Owen Cook & Marczell Klein Free Tour NYC Notes 9/26/25 - 9/28/25

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, nerdspeak said:

it’s a miracle he ever made money this way.

His FreeTours made him tons of money. They were a vehicle for selling bootcamps. Bootcamps are like free money.

[nerdspeak]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

His FreeTours made him tons of money. They were a vehicle for selling bootcamps. Bootcamps are like free money.

Free Tours worked because he could fill the room for free based on his YouTube reach.

Let’s do a simple model without repeat customers, where all customers come from the free tour.

Let’s say he had 100 free tour attendees per event x 2 = 200 month on average, and filled two hot seats with 30 people each -> 60 per month  and two bootcamps of 3 students each per month -> 6 students.

That’s $30k gross which isn’t bad, and seminar rooms back then were cheap, maybe $1000 per weekend x 2 = $2k per month. Subtract another $2k per month for travel costs, and you’re at $26k. 

That’s $312k profit just on Owen each year, which isn’t bad. And maybe some other instructors put up similar numbers, and he was banking $70k net from 2-3 of them after splitting it with Papa (if that’s actually what happened). But plenty of salespeople make half a million dollars without flying around the country like a madman. It would have been a lot easier to sell digital services or even long-term dating mentorship just for rich guys in LA. He might have made more doing that actually (and it’s what he seems to be doing now), with way less risk since he wouldn’t be burning through $4k/month in travel and seminar room costs, and without the disruption from the constant flights.

It’s an inefficient way to sell services, which is why he had to develop all these content generation and sales tricks to make up for it with high conversion rates. 

Edited Thursday at 02:21 PM by nerdspeak

[Hafiz]

At the free tour they upsell you on the hotseat and boot camp. I paid for the hotseat, 300, and it was not bad but you need to apply the lessons. The boot camp is like 2k I think but probably like 3k a head now.

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

Let’s do a simple model without repeat customers, where all customers come from the free tour.

Obviously he needs social media marketing to get people into the Free Tour.

He also sold a lot of Hot Seats from the Free Tours.

It's a great, efficient business model.

Edited Thursday at 11:02 PM by Leo Gura

[Zen LaCroix]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Obviously he needs social media marketing to get people into the Free Tour.

He also sold a lot of Hot Seats from the Free Tours.

It's a great, efficient business model.

He claims to lose a lot of money doing free tours. He used some business acronyms to describe how. I'm not sure if he meant actual money lost or the potential of more money being made that is lost from doing free tours. I couldn't wrap my head around it because he's been booking cheaper and cheaper hotels to do these events and he fills his bootcamps up along with other sales but anyway I digress. Maybe it was some business stuff that just went over my head

Edited 22 hours ago by Zen LaCroix

[Zen LaCroix]

12 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

Free Tours worked because he could fill the room for free based on his YouTube reach.

Let’s do a simple model without repeat customers, where all customers come from the free tour.

Let’s say he had 100 free tour attendees per event x 2 = 200 month on average, and filled two hot seats with 30 people each -> 60 per month  and two bootcamps of 3 students each per month -> 6 students.

That’s $30k gross which isn’t bad, and seminar rooms back then were cheap, maybe $1000 per weekend x 2 = $2k per month. Subtract another $2k per month for travel costs, and you’re at $26k. 

That’s $312k profit just on Owen each year, which isn’t bad. And maybe some other instructors put up similar numbers, and he was banking $70k net from 2-3 of them after splitting it with Papa (if that’s actually what happened). But plenty of salespeople make half a million dollars without flying around the country like a madman. It would have been a lot easier to sell digital services or even long-term dating mentorship just for rich guys in LA. He might have made more doing that actually (and it’s what he seems to be doing now), with way less risk since he wouldn’t be burning through $4k/month in travel and seminar room costs, and without the disruption from the constant flights.

It’s an inefficient way to sell services, which is why he had to develop all these content generation and sales tricks to make up for it with high conversion rates. 

When you are at the free tour he sells his bootcamps directly to you. I'm not familiar with sales tactics but its pretty clear hes sells by psychologically dominating the people in the audience. He offers the bootcamp at the end of his talk and tells the people to go in the hall if they're interested in. There he gets the first batch of people who are super interested.

Then he starts talking about the bootcamp and tells people if they just wanna hear about go in the hall. With the span of 2 - 3 minutes he becomes more and more intense and aggressive while not being pushy at all. He does not hide the fact that he selling he straight up tells you he's selling to you and even says come out and hear the pitch. You almost feel you have to do it. He sets the frame of stern father telling his kids what to do.

When you go in the hall there's like 30 guys there and Owen pitching the bootcamp SPEAKING IN THE MOST INTENSE AND AGGRESSIVE FASHION YOU'VE EVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING SPEAK IN! It's probably very intimidating for some guys. He's completely psychologically dominating most of the guys there. And you've probably never in your life ever seen a human being speak with as much conviction and intensity as he does when selling bootcamps. It's EXTREME!

Edited yesterday at 02:46 AM by Zen LaCroix

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Zen LaCroix said:

When you go in the hall there's like 30 guys there and Owen pitching the bootcamp SPEAKING IN THE MOST INTENSE AND AGGRESSIVE FASHION YOU'VE EVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING SPEAK IN! It's probably very intimidating for some guys. He's completely psychologically dominating most of the guys there. And you've probably never in your life ever seen a human being speak with as much conviction and intensity as he does when selling bootcamps. It's EXTREME!

Yeah, he is shmeless about it. He's rationalized it to himself in his mind in the same way he has rationalized that he is God's gift to women, when in fact most women who sleep with him will regret it.

That's how narcissist works.

[Deziree]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, he is shmeless about it. He's rationalized it to himself in his mind in the same way he has rationalized that he is God's gift to women, when in fact most women who sleep with him will regret it.

That's how narcissist works.

Why is your blog not working?

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Deziree said:

Why is your blog not working?

Technical problems.

[Zen LaCroix]

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, he is shmeless about it. He's rationalized it to himself in his mind in the same way he has rationalized that he is God's gift to women, when in fact most women who sleep with him will regret it.

That's how narcissist works.

Why will they regret it?

Also many women regret dating a guy years later after they've evolved and changed looking back in hindsight.

[Deziree]

1 minute ago, Zen LaCroix said:

Why will they regret it?

Because he won't fulfill their long term expectations I guess.

[koops]

3 hours ago, Zen LaCroix said:

When you are at the free tour he sells his bootcamps directly to you. I'm not familiar with sales tactics but its pretty clear hes sells by psychologically dominating the people in the audience. He offers the bootcamp at the end of his talk and tells the people to go in the hall if they're interested in. There he gets the first batch of people who are super interested.

Then he starts talking about the bootcamp and tells people if they just wanna hear about go in the hall. With the span of 2 - 3 minutes he becomes more and more intense and aggressive while not being pushy at all. He does not hide the fact that he selling he straight up tells you he's selling to you and even says come out and hear the pitch. You almost feel you have to do it. He sets the frame of stern father telling his kids what to do.

When you go in the hall there's like 30 guys there and Owen pitching the bootcamp SPEAKING IN THE MOST INTENSE AND AGGRESSIVE FASHION YOU'VE EVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING SPEAK IN! It's probably very intimidating for some guys. He's completely psychologically dominating most of the guys there. And you've probably never in your life ever seen a human being speak with as much conviction and intensity as he does when selling bootcamps. It's EXTREME!

Damn, back in the day I went to a Derek Moneyberg free tour... it was so bad... the free tour per se, and the pitching.

At the end the picture was something like this: Derek and 4-5 assistants on stage + 10 guys who bought bootcamp + 20 guys that already went to past bootcamps. 

We were like 7-10 people left in the audience. And he told us to get to the 1st row. So it was like an outnumbered confrontation. US vs Them dynamic.

And he start telling us 'why are you not signig up? I dont get it' ''look at all these people that are going to fuck all your women'.

I dont give a shit, I found it hilarious, but man, it was so weird and aggressive. Pure psychopathy. He saw no humanity in anyone. Just the potential for an extra 3000$

At the end he was so gracious, and he let us go lol just thinking we are inferior beings.

Funny experience.

 

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Zen LaCroix said:

Why will they regret it?

Also many women regret dating a guy years later after they've evolved and changed looking back in hindsight.

Because he is just using them for sex.

[nerdspeak]

5 hours ago, Zen LaCroix said:

Owen pitching the bootcamp SPEAKING IN THE MOST INTENSE AND AGGRESSIVE FASHION YOU'VE EVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING SPEAK IN!

It’s so annoying. It didn’t use to be like this. Skinny Owen was much more laid back. 

He’s probably tested it, though, and determined this way works better. 

Edited 19 hours ago by nerdspeak

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Zen LaCroix said:

SPEAKING IN THE MOST INTENSE AND AGGRESSIVE FASHION YOU'VE EVER SEEN A HUMAN BEING SPEAK IN! 

I can't listen to Owen any more for this reason. The speaking is too obnoxious. Like he is speaking to morons whose ears don't work. It is unpleasant. His old style was far better.

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[AION]

Owen can't go back to his old self because the moment he would, he would be canceled from the platforms. I don't listen to Owen, I just pull transcripts. His shit is still top tier level game in terms of the game of frames which is the highest level. If your frame is right, all things will fall in place. 

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, AION said:

Owen can't go back to his old self because the moment he would, he would be canceled from the platforms.

He doesn't need to say anything that gets him canceled.

[Miguel1]

My god, thank god I was a teenager with shitty english and broke, when they were on full rampage scamming mode.

I mostly got the good stuff and didn’t get sucked too much into the toxicity.

Oh, and lived far away so didn’t get too involved physically either.

Edited 18 hours ago by Miguel1

[JosephKnecht]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

I can't listen to Owen any more for this reason. The speaking is too obnoxious. Like he is speaking to morons whose ears don't work. It is unpleasant. His old style was far better.

Ha. 

I would say the same about your new speaking style. 

[Miguel1]

1 minute ago, JosephKnecht said:

Ha. 

I would say the same about your new speaking style. 

How do you compare lol