Sunday, July 02, 2006

Index to My John Burley Posts

Well, I’ve finally said all that needs to be said about John Burley (I hope)! 23 posts in all—over a third of this entire blog. Somewhat ironically, most people who find Die Eigenheit via the search engines do it with some variation of the key words john burley progressive profits scam, which takes them to my shortest Burley post, which is a post that directs them to other skeptical sites! Bummer.

Anyway, since I’ve written so many posts critical of John Burley and his real estate investment “advice” over the past several months, I figured it would be a good idea to create a single post that links to all of them, with short descriptions of the contents of each. I guess that’s not an index, really. More like a table of contents, I suppose. I’ve listed them in a suggested reading order, but feel free to skip around.

I recommend you start with A Brief Introduction, which goes into why I decided to write all these criticisms of John Burley and gives the barest sketch of what exactly a “wrap” is.

Next, check out my post that asks, “Is John Burley a ‘guru,’ or a fraud?” I take a detailed look at the claims John Burley makes on The Secrets of Professional Investors Made Easy, a tape set of Kiyosaki’s 1997 seminar in Australia which featured John Burley. Of course it’s impossible to say that Burley is running a scam without creating an exposure to charges of libel, so I leave it to you, the reader, to answer the question in the post’s title yourself.

I recommend you then check out my post on John Burley’s 7 Levels of Investor. I notice that Burley has very recently updated his web site (and in the process broken all of my links to his pages!), to better highlight what has basically become his “brand.” It’s smart to stick with what works, no doubt. Interestingly, he’s allowing people to review his products directly on his site. That could be fun! Will he be able to handle the negative reviews?

You might then be interested in reading my review of John Burley’s book, Money Secrets of the Rich. I highlight some pretty incredible claims that he makes.

As you probably know, John Burley has a “Boot Camp.” Is it really worth $5000? I doubt it. In my post on John Burley’s Dog and Pony Show I give one reason why.

Burley used to publish a quarterly newsletter (maybe he still does. I’m not sure). I compare the advice he gives in one of them with the advice that you’ll get out of your newspaper’s horoscope. See if you can tell the difference.

Burley’s biggest claim to fame is, arguably, the “hundreds” of houses that he owns. I took a look at the public record in an attempt to figure out the real number. It’s actually higher than I thought it was going to be. You can read more detail in the post on Burley’s Investment Properties and Investor Partners.

Given all those houses, Burley has to have some way of finding home sellers and then attracting homebuyers. One way, it seems, is with an eBay Store. Another way is with a website. I should point out that I have been watching ez2own1.com for several months, now, and I haven’t once seen an old property come down or a new property go up. I am therefore convinced that ez2own1.com is a dummy site (though the properties listed are, in fact, Burley houses). Now that Burley seems intent on revamping his web pages, however, we may soon see this changed. I will update this post as needed.

Burley sells houses to people with bad credit. Not surprisingly, this leads to a lot of foreclosures.

Burley loves to crow about his high returns on investment. I tackle his claims based on economic theory in this post, and then follow that up with a more concrete analysis in this post. Then I top it all off with this one, where I look at what Burley had to give up to become a "guru."

As I mentioned above, there are other skeptical sites out there on the web, but not many. I highlight a couple of them.

In my transactions and legal entities posts I present some raw data I pulled from the public record, mostly in preparation for my more detailed posts later on.

Burley has many “students.” He claims that his students’ success rate is the best in the business. I liken the behavior of some of these people to what you might see in a religious cult, which is why I decided to call them “Burleyists.” I’ve written a number of posts highlighting a particular person and what makes them interesting. You can find them here:

Mike Hay
Chris Bridgeman
ChavaRica
Robyn Grinter
Robert Yang
A Burleyist?
Troy Mann
Joe Arlt

That’s it! I don’t foresee writing any more John Burley posts, but you never know. If I do, though, I’ll be sure to put a link to it here.

Update: John Burley's Latest Antics - I wonder why Burley borrowed such a huge chunk of money and won't talk about it.

4 comments:

Dikkii said...

Spectacular effort with your Burley exposay, Einzige.

Property gurus annoy me at the best of times, but Burley appears to be a really nasty piece of work.

Well done.

Einzige said...

Thanks, Dikkii! A lot of work went into this stuff, so I sincerely hope the right people find what I've written here and come away from it having learned something. I know it's what I wish had been out there when I first attempted some due diligence on John Burley (unfortunately after already having spent a lot of money).

I wouldn't say that Burley is as bad as, for example, Robert Allen or Wade Cook--two guys who are demonstrably bald-faced liars and crooks giving extraordinarily bad advice. It's just that, like any of the endless varieties of snake oil you can find out there, Burley's teachings are ultimately not falsifiable. It's too easy to attribute your success to the snake oil and your failure to something else.

Sadly, no matter how many times you make that point, people still seem to need the teachings of their guru to be true--I know this from personal experience. All the cognitive illusions and biases are brought in to play to shore up the belief against the onslaught of reality. I'm sure it's analogous to, e.g., what the Christian mind must go through when confronted with any of the endless number of Biblical absurdities. Speaking of which, Burley goes on at length about his Christian belief and the power of faith to accomplish great things. I bet you're not surprised.

Anonymous said...

Hey Einzige...

Does all this make you a "burley man". Kubrick reference; get it? Ha, ha. Lord, the wit.

Anyway, it seems you're in good spirits (as good as you ever were, you crank), and that's awesome. Lots of people back in the 602 give you a shout-out. You're a great human being my friend. If you're ever in New England, give me a ring.

Krol

Einzige said...

Also a bit of a Matrix reference (and maybe an SNL reference?)!

Nice to hear from you, Krol!

Perhaps this is not the best location to discuss this, but where in New England have you taken up residence? You still at the same Yahoo email?