Rick Neiswonger Producing And Promoting A Series Of Business Training Programs

With barely a high school education in Cleveland, Ohio and $500 in self-earned savings in 1970 Rick Neiswonger built his earnings in the next ten years from straight-commission only sales jobs to becoming a self-made millionaire before the age of thirty.

From that point on his success came primarily from producing and promoting a series of two-day business training programs or boot camps for groups of five to twenty-five entrepreneurs at a time, who each paid ten-thousand dollars to attend. That’s right, ten-thousand dollars per head.

Over the next twenty-five years these programs collectively grossed well over $250 million dollars in sales. Some clients didn’t make any money. Some clients made a lot of money. And some of his clients became millionaires from what they learned. For each program Rick Neiswonger had a business partner who engaged in each business and produced most of the content for what they taught. One program taught how to audit real-estate property taxes; one how to audit utility bills; one for medical bills; one taught business loan consulting and packaging; one taught how to audit commercial real estate leases; one was how to get customers for any business; and there were many more.

Rick produced and directed video documentaries for each of these business training programs staring major internationally known celebrities including Art Fleming, the original host of Jeopardy, football legend Joe Namath, actor Robert Wagner (twice), actors Eddie Albert (Green Acres) and James Whitmore (Shawshank Redemption), and many more.

By the age of forty, now living in St. Louis, Missouri, Rick Neiswonger had now become a self-made multi-millionaire. By now he had already worked and partnered with many legendary marketing geniuses including Gary Halbert, Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy. And yes, he had all the trappings of success, including building a 17,000 square foot ultra-modern mansion in St. Louis — for cash — with thirteen bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool and a home office with a staff of three. He had a five-car garage with three new Mercedes and two new Rolls Royce’s, a full-time cook, a housekeeper, a butler and a live-in nanny. At the move-in party a sit-down dinner was served to over 250 people as they listened to the Fox Theatre Orchestra of twenty five musicians. From the mid-1980’s Rick was paying taxes on an income of well into seven figures.

In 1996 he abruptly sold everything in St. Louis and relocated to his favorite city in the world, Las Vegas, where he bought superstar Kenny Rogers house for cash, fully furnished.

But there‘s a dark side to this story, as there often is. In 1997 Rick Neiswonger’s business was swept up in a nationwide crackdown by the Federal Trade Commission on business opportunity programs. He and his partners together paid a $1 million dollar fine for making overzealous, exaggerated and misleading claims in their marketing. Two years later this became a criminal case and Rick quickly accepted full responsibility and pled guilty to Federal fraud charges and served twelve months at a minimum security federal prison camp at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas.