Bad Ass Marketers Review
I am going to give a detailed BAM review of Joshua Osborne and his training. My goal by writing this is to hopefully help give some clarity to anybody that may not be sure whether it is worth the investment and whether or not to get into this training course. The answer is as simple you make it, but humans aren’t simple creatures so here we go.
Anything you pay a lot for online seems really sketchy at first. I am not one that likes to be the victim of a great sales pitch. I like to think I’m smarter than that. You know salesman, right? They always have their special way of selling you something you don’t need, something that had never even crossed your mind previously.
But there I was, reading some long caption on Facebook, fully engaged in the possibility of being a digital marketer when two minutes prior, I had never even considered it. It peeked my interest enough to go watch the free webinar. It seemed to make sense to me. But I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the whole thing.
My Background
My husband is an owner of a small business and we were already paying some random person online each month to bring him leads for his business. So, at that point, I knew the business was a real thing. There are real people out there getting paid for this type of work and I wanted to figure out how people would pay me instead. The thing that held me back from considering this as a career before, was the fact that I had no idea where to start. I wasn’t a person that knew how to make a website, or knew how to do anything technical, and I always figured it was a career for some nerd that lives in their mom’s basement.
But with that said, this advertisement I read on Facebook and this free webinar I watched made it sound super simple, easy to get rich doing this type of work kind of thing. It all sounded a little too good to be true. That was a big red flag scam alert for me. I wondered why it seems too simple to be true, because I already know nothing in life worth having comes easy right?
I grew up fluctuating between middle and low class. I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree but still didn’t have a focus for my career by the time my son came into the world. Before buying the BAM training, I was at a point in my life where I was dipping my toes in different areas of work. I was trying to find the balance between doing something I was passionate about but also worthwhile financially. I came across this ad and I thought it was perfect. Digital Marketing. At that point, even if the Bad Ass Marketers wasn’t the training I ended up doing, I knew at that point that this was the field of work I wanted to be involved in. It didn’t really matter if the bam price was too much, I figured I could find another training to get started or figure out how to pay it. I started to do my research. This field of work hit all my boxes. I wanted to work from home, I wanted to have control of my life, my finances, and my time. I wanted to learn something that had REAL value. I wanted to learn something that would help me have confidence when talking to important people like business owners, instead of feeling inferior to them. At that point I knew, regardless of whether I got played into this possible bad ass marketers scam or not, I knew that learning SEO and creating a business online was something I wanted to do. But now I needed to figure out if Bad Ass Marketers is legit or not?
BAM SCAM?
I decided to start out by finding out more information on the head guy himself. I wanted to find out, is Joshua Osborne legit? Is BAM a scam? I looked for any Bad Ass Marketers reviews I could find. I found some good reviews, and I also found some skeptical people who had left Bad Ass Marketers reviews but they hadn’t bought it, they were also considering the buying the course and had some hesitation, and that was about all I could find. I looked at the Facebook group and watched some videos they had posted on there with successful students. The Facebook group was also full of people asking questions to which admins would respond saying that all their questions would be answered on a phone call. A phone call, very mysterious.
The Process of Bad Ass Marketers training
Signing up for a call
I talked to my husband about how much he thinks this kind of training would be worth. We decided that it would be worth a lot of money… but that resolution had some parameters involving even MORE questions. We wondered how in depth the training was. We wanted to know at what point we would be able to make money with this training. Would it take 3 months to make $12,000 a month, or would it take 12 months to make $3,000 per month? What kind of money are we talking about here? We wanted to know what kind of costs were going to come on top of the training before I was able to start making money. Did this course really have all the tools to be successful or did I need to have certain skill sets that I possibly may not have. It all felt very secret society to get any answers to these questions before the phone call and so if you’re where I was 2 months ago – I totally get it.
So, there I was… filling out my information to sign up for a phone call without really having any of my questions answered leading up to the call. I began to make a list of questions I wanted to be prepared to ask on that phone call. I also messaged someone on Facebook who had purchased the training and asked him a few questions. Shout out to my high school self that acquired some pretty good Facebook stalking skills. Just kidding, it wasn’t that hard, I just found an interview Josh had done with a student and posted the interview publicly. Then I just found that student and sent him a personal message. I was kind of hoping he would respond to tell me that he was being held against his will and forced to say how successful he was on camera so people would buy this training course. But he didn’t. He even said it was such a blessing for his family to come across this program. He told me how much he was making per month, and how much he spent to get his business up and running in the beginning. His transparency was refreshing and gave me a little more faith in the program actually being a legit thing.
The Phone Call
The day of my phone call came, and I was ready to get some more information. I was still very skeptical. Was it a multi-level marketing thing? Was it a scam? What exactly was the offer here? What is the motivation to sell this training? If the knowledge is so valuable, why not continue to do what you’re doing to make money instead of focusing on teaching others? Why can’t I find any negative reviews about it and isn’t that a bad sign? Odds are someone has had a bad experience with this, right? I still had questions but I was open to all the answers.
It was a decently long phone call. I would plan for around an hour. My phone call was I’m sure very similar to a lot of others that buy the course. You’re introduced to someone who you would consider your “Coach”. This really just means they’re the one that sold you the product but if you do buy, they will help you later on if you have questions. On the call, my coach mostly asked about me and we talked about why I wanted to buy the course, and what it would do for my life, etc. I wasn’t really into the whole salesy vibe but I get why they do it like that. Looking back, my coach told me the struggles I would have, he told me it was hard work, he told me it involved sales and learning how to sell your product. I listened to what he was saying but it was hard to have a complete understanding of what was actually hard about it when you feel like you understand the process of what you’re about to be trained on. I understood that I was going to be trained how to rank a website in google and that it was going to be hard work to get started. But that hard work is easy to brush off as super doable when you are being told about the possibility of success. I was super motivated, felt like I could trust the guy on the other end of the phone, and I wanted to move forward with the process.
Spoiler Alert – I bought the training. And the reason I’m writing this now, is to give a person that has those same questions, the answers! So, listen up because this is how the training process works start to finish. And at the end of this article, you can decide for yourself if it’s something that is worth it to you. I’m not here to convince anybody reading this to buy anything, I’m simply giving my experience with the course so far and trying to give some insider info into the course and what it is like.
BAM Price
After that, you decide how you want to move forward with payment. This is probably the most sought-after question for those that aren’t in the course. What is the bad ass marketers price for their training course? There are multiple reasons why I think talking about price is kind of a taboo topic when it comes to high priced items. It comes down to salesmen wanting to be able to pitch their product before someone decides against it without taking the time to understand the value it offers them. I do the same thing with my clients now, I don’t just throw around prices for high ticketed items. I want to get to know my client and build a relationship with them to see if we are a good fit for each other before I just ask them for a bunch of money. I want to trust them and I want them to trust me. It’s maybe not the way everyone likes to sell their product, but it’s a sales tactic I can respect. Plus, each person should do their own research and decide what bad ass marketers price is worth to them. After they figure that out, it will be easy to say yes or no to the offer because you have already decided what it is worth to you.
But since you are taking the time to read this BAM review, I’ll give you a little insight into BAM price. Bad ass marketers price is different depending on only one factor, whether you’re ready to buy or not. They give you a pretty big discount if you’re willing to commit. Although it is a sales tactic they use for the purpose of getting you to buy, it is something that they practice and teach in the course as well. This is taking massive action. I’ve learned throughout the course that it is something that is actually practiced by Josh and by successful students. They’re all about taking massive action, and they use that when bringing in new students to the course. My advice would be to decide what bam price you would be willing to pay before getting on the phone call, and figure out if you’re willing to commit. If you’re in my situation and you see the value in it, but don’t quite have all the cash in the world laying around, they do have payments you can work out but I think it depends on what the coach offers you. My guess is they would be willing to sell and receive money from anyone who wants in.
Getting what you paid for
Once you commit, you get an email with an invitation to the training website. You set up your login info on the website. You also get a friend request on Facebook from your coach who adds you to the BAM group on Facebook and makes an introduction to Josh through FB messenger. This all happened while I was still on the phone with my sales coach which made me more comfortable in making sure I was actually getting what I was paying for. I was able to see all the training videos on the website and check out a few posts on the group before we hung up the phone. Okay I did it. Now what?
What to expect in the training course?
Introduction and Changing Your Mindset
When I first got into the course, I expected to immediately start learning how to build a website and rank that site in google. Josh gets to teaching you that pretty soon after, but first he talks about your mindset, how to stay motivated throughout the learning process, and how to set your goals. To the average person, this might seem like unnecessary training to include in a lead generation, seo, website, ads training course. With my natural skeptic attitude and the fear that I just spent a bunch of money for a glorified self-help book still inside me, I was relieved to see the sections after that which go into the training. But as far as what I think about this attitude adjustment being included in the training, I am completely on board. If you look at the language of any person who is successful, they have a certain mindset. They know how to stay motivated, and they have clear goals. I have always been big on making goals for myself.
I’ve read my fair share of self-improvement books, and I still found this training valuable. It was all the basic things you hear from successful people, but I was more willing to listen because I had already taken that first step into becoming that successful person I want to be. I had already taken action, and that gave me motivation to listen and apply what he was teaching.
Normally when and if you listen to a guru speak, it goes something like “work hard, set goals, be focused, make sure you want it really bad, etc”. All these things are true, but they are SO hard to actually apply when you don’t have a direction. You just have a vague idea of what characteristics you need to have to be successful. The difference when you’re being told these things in a training that also holds tools and information in order to apply those characteristics… makes you much more engaged and willing to commit to this “golden mindset”.
I personally think the more serious people take the goal setting and mindset section, are the ones that actually become successful with the information they learn in the later sections of the course. Setting your goals allows you to build a solid foundation. And this training is all about helping you become successful from start to finish, and with that I think it was an appropriate addition to the training course. It allowed me to take the time to set up a foundation for myself so that when I did start my marketing agency, I had a more focused and driven mindset. Once you get into the actual training, it becomes overwhelming. Being able to look back at my goals that I made when I started, helps keep me grounded and focused on achieving what I need to each day now.
Goals –What are the four F’s?
One thing I do like that is taught in the course is balance. I remember when I first started, I felt like I had access to an information gold mine and I wanted to spend all my time learning and soaking up the information. I started to think of my time being wasted if I wasn’t spending it in the BAM training portal. But after feeling overwhelmed, I went back to the video in which Josh talks about the 4 F’s. We were supposed to make a goals worksheet including ALL aspects of our life, not just work and financial. To give you a little sneak peak, the four F’s are Family, Finance, Fitness, and Faith. The great thing about it is, my family goals might be completely different than another student’s. And their financial goals might be a lot different than mine. But each of us were supposed to analyze our lives and really consider what we wanted in these different areas of our lives.
When I first started the course, I thought I was willing to do anything to have a certain lifestyle. But it turns out, I like spending quality time with my son during the day, and I like taking most of the weekend off to relax, and I really enjoy sleeping in past 5am. And I like doing these things more than I like working on my computer. It may sound lazy to you, but those are a part of my goals and it gives me balance. My family goals are to spend quality time with my son, and spend some time as a family on the weekend. My fitness goals include being well rested and energized for the day to be able to get more efficient work done. Everyone has different goals for their life and you can make your plan of attack more aggressive, or less aggressive than mine and it doesn’t really matter. It wouldn’t be appropriate to write a bam review without including the importance placed on making these goals in the training. It helps you be successful… and after you make your goals, you set up a 1 on 1 call with Josh to help give you focus in the following sections.
Areas of Focus
The whole course is really well organized. After going over goals and mindset, you get into the actual training. There were a few reasons why this course stood out to me. The first was I couldn’t find anything that offered the training in ALL of these categories. It was maybe 1 or 2 of the categories. The second is the fact that all other trainings want to give you just enough to where you’re still dependent on them for continued success. I didn’t want to pay anyone continuously, I just wanted to have the skills myself instead of trusting someone else to have the skills. This course goes through everything you need to be successful. And it is not just a spaghetti bowl of knowledge thrown at you. It is a step by step process how to start your own individual business.
Research
You learn how to do the necessary research for anything you’re trying to rank in google. You learn what tools you need, how to sign up for those tools, how to use those tools, and how to implement the research into the following sections.
Website Design
Josh teaches you how to use one hosting site for website design. It isn’t the most technical training. It teaches you the basics of how to design the website and make it look decent. The whole idea is that you don’t have to have the fanciest website in order to rank it on google. But there are a bunch of students – me included – who have a nice-looking website they built from scratch with no previous website building experience. Depending on your goals, you may not need to learn any other hosting sites, you can just use the one taught. But you also may have clients that hired you for SEO and they already have a website with a different hosting site, and you need to know how to optimize that website as well. Once you learn one, the language becomes familiar and it’s easier to pick up others without too much difficulty.
SEO
This is when you can feel the training getting nice and juicy. It’s all about the google algorithm and how to incorporate what google wants to see into your website. The training style is simple, fast paced, and effective. It is recommended to go through at least twice to get a handle on implementing these skills to your business.
Facebook ads
This section is all about how to optimize your Facebook ads in order to actually get leads from them. Most people and business owners that run Facebook ads are doing it completely wrong. Facebook doesn’t care if you get leads or not, they just want your money. The training will teach you how to control your ads and not let Facebook control them for you which is what most people do. Special hint for you just because you’re reading my bam review: please don’t use the “Boost your post” that Facebook offers.
Google ads
Google ads is similar to the section above in the sense that they don’t care about your money and how its spent. You learn to have more control over your ad spend and your ad campaigns. Obviously google and Facebook have different things that make each more efficient so we learn those differences and how to run a successful ad without wasting your money.
Google Map Pack
It is crazy how complicated we make things in our head when we don’t know something. And how simple it actually is when you have a teacher who understands it really well. Ranking in google maps is something my husband never considered for his business. I always thought it was a really hard or special process to get registered in google maps. I could see how it could be confusing but honestly all the things we learn are taught in a way that makes sense and makes it simple. Google Map Pack is very simple but overlooked by business owners and we learn how to get those listings to the top of search results. BAM!
Sales and Client Retention
On top of learning all the skills, there’s many sections and topics covered on how to sell your skills as a digital marketer, prospecting clients, how to position yourself in a meeting, etc. If I went through all of these sales sections and what we learn, as well as all the sections about how to keep a client, sell a lead gen site, it would be too much! To give a rundown review of bam sales training, it gives you a very clear 6-step process to follow with sales.
Building a Business
It’s funny to think that the big selling point for this training is that it teaches you SEO. When there is a whole entire training on building a business that literally applies to any business. BAM showed me how to run your own QuickBooks, manage your CRM, make flowcharts for your business processes, how to write a contract, what to do when you want to hire employees, etc. It is a lot of information. It is overwhelming and takes time to process it all. But it’s there and it’s yours for the taking.
Is There MORE I Need to Buy Once I get in the Course?
There are a few expenses that come with starting your own business. For a digital marketing agency, SEO tools are a part of that expense. Other expenses include paying for your website domains, and getting your business registered with the government. There are some ways that you can bypass these expenses and make it cheaper for yourself, but the truth is these expenses even at full price are very minimal compared to the profit you get from utilizing these tools. Right now, I am only paying for a few tools to get the work done that I need to. There are a lot of free resources out there but the ones that cost money are more convenient and time-saving. So, to answer the question: The short answer is yes. The “long” answer is yes, but not much and it’s worth it.
The Bad Ass Marketers Private Facebook Group
Learning Units
In the group files, there are more training courses where Josh records one on ones with students that have questions, and there’s a bunch of resources in there to help you. Also there are Facebook lives every week where either Josh answers questions and gives extra motivation for about an hour. He also gets on FB live throughout the week to quickly answer questions from students. Also, once a week, whoever wants to can get on a zoom call to chat and problem solve. This has personally helped me so much to be a part of those zoom calls and also have my specific questions answered on those zoom calls.
The Networking
I’m not going to lie, I do feel pretty cool being a part of what this group has to offer. On top of the training, you are provided with an entire network of people. Some just starting out, some people who are quitting their jobs to do this full time, and some incredibly successful people.
Is Bad Ass Marketers a scam?
The best answer I have for why it could be put in the category of possibly being a scam, is the fact that they use really strong sales tactics to sell the training. They do sell it as being very simple. They tell you it is hard work so it isn’t like they are lying and telling you it will be easy. But it’s hard to comprehend exactly why it’s hard when you haven’t been through the training. For me, it is hard because there is so much information that it is hard to stay focused. There are so many different avenues for the ability to be successful. And it’s hard to stay focused long enough without getting distracted that there could be something else you could be working on that would bring you more results quicker. When you’re first starting out, there is SO much information and so many different areas you can practice and fine tune your skills, that it is easy to feel a little lost. The process of figuring out what YOU are best at is the hardest. I’m still working myself to figure out which of the skills I’m learning is going to bring me the most results.
I know for me it was a red flag that I couldn’t find anything negative by people that had actually taken the course. But the reason you won’t find any negative Bad Ass Marketing reviews is because anybody who makes the investment into the training, learns the value of the training very quickly. And is it possible that you could fail to be successful even though you make the investment? Absolutely. I’m sure there have been many people that have bought this course that aren’t making any money from it right now. At that point though, I’m sure that those people are aware of the reasons they aren’t making money from the course. And the reason they don’t feel the need to write a negative bam review is because they received everything they were promised. I don’t know this for a fact, I just assume that if there are people that regret their decision of buying the course, they probably just learned that it wasn’t something for them and decided to go a different direction. At that point, you would know it was your own shortcomings that weren’t successful, so there aren’t any hard feelings towards Josh or the group because you know it’s your fault for paying for something you weren’t fully committed to.
Is Bad Ass Marketers legit?
Yes. Throughout this entire detailed review of BAM and Joshua Osborne’s training course, I’ve laid out exactly what the process is like. I hope to help ease the nerves of anybody interested that is worried if it is a scam or not. It is very salesy in the beginning to try and get you to buy the course. Once you commit, then it is an overwhelming feeling of excitement getting into the training course and the Facebook group. After that it is a lot of time and hard work. You need a strong desire to be successful and grow your company in order to get through your own fears, doubts, and even failures.
Overall Bad Ass Marketers Review from a Student’s Perspective
It is a great course. But it is not for everyone. I think people who regret the purchase of the course, are people who didn’t quite understand what they were buying into. It is a training that provides a process to follow, but it doesn’t mean you are automatically successful when following that process. You have to follow that process AND practice it AND perfect it, in order to be successful. For some, selling digital marketing services may come more naturally than it does to others. For me, it doesn’t come as naturally and so I may have to work a little harder at perfecting my sales pitch. For others, it may come easier. My advice would be to understand exactly what you are signing up for. You are signing up for a training on how to start your own business, and grow that business. Depending on how aggressive you want to be, will require some big life changes. If you are getting on a phone call strictly because you want to make money, and don’t like your current job. Find another reason before purchasing the training. The motivation to make more money is a quick little sparkler of motivation. You need a real, deep reason that provides a slow burning fire of motivation. Your fire is less likely to burn out with a real reason.
