Sam Ovens is a Fake Guru!? (100% REAL TESTIMONIAL)

Hi! This video is unlisted because I want a record of my own mistakes in this video, but I also don't want this video to be stumbled upon by the public, as people sometimes miss the correction and only will hear the misinformation.

This video had several points, but the main one is that Sam Ovens used Dave Rogenmoser as a testimonial, and that that testimonial was a fake review. I was wrong about that, here's why:

I came to this conclusion based on a timeline I inferred from Sam's review with Dave.

In the review, Dave says he met Sam "13 months ago", and based on when that review was posted, they would've met somewhere mid-2015. Through looking at other facts about Dave, I quickly realized this timeline didn't make any sense. I also got suspicious when I stumbled upon several other reviews Dave had done, each with a similar, internet-marketer vibe. I conclude that the review was fake.

-As an aside, this is not an uncommon practice in the internet marketing world. Social proof is a powerful tool, and a common refrain in internet marketing is "fake-it-till-you-make-it". I did not think it an unlikely possibility at the time.

However, on March 6th 2020a Youtube channel called eBiz Facts made an important followup/critique of this video, where he contends with some of my core points in this video. I agreed with some of his criticisms, which you can find here

Most importantly, he finds some private emails and private posts in a FB group that clearly show that the timeline Sam and Dave provided with the video was incorrect. Dave Rogenmoser joined Sam's course sometime in November 2014. Sam must have posted the review at a much later date than it was recorded. This immediately throws this video's whole conclusion into question, as it seems much more plausible that Dave really did know Sam, and took his course.

So... now what? I wavered between leaving this video up (with a correction) or not (delete the video), since it seems the main contention of this video is wrong. On the one hand, I didn't want to pretend the mistake never happened, that would be unfair to Dave and Sam, on the other, I didn't want random people stumbling upon an incorrect video. So I'm compromising with a half measure, unlisting the video, with addition of this little postmortem, to hopefully explain the situation to anyone who wants to know what happened with all of this.

If you'd like a closer look at Sam Ovens, I interviewed two of his students to check him out further. These videos are much more fair to Sam, and although I'm still critical of Sam to this day (I think he uses questionable marketing tactics), I think both of of these videos have a more balanced perspective:

(review from a student who likes Sam)

(review from a student who dislikes Sam)