There are real definitions, and the market uses them loosely, so you need to ask what's being delivered rather than trust the label.
Strictly, a course is recorded or scheduled instruction on a subject. You get material and you work through it. A coaching program means scheduled sessions with a coach who reviews your specific situation, usually one-on-one or in a small group, and the value depends on who the coach is and how often you actually get them. Mentorship strictly means an ongoing relationship with one experienced person who knows your deals, and in the market it gets used for anything from that to a group call every other week with a hired staff coach. A mastermind is a peer group. There's no teacher at the front of the room. You're paying for access to the other members and the organizer's job is curating who gets in.
So the $25,000 with no curriculum isn't necessarily a scam, it just isn't education. It's a network. Whether that's worth $25,000 to you depends entirely on whether the people in the room can send you deals or capital, and if you can't name three of them you can't price it.
The question I'd add is what you're actually short of. Somebody with a construction background usually isn't short of knowledge about buildings. You might be short of underwriting practice, or lender relationships, or the confidence to sign. Those three problems have completely different solutions, and only one of them is fixed by buying content. Write down the specific thing you couldn't do last time you looked at a deal, then ask each seller how their program fixes that. Most won't have an answer.
