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Ep #387 – Hunter Thompson – Raising Capital for Real Estate

Here is some of what you will learn:

  • The value of nurturing relationships
  • Understanding real estate fund structures
  • Attracting your tribe
  • The value of momentum
  • How to find a mentor
  • How to build your platform
  • The real estate investing success model
  • Understanding value funnels
  • Creating your pitch deck

To find out more about our guest: ​click here  To find out more about partnering or investing in a multifamily deal: Text Partner to 41411 or email Partner@RodKhleif.com Join us at a Multifamily Bootcamp, visit: MultifamilyBootcamp.com

Full Transcript Below:

Ep #387 –Hunter Thompson – Raising Capital for Real Estate

Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.

Rod: Welcome to another edition of How to Build a Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m thrilled you’re here. My guest today, we’re gonna have a lot of fun. I’ve been on his podcast. His podcast is called Cash Flow Connections and his name’s Hunter Thompson and Hunter has a company called A Sim Capital 0.36 and he’s raised lots of money for deals, has been featured in Forbes, good guy and we are going to drill down on raising capital because you just wrote a book called Raising Capital for Real Estate. It’s gonna be on Amazon in November 4th and so, definitely wanna look for that. Welcome to show, brother.

Hunter: Hey, thanks again for having me on.

Rod: No, no problem. We’re gonna have a lot of fun today. So, let’s get into raising capital, my friend. Let’s, you know, I know that you’ve been a, you know, talked about how you got started in the business. Talk about, I know you had some challenges with your first deal, so let’s go all the way through that and then, we’ll drill down on ….

Hunter: It’s that 1.17 again.

Rod: On what you’ve learned and the book and all that.

Hunter: Sure. So, you know, starting out, I was very drawn to syndications as a real estate investor. I just love the way that there’s, you know, you can have a delineation between active and passive and I was very drawn to the passive approach to investing even if I was a sponsor, I was still saying, “look, I can either spend all my time learning everything about one particular asset class or I can be diversified across a lot of asset classes and leverage other people’s time, energy and expertise.” I just love the delineation there because, especially, when you start to get in play with the big boys of commercial real estate, the more complex the asset class, the larger the dollar signs, the more value an operating partner can bring to the table. And so, I was very drawn to that very early on. I like the mobile home park business a lot, especially, going back to 2012. I’m sure a lot of your listeners are now very familiar with the asset class, why it’s so special but I can tell you, back in 2012, that was not something that was in trend. It was something that was really kind of on the tertiary, outside skirts of the real-estate market. And so, I developed a relationship with an operating partner and I said, “Look, I’m confident that, now that I’ve invested with you guys a couple of times and I’ve been on site and I’ve done all this due diligence and I’ve really learned the business inside and out I’m confident I can raise money through my friends and family. Kind of the plus one plus two is like the extended friends and family.” So, I, basically, said, “Look, I’m confident I can bring about a half a million dollars to the table,” and I thought that was conservative. I had a luncheon. I sent out an event bright 2.48

Rod: You had a luncheon. No kidding.

Hunter: Yeah.

Rod: Free lunch. We’re gonna talk about, oh, wow. Okay. So that is old school. Okay.

Hunter: That’s exactly right. No online marketing component. Just, “hey, look, I’m in the real estate business. I’ve been investing successfully for a couple of years now. It’s time to scale this business.” I had 30 people come. All were credited investors just through, you know, networking, kind of reaching out etc. And I had this luncheon. I did a pitch for about 30 minutes. I was, from my perspective, I knew what I was talking about and I have the ability to communicate effectively, right? It’s not my inability to sell that was the problem. I sent a piece of paper out to everyone. I said, “Write the number of dollars that you’re interested in investing and then turn it over so it’s private. So you don’t have to share it with everyone and then turn it back into me.” And the total that I raised from this luncheon was zero dollars. Not a nickel and I went in there with all the confidence in the world and, by the way, like I said, I understood the business, you know. I was able to communicate. I was confident. I understood what I was talking about. I have a background in sales. I used to work for Cutco 3.55. Led the little the branch and sales, so it wasn’t that. It was the fact that I was trying to convert people that had never been interested ….

Rod: That you never met before, right? Right, right, right.

Hunter: Many of them I knew but it was just like, even if they trusted me, all the reasons that I thought they’re gonna be blown away by this opportunity, where is exactly the reasons why they’re completely uninterested, because they had never been paying attention to this stuff before. If they were, they had then 4.20.

Rod: You got a date before you get married. It’s that analogy is the same thing raising money. So that was the dynamic because soon you discovered that you have to build that relationship, nurture that relationship, educate them as much as you can, and I’m sure you get into all that in your book. So, is that the, so, is that the lesson that you’re talking about in your first capital raise?

Hunter: There’s so many lesson. I mean, first of all, to be honest with you, we’re going over this, like this is just a story. When it happens to you, it’s completely crippling, right?

Rod: Sure.

Hunter: I mean, any of the 4.50, that’s an entrepreneur, can kind of relate to that where, you’ve told your friends, “hey, I’m opening up my first fund and I’m probably gonna raise a half a million dollars,” and you start getting those text message coming in saying, “how the raise go?” And you have to slowly admit, “boy, it was way worse than I thought it could,” and so, you know, I, basically, had six had six months of kind of thinking about, “why did this go so wrong? And then, I started to realize that it was I needed to attract people that were already thinking about this type of thing. And create a system that, so, I would have to convert someone like a, basically, a pseudo religious experience. You know, taking people who are credited investors saying, “look, you guys have made two hundred thousand dollars a year for the past couple years. Well, I’ve got a completely new perspective on finance that you should take me seriously in this 30-minute luncheon 5.35.” It’s very challenging to have that happen. So, I really started by just writing articles and, you know, looking back on it, there’s a much more efficient way to do it if people are listening ….

Rod: So, hold on, hold on. I wanna stop you. Forgive me. Forgive me. I just, because I wanna, so, where did you post the articles? Did you do a blog? Did you put them on other people’s platforms? Did you do bigger pockets? Where did you, how did you get those articles out there?

Hunter: Yeah. I had a website at the time and it was Cash Flow Connections and that was really the brand that I was building. At the time I was really focused on single-family investments and I started to transition into syndications and you start to get into a, you know, you’re playing with the big boys. You’re talking about investment amounts of fifty hundred, two hundred thousand dollars, and you really do have to have a platform to educate people, especially back then. Now, crowd-funding is much more popular back in 2012 or so. That was something that only really ultra-high-net-worth people really talking about a lot. So, yes. To answer your question directly, the articles were started to be posted on my Cash Flow Connection site.

Rod: Okay, okay. So, like a blog kind of a thing.

Hunter: Yes.

Rod: So, let me ask you this, and I wanna Google and gonna go into all the other mediums that are available now because we’re living in the greatest time on earth for that right now. But, you know, I mean, look at my podcast, 7 million freaking downloads. You know, I mean, that’s, you know, I mean, unbelievably incredible and so, you know, Facebook group with 30,000 plus people in it, YouTube videos got watched 30,000 hours last year. I mean, it’s just amazing what’s available for free to get reach. But I wanna ask you a question, you say that you, you know, and you’ve said this before we started recording, that you’re just doing funds. Is there a reason you’re not doing property specific offerings?

Hunter: I like both.

Rod: Okay. Okay.

Hunter: But to be honest with you, I own it 7.20 Yeah, I mean, I just really like the diversification approach and I understand that, you know, you’re exchanging some control to get that diversification, but from my perspective, even very experienced investors, it’s hard to overcome the math, right? So, if I have just three properties and one investment vehicle, I really like the idea that if something weird goes wrong in a property level, the other two properties can kind of make up for that. And in today’s economic climate, we’re not having a lot of those challenges but when things turn around, weird things happen. Things that are challenging to underwrite 7.51. You know, we did have a property where an elevator broke. That’s a really expensive expense. That can create some challenges but if you just have a couple other properties in there, cash flow is gonna keep going in. It’s not gonna alert anyone.

Rod: Lender didn’t require reserves for stuff like that.

Hunter: Yeah. Certainly. But, I mean, you know, it’s just ….

Rod: laterally 8.06

Hunter: Exactly. Passive investors, they want that predictability of outcome. They want the high returns and the predictability of outcome, and, from my perspective, a fund allows you to participate in both of those without exposing yourself to one particular strategy or one particular risk …. 8.27

Rod: Are you in the same asset class in your funds or different asset classes?

Hunter: Typically, asset class specific and sponsors specific, operating partners specific.

Rod: Alright, alright. Well, so let me ask you this question because, you know, one of my what I think is hair-raising 8.43 pieces of wind 8.44 of doing a fund is, what happens if you don’t locate properties? You know, my fear would be, especially, in this hot market where we’re kissing 200 frogs to find a deal, you know, I could see the potential to make a deal happen just because you’ve got to exercise on the fund. So, could you speak to how you avoid making mistakes in this, in, you know, in this period of, I think in some cases, I would describe it as irrational exuberance in where we’re at in the market cycle, so, how do you get around that when you’re doing it in a fund?

Hunter: You’re speaking my language, brother. I mean, I completely agree with you. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees trying to navigate this because I am such a big proponent of the fund model and so, the way that we have done it, and this is very unique and it does take a lot of explaining to new investors, but, I think, it’s worth it from my perspective. We like to have a situation where our investors get to invest a hundred percent of their committed amount and all the, all their capital is allocated to one particular property but then, once their capital is allocated, they’re an investor in the entire fund. So the way it works, is that we build up a waiting list, we don’t accept the capital at all. We build up a waiting list which are just verbal commitments. Then, once the property is identified under contract and set to close, we call a hundred percent of that capital due and then, the remaining capital is put on a waiting list for future clauses and the reason …. 10.10

Rod: So, you’re only pulling the capital in deal by deal. Anyway.

Hunter: Exactly.

Rod: Even though it’s a fund. Very cool.

Hunter: Exactly. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Rod: Very cool, Hunter. I like that.

Hunter: And I just like it because I’m sure that a lot of people listening to this have realized that even ethical people can have their vision clouded.

Rod: Yeah.

Hunter: If it’s eyes 10.27 are …

Rod: Yeah.

Hunter: Correct. And so, if you have three million dollars in a checking account and you’re trying to say, “man, …. 10.32

Rod: And you’re paying a return on it in some cases already.

Hunter: Exactly. Or getting ….10.36

Rod: ….. 10.36 National Bank. Coming, you know, depleting the principal reserve. Not a good thing.

Hunter: Exactly. Or if you getting emails from investors saying, “hey, where’s that first distribution?” You know, you’re starting to think, “man, maybe the six cap could be okay or if this four cap can be okay,” and so, we wanna be really cautious about that.

Rod: Okay. No, I like that. And that’s a great answer. Okay. So, let’s talk about how someone, you know, let’s talk about some of the pieces that I know you go over in your book about how to raise capital. I know you just spoke about this at my friend Adams event. Talk about, you know, it’s for my listeners that haven’t done this yet or they’ve done it in a small way, how they can do it in a big way? So, let’s go through the pieces if you don’t mind. I’m just gonna let you lead.

Hunter: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, first of all, I think it’s worth saying that, from my perspective, raising capital is the most sought-after, consistently needed, most lucrative piece of the entire real estate business. It is the one thing where if you can do this thing, you can always have a place in commercial real estate. As long as you pick operating partners that you can partner with that act ethically that can deliver on their promises, you have to do that. That’s obviously a given. This is completely useless if you don’t have that, but once you have that on lock, this is a good way to spend your time and there’s never been a better time, just what you’re just saying earlier, there’s never been a better time to build an educational platform that can add tremendous value to people and attract your tribe that are gonna be able to invest with you over and over again.

Rod: Yeah.

Hunter: And so, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is getting mentors. It’s the first point because I don’t like to be the first guy that does anything. What I wanna do is identify best-in-class and then, use their success as a playbook. Now, this has been an industry that’s basically revolutionized. Rod, you’ve been in the business for a long time. You know, 20 years ago, the business was, “pay me $50,000, I’ll teach you how to flip houses,” and I’ve never flipped a house before in my life. That’s the challenge.

Rod: Yeah, there some of those charlatans out there, and there still are believe it or not.

Hunter: Certainly.

Rod: But, okay. So, yeah. Find a mentor. No question. And guys, you know, on that note, I’m gonna be in Los Angeles 17th, 18th and 19th of January. Still early bird pricing and so, you know, it’s just me, not, there’s no, you know, unlike most of my competitors that bring a bunch of people on stage to sell you stuff. It’s just me teaching you about the business. So, I hope you’ll come but, and that’s RodinLosAngeles.com. And so, find a mentor and guys, you know, if you can’t make it to one of my events, then, look in your local marketplace for a mentor. Go real estate investor club meetings. You know, what else suggestions do you have around finding a mentor, Hunter?

Hunter: I’ll say this. “Look, if you wanna get mentored by someone it’s because they’re high performer, high successful individual in the real estate business and someone that you see eye to eye to them. But these are people that are busy, right? So, what I really like to talk about is, you have to inspire them. You have to inspire them by showing them the one thing that mentors are just addicted to, which is momentum. So, it’s just a matter of saying ….

Rod: Momentum. Interesting. Okay. So, ….

Hunter: I like ….

Rod: Drill down on that a little bit.

Hunter: So, basically, it’s like this. A lot of people come into the real estate business and they go, “man, I need to find a mentor that’s gonna help me along the way.” The moment that you realize that, that you’re gonna have to do it yourself and then, you start to get your own momentum, all those mentors that you could never find, all of a sudden they appear immediately because they’re addicted to it. Because there’s so many reasons for this, but if you can just show that sense of urgency like, I cannot tell you how clear it’s going to be that someone’s gonna be successful if the moment from when they have a concept about business to when it’s done is short, their success just takes off like a rocket ship. And it’s everything. Like as simple as saying, “okay, I need to create an LLC.” If that LLC is created in three days, that person is gonna be a success almost a hundred percent of the time. It’s unbelievable. Doesn’t matter what the contacts they have or the network or the educational level, they can just do that stuff quickly. Man, it just takes off.

Rod: It’s like a, it’s, you know, so many people get caught in analysis paralysis and I’d describe myself as the fire ready aim guy, you know. A lot of people are aiming and they reposition, they aim again, then they research and then, they may aim again and they never fire. So, I love that analogy. I’m gonna add a caveat, and that is, if you wanna attract a mentor, show them also your passion. Show them that you’re really into it. I love the momentum thing though and I I’ve got a great example of that. My friend, David, is in my mastermind. He’s 23 years old. I think he’s in 600 doors now and he met Glenn, someone else on my mastermind, with over 4,000 doors and now they’re partnered. You know, Glen is no longer of tooth. David’s 23 years old and in Glen sees that passion and that enthusiasm and he’s like, “you know what?”, and momentum for sure. And they’re partners now. And so, guys, you know, that’s what’s possible, you know, to align with someone, when you show them that. And I just brought on someone in my team that’s, you know, really passionate as well. Literally, just hired him yesterday. You know, same dynamic. Love it. Alright. So, mentors, what’s next?

Hunter: So, again, let’s talk about the platform. I think that’s a big part of that. Once you find a mentor and they can kind of show you the ropes, you have to be an absolute expert in this game. I’m not the type of person that says, “hey look, anyone can do this.” This is a ultra-competitive, ultra lucrative business that attracts everyone from Warren Buffett to Carl Icahn 16.20. You’re competing against those guys to some degree or another. You have to be willing to put in the work and then, once you have done that, I really suggest putting out some educational content. One of the ways, I really am a big proponent of time batching tasks, so anything that I’m …

Rod: Okay. Before you, I’m sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Don’t forget. I wanna come back to that but you’re talking about a platform and guys, what we’re talking about here is a way to create reach, okay? And so, I’m assuming Hunter, without assuming too much, is we’re talking about meet-ups and we’re talking about social media, yes?

Hunter: Correct.

Rod: Okay. Alright.

Hunter: Or website, anything that ….

Rod: Or blog or a blog or adding value on, you know, someone else’s blog. Like a bigger pocket sort of my Facebook group and, you know, whatever it is, adding value to threads and things of that nature, yes? That’s what we’re talking about here as far as ….

Hunter: Exactly. I prefer this down line component just because that’s just how I prefer it and I also live in Los Angeles, very hard to drive around in traffic, so I like to do it online.

Rod: So, what do you mean by online? What specifically are we talking about?

Hunter: Podcasts, articles, ebooks, etc.

Rod: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.

Hunter: Correct.

Rod: Okay. Got it. Okay.

Hunter: Correct.

Rod: Alright. Continue.

Hunter: So, what I was kind of getting at is that I, anytime you’re going to do something, I wanna have a system around it. For me, time batching is a really important part of my system so if I wanna write articles, the first thing I’m going to do is block out 17.44 60 to 100 eighty minutes and just do nothing but write article topics. Just the names of topics, okay? And the fact that I’m gonna do this for two hours or three hours allows me to overcome procrastination which is a big killer of success and realize that a lot of these topics are gonna be trash. I’m never gonna write about them but man, if I could just do it over and over again and write a hundred, I could probably find ten that are gonna be great topics, right? So, these are things like, what’s the relationship between interest rates and housing prices? Is self-storage really recession resistant? Three reasons to invest in multifamily. So, I just gave you three right there. You only have to come out ninety-seven more and you’re well on your way to creating your flat 18.21

Rod: I love it. I love it. And I’m showing you something, those of you on iTunes aren’t gonna see this, here’s exactly the same thing that I do from my own, your power clips. These are topics that I’m selecting to write about and I sit and I do exactly what Hunter just described. So, I love it. And there’s a personal example. There’s a personal example of it now. And time blocking, you know, I do a planning, weekly planning process at my live events because it’s so critical. You know, you heard the adage, “fail to plan, plan to fail”. It’s so real and so true, and so, part of that weekly planning process is blocking time. You know, looking at your to-do list to determine, you know, where the Pareto principle comes into play? What’s the 20% that’ll get you 80% further and actually blocking time for that? So, I love that. Alright. So, blocking time and batching, batching as well. I’ll give you another example of batching like, Thursday’s is typically my day, it’s Thursday today to record my podcast interviews. And I do them, you know, back-to-back as much as I can. You just so much more effective when you do that. Would you agree, Hunter?

Hunter: Absolutely. A part of that is because the cognitive shifting of gears. You don’t have to wake up ago 19.26, “oh, it’s Monday. Do I have a podcast interview that I have to do today?” You know that on Thursdays that’s when that takes place. You can check out and focus on what you have to focus on, on Monday.

Rod: Yeah, yeah. I love it. That’s a good, that’s absolutely, you know, that you’re so on it about the effect on your cognitive abilities and thinking, you know, that’s why you’ll see me in a black V-neck almost all the time. I don’t wanna have decision fatigue so unless my wife’s really irritated with me and I have to put on a dress shirt and pant and shoes because I’m usually in flip-flops as well, you know. I’m, you’re gonna find me black V-neck, shorts or jeans and flip-flops. So, love it. Alright. Because I don’t wanna affect anything cognitively and I wanna impact as little as possible. Alright, so, what’s next? How do you, so, you add value, you find a platform, continue.

Hunter: Yeah. I think that articles are, so from my perspective doing some research in terms of the Google algorithm, articles should probably be between a thousand and 1500 words. You can typically make claims and you wanna back them up but you don’t have to go into a ton of detail. You don’t really have enough space to go into that kind of detail which is kind of a good segue into a tool that I think I’m just a huge proponent of which is the e-book. There is no reason why you should not write one of these if you guys are interested in becoming an expert in multifamily or appearing to be an expert in multifamily. This is typically somewhere between six thousand and fifteen thousand words should take about forty five minutes to read or so, and this really gives you an opportunity to go in deep, provide some data that’ll back up the claims, make it evergreen so that’s good forever and man, if you can send this, it’s a lead capture mechanism, right? So, whenever come, someone comes to your website, I like to put out content that’s gonna be evergreen that really speak to the general thesis of your particular investment. So something it’s not gonna change.

Rod: In the digital world that’s called a lead magnet.

Hunter: Yes.

Rod: Yeah, I love it. So, let me let me enhance something you just said about e-books because, you know, there’s a lot of crap out there too and people do get wise to, you know, “hey, give me your email address and I’ll give you this free report.” So, I gave away twenty thousand copies of my book. My book and now it’s on Amazon. It’s a best-seller and, you know, and if my team was finally like, “hey stupid, let’s make some money with this”, but I used it as a lead magnet, okay? So, I got emails from 20,000 people but I was real, it was really important to me to not have it be crappy because if you produce crap material or fluffy content that sales a, you know, I forgot who, I heard it on stage, “if you produce crap, you are crap”, is really what the what the phrase was. So, make sure whatever you write really adds value like, and now that I put my book on Amazon’s like, “hey, you know, how am I gonna capture email addresses?” So, I created, in fact, I just happen to have it right here cuz I just did a Facebook live on it. I created this tool book which is 67 pages long. No fluff and it’s every possible question you would need to ask yourself if you’re buying a multifamily property. It’s like a due diligence checklist on steroids. I mean, it’s got every possible question and its total content. So, I mean, this is and that’s important piece. That’s really that what I wanted to hammer home on that on that topic Hunter is that, do an e-book but make sure it adds incredible value like, I mean, like, this we use this. I mean, literally, it’s that good. And don’t hesitate to put your best foot forward when you are doing this because, you know, that’s what’s gonna get you ingrained with these, do you agree with what I’m saying, hunter?

Hunter: Oh yeah. You should feel like, “man, why am I giving this away for free?”

Rod: Exactly. Perfect answer. Perfect answer. I’m sorry I interrupted you.

Hunter: No.

Rod: I wanted to hammer that piece home. So, you got your e-book, what’s next?

Hunter: So, then, it’s time to kind of get the word out, right? Because this e-book is gonna act as a lead capture mechanism.

Rod: Right.

Hunter: So now, I mean, look, you’ve done the work, right? You’ve become an expert in the space. By the way, writing those articles and writing this e-book, you’re gonna take your level of understanding of your own thesis to the next level. Just going through that process alone will help your close ratio 23.38 drastically because …

Rod: The teacher learns while they’re teaching. So you’re educating through your content, you’re learning. We do our podcasts, we’re learning via our podcasts. I’m learning while I’m sitting here talking to you and so, ….

Hunter: Always.

Rod: You know, that’s the dynamic. So, yes. Absolutely.

Hunter: So here’s what I suggest after that. The podcast mechanism, the podcast medium is exploding as we speak and I think I looked at some numbers recently. By 2014, there was seven billion downloads in iTunes. By 2018, that number went from 7 billion to 50 billion.

Rod: Okay. As an …..24.16 wow

Hunter: I think as investors, it’s massive. As investors we think about that growth and I think we think, “oh, there’s a massive bubble”, which is reasonable to think but here’s the difference. Bubbles are indicative when people are making those decisions when the risk is very high and what to gain is very low, right? That’s like what the definition of a bubble is, where the risk is just massive and the upside ….

Rod: Sorry. You think there’s a bubble in the podcast space?

Hunter: I don’t because, yes. Because what kind of explaining which is that, like you think of the .com bubble. It’s like people were investing, they start, they didn’t understand, they could lose all their money but the upside was basically limited because it’s like it’s a bubble. With the podcast mechanism, it’s just because there’s growth doesn’t mean they’re a bubble. It’s still an incredibly favorable time to start a podcast, to be on a podcast. Why? Because the risk is extremely limited. Rod, it’s just me and you having this conversation right now.

Rod: Yeah, it’s just time. It’s just time. Yeah, you lose some time. Big deal.

Hunter: Worst case scenario. Yeah.

Rod: Let me say this, you know, I mean, I’ve been blessed. I’m like, we’re approaching 7 million downloads. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of years I’m in every weekend. I’m really blessed and not all podcasts have those kind of numbers and but, guys, it, you don’t need 50,000 ears listening to you. You can create a platform with a few hundred, okay? But so, talk about the keys to having a successful platform because I wanna hear it from you. I mean, I know my answer is but I wanna hear your answer.

Hunter: Sure. So, what I would say is, once you have this e-book, I would start well, first of all, have a VA, create a Google sheet, search real estate podcasts, find some mechanism, some metrics that you wanna track. So, the name of the podcast, email of the host, the number of reviews, the number of Twitter followers, and then, search by the number of reviews and start with the ones at the very bottom with the least reviews first. This is important guys. You’re gonna wanna hit up Rod immediately now you’ve written this e-book. Wait. You can work your way up to Rod. Start at the bottom because the podcasts that were just recently started are more eager to have guests on that are relatively new and go on there and talk about the content of that e-book and drive them back to that e-book as a lead capture mechanism. What I’ve outlined right there is the business model of extremely successful people in all over the real estate business and all over the world right now.

Rod: Yeah, oh, for sure. No question. And, you know, I was just interviewed on a podcast and I said, “you know, I’ll give you my free tool book just text the word Rod to 41411 and you’ll get it”, and then, I’ve got their email address. Now, the critical piece after that is you need to have an email sequence that they get that adds even more value to, once they’re in. And there’s a whole strategy for this, you know. And so, like when our, in our network, you’ll get three more pieces of content within the first, I don’t, four or five days, that here I wanna give you another gift, another gift, another gift, and they’re just great books that I’ve written and so, but that’s how you capture, you know, and start building that list. And then, of course by adding value Hunter on a podcast, you’re building your brand as well. Now, are you, you’re advocating, are you advocating to do your own podcast or go on other people’s or both?

Hunter: Honestly, it is what it is, right? So, if whatever your skill set speaks to you best. If you’re great at writing, do that. If you’re not great at writing and great at speaking, creating a podcast is incredibly asymmetric in terms of it being favorable and as a bonus if you’re really not good at writing and really love speaking, have your friend interview you about a topic that you’re an expert in. Go to rev.com. Convert that interview to text and that’s your first e-book, boom. Completely, there’s no excuse.

Rod: So, yeah and that’s gonna tie into something else. I think we’re gonna talk about here in a minute. And that is cross-collateralization of whatever it is you’re doing, yes?

Hunter: Yes. Absolutely.

Rod: Do you wanna speak for that for a moment? You wanna speak to that?

Hunter: So, I mentioned before and anyone that’s work with me knows, I’m just extremely obsessed with productivity, and so, one of the things I really like to do is anytime I create something, I want it to be evergreen if possible and …

Rod: So guys, just so you understand what he means by evergreen. That means that there isn’t really, it’s gonna be out there in the online’s world as if it’s new and it’s never gonna expire, okay? And I’ll give you an example of this. You know, there used to be a big surgeon in people doing webinars and, you know, they would and now, you can even do a webinar where it appears as if it’s live but it’s not and people can ask questions to get their questions answered and I’m actually thinking about doing one myself which is why it’s top of mind for me and, you know, like a master class or and it becomes what he calls evergreen meaning it just stays out there and it’s producing while you’re sleeping and on twenty-four hours a day and, you know, until the content becomes dated and you have to update it, yes?

Hunter: Exactly. And I think doing a webinar is a great example of this. I mean, I talked about this in the book because of the fact that it’s basically taking your pitch deck which we haven’t really talked about but your pitch deck turning it into a presentation and having Q&A be a really important part of that presentation, at least half of it. So that, by the time the investor sees the webinar, they go through the entire pitch deck, basically, but in audio and video form, video form you’ve already done the hard work reading the pitch deck. Now, you’re just putting it through another mechanism through people that learn through other senses as well as the opportunity to hear other investors’ questions. By that time, they go through all of this, they’ve listened to you on podcast, they’ve read your articles, they’ve read your e-book, they’ve looked at the webinar, they’ve read the deck, man, they are ready to move forward and it’s just a matter of some of them will move forward just because of the content you’ve already created, some will require a phone call for to close. But by the time, you get to that phone call, see, this is the thing so many people think, like I’ve raised about thirty million dollars of private equity. People might think that the way that I’ve done this is like I go in there, I just pound my hand on the table until they close. I just say, “No, is that the kind of thing that I can interest you in? Well, you said you have these problems earlier. Doesn’t that solve your problem? So, don’t you wanna move forward?” I’ve never said that stuff in my life. It’s not a closing strategy. It’s all about the top of the funnel because if I’m talking about closing strategies, if I read the best book on closing ever, it may take me from getting; let’s say there’s 10 people in a room. I can go from closing three people to closing five people. That would be, like, the best closing strategy you’ve ever heard of. Almost double the close ratio. The challenge though, I’m not interested in going from three to five. I wanna go from three to 300 and the way to do this is by building this infrastructure. Just incredibly efficient way to spend your time.

Rod: Yeah. No question. So, you’re talking about building a fuss 30.58. Really it’s a sales funnel. I mean, it’s like any business, you need to get people on the top of the funnel and as they’re going down through the funnel, we, I described one of the ways we do it, is just multiple emails adding value, add value, add value, add value, and then, you can ask for something. You can ask for a phone call. Like with my, the webinar that I plan to do, I will, likely, I’m not gonna sell anything on it. I’m just gonna say, “hey listen, if you, if I’ve intrigued you, get on the phone with me or one of my people and let’s talk about this business and talk about your goals and see if we can help you,”, okay? And that’s really it. That’s what my plan is. And so, I love it. Now, …

Hunter: One more piece of this actually before we …. 31.39

Rod: Go ahead. Yes, please.

Hunter: Because as I’ve said, I kind of wanna repurpose things over and over again.

Rod: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hunter: I’ve done here I’ve created the pitch deck. I’ve created …. 31.48

Rod: Yeah, yeah. I wanna, that’s what I wanna, I was trying to remember what I want to ask you about and I wanna talk about the pitch deck but go ahead finish your thought and then, we’ll go circle back to that.

Hunter: Once you have created the pitch deck, once you have created the webinar, you’ve done this, you practiced it, you’ve heard your own webinar back, you’ve started to become a master by, you know, being kind of hard on yourself, where can you pick up? How can you make the transitions better? Where can you make it more concise, more clear, etc.? Then, it’s time to hit investors what really counts which is in their stomach. And so, I talked about kind of putting this into a live presentation and doing an investor dinner. And this is where the investors who are maybe not as online savvy, maybe much more interested in investing with someone based on the experience of investing, the personal relationship, drive traffic to an event website that allow them to have a free dinner with you where you can have like, let’s say, a dinner of 30 people, you know, typically, about 50 to 80 dollars per person at dinner and you go through and you give that was what that webinar presentation live.

Rod: And you’ve done this?

Hunter: Yes. I’ve done this. Probably, about do it twice a year or so, and I’d like to do it either in LA, which is where a lot of my investors are, or, and this is something a Hammond diamond 32.58 I’m probably gonna do very soon is next time we close a property I’ll have a dinner at the site of the property. So that’ll ….

Rod: These are existing investors or do you have, you invite them to bring other people that might be interested, yes?

Hunter: Great question. Great question. So, what I really like to do here is I wanna have as many team members as possible, as many previous investors as possible because that really creates this atmosphere that people have had success with me and also that people get to meet the other team members that are going to be responsible for the performance of their investment. Just having that confidence in the room, this whole live presentation thing is all about confidence and credibility because it’s all about the experience the investor has. So, I like to invite any previous investors, always invited to something like this as well as investors that are considering investing.

Rod: I love it. Love it. We’re about to do one of those ourselves. It’ll actually be our first one in a long time.

Hunter: Great.

Rod: Yeah, so, let’s circle back to the pitch deck for a minute. So, describe what that is and what it looks like and what’s in it and how you use it. Please.

Hunter: So, this is basically an executive summary. This is basically a summary of the deal, right? So, whether ….

Rod: Okay. So you’ve got a, it’s a deal you’re actually working on?

Hunter: Correct.

Rod: Or is it a sample deal?

Hunter: Yeah. And so, some people do like to do the sample deal but I’ll probably be since we have a fund, especially, we have something that is open, that, you know, people can review. Now, it’s the same thing for a property specific situation. It’s basically just the details of the fund or the details of the property and, you know, you go through everything from your background, ways ….

Rod: So, yes. it’s like it’s an OEM 34.34 for the deal. It’s a property teaser, property package. Okay. I didn’t know if it was something else other than a deal but, you know, so it’s gonna have everything about you and your experience and your successes and the deal and the demographics and the financials and everything on the specific one pictures and all that.

Hunter: Yes. One thing I’ll say about this. In real estate, its location, location, location, when it comes to anything you’re putting in front of an investor but, especially, a pitch deck or an OM. It’s about design, design, design. Buy based on emotional reasons. I mean, this has been proven in study after study. So, if you can spend a thousand dollars on an design of an offering deck and a thousand dollars on photography of the actual property that investors will be invested in. That two thousand dollars, if you’re raising two million dollars, this is like a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of nothing and it is going to drastically impact the emotional component about what this looks like. It should. There’s no reason that your deck shouldn’t look absolutely perfect.

Rod: Alright. That’s great tip. Fantastic tip. In fact, I told I wrote a note down myself because I don’t think we spent enough time on photos and money on photos. Thank you for that. So, ….

Hunter: thumbtack.com 35.48 is a good resource for that, by the way.

Rod: What is?

Hunter: Thumbtack.com 35.51 is a good resource for photography.

Rod: For photographers?

Hunter: Correct.

Rod: Okay.

Hunter: All over the country.

Rod: Okay. Love it. So, one thing I thought we were going this direction and maybe I misunderstood something but as you’re building reach, as you’re, as you decide whatever your platform is gonna be; be it a podcast, be it a blog, you know, whatever your medium is that you enjoy communicating in, be it, you know, Instagram even, whatever, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, I’m gonna and I’m just gonna throw this out there just cuz I don’t wanna not do this, whatever it is, you should cross collateralize whatever it is you put out. Like you talked about having your podcast or something you talked about having it transcribed and throwing it out there’s a blog. I forgot what it was, but was it a podcast interview or what was it you …. 36.44

Hunter: Yeah, I was big 36.44, like if you’re really hesitant to create your first e-book.

Rod: Right.

Hunter: What you can do is just have someone interview you and then, transcribe that conversation.

Rod: Turn that into an e-book. Yeah. So, that’s one thing but like my podcast interviews, there, I mean, like we’re doing this on video not just on iTunes so it’ll be on YouTube. I got, you know, I had 30,000 hours watched to my You tube videos last year, blew my mind, you know. So, there’s a medium. We have a VA transcribed them and they’re put on my website as a blog article so if somebody doesn’t want to sit and listen to my painfully irritating voice and the fact that I interrupt way too much because I get excited, they can just read the thing, okay? It’s not as painful and so, you know, it’s you wanna cross collateralize as much of this as you can to maximize and it’s not expensive to do it. It’s like, you’re gonna spend the time to create, you know, get it, get the biggest bang for your buck. Do you agree with me?

Hunter: Absolutely. This is the first thing I said when we start this conversation is like, “look, you’re competing against Warren by fitting carl icahn 37.39 ….

Rod: Right.

Hunter: You need to be putting in the work but once you have done that, now it’s time to maximize that by just putting everything out. So, another thing, when you do these podcast interviews you’re going to have a couple of cool bullet points that you say, just little quotes. It is such a cool credibility booster to have just a quick quote from yourself with a picture of yourself to post on Instagram or social media. It’s a really good look and your VAs can help you do this. If you haven’t really hired a VA by the way or an assistant, I’m sure you’ve talked about this in the show many-many times, it is the most important hiring 38.12 you can do. Go to upwork.com or one of their competitors. Hire someone to take some of those tasks that you’re not good at and shouldn’t be spending your time off immediately. …. 38.22

Rod: Yeah, I’ve had as many as eight VA is working at one time. And there’s it’s critical. So, just because I’m running me up against a hard stop, I wanna talk about other couple other quick things real quick. Talk about how you nurture your list once you build it.

Hunter: Yes. I mean, the nurture process is really, the attraction process is really kind of going through the e-book. The nurture process is going through that email list and other articles that I’ve written. So, I mentioned writing a hundred articles. Rod, you usually showed that list you had up earlier. Some of those may be really great articles. Some of them may be a great for a book or even an e-book. I mean, a book, e-book or even a book. Now, some of them may not quite be on that level but still good things that you wanna touch on so that’s what you write, let’s say, 300 to 500 words and put them in an outgoing email blast. And those 300, 500 words, those could be things that are intriguing that are kind of like nurturing but they don’t have to go into so much detail where you’re, you know, the investors or the listeners are kind of getting bored. It’s just like, “here’s a cool thing that I thought of”, “here’s interesting to click more”, go to this article or …. 39.24

Rod: How often? How often are you doing this?

Hunter: So, the way that ….

Rod: Do you have to have a framework around this?

Hunter: Yeah.

Rod: This is something you’d think about consciously and put a calendar together and all that business.

Hunter: Yeah. So, I mean, and this is something I kind of got from Joe fearless 39.39 but you wanna be able to contact investors; weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, and I think that that’s a fair thing. So, our investors and our people and our mailing list, they’re going to receive a weekly newsletter, newsletter they’re going to receive two podcasts downloads a week, every month they’re going to receive some kind of communication about the net, an update every quarter, if they’re an investor, they’re gonna receive an update about the investment in every year we have a conference. You know, the intelligent investors real estate conference which is where a lot of our investors get to, again, build that personal relationship.

Rod: Okay, okay. Love it. Listen, brother. I really appreciate your being on the show. Guys, check out his book, you know, Raising Capital for Real Estate and Hunter it’s a pleasure to see you again. I know you’ve had me on your show and you get a lot of that incestuous stuff going on between podcast hosts ….

Hunter: That’s right.

Rod: And but you added a tremendous value today, brother. And it’s great to see you again, my friend.

Hunter: Thanks so much man. We’ll do it again.

Rod: Absolutely. Take care, buddy. See you later.

Hunter: Have a good one.

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