Secret Entourage Academy

Secret Entourage Academy sells lifetime memberships granting access to educational and motivational media.  Let's find out what it's all about…

The Company

According to ICANN Whois, the domain was registered privately  on 2008.  Executives include:

• Pajman Ghadimi, Founder
• Alan Dang, Co-Founder
• Navid Norouzi, Co-Founder

Mr. Ghadimi's story can be found below.  As for the other two, Mr. Dang's claim to expertise is that:

1. he's a Millennial
2. 10 years of marketing
3. does mobile app development

Yes, but executive experience?  Hmmm….

Mr. Norouzi's expertise:

1. he doesn't make any claims, just gives some motivational statement

In the area of management, Secret Entourage doesn't impress- maybe the founders know how to make a quick buck, but to keep a large company running, year after year, profitably?  You gotta have someone in there who knows what they're doing…financially, legally, and business-wise, too.  And it has nothing to do with developing apps or writing statements on how much you believe in the “potential in all of us”.

Curious about what Secret Entourage has been doing all these years, I did a little digging and found this history of what they've been up to:

1. In 2009 their site redirected to www.secretconsulting.com, which has a blog on it.  Topics covered various aspects of owning a luxury car, and “The American Dream”, and luxury watches.
2. In 2010 the site moved into “Education & Motivation” and offered “sponsorship” of the Secret Entourage Movement.
3. In 2011 they started using the word “entrepreneur” more often, and began including success stories.  Blog topics included models, real estate, cars, entrepreneurship, and watches.
4. Finally in 2012 they began pushing the idea of self-help but still no product and no business opportunity.  Just offering free articles on those topics, plus motivational success stories.
5. 2013 brings efforts to get visitors to sign up for 15 free lessons on business.  Also, suddenly they've been “featured” on Forbes, Box Business, Playboy, SunSentinel, and more.  Plus now there's an affiliate program.  Affiliates could send people to the SE store and earn commissions off sales of ebooks.  There's now also an academy, which gets its own website: secretacademics.com.  Seems to be an email-grabber only.

So it seems the company has evolved from offering free blog posts, to selling e-books, to selling a membership “service” offering access to  wider range of motivational tools.

The Founder

Pejman Ghadimi tells his success story on the Secret Entourage website, one of early immigration to the US when he was a child, with his single mother.  He went from a teenager with a job at a call center to successful entrepreneur and by 2006 started Secret Entourage to spread the “word” on how to become successful.

From learning how important it is to know your market and direct your sales efforts in that direction, to landing in the right place at the right time during the real estate boom, Mr. Ghdimi has apparently rode the fast train to success for his entire adult life.

His first quick-thinking success came when he learned that call center efforts work much better when you know more about your market.  Selling new window installations, he figured out that by determining where hail storms had recently hit in his area, his success rate shot through the roof.

The Product

Mr. Ghadimi is smart, business-wise.  And so are the other entrepreneurs who contribute to the Secret Entourage Academy's warehouse of data…videos, podcasts, e-books, blogposts and more, featuring stories of success.  Members also get to join live interviews so they can ask entrepreneurs questions, plus a private forum.

This would be the “Academy” product, which costs $124 as a one-time payment.

The Academy + Third Circle Theory Collection costs $173 and offers a few more books and courses.

That is the product: motivation, inspiration, education, and well, lots of reading material that possibly used to be offered for free.

The Affiliate Program

The Secret Academy affiliate program hasn't changed – send people to the online store and earn a 30% commission off their purchases.  Products include e-books that run as high as $95.

There's also the Third Circle Theory and Exotic Car Secrets Affiliate Program, which is the same deal.  For either program, you would register through a website called e-junkie.com.

The Verdict

The founder and the company seem to have something to offer, and that's lots of stories on people making it big.  Whether that proves motivational or educational to you is anyone's guess.  As for the affiliate program, there's a lot of competition for motivational business e-books but since it's free to sign up, why not?  I just don't see anything overly impressive about the company or its products.  Mr. Ghadimi may well be successful, but that doesn't mean he's a good teacher.