WS389: Raising Capital with Hunter Thompson

Today on your daily Real Estate Syndication Show, we are joined by return guest and friend of the show Hunter Thompson, who is here to talk about the ins and outs of raising capital. Through his own experience starting out investing in mobile home parks, Hunter quickly learned which types of investors to avoid and which to target in order to fund the deals he found. Hunter’s formula for raising capital is more scalable than the typical ‘80s sales pitch.

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[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:24] WS: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Hunter Thompson. Thanks for being on the show again, Hunter.

[00:00:32] HT: Hey, thanks again, Whitney, and congratulations on getting all these episodes out. I know your listeners are super grateful for that. Congratulations on that.

[00:00:39] WS: Thank you for about. It’s no small feat. That’s for sure. Thank you again, Hunter, and I appreciate your time and sharing your expertise and experience. I would encourage the listeners to go back and listen to show WS08 and WS59 where Hunter shared numerous great topics in as well, and thankfully he’s come back now and we’re to focus on a specific topic that is extremely important to anybody that’s in the syndication business and Hunter is very talented at this and is going to share some great secrets that you’re going to enjoy that probably have not heard of or learned anywhere else.

But before I get into Hunter again or introducing him, I want to remind you, go to the Facebook group, the Real Estate Syndication Show or you can connect with experts like Hunter and ask questions and connect with me, and we’re always trying to improve the show. Hope you’re sharing it and learning from it. Also, go to Life Bridge Capital and connect with me where I’ll reach out to you personally.

But a little about Hunter, he is a full-time real estate investor and founder of Asym Capital, a private equity firm based out of Los Angeles California. Since starting Asym, Hunter has raised more than $30 million in private capital for real estate offerings. He’s the author of Raising Capital for Real Estate: How to Attract Investors, Establish Credibility and Fund Deals. Anybody listening to this is trying to do that most likely. Thankful that we’re getting into that today, but he’s also the host of the Cash Flow Connections Real Estate Podcast, which I also highly recommend. He has some amazing discussions on there as well with some very talented guests.

So, Hunter, thank you again. Maybe give us an update on what you’re up to right now and let’s dive in to this topic today.

[00:02:19] HT: Hey, things are going great. Again, thanks again for having me back on. I can’t believe it was episode eight that I was lucky enough to be a guest on that early in something that’s turned into something so remarkable. But we have been focusing on the same types of real estate asset classes. I think I made the case last time I was on the program that when I found out that all types of real estate do well when the economy is booming and the capital markets are loose, but only some types of real estate do well when the economy is contracting. I figured why not always invest in those real estate assets, which are more stable?

Now, towards the end of the cycle, it’s really in trend. People always want to talk about recession resistant real estate. For my perspective, it’s great time to do it now. It’s a great time to do it in 2009 as well. So we’re still focusing on the mobile home park business, the self-storage business and the workforce housing business, which is the class C and B- class apartments. Just always a perma bowl on those asset classes because there’s always interesting ways to make money in real estate as long as you protect yourself to the downside.

[00:03:16] WS: Nice. Appreciate that update. Appreciate you sharing. But I want us to just maximize our time today, Hunter, and you being the author of Raising Capital for Real Estate, I want us to dive into – Everybody listening is trying to raise capital, most likely, or they’re working with somebody that is, that is raising capital, one way or the other. But for that person who’s trying to get into this business, it’s not always that it’s easy is what everybody thinks it is. Or you see somebody who’s been running a podcast or they’ve had some other type of thought leadership platform or they’re creating content or maybe they’ve done a few deals and all of a sudden it looks like, “Wow, they’ve got it all together,” or it just happen for them. But it doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just happen. There’s –

[00:03:58] HT: No. I mean, it doesn’t just happen at all. I’ll just start off by saying this, and hopefully this doesn’t offend some of your listeners, especially those that have worked in the real estate business for a long time. But there is no consistently sought after and lucrative, consistently lucrative skill, in the entire real estate business than on the capital raising side.

Now, that may not be what everyone wants to hear, but that’s the reality of the situation. From my perspective, it always will be. I was at a conference recently and someone said, “Is the money in the deal or is the money in the money?” I’ve come to realize that the money is in the money. Right now, there’s this unbelievable opportunity to create a highly scalable, highly replicatable infrastructure to attract leads, nurture them and close deals.

But to your point, I got into the business with a little bit of background in sales, a lot of confidence, and had a lot of success investing in real estate from my own personal portfolio, my family’s portfolio. Which is similar to you, like a model of the family office where I was trying to help my mom invest, I was trying to help my sisters invest and created a track record around the mobile home park business. Realized that the track record was working, the valuations were still favorable. Started in 2011, working in 2013 or so, and I thought, “This is actually a scalable business. I’m going to create a business around passive investing,” and I decided to create my first fund, real fund in 2013.

And In order to fund this fund and to scale the business, I had a luncheon where I was going to invest or going to invite a lot of friends and family, they could even invite there plus ones if they wanted to, had to be accredited investors to attend. And I had this luncheon. 30 people came. All were accredited investors, so about $30 million in net worth probably on average in this room. I was really knowledgeable. I was passionate about it. I had taken this due diligence process far serious, more serious than any of the attendees.

I went through a 30 minute presentation about the mobile home park business. Talked about how all these baby boomers are hitting the age of retirement. They’re not building any new mobile home parks. It’s an unbelievable situation. Got the nuances of the asset class, like the fact that the tenants actually own the homes, which means they’re more likely to stick around longer the pride of ownerships. There’re been many, many reasons why the mobile home park business is so compelling. It sells itself. And I had agreed with an operating partner, said, “I’m confident. We can come up with half a million dollars. There’s $30 million in this room. I have a background in sales. I know how to communicate. Let’s do it.”

I went through the presentation and zero dollars was invested. Absolute goose egg. This is like, as an entrepreneur, I can talk about it now, but I’m talking about this took me months emotionally to get over. This was terrifying. I mean, I had made a commitment to be a real estate investor and an entrepreneur and there couldn’t be a more clear red light than this experience.

So after months and months of thinking, “How is this the case? Do I not know what I’m doing and did I not communicate clearly enough?” I realized that what I was thinking was all the amazing reasons that people are going to be blown away by this was all the reasons that they were completely turned off. They weren’t interested in this type of thing. Most of them have never even invested in real estate, let alone mobile home parks. If they were interested, they would’ve been investing.

The example I used in the book, let’s say someone came to you and said, “Hey, I got a great deal on these dairy cattle. These cows are amazing. They produce 30% more milk than any other cow and we’re going to get them pennies on the dollar. Pennies on the dollar you say? That sounds like a great deal. Who wouldn’t be interested in dairy cows at pennies on the dollar?” Well, I’ll tell you who. Me and you, because what are we going to do with that? I’ve never been interested in dairy cows. It doesn’t matter how good of a deal it is. No matter how compelling the investment thesis is.

So, what I had to do was create an infrastructure to attract people who are already interested in these types of investments, nurture them through an educational platform and then close deals. And so, one of the things I want to talk about today is kind of how you can go about this, because there’s never been a better time in the history of real estate than to do this and to effort, put effort towards building this infrastructure.

[00:08:17] WS: That was a mouthful. All that was so – That was such good information right there, and it’s such a good example though of how you were so prepared to sell that room, but you got to be able to sell without selling, don’t you? I mean, you have to be able to educate and you have to be able to build that trust kind of over some time and be patient, right? And so, that’s amazing. Help us build that infrastructure, Hunter. Get us started.

[00:08:40] HT: Exactly. I mean, just to go back to that example, I was under the impression that these people who were successful and had in a background as an accredited investor were going to listen to someone and have a pseudo-religious experience in a 30 minute luncheon. This is going from someone that wasn’t interested to all the may doing a 180 and investing.

Well, there are people out there that are kind of teetering on the edge of interest, and those people are the prime candidates for being interested in your particular niche. They’re searching around on the Internet. Crowd-funding thing has gotten really, really popular over the last couple years. So building this infrastructure is critical.

I think if you haven’t already started doing this, it is an incredibly asymmetric way to spend your time. Here is a great example. I am a huge proponent of time batching tasks. I’m obsessed with productivity, so don’t like to cognitively shift gears frequently. I feel like it wastes time. So what I’ll do is I’ll block out somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes to do something like write down 100 potential topics of articles that you may write. These are things related to your business.

So, for me, it would be, Five Reasons to Invest in Self-Storage. Is the Mobile Home Park Business Actually Recession Resistant? How Do Low Interest Rates Affect Housing? There’s three. So you only have to come up with 97 more, okay? So come up with 100 and then go through, put those in Excel and rank them numerically in terms of how close to your business and how aligned with your business they are.

Then once you have those hundred and they’re numerically listed in Excel, sort from 1 to 10 and write an article, which is about 1,000 to 1,500 words, about the first 10 topics. And that is the beginning of your infrastructure. Now, along the lines, I’m not wasting time, I would take another 52 of those topics and write emails somewhere between 300 and 500 words that can be sent out on Drip Campaign and put the best ones first.

As you start to build that infrastructure, as you start to learn more and more, you can cycle out some of the ones that are at the tail end of that drip campaign. And my friends, that is a really solid way to begin this process, because not only are people going to be attracted to you and learn through your educational platform, you’re going to be shocked as to how much you will learn just going through this process. It’s completely asymmetric. The risk is very, very limited and the upside is incredible.

[00:11:05] WS: Creating content, it is an educational process for yourself. Even interviewing on almost 400 people now, it’s been like my own university. And writing these articles will be the same way and probably even we’ll learn a lot more, honestly. If I wrote 400 articles, it’s probably going to educate me further than what I’ve learned from the podcast, honestly, just from doing the research.

But what you laid out there is – I mean, it’s four bullet points there that I made, but most people will say, “Well, I don’t even know where to get started.” Well, there you go. I mean, that’s an amazing template right there just to get you going.

[00:11:42] HT: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So kind of to build on that though, you want to always – The whole goal here is to create content, repurpose it, reuse it. If you’re already an expert in this space, you’ve done the hard part. Now it’s just a matter of getting it out of your head and then reusing it over multiple, multiple mediums.

One really, really critical thing is that your website that you’re going to be starting building and nurturing have a call to the action. From my perspective, I am just a huge proponent that this call to action being e-book. I’ve seen not only from a conversion rate standpoint, but from an educating your investor base standpoint, there is nothing better. If you’ve written a couple of articles that are let’s say a thousand words. An e-book may be somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 words. Something that will probably take an investor 45 minutes or an hour to read. This will really give you an opportunity to go into detail. Provide some data. Provide some graphs. Justify some of the claims that you’ve made in those articles.

And once you do that, you’re really starting to – Again, the people that are interested in kind of going that extra step of due diligence can get a very thorough grasp of your entire investment thesis. It’s really, really important that you do an e-book that is going to be evergreen to as greatest extent as possible. So if you’re going to always be focusing on apartments, something that the case of ‘Why Passive Investors Should Give Apartments a Second Look?’ Something like that that’s going to be consistently used.

Then after a couple of years, it will probably be outdated and you can re-up, do it again. But that is kind of the key. I’ll stop there. But I know that you are also a big proponent of the e-book metric. It’s free. The PDF, to send an email with PDF that’s linked is free and, again, it’s very asymmetric in terms of the cost benefit.

[00:13:28] WS: Yeah. I know a lot of people listening are thinking, “Oh, wait, man. I did not have time to write a book.” When am I going to do that, Hunter? Do you do you have any kind of suggestions on how to create an e-book? Let’s say, okay, we’ve went through your template here. “We’ve got our topics. We’ve started writing all the blogs, the emails. We have this content now. How can we create a book out of that,” or what’s your suggestion?

[00:13:51] HT: Oh my gosh! I’m so glad that you asked that, because this is something I didn’t really include in the book and now I’m wishing that I have, because this is something that’s come up a lot. If you’re listening to this and you’ve listened to 400 of Whitney’s episodes, call your best friend and have him ask you 10 questions that he thinks are interesting and have someone, a transcript that recording, and that’s your first e-book.

There’s many, many websites that can do this. Usually it’s about a dollar a minute to have something transcribed. Do that. Go in upwork.com, hire a consultant that’s going to be able to create graphic design for you for your e-book. Take the word document. Turn it into a PDF, and that’s your first one. If you’re really, really strapped for time, that’s a way to do.

By the way, we’ve done this. I mean, our first podcast episode, episode one, conducting due diligence for passive investors. If you email me at [email protected], I’ll shoot you a copy of it, and it’s literally just a transcription of that. By the way, once you’ve done it, you can use that not only as a lead generation or a call to action, but also outreach for other podcast interviews, which I’m sure we can talk about. But it’s just reuse, repeat, continue to make that scalable piece of content as favorable as possible.

[00:15:06] WS: Love that. That’s awesome. Yeah, and people don’t utilize virtual assistance enough and here’s one good example of how getting stuff transcribed for pretty cheap. And there’re other cheaper options for transcription too if you just do a little research. But, yeah, building the infrastructure, creating the content so it can be repurposed. I mean, that’s so crucial to nurturing these relationships with these potential investors. What do we need to be doing next, Hunter?

[00:15:32] HT: Okay. If you’ve done the e-book, you’re like, “God! I’m big leg up on some of your competitors,” that are by the way can be succeeding completely without the e-book. But the e-book to me is a complete no-brainer because of the fact that it’s free to distribute and is Evergreen. So, nce you’ve done that, I would use that to start to reach out to people that are on podcast.

Now, before we go any further, you and I both know, Whitney, and anyone that’s listening, that the podcast community is changing every single day. It’s blowing up. It’s extremely saturated. I actually looked up some data on this. By 2014, iTunes had received 7 billion downloads total. By 2018, that number went from 7 billion to 50 billion.

As an investor, we look at cycles and we see that trend and we go, “This is a massive bubble.” That’s understandable. But for me, the way that a bubble is kind of identifiable is when things stop to make – They stop making sense on a risk-adjusted basis. This is why 2,000 was a bubble. This is why 2007 was a bubble, because the risk was completely asymmetrically unfavorable. With the podcast medium, it’s the opposite.

Right now you and I are talking. This set up probably cost me $300. It’s not like there’s someone in the other room saying, “Oh, gosh! Watch what you say.” I don’t have employees in the background talking about that. The overhead is drastically reduced, and the upside is incredible. We get to talk about my book. We get to help people raise capital, whatever. The point is there’s only upside to go.

And as more people create podcasts, it’s going to create more of an opportunity for you to be a guest. It’s going to create new shows that are interested in having your guest as supposed to people that are only interested in your interviewing Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn, for example.

If you have created that e-book, I would have your virtual assistant again research real estate related podcasts. Put them in a Google sheet, and I would have the top have something similar to this. The name of the podcast in one column, a link to the iTunes show. Next column is the number of Twitter followers. The next column is the number of comments. Next column is the host’s email, and the next column is a numeric value of how aligned this podcast is to your particular investment thesis.

I would sort by whichever one you want and I would probably start requesting content or requesting interviews with the people that have the least comments in iTunes. These are the ones that are most likely to be interested in having you on the show. And this is the beginning of the second stage here, which is gaining credibility through these interviews. The whole thing is that you’ve already done the hard work of creating the e-book and now it’s just a matter of reusing that for interview.

[00:18:20] WS: I love that. You even took me by surprise when you said start with the ones who have the least ratings or least comments, things like that. I just think getting started doing this, that’s a great – It’s a great way to get started also because you’re not going to be rated to speak. You’re just not going to be as prepared as you think you are. Your story is not going to be rounded out yet. You’re not going to have all the stuff ready. So, it’s going to give you a way to practice really on some shows that maybe don’t have as many followers yet as well.

[00:18:50] HT: Totally. I mean, look, I have told this story many times before, but not on this particular show. There is a show, you can’t find it because they didn’t air it, but there’s a show that I went in, a very popular show, with 100% confidence. To be completely straight with you, I choked. There was five seconds where I didn’t speak on the show, and I thought I was really well-prepared, but the guy caught me off guard a little. Five seconds. Let me show you what one second is. That’s one. All right? Imagine doing that for five seconds on a really, really popular podcasts, and this is someone that — I speak professionally. You don’t want to do that, okay?

So the way that you limit the challenges to that is go on your friend’s show, go on the non-real estate investing show. Just go on something where you feel super comfortable and you can increase your confidence and get some momentum so that when you reach out to the more popular shows, they can see that you’ve done a really good job on these other shows.

[00:19:41] WS: Great advice. Great advice. I love the making the list of all the shows too. We’ve been doing that. Honestly I‘ve got a VA doing this exact same thing and reaching out to these people. So there are services that you can pay lots of money to to do this for you and help promote you, but I’m like, “Wait a minute. I can hire a VA and do it myself.” Great advice. Great advice, Hunter.

Okay. So now we’ve got our infrastructure, we’ve got our book now, and now are getting interviewed as well. That’s great, because then you have a lead magnet, just to mention, our call to action to mention on the show, which you’re being interviewed. And I’ve done many interviews now. I mean, where I’ve been interviewed on somebody else show and I haven’t always had that. And so, it’s so much better when you have a way to draw people to your website. What’s next?

[00:20:26] HT: Totally, and just to add on that real quickly, you’re always kind of circling back to different calls to action. So, within your own e-book you can say, “By the way, look at this article that I’ve written on this topic. If you’re interesting more, check out this interview that I did in this topic,” and your credibility starts to go up and up and up. So that when you get to the close process, which I know we’re going to talk about at another date on your audience, it’s not that you’re trying to establish credibility at that point. At that point you’re really just trying to answer the questions that they have about specific opportunities. They go entrusting you.

Another thing, just real quick, the article content thing is so amazing because not only are you going to address questions you get over and over again. How many times you’ve gotten a question about UBIT, which is a tax on Roth IRA investments? Write an article about that. When you have that conversation come up say,” And guess what, I’m going to email you this article that I wrote.” That is like your credibility is going through the roof at that point, which is a really good segue into the next part of this process, which is actually pitching a particular deal.

[00:21:25] WS: I would add on to that and say you have to be a good listener. What are people asking for constantly? Take notes of that, and just like Hunter said, write an article so you can say, “I wrote an article on that.” Go right ahead, when pitching a deal.

[00:21:38] HT: So better than linking out to your competitor and saying, “Well, this clearly knows what he’s doing,” because it is easy for you to come up with your own example of that.

Obviously, in the world of real estate, people have a lot of different names for it. I call it the executive summary. This is basically the marketing deck for your particular deal. I’m going to make a very clear statement right now. In real estate, the name of the game as we’ve heard many times is location, location, location. When it comes to your marketing deck, your offering deck, your executive summary, it is design, design, design.

I cannot stress this enough. If you’re in the process of raising $1 million, please spend $2,000 on a combination of design and photography for your deck. This is the kind of thing where if one $100,000 investor moves forward, you’ve already paid for yourself.

In my opinion, with the ability to outsource tasks like this very easily on sites like upwork.com, for example, there’s no excuse. I’m in a keep harping on this point until I stop seeing these poorly designed Excel documents, which are still succeeding because the market hasn’t realized this yet it. It such a credibility booster to have a very well-designed marketing deck.

Like I mentioned, thumbtack.com, that will allow you to have photography, and that will kind of – You can outsource this anywhere in the country. You can get someone on thumbtack.com. Great way to spend the money. I don’t want to go into the details of what should be in an executive summary. You guys can look that up. You can read the book, whatever you want. You can copy someone else’s. That’s fine.

But here’re a couple of tips I have for the offering deck. Ensure that the person that you hire can work in a very common platform for presentations. So, this is either PowerPoint or Keynote. The reason for this is that once you created the document as a marketing deck, it’s important to turn that marketing deck into a webinar or a live presentation. And the easiest way to do that is keep it within the same software, either PowerPoint or Keynote.

So we can transition into the kind of webinar presentation part of this conversation, but for now – And I know you’ve created a lot of marketing decks that look like this, but design is the absolute name of the game.

[00:23:57] WS: I would say it was very difficult at first and I still spent a lot of time on it now or just like thinking through, “Okay, is this the best way for this to be designed? Is this laid out correctly?” I’d love for you to be able to elaborate on that, and I will have little bit more time than you and I first thought, Hunter. So we can elaborate a little bit on that.

[00:24:14] HT: Sure. I mean, it really comes down to photography. If you don’t have an eye for design, number one, just hire someone that does. It’s a no-brainer. But what I usually like to do is take three decks where the first thing that you say when you open them are, “Wow! This is beautiful.” That should be the response. It should not be, “Wow! This guy is really smart,” or “Wow! These people know what they’re doing,” or “Wow! This is really compelling.” It should be the kind of thing where they go, “Wow! This is beautiful.”

Then when they start to get into the details, they’ll realize that you do know what you’re doing. If you’ve read the book Pitch Anything, for example, or any book about really sales, you’re going to find that people make decisions even at the highest level, everywhere from Main Street, to Silicon Valley, to the hedge fund world, it’s all about emotion. So we’re trying to tap into that through this design. So that should really be the first thing that people think of. It’s really nothing more than that. Like I said, if you don’t have an eye for it, get three competitors that you think are beautiful. Send that to your graphic designer. Say, “This is exactly what I want them to look like.”

[00:25:11] WS: Great idea. You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel, because it can seem so overwhelming at first, like I said. Great advice.

[00:25:19] HT: Cool. So, now we created the executive summary, and just similar to the stuff we were talking about early, it’s important to repurpose that content for a webinar presentation. You’ve already done all the hard work. Now we’ll have a recorded webinar presentation which people see over and over and over again. It’s going to make your life a lot easier.

So here are a couple of tips for the webinar presentation. Number one, I would track RSVPs through eventbrite.com so that people actually have to RSVP to the thing. This will allow you to get their emails. Prior to the webinar, I would schedule 15 minutes just to make sure the sound quality is important. It could not be stressed enough. Whitney, I know you know this. How many times – You have a background bird chirping. All the comments on your podcast are going to be, “The bird is killing me.” So, just be cautious about the sound there.

Spend $150 on a Blue Yeti Microphone on Amazon.com. It’d be one of the best ways to spend that $150. People’s attention span typically are not – Some of the people listening to this are going to be CPAs and attorneys that have this infinite attention spans. That’s not common, even in  the accredited investor space. 30 minutes is about as much as you can get.

What I like to do is block an hour for the webinar. The first 30 minutes should be the presentation in which you’ll go over the key points of the executive summary. Reformat it through a webinar, of course, done by the same designer in the same software. And then 30 minutes of Q&A.

Here’s an extra tip. If no one speaks up during the webinar, I would actually have 10 questions that I’ve written to myself that you can say, “Well, someone email me these questions so I’ll go ahead and answer them.” That’ll be the ways to just continue to save yourself time and time again. As you know, from hearing this interview, I’m just obsessed with productivity. The goal should be limit the time that this is required as much as possible.

Here’s another one. Thank your RSVPs. Previously before the end of the event, write your thank you note to them and then automatically send it when the thing is done with the recording webinar. Then as you have new investors come through, send them the recording. Even for people that you thought were already there, because you’re just touching them on different senses. Here are the articles. You don’t like reading? Here’s the webinar. You don’t like watching and listening? Here’s the audio podcast. Boom! Boom! Boom! This is how your close ratio is going to go much, much higher. But more importantly, it’s much, much more scalable. Meaning that you’re not trying to go from four investors to seven. You’re trying to go from four investors to 4,000.

[00:27:48] WS: Love it. I’d like you to tell me – I’m sure some people were like, “Well, wait a minute. I was going to use that same pitch deck for my webinar, but then you said to recreate it.” So can you tell me what might be some differences between that first pitch deck to what the webinar looks like?

[00:28:02] HT: Yes, and I would say that the pitch deck itself should probably be somewhere in the range of 6,000 words. The webinar presentation should be highly visual. So these are bullet points. What I really like to do is when you have the webinar, I don’t want it to be the kind of thing where I flip the page and all of the content appears, because people will try to read ahead. You don’t want to just see a bunch of text. What you want to do is have bullet points that are animated that come out as you speak.

Now, this does take practice. And I would say that not only do you need to practice, you need to practice with mastery in mind. This is a very lucrative business, okay? So mistakes can cost you millions of dollars. A way to overcome this is record yourself doing this and listen to it, and it might be really uncomfortable to do that. Take an honest look at where you’re not really as strong. Work on those transitions and animate every single bullet point. I’m not saying to have cartwheel in as the text cartwheel in or something like that, but just do something classy that just makes it so that people are actually focusing on the point you’re actually making.

[00:29:06] WS: I like that, because if people are reading ahead, which I would. I mean, I would be, and then it’s going to distract me from what you’re actually saying at that time.

[00:29:14] HT: It’s a marketing. It’s an effort in marketing. It’s not a legal disclosure. When we get to the legal documents, we’ll talk about the details of everything that can go wrong, bullet and bullets and bullets and paragraph to paragraph of the risks, when it comes to marketing, design and the actual experience should be paramount.

[00:29:31] WS: Alright. I like how you said have your thank yous for the RSVPs ready ahead of time.

[00:29:37] HT: That’s right.

[00:29:38] WS: Because by using eventbrite or something like that, you already know who’s signed up. But you also mentioned, I think, send one to everybody. Is that what you said?

[00:29:46] HT: Yes, that’s correct. So you can say thank you to attending for anyone that RSVP’d, but really, you send out to your entire mailing list. For those that missed it, “Here’s the link to the recorded one.” Again, this is just another way to touch people in terms of the senses that they prefer to learn by.

[00:30:04] WS: Okay. What happens after that?

[00:30:06] HT: Okay. So this is the lesson that we’ll get into today. Again, I appreciate you giving me the extra time, because I know we’ve gotten super dense on this podcast today, which is not surprising given the fact that you and I liked to get into details.

Something that I think is really underutilized, once you’ve already created the webinar presentation, take that same content and turn it into a live presentation. I just refer to this as an investor dinner. So what I’d like to do is have somewhere between 20 and 30 people come. It’s free. You pay for everything. I don’t like to pay for alcohol, but if it’s necessary to get to the food and beverage minimum, I might get one drink ticket or two. Take this seriously. Having an open bar at an investor dinner turns it from an investor presentation to like a birthday party. So just be cautious about doing that. Even if you have to come out of pocket for the food and beverage minimum, just don’t do the open bar situation.

Now, kind of going along that line of thinking, what you’re trying to do when you have an investor dinner, you’re trying to cater to the people that are going to invest more about the experience surrounding their investment.

Now some people like to listen to podcasts, some people like to listen to articles, but the people that want to attend an in-person meeting, it’s all about the actual functionality of the event. This is like the vibe, the logistics. How is the staff going to be treated? What is the sound quality like? What is the overall experience?

Here are two tips that I think are really helpful for live presentations. Number one; be very cautious about your internal thoughts. I like to visualize things going wrong prior to any in-person meeting. So, going in there, people talk about visualization a lot, “Oh my gosh! It’s going to go so well. “everyone’s going to invest.” Blah-blah-blah. we’ve all been there, and that’s fine. You can visualize that no matter what. That’s fine.

But from my perspective, I want to be emotionally prepared for when it’s way too hot. I want to be emotionally prepared when the microphone doesn’t work, and people don’t show up, or too many people show up, or the check is late, or anything like that where I can say, “Okay, I have been here a thousand times, if it actually happens, I know how to overcome it and here’s the system and the processes that I’ve done to mitigate these challenges.” And so that’s something that I think is a big one.

Another one is people that are afraid to take up physical space while presenting in person. Some of you listeners may be familiar with Conor McGregor. He is like a MMA guy. The fact that he is one of the best in the history of MMA is not really consequential in terms of his actual background is like a celebrity. I think he was recently ranked as the fifth most popular athlete in the world by ESPN, like right above Tiger Woods and right below LeBron James. He’s no joke.

The reason I mentioned him is that he kind of made a habit of doing something called the billionaire walk prior to his fights where he kind of struts himself side to side and just takes up a lot of space. It’s like a very commanding position to be in and it’s like a confidence booster. I’m not suggesting that you do a billionaire walk through the doors of Morton’s Steakhouse in front of your investors, but it’s kind of the thing where you shouldn’t be acting like you’re in coach in an airplane trying not to touch the person next to you. The absolute opposite of that. You should be acting like you’re flying first class and you deserve to be there. That confidence is what investors are going to pick up on. I think those two things right there will help you overcome a lot of challenging situations when it comes to in-person meetings.

[00:33:26] WS: Hard to have the confidence when you feel like you’re just getting started. Those people, you’re walking into that room and sometimes those investors, you’re intimidated already because you felt like you’re just getting started and maybe you haven’t had too many of those conversations yet. But what a great way to get the ball rolling.

One question though I wanted to ask you, actually about the webinar that I forgot, was when you do webinars, do you recommend them being able to see you or is it just the slide itself?

[00:33:56] HT: You know what? It’s honestly a personal preference. I really like the presentation to be the full screen, but that’s just something that I prefer. I’m trying to make it is least distracting as possible. It’s just a preference though.

[00:34:08] WS: Yeah. I’ve just seen it done both ways. I just wondered what you prefer.

[00:34:10] HT: Yeah, which way do you prefer?

[00:34:12] WS: We’ve done full screen, the webinar full-screen, or maybe I’ve been there at the beginning where they can see me and then I’ll switch it to full-screen. Kind of introducing myself and the team and things like that, but then switching to full-screen.

But this dinner though, also a great idea. So, actually, we just had a dinner for our first distribution for this last deal that we did, because we had a consolidated – Our group of investors that were like in one town or really close. So we’re like, “Well, why not have a get together here?” So a lot of them, it was their first time investing in real estate. So it was a great time to get together. But outside of that, most of mine are like all over the country. So it’s difficult, and so that’s something – I wonder how you handle that or may be most of yours are local to you.

[00:34:55] HT: Yeah. It depends on what we’re trying to accomplish. I can see a situation. Let’s say we’re closing a deal in San Antonio and I say, “Look, the first 20 people that come to San Antonio on this date, I will cover your hotel room and the food for two days. There’s going to be a pitch for an investment on the end of the day. But on Saturday, you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to hang out with me if you don’t want to.”

I think that’s a great way to raise $3 million, because the people – I mean, the whole phrase is if they fly, they buy. So just make it clear that you are going to have an opportunity to invest. It’s for accredited investors only, whatever your particular niche is. And take care of them. If you’re closing on a property and you have a significant acquisition fee, then covering the $10,000 in hotel rooms and $3,000 of food is a really good way to spend that money.

I’ll tell you what though. With the live events, something, and I really like as well, is bringing as many team members as possible to the event and then also bringing especially savvy investors who have invested with you previously. Knowing that they’re out in the audience, explaining how they ended up investing with you and how they got to know you and probably being impressive to the people that are at the table just because they’re knowledgeable, savvy people, that’s a really good look, but also just really helps boost your confidence. So, I can’t speak enough about how important that physical confidence is when it comes to live presentation. So I do talk about that a little bit.

[00:36:20] WS: That’s a great point, and I like blasting out that you’re traveling to this area and this is what’s going to happen and inviting them and even offering to pay for their stay. Yeah, great way to spend some of that money and invite them down. I’ve never heard that saying though, which if fly, they buy. That’s good.

We’re getting really past our time limit here, but anything else, Hunter, you want to leave us with before we have to end it?

[00:36:42] HT: I think that, first of all, again, I appreciate letting us go a little bit late here. I think that when people think about the entire raising capital process, this is not what they think about. They think about these sales books of the 80s, telling people, “Is that sound like something I think I can interest you in?” and all these type of stuff.

The whole process is to make – That’s not scalable. Chasing around people is not scalable. What we talked about today is scalable. However, I know in the next interview we’re going to talk about the actual fun part, getting that money across the finish line, but it really is just about educating and networking the network upfront, building that infrastructure. Don’t focus on the back-end. Focus on building that infrastructure. It’s a great way to spend your time.

[00:37:24] WS: Awesome, Hunter. Well, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a great show. I’ve enjoyed this a lot myself. But before we go, tell us how like to give back.

[00:37:33] HT: Yeah. Man, I think I mentioned this previously, but I was so hesitant to get into the world of mentorship programs and such, because my background – I just am very hesitant of that industry. When I started, it was like pay $50,000 to learn how to flip a house, and the person that was teaching it was someone that never really flipped a house. Man! I have seen this change so much because all the free content that’s available on the Internet.

Now people have really stepped up their game for the paid stuff. I love the way that if people invest, they get so much more results. Guys like you have put incredible content on the Internet. But because it’s free, sometimes people don’t think it’s actually worth much. Nothing could be further from the truth. Man! If you just pay that hundred dollars, thousand dollars, whatever it is. I have really gotten a lot out of that. Now it’s not pure charity, because people pay for it, but nothing makes me happier than to see other people succeed. That’s really why I’m writing the book in the first place.

[00:38:30] WS: Cool. Well, Hunter, amazing show! Thank you again so much for your time and sharing your expertise. We look forward to getting this book, and can we say when it comes out now?

[00:38:40] HT: It’s going to be available on December 2^nd, but if you go to the website, raisingcapitalforrealestate.com and buy the presale, you’re going to get a presale bonus, which is not available after the book is released. So, if you go right now to raisingcapitalforrealestate.com, preorder the book, you’ll get this access to this presentation about actually closing the money. Then on December 2^nd, you’ll get the book shipped to you.

[00:39:04] WS: He’s on top of it. He’s got that lead magnet ready and call to action ready to go. Any other way you’d need to let them know to how they get in touch with you before we go?

[00:39:12] HT: Yeah. Just shoot me an email at [email protected], I’ll shoot you some free stuff; ebooks, articles, all these stuff that I’ve been talking about on this program.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:39:21] WS: Don’t go yet. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook, so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show. Subscribe too, so you can get the latest episodes. Lastly, I want to keep you updated. So, head over to lifebridgecapital.com and sign up for the newsletter. If you’re interested in partnering with me, sign up on the contact us page, so you can talk to me directly. Have a blessed day, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

[00:40:01] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Lifebridge Capital. Lifebridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Lifebridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]