Stabbed! - The latest victim - Posted by John Behle

Posted by John Behle on April 17, 1999 at 19:03:28:

I went as far as to email my post to John T. Reed and he responded “I stand corrected. My apologies to John.”

I was a little surprised. That was very gracious and raised my opinion of his objectivity and desires to keep his facts accurate.

I guess things could have been worse. Getting on the wrong side of Fred Crane would truly be a nightmare I don’t envy at all. He is very well respected, widely read and opinionated. His seminar back in the early 80’s is still valuable legal reference I use on a daily basis.

Stabbed! - The latest victim - Posted by John Behle

Posted by John Behle on April 17, 1999 at 15:37:50:

I had been so thrilled to stay off John T. Reed’s hit list. He doesn’t have a competing book about paper, so I thought I might be safe. Apparently someone inquired and now his faulty memory and facts have colored me too.

It’s not a big deal, just not true. I left a message on his voice mail which since it wasn’t “worshipful” will probably lead to further attacks. I guess I knew it was just a matter of time.

Here’s the scoop - I mean poop.

John Behle—I do not recommend
Behle once tried to rent my mailing list. I refused to let him because I thought the advertising piece he wanted to send was misleading. It was made to look like a newspaper article and had a post-it note on it that looked like it came from a friend. It was signed “John B.” I had received the same piece myself previously and called my friend John Beck to ask if he had sent it. That’s when I first heard of John Behle.

I’ve never tried to rent John’s list. He has nothing to do with paper and wouldn’t be an interesting list for me anyway. The only list I’ve ever rented in my life is Creative Real Estate Magazine (a couple times).

I doubt John cares about facts, but the letter/ad he is referring to was developed and marketed by a company named Unicorp or Millionaire Consulting Service. They marketed a consulting service for Bob Allen and Mark Haroldsen.

I sued them and won over the fact that they used their infamous “John B” letter as they called it. Nothing in the letter ever mentioned me or referred to me, yet in a marketing script that we uncovered it mentioned that if they thought it was a friend or relative that had sent it to not disagree with that.

If they were upset or enquired as to who sent it, the marketer was told to say that it came from John Behle in their marketing department. I never had anything to do with their marketing department. For a few months I helped out in doing some training for their consulting staff and handling the most difficult consulting situations.

I sued them because many people did assume the letter came from me. At that time about 100,000 people per month had been reading the magazine articles I wrote for many different publications and my name was the first to come to many people’s minds. They mailed out tens of thousands of these ads per week and just about anyone with the name “John B” paid the price. Chuck Abbot, Doug Holmes and Richard Allen that developed the ad said that they chose that name because almost anyone knew a “John B”.

I sued for $750,000 in damages and because they didn’t have a leg to stand on, they settled. I just wanted an apology, the cessation of any use of my name and just to rub Doug’s nose in it a little, I received rights to use his mailing list (total junk), the Unicorp mailing list and had him sign a letter to clear up falsehoods that they had spread among their employees. I’m not a real vindictive person, so I didn’t mail the letter. I guess I should have.

Anybody want a 10 year old 30,000 name mailing list from a consulting service?

Once again, John T. Reed’s facts are messed up. Hopefully he will show his intentions are honorable and clear it up. What do you wanna bet?

JOHN T. REED - I DO NOT RECOMMEND - HIS RECOMMENDATIONS

From what I’ve heard, his books are very worthwhile reading, his opinions of others in many cases are flawed.

Re: Stabbed! - The latest victim - Posted by John(NH)

Posted by John(NH) on April 19, 1999 at 10:34:42:

I recently finished reading Reed’s book on Lease Options. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but it both sucks AND blows. It’s not an informative, how-to type of book like I expected. The man is very negative from page two, giving a preaching attitude to do things his way or no way at all. As far as I’m concerned, his writings are the literary equivalent of valium.

Never argue with an idiot . . . - Posted by Bronchick

Posted by Bronchick on April 19, 1999 at 09:01:14:

“Never argue with an idiot . . . people might not know the difference.” One of my favorite “Murphy-isms”

Reed also made an insulting comment about me by taking a quote of mine out of context and saying “excuse me, what law school did you go to?” He makes broad negative generalization and statements of law that have no basis, like “that’s fraud.”

Reed is one of those self-proclaimed “watchdogs” who prides himself in attacking others to make himself feel worthwhile. His books are well-written, and inexpensive, but give no real “how to” information for someone to get started in real estate. His suggestion is essentially “forget those ‘expensive’ book and tape courses, just buy my $20 book and go out and do it!”

Hmmm . . . and make a $5000 mistake? If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!

Re: Stabbed! - The latest victim - Posted by Bill Gatten

Posted by Bill Gatten on April 17, 1999 at 18:17:31:

John,

I too have been framed and flamed by the best, from people posting here, to the [in]famous Fred Crane, the publisher of “First Tuesday,” the so-called California Realtor Magazine, who also happens to be the attorney responsible for the landmark Wellenkamp decision against Bank of America (which led to the Garn St. Germain Act in 1972). Mr. Crane alone cost me many thousands of dollars in lost revenue for a period of several months, while he battered my program in two or three consecutive editorials. Ultimately realizing he had the wrong guy, and that his information was terribly in error, he blamed someone else in his office (a law student, we think) for the misinformation and poorly researched articles.

My first response to all of his hurtful and unfounded “critcism” was to write a 24 page rebuttal article in answer to his very sophomoric attack on the PACTrust (it’s still on our website at www.cal-equity.com).

However, since that time I’ve learned that if a few words aren’t sufficient to take care of insults and defamation at the outset, a lot more just tend to make it worse and give them more to keep plugging away at.

As embarrassing as I know it is, when irresponsible people (like Reed), do hurtful things to people like yourself, they can seldom have the power to affect their victims for long, and it all balances out ultimately anyway. In my case, Fred Crane is better known than I, and my rebuttal probably netted us more new business than anything I’ve ever written.

Keep on grinning.

Bill Gatten

Re: Stabbed! - The latest victim - Posted by phil fernandez

Posted by phil fernandez on April 17, 1999 at 16:00:34:

John,

Your reputation here is cemented in stone. Many of us have met you at the convention in Dallas and have ordered and read your material.

Don’t let John Reed get under your skin. The man has problems.

Free advertising - Posted by Matthew Chan

Posted by Matthew Chan on April 19, 1999 at 23:58:43:

While I agree some of John Reed’s comments are rather disrespectful and scathing, I really don’t mind it because I have found that I can mine gold nuggets from all the commentary. I mentally filter out all the emotional/opinionated statements and have found some of it informative.

If nothing else, his site has been an advertisement to other “gurus” giving me more avenues to further feed my brain… I disregard his negative comments and begin my own discovery process and come up with my own opinion of a given “guru’s” course and seminar.