who buy, buy too early, and the reason is that purchasing produces the sensation of commitment without any of the work.
Paying is premature if any of these is true:
- You are still deciding whether you are interested. That is a free-layer question and nothing paid answers it better.
- You have not yet chosen one strategy and one market.
- You have never made an offer, and cannot name what specifically stopped you.
- You are hoping the purchase will supply motivation. It supplies a deadline, which is different, and only if you were already going to work.
- You would have to put it on a credit card you cannot clear, or it comes out of money your household actually needs. A program bought under financial pressure adds pressure to decisions that require patience.
The moment it stops being premature is specific: you have a repeated, identifiable stall you cannot resolve on your own. Not a vague feeling of being stuck. A named blockage that has recurred and that free material has failed to clear.
The checklist for evaluating any program
Use this on Ben. Use it on whoever is running ads at you this week. If a program cannot survive these questions, the answer is no regardless of how much you like the person asking.
- Are they currently transacting? Not in 2019. This quarter. An educator who stopped doing the work teaches a market that no longer exists.
- Will they tell you who this is bad for? Anyone who believes their program suits everybody is selling, not teaching.
- Is there a free layer you can test first? You should be able to sample the actual thinking before spending anything.
- Does the pitch lead with lifestyle or with mechanics? Rented cars, jets and beaches are a signal about where the revenue really comes from.
- Are income claims attached? Specific earnings promises are a reason to walk, not a reason to buy.
- Is there urgency pressure? Countdown timers, closing tonight, price going up at midnight. Real instruction does not need a clock.
- Can you talk to someone who finished and did not succeed? Everyone will show you the wins. The distribution of outcomes is the actual information.
- Is the refund policy written and readable? If it is verbal, it does not exist.
- Does the paid layer require the free layer first? A program that will happily sell to a complete beginner who has never made an offer is optimizing for volume.
The red flags that should make you walk away from Ben
A checklist that never points at its author is marketing. So here is the version pointed the right way.
Walk away from anything Ben sells if: he stops buying houses and keeps teaching; the free layer stops being genuinely useful and becomes a thin advertisement for a paid one; an income figure appears attached to a program; a deadline or a countdown is used to make you decide faster than you want to; you are told this is right for everyone; or anything on this network starts implying that buying something is the step between you and a deal.
He is also not a broker, attorney, CPA or investment adviser, and nothing published here is advice about your specific situation. For that, use your own licensed professionals.
You do not need another promise that everything will be easy. You need something useful to learn, and a next step you are willing to take.
Ben Lovro
If you decide to buy something
Three rules that reduce the damage of a bad purchase.
Buy the smallest version first. If there is a cheaper tier, a single workshop, or a month-to-month option, take it. You are buying information about the teacher as much as about the subject.
Set a use-it deadline before you pay. Write down what you will have produced sixty days after purchase — offers made, deals analyzed, conversations had. Not modules completed. Completion is consumption wearing a costume.
Do not buy the second thing until the first produced the output. Serial purchasing is the most expensive trap in this business, and it is covered in detail on learning traps.
Frequently asked
Questions people actually ask
Should I pay for a real estate program?
Probably not yet. Most people buy before the free layer has run out, which converts the feeling of commitment into a purchase instead of into work. Paid instruction earns its place when you have a specific repeated stall you cannot clear on your own.
Isn't Ben just going to say yes because he sells education?
That is exactly the risk and it is why the checklist on this page is written to work against him. If the free layer here is not useful to you, the paid layer will not rescue it, and that is a reason to leave rather than to upgrade.
What makes a program worth the money?
Sequence, a person to ask, standards applied to your actual work, and a deadline with cost attached. If a program is mostly content volume, you are paying for the part that is already free everywhere.
Are expensive programs better?
Price signals nothing about quality in this market. It signals marketing spend and positioning. Some of the most useful instruction is cheap or free and some of the most expensive is video the seller no longer updates.
What is the single biggest red flag?
Income claims. A specific earnings promise tells you the business model depends on hope rather than on teaching, and it is a reason to walk rather than to ask for details.
What if I already bought something that did not work?
Finish the diagnosis before buying anything else. Name the exact stage you stalled at and what specifically stopped you. Most people who bought twice bought the same thing twice because they never named the stall.
Make your next move
A year from now, what will you be glad you started today?
You don't need another promise that everything will be easy. You need something useful to learn — and a next step you're willing to take.