10 Strategies to Close More Deals & Raise Capital Faster [Webinar Video, ChatGPT Insights + Full Transcript]

My friend Badri from Avestor (customizable funds) invited me to do a webinar last week, which provided their clients with 10 ways to close more deals and raise more capital. Below, please find the recording of that webinar, a ChatGPT summary of the content, and a full transcript of what I said during the presentation.

ChatGPT Insights: I have asked ChatGPT to please review the webinar transcript, summarize key takeaways in bullet point format in a way that is practical quick to read, and actionable for anyone who is raising capital or working with investors. Please also bullet point out a few mistakes that many people make while raising capital and finally point out a few points that were stressed above everything else so they are not missed. Here is what it produced:

Key Takeaways for Raising Capital [ChatGPT Summary]

• Ethical Reputation is Paramount Building and maintaining an ethical reputation is the master key to influence. Trust is the foundation of all investor relationships.
• Understand Influence and Persuasion Study scientifically proven methods of influence to enhance communication. Familiarize yourself with Robert Cialdini's six principles: authority, commitment, reciprocation, similarity, scarcity, and social proof.
• Build Authority and Preeminence Position yourself as an expert in your niche to gain credibility. Use thought leadership (e.g., writing books, creating valuable content) to establish authority.
• Meet Investors in Person Personal meetings are significantly more effective—up to 16 times more—than virtual interactions. In-person connections build stronger trust and facilitate better deal-making.
• Align with Investors' Past Actions Research investors' previous deals and tailor your pitch accordingly. Present opportunities consistent with their investment history to increase influence.
• Ask Questions and Listen Spend 60% of meetings asking questions to understand investor needs. Tailor your presentation to address their specific interests and concerns.
• Provide Value Before Pitching Offer something beneficial to investors upfront (e.g., insights, resources). Leading with value fosters reciprocation and opens doors for future collaboration.
• Be Concise and Clear in Outreach Keep communications brief and to the point. Highlight what makes your opportunity unique without overwhelming details.
• Demonstrate Consistency and Commitment Show long-term dedication to your venture to build credibility. Consistent actions reinforce trust and investor confidence.
• Utilize Influence Principles Ethically Apply influence strategies genuinely without manipulation. Ethical persuasion strengthens relationships and fosters long-term success.

Common Mistakes in Raising Capital

• Over-Pitching Without Adding Value Focusing solely on selling rather than building relationships deters investors. Neglecting to provide initial value can weaken your approach.
• Ignoring the Importance of Ethics Underestimating the role of an ethical reputation undermines trust. Any unethical behavior can nullify your influence efforts.
• Lack of Personal Interaction Relying only on digital communication limits relationship building. Missing opportunities to meet in person can reduce effectiveness.
• Not Aligning with Investor Interests Failing to research and align with investors' preferences leads to mismatches. Generic pitches show a lack of personalization and effort.
• Poor Listening Skills Dominating conversations without understanding investor needs is ineffective. Not addressing specific concerns can lose their interest.
• Generic and Lengthy Outreach Sending long, impersonal emails doesn't capture attention. Overwhelming details without clear value proposition can be off-putting.
• Overlooking Thought Leadership Neglecting to establish authority through content limits credibility. Missing the chance to position yourself as an expert in your field.

Points Stressed Above Everything Else

• Ethical Reputation is Non-Negotiable Without an ethical foundation, no persuasion tactics will be effective. Trust is the most critical element in investor relationships.
• Personal Meetings Amplify Success In-person interactions significantly boost the likelihood of investment. They help overcome skepticism in an era of digital misinformation.
• Lead by Adding Value First Always begin interactions by offering genuine value. This approach fosters goodwill and encourages reciprocation.

These insights aim to help you effectively raise capital by building strong, trust-based relationships with investors, leveraging ethical influence, and positioning yourself as a valuable and authoritative partner.

Stream The Webinar:

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Full Webinar Transcript: My name is Richard C. Wilson. I started an investor club in 2007. I've been running that now for 17 years, and we've hosted over 275 live events. We have a 20-person full-time team helping us run the investor club, and we have about 7,500 investors registered with the club.

Before I even started the business, I began studying the science of influence and persuasion. It was through studying that we really launched and scaled our investor club. If it weren't for the influence and persuasion strategies I'm about to share with you today, I think our business would be a fourth of the size, or maybe we would not have survived; we might have gone out of business.?

The strategies we share here consist of about 20 slides. They've made us millions of dollars, and I hope that all of you get a ton of value from sharing this. I’ll move pretty quickly through these, but feel free to stop me if people have questions. I'm happy for you to interrupt me to clarify a point or emphasize something. This is what's worked for us in the investor space.

So, I'll share my slide here. If I take a second to pop it up... there we go. Let me know if anyone has trouble seeing it, but this is about how to influence investors and win deals. This is my thesis: after I had my MBA, I was living in Boston raising capital, and I studied influence and persuasion through the Harvard ALM division. I took all these psychology courses, and I was the only business person; everybody else was a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I was like the evil business person trying to figure out how to use this stuff in the real world—besides therapy, obviously.?

You can see at the bottom of this page that part of my thesis was basically on Robert Cialdini's influence principles, so that's kind of the foundation for all this. I started learning about all of this back in 2007, and my thesis was in 2009, so it's been quite a while studying influence.?

But what is influence? It's basically: how do you get people to say yes to you? How do you convince your wife to go to the sushi place you want to go to instead of steak? How do you convince your kids to go to bed on time? How do you convince somebody to invest in your fund??

Importantly, the academic field only approves scientifically proven methods of influence. There might be some things that we all know work in the sales industry or the sales world, but the study of influence and persuasion is really saying what is scientifically proven to work over and over again across a wide variety of people. It almost always works or gives you a better chance of working.

It used to be that someone could claim to be an expert on a lot of different topics, right? You'd look at Leonardo da Vinci, or someone who lived in the 1800s, John Stuart Mill—he was the last person ever to claim to know everything about everything. That’s such a ridiculous claim nowadays; no one would ever claim that, right? Like, Elon Musk doesn’t say, “I know everything about rockets,” because no one person does, right?

The amount of cognitive overload is greater every year. It used to be that knowledge doubled every 15 years. Now knowledge doubles; the last time I heard, it was every two years. It's probably even faster—who knows? The other way to say it is that there are over 400,000 scientific journals published every year. No one person knows everything in any one scientific journal, so there's no way to be an expert on all the stuff being thrown at you.

If you're an investor, you're very busy. You have dozens or hundreds of employees; perhaps you get dozens of K-1s and manage dozens of LLCs. The amount of information coming at you, if you're a successful founder or an investor, is a lot, right? If I recommend a book to you right now, are you going to go to Goodreads and read 19 book reviews, ask on social media who’s read that book, ask your best friends, or do research on Google? No, you’re either going to say, “Oh, that book sounds good,” look on Amazon, see it has a good review, and buy the book, or you’re going to move on with your life and not even write down the name of it, right??

You have to act very quickly. The busier you are, the more you have to rely upon shortcuts. Like, “Do I trust this person who told me to do something? Do I trust this review online?” You make a very quick decision. The busier someone gets, the faster, the more that influence and persuasion principles matter because you have to rely upon shortcuts to survive the day. You can’t investigate every little decision you make, or you won’t get anything done, right??

So that's the basis of influence. The reason you want to study it is that, first of all, in the investment industry, almost nobody talks about Robert Cialdini and influence and persuasion. Also, every time you write an email, you're trying to get someone to respond to you or get on a phone call. Every time you write a one-pager—which hopefully you have and not just a pitch deck—you’re trying to get someone to review your pitch deck or get on a call with you.

The whole point of any piece of investment marketing materials is to gain interest, gain traction, get a meeting, and move them to the next step forward. And so if you know these strategies, which you can literally study your whole life and always get better at, it's just going to make you more effective at communications.

This is just an example of how many different pieces of materials can be dialed in from your one-liner, the name of your company, etc. It could all be done in a way that's more influential than it is right now. It could always be improved. So I was lucky enough, after studying Robert Cialdini for, you know, the last 15 plus years, last week I got to interview Dr. Cialdini for the first time, which was pretty cool. His team had reached out to us just by chance because they found we were an investor club and they were raising capital for one of their training programs. I said, oh, I'm like a huge fan. I'd love to interview Dr. Cialdini and put it out on our YouTube channel. So I was able to do a one-on-one exclusive interview with Cialdini. He is basically the foundational expert, the preeminent expert of the whole field of influence and persuasion. Many of you may have read his book; he's sold over 7 million copies in 44 countries. That book is called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." He has six principles in there that I mentioned in a couple of minutes, but I got to ask him a lot of really pointed questions. I'd always wondered about influence and persuasion straight from kind of the godfather of the space himself, which was super cool.

One question I asked him was, after studying this for so long, what is the master key to influence? Like what is the one thing that if Badri's group here from Avestar is watching this webinar, they don't remember anything else that I said the whole webinar, what's the one thing they should for sure do? And Cialdini said that it is to have an ethical reputation. He said if you do not have an ethical reputation, nothing else you say or do matters. I had never talked to anyone before, but at all of our events, I start out telling people it's not the person with the best IRR written on their paper, it's not the person promising the most high ridiculous returns that's going to win the day here at our investor club; it's the person that builds the highest trust, the highest conviction, and builds the best relationship. People want to invest with the best people with a compelling unique strategy, not so many promises of the highest returns. That's sometimes what new people to the space think. So I loved his answer. It totally makes sense. In all of Cialdini's teachings, he says it's about ethical influence and persuasion, because otherwise you look like you’re a used car salesman and it backfires, and nobody wants to do any business with you because you look manipulative or you're faking something to have in common with someone. So I just thought having an ethical reputation was a really interesting takeaway from him and worth mentioning here for you guys today.

I also asked him two other really critical questions that I thought were $100,000 insights. I said, what is going to make the difference in the world of artificial intelligence and technology and deep fake media? You can't even believe your own eyes anymore, whether it's a picture or a video; it doesn't matter. It could just be fake easily, right? So in that world, what's going to make the difference? There are scientific studies done over and over again that show not just in the investment industry, but just in sales in general. And this is not in the world of AI; this is before you couldn't believe anything that you see—that people are 16 times more likely to move forward in a transaction with you if they've met you in person and they heard the pitch in person. Just imagine if you're going to buy a hamburger through Uber Eats or if you're going to get married. Which one do you think is going to hold so much weight that you may want to meet in person with that person who you're about to marry or sell you that hamburger? Probably, if you're going to get married, you’d love to meet them in person first, right? So my point about that hamburger...

What was that? Hamburger? Scott, you gotta know who's cooking that burger. Yeah, it depends on how much of a burger connoisseur you are, I guess. So basically, it's like the heavier the weight of the decision, obviously the more you're going to want to meet the person in person, right?

I mean, like, it's just common sense. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that; for all of us founders, we know that. But also, in a world where everything could be fake, you probably want to meet in person. So my thinking is that in the investment world, I don't have a scientific study to show it, but I would guess it's 20 times more powerful, or 50 times more powerful to meet in person.

So we are gonna continue. We've got 16.5 million social media group members and followers behind our brand, but we're gonna keep hosting in-person events for as long as we possibly can for the foreseeable future, because we think it's the combination of having a big digital reach but meeting in person which is super powerful. Badri's been to some of our events, and it just makes a huge difference meeting in person.

So when I was back in Oregon for Christmas last year, we got a hemp milk latte with Badri and got to meet him in person. I just wanted to actually get to know him as a human being, and I think that's gonna keep on becoming more and more important. So that was interesting to hear from him.

The other thing is, I said, if you're approaching ultra-wealthy families, centimillionaires, billionaires—the busiest people on planet Earth, like heads of state, etc.—what can you do to get a response from investors or catch their attention? Cialdini said that they've shown that people who are very wealthy are very successful, and they believe in themselves. They have conviction and rely upon their own judgment because they've learned they're pretty good at making decisions, and that's how they became successful.

So looking at what they've done before and being consistent with that, and looking at their actions and saying, okay, they always like to structure deals like this, or they always like to invest this amount and then a higher amount, or anything you can find about the types of deals they've done, then explaining what you're doing in a way that's very much in line with what they've done before would be something that they are much more likely to be influenced by because they trust their own counsel. They are still influenced by the counsel of people that they see as authorities, but not as much as someone who has no idea what's going on on planet Earth and doesn't have success yet. They trust their own counsel more than the average person.

So those are some interesting questions I got to ask Cialdini directly. You know, I've been presenting on this stuff for over a decade at our events, but I never could quote him directly exclusively. It's just a picture of people meeting in person at one of our investor club events. We host 16 events in person each year: masterminds, as well as investor summits. Our next investor summit has four billionaires on stage and 120 speakers total.

One of my two favorite books from Cialdini is called "Pre-suasion," and essentially in this book he's providing over 50 examples of ways that you can shine a spotlight on something. So somebody's prefrontal cortex puts an outsized importance on one fact or area, and then when you're bringing up your presentation later, it's going to influence their perception of it.

For example, if somebody does deals in a certain way as an investor typically, and you learned through someone or somehow about past investments someone has made, then talking to them when you're first getting to know them and bringing up, "Oh, I saw you've done three deals in manufacturing before," or in whatever niche you're in, and bringing that up and confirming that you got your facts right, but also just bringing it to the front of their head. Now, if you bring up your deal that's structured in a similar way, they're going to link those two together even faster than they normally would.

Another example of persuasion is if you add big value to someone and it's going to help them make $500,000. You know, you don't say, "Well, we're not going to split that. I'm not taking $250,000 of the $500,000. Our fee for doing that is actually only $25,000." Saying $500,000 first, and then $250,000, and then $25,000 makes the $25,000 seem much, much smaller. That's just another form of persuasion: influencing what's coming next by saying something immediately before it that has the brain hyper-concentrate on a certain area, factor, or element.

Another thing that boosts credibility and influence is pointing out what's not perfect. If you pretend like there are no chinks in the armor, then someone's gonna look for one, and they're gonna think you're trying to deceive them. It's scientifically proven that there's always a negative. Like in our investor club, we're not doing one-on-one matchmaking, and we're not doing capital introductions and raising all the money for you. You know, if we did, we'd be charging $30,000 per event, not, you know, three to seven K for a six-month or a year membership, right?

The benefit of that is we don't have to charge $30,000 per event, but we also are not like your capital raiser full-time or your broker-dealer, you know, placement agent. Admitting what the negative is upfront allows people to not only understand it better—full disclosure is always best in the investment world—but it just gains trust because you're not acting like you're perfect. When someone says they have no competition, there's no downside, there's no risk to this deal, it's the best deal you've ever seen, people just kind of think, "All right, that's just in the conversation; I need to go take a phone call or something." Investors can smell amateur hour when they hear that, and they just blatantly don't trust it.

This is the book I mentioned earlier. It's kind of the foundational book on influence. If you haven't read this, I definitely encourage you to pick it up on Audible. You can see the six principles here on the screen: authority, commitment, reciprocation, similarity, scarcity, and social proof. Some of these are pretty obvious and have been talked about many times, so you're probably familiar with scarcity or social proof. But the more you can build yourself up as an authority that people look up to, the more powerful subconsciously what you say becomes; it has a heavier weight to it.

They've shown that in different environments, different people have levels of authority, such as speaking on stage at a conference, for example. In the world of medicine, if you are in a hospital wearing a white doctor's lab coat, people treat you differently. They've even shown that trained and experienced licensed nurses told by someone who's not a doctor but is in a hospital wearing a doctor's lab coat will walk in and tell a nurse to inject two chemicals that every nurse should know are lethal into a patient. More often than not, the doctor can get the nurse to inject the patient with what would be a lethal substance simply because he’s wearing doctor's clothing.

They don't recognize the doctor, they have never met them before, they know it's lethal, and they still do exactly what the doctor says, right? And so that's just one example of authority. There are hundreds of scientific studies behind each of the scientific influence principles mentioned here. And number two on commitment is related to what we said about getting the ultra-wealthy, who believe in their own counsel, to do business with you or to work with you. If you do things that are in line with how they operate, then you're more likely to gain their approval and gain momentum. I'll stop right there to see if there's any questions. I've got some more slides to go through, but anything that I moved through on these last couple of slides that somebody would like to ask about?

• No, I'm familiar with the books and I agree with you 100% that these are great principles to follow. It's very, very difficult, at least for me. I'm like a mule; you gotta hit me over the head many times. You know, that's the power of going back and rereading it and, quite frankly, practicing it. If you don't practice it, it's really hard to make it part of your everyday being when you're speaking to other people.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And one thing that Cialdini said—because I told him my favorite influence principle is a combination of scarcity and authority and trying to make myself such an authority on a niche topic that I'm a scarce resource and they don't know of any other authorities more in-depth, like an expert on how to start a family office or something of that nature.

What's interesting about what you just said and how Cialdini responded to me, I thought he was gonna be like, "Oh yeah, that's really smart, Richard, good idea," or, "Here's another one that's a good combination." Instead, he said, "You should not have a favorite principle among these." He said, "You should just go into an environment and see what objects are naturally in that environment and not fabricate or push a scheme on every situation you go to. Otherwise, it's like you're running around with a hammer trying to find nails." He said instead, "You should just enter a conversation and then see, oh, commitment consistency. Oh, there's some natural scarcity 'cause I only have room for four more investors, so I might as well mention, I only have room for four more investors." And that's a natural scarcity, not a fabricated, fake scarcity. And he said, "That way you're being genuine, and you just use the one that's strongest in your environment."

You know, if you're going water skiing, a pickaxe for the mountains might not be the best, right? So that was his response, which I thought was kind of helpful because also related to what you said, you can study just one of these principles. Like I became more obsessed with authority and scarcity combined for a long time, and like the rabbit hole goes so deep, right? It's like there's so much to learn about just even one of these, you know.

Any other questions or comments on these?

No, I like your point of don't try to force fit something, right? I mean, I think that's a very important point. And I think you need to understand the environment you're in, and if somebody doesn't respond to high-pressure things, trying to push a scarcity thing might not be the right way to go. Even in the sales thing, right? I mean, sometimes, okay, you have 24 hours to sign this; it might work, but sometimes that might actually backfire. "Hey, this guy is very pushy."

ust to give an example, we unfortunately had to replace our heat pump—worse things can happen. And two people, one guy said, "Hey, this is the price. If you want to do it, you can. I can't do it for a month and a half. He was genuine about it." And then this other guy comes and he gives me three prices: if you do it within 24 hours, this is the price; if you do it right now, this is the price; and if you do it within 48 hours, this is the price. My wife completely said, "We're not working with that guy. I don't care how good this company is," you know?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. When there's like a fake emergency, like we were trying to get this domain name for one of our hospitality clients, and we wanted it. But then they tried to create this fake thing: we have to buy it right now. I was traveling that day to Bali or something, and I was like, forget these guys, you know? I don't even want to get it from them because they're so weird about it. So I think that's a really good point. Any other comments or questions from anyone?

Yeah, I have a question. The question is, excuse me, I just came in late and I want to know what of these services that you're talking about are provided to us as new members of Avestar? What do you provide us?

Yeah, sure. Well, we have 1,000 videos that are free on our YouTube channel. It's called Cetimillionaire Strategies, and under the playlist on our YouTube channel is our most valuable content because we have a $100 million Rainmaker series. It's like a mini-series on there, and each video is just four to seven minutes long. We have 17 videos providing over 30 different strategies on how to raise a lot of capital, and it's just based on what we've found works while running our investor club the last 17 years. So that's the number one best free resource to go to.

We also have a free book on Raising Capital at CapitalRaising.com . Those are the two best free resources. Then we try to jump on here once a quarter to do a webinar just on some of the stuff we've learned while running our investor club and what works in convincing investors to work with us or come to our events or conduct transactions with us.

Because we'll do things like we sourced half a billion dollars' worth of Marriott hotels for a hospitality REIT that's going public, but we've also sourced 19 deals for a billionaire. We've also sourced capital and investors for medical practice deals, real estate deals to buy assets like billionaires.com or commercialrealestate.com . So we've been on the side of sourcing deals, but also helping families start their family offices or raise capital. So that's kind of like how we apply this to our world—it's kind of on both sides of the coin.

In case you didn't see the chat window, somebody asked where, what is the YouTube channel link. Corey put in the link, including the search query. Thank you. - Oh, awesome. Yeah. Thank you. I just is centimillionaire strategies. Was there one more question? No, okay. Here is the short code to the YouTube link, right there. There we go. All right, let me get my PowerPoint brought back up here. Here we go. Okay. So in psychology of influence, um, they've just shown that the way you do something is the way you're going to do it over and over again. Like if you wake up and the first thing you do is brush your teeth and then shave or brush your teeth and make a coffee. Like that's typically the way you're always going to do things—like we're creatures of habit. Um, and so recognizing that is important to the key to influence in my opinion. This was not Robert Cialdini's opinion, who knows a hundred times more than I do, 'cause he's been studying influence for 45 years. So what do I know? But what I've found for myself is that I become much more influential the more I can first influence myself. I've had this saying that nobody will take your investment offering more serious than you take it. So if you don't bother to get a domain name, you don't bother to create a website, you don't bother to have a professional logo, then like why should someone else bother to take it seriously if you're not? But also, the more that you can influence yourself and be aligned, you know, your words being aligned with your actions, etc., then I think the better things go for you. And so, you know, the more you can be disciplined and do the things that you know you need to do, the more you're going to rise above others that know they should be doing some things. They just don't do them. They just don't get them done consistently. And I think that's one of the things that family offices, like ultra-wealthy investors, really look for is consistency because they know to be a successful founder and create the wealth that they have that they not only have to be hardworking, but they have to stick at things and have some grit and consistency to their own actions.

So that's part of having a track record and part of looking for people that already have momentum and success in their model. They have shown through many studies that the relationship you have with an investor is more than two times as likely to determine whether they invest with you as the features of your fund. So somebody else could be offering higher returns, better collateral, their materials look better, but because you have a better relationship, you get the deal done. Another thing that I think is really interesting is we have had 100 people interviewed within Family Office Club, our investor club, that have all raised $100 million or more. So if you sat down and had a cup of coffee with 100 people who have all raised $100 million plus, we've recorded those 10-minute talks, those interviews and talks within our member portal. And we have found that even people who have raised, like Chip Perkins, who spoke at our mastermind this summer, he's raised $7 billion, and all he does is work as a placement agent to raise capital for people. He has the best CRM, the best team. He's like Cialdini, but for capital raising as a placement agent, right? And so what's interesting is that he said many times during the fireside chat I did with him that even now he has to go and talk to 200 to 300 investors to find 10 who will invest or talk to 1,000 to find 100 that will invest. And he says it's still not easy after doing it for 25 years. So I think it's good for people on here to hear that. So you're like, why is this so hard to raise capital? Why is it so hard to find an investor? Like, well, it's not always hard. Sometimes you have something and the money pours in 'cause it's a very hot area, hot topic, and everything—the stars align. But most people have a really hard time raising capital, and it takes a lot of work. You might get it done, but it might be harder than you thought, right? So I think it's just good for people to hear, and the relationship matters a lot.

In terms of how we've evolved in positioning our authority, the first book I wrote is on the left here. It's fuzzy. My head's cut off. It's obviously at a conference. Bank of America says there's 6,000 Richard C. Wilson's just at Bank of America, and I forgot, you know, I didn't have my middle initial on the book cover, so, you know, you can never find me on Google otherwise. And so, the next time I wrote a book is for Wiley. The cover is more professional. I used my middle initial. Actually, I had a subtitle to the book. And then, with Evolve to doing books that are very clear on who they're targeting, have a subtitle, a better design, have a URL in the front. And just to position yourself as more of an authority, you wanna make sure everything you produce is appealing to somebody very specifically and has really dialed into that person and crisp and institutional quality that will grow your level of authority in your space.

Brian Burke is a friend of mine who helped us acquire commercialrealestate.com . It's a domain name that we own, and he came to some of our workshops and masterminds and heard about how I've written 13 books and how books have helped us gain investor traction and investor clients. And it's not so much about the book; it's more about just doing thought leadership in general, but he decided to put a book together and he was able to raise a record, for him, a record, $25 million in just four weeks. And he reached out and thanked me 'cause he said the book was central to that. And again, it's not a prescription to go write a book; it's just that the influence principle of reciprocation means if you give value to someone, they're more likely to want to do something to help you back. And whether that's a YouTube mini-series, or a PDF book, a white paper, a benchmark survey, a series of interviews you do on a topic, whatever it is, if you're adding genuine value to someone, they're more likely to want to meet with you and add value back. And that's what Brian found, and he had a record capital raise because of that.

Tony Robbins is an example of the scarce authority, at least in some people's eyes, at least in the late 90s and early 2000s, and if not now, he's seen as an authority on self-improvement and leadership. There's not many self-improvement gurus that have self-improved themselves so much that they became a billionaire. That's pretty unique. And so his level of reach and notoriety just grew to a point of, you know, whether you like him or not, like he's kind of a preeminent authority in that niche. So he's an example of a scarce authority. And Jay Abraham was introduced to me through Evan Pagan, one of my early mentors, and his whole theory on authority is really to have preeminence. Cialdini is referred to as the foundational expert on influence. That's the ultimate position of authority. And that's what Jay Abraham, who's thought of as one of the smartest business development and marketing minds alive today, talks about more than anything else—is trying to get to a place of preeminence in your niche.

And you might say, like, oh man, I'm so far off from that. I'm just trying to do this. I'm just trying to acquire five plumbing companies, or I was trying to acquire my first three hotels, whatever it is. But you could be number one in your niche, and you carve out a small sandbox and say, well, we are acquiring dry cleaners only in Houston. And we want to have more dry cleaners than anyone else in Houston. And at least in that sub-niche, maybe you're more well connected than anyone else. So you can always niche things down.

When I talked earlier about influencing yourself and having an ethical reputation and how to be consistent with where an investor has acted before, one way to get to those places is to ask more questions. A lot of times you get access to an investor and they say, "Oh, great. When do you have time to go through the pitch deck?" You get to the pitch deck or the meeting, you go through all the slides, you say, "Oh, do you have any questions?" The other way to do it, which is much more effective, is to ask questions for 60% of the time and then tell the part of the pitch that they actually care about. Then emphasize the thing, which is very consistent with their past actions, and you'll learn way faster than if you just pitch the whole time. And they say, oh, no, I don't think I have any questions. Let me just follow up next week if I do, and then nothing really happens, right? So spend your time with investors asking a lot of questions. Stephen Covey says that to be influential, you first have to be influenceable. First you need to take in a bunch of information, and then you can be influential after you've allowed yourself to be influenced. So any questions about that?

If not, I'll keep going. Just have a couple of slides left, and I'll wrap up here. Covey mentioned related to listening that most people are just horrible listeners.

You're lucky in school if they teach you anything about public speaking; usually, they teach you absolutely nothing, even in an MBA about listening, right? And it's more important to listen than it is to speak. And Stephen Covey talks about how most people speak at 150 words per minute, but they can listen at 500 words per minute. That's why a lot of us listen to Audible at two times or 3.5 times speed and get through books fast because we can listen way faster than most people talk. So most people get bored while you're talking because they can hear at a much faster rate, right? And so that's something just to keep in mind and be thoughtful of so that when an investor is talking, take notes and really try to empathize with their position and not ignore what they're saying and just latch on to the first idea that comes into your head. And that's something that takes some practice. But I find that most people are just pretty bad at listening, and most people are not used to others actually listening and following up on exactly what they said to follow up with. And some of my best relationships are with hundred-million-dollar network families, and I only touch base with them twice a year when I have something that's exactly what they told me they wanted. They're not following up all the time—just get on another call. They're like, why do we need another call? Like, I don't know. There's not something really relevant, right? They're super busy, just like all of us are. Gary Vaynerchuk has recruited three companies to 60 million in revenue, and he says he is a counterpuncher in a world of jabbers. He's a big boxing fan, and so the other people come out jabbing and pitching, pitching, pitching. He just listens, listens, listens, and then waits for that opening to add value and really close on exactly what they want.

So some of the things we covered today in the presentation were persuasion, planting things, reminding people of things, and putting it in the prefrontal cortex so that what you're doing next has kind of a light shown on it and it's extra influential. Becoming a scarce authority, learning how to influence yourself, and coming up with many strategies to make yourself more disciplined and more focused. I have a one-pager that I read every day with my monthly, quarterly, and annual goals and about 50 statements that I know I have to abide by in my life so that things go better. And I review that every day so that I can influence myself to be more influential to others and just be the higher-level version of myself, hopefully. Meet and close people in person. It's at least 16 times as effective. I think it's probably more like 30 or 50 times as effective. Long-term commitment equals conviction. Show you're committed to your craft and what you're doing and only act in ways that nobody would do unless they were long-term committed, and that's gonna earn trust faster. Open with a mystery or open a loop in an investor's mind, and they're gonna wanna close that loop and hear the rest of your pitch and figure out what's that one thing you learned that saved you a million dollars, but save that for the end of your presentation. That's a way to hook a very busy, wealthy founder. And then the last point is just try to be the number one resource for a specific type of investor. Like maybe you're the most informed person on tax strategies they know, or on solar, or on whatever your niche is, right? Or for Badri, it's a customized fund approach, right? That's like a unique position in the marketplace. And so he's cut out a clear spot. Sanjay and him have cut out this clear position in the market with Avestor that's not like a thousand other options out there related to funds.

So that's it for today. Our website for our investor club is just familyoffices.com . You can see our event schedule there. Our 650-person event is coming up December 10th to 12th in Miami. It's in Kibis Cain, just about 15 minutes from downtown Miami. And I appreciate everyone's attention. Happy to answer any questions that anybody might have here. Thank you. One—oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead, Richard. I was just going to say that one thing that's interesting is just to look at meetings you have coming up or looking at your pitch deck and your one-liner and your one-pager and just thinking, what thought leadership could I put out to enact a sense of reciprocation, and investors would get so much value from that infographic or that checklist that they're gonna wanna talk to me and get value from me. Like, what can I do as my first interaction with an investor is giving them value instead of pitching, you know? - Still standing risk to me one of them. - Bobby, were you gonna say something? - Sorry, let me unmute. Hey, Richard, great presentation. Nice to meet you. - Thanks. - Wanna run a question by you. I'm a big believer in meeting in person, and I think it's a great way to connect with like-minded people and all that. My situation is a little different now. I'm not in the States anymore, where most of my investors are. So nine to 10 months out of the year, I'm not in the country. So what is the next best alternative for me to connect with people? Where are you the other nine or 10 months? Like, what country are you in? Bouncing between South America and Asia. - Okay, so obviously Asia has tons of new wealth being created there. So that's partially why I'm living in Hawaii, and we're starting to host four events a year in Singapore and then Sydney, Australia next after that. I think a lot of the future wealth creation will come from there. So that's one thing just to keep in mind. There's like maybe there's one city in Asia that you focus on tapping into, like, network-wise. For when you do go to the U.S., then I would probably try to concentrate your energy just on two things, like where you're buying assets, like let's say you're buying multifamily properties in Nebraska or something, or maybe it's Texas. Then I would focus your capillaries and efforts on just one or two cities within the United States right where your assets are that you're acquiring, because even if you're not there, the investor could go visit the property with one of your team members. Or when you're in town and doing due diligence on properties in Texas or Nebraska, you can meet with them easily. So that could be a lot of synergies in doing that. So that'd be the first thing is the geographical focus. But then, depending on the niche you're in, like let's say you're buying dry cleaners or plumbing companies, etc., I would also then go niche on that demographic and find people who have had exits in that space. And people who have sold their plumbing companies are amazing prospects to invest in your plumbing fund because now you don't have to explain to them plumbing, like they get it and might be hard to build that database. Of course, there's some challenges to that, but with some like offshore data researchers, you could probably put some together. So the first idea is geographical focus where it's near the assets you're buying. And the second is like, you know, if it's a litigation law hedge fund, maybe pitch law firm partners, you know, it might source you a deal. Same with a plumber; their friend might be selling their plumbing company, and you don't have to teach them the ABCs of law and litigation funding, you know. - Makes sense, makes sense. Thank you, Richard. - Sure, sure. Yeah, Corey? - Yeah, thanks for a great presentation.

And I arrived just a little bit late, but if so, sorry if you already answered this, but what does the initial reach out look like to engage? I think that's something I'm testing right now and figuring out. And obviously, how different is it from going to a family office or a very high-net-worth individual to like a small balance investor? Like that initial with, given that you don't have a brand, it's not really built out. They haven't been on a campaign or a newsletter; I'm building out right now, but that's just for the short term.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So after 17 years, you know, I'm still evolving what we do. I think like it's a constant evolution is one part of the answer. The other is that on the hardest to reach people in the world, cold emails do work. And we have proof of that because we've interviewed 42 billionaires, and 30 of those were done through cold email approaches. You know, with Mark Cuban, it took 14 emails to get him to reply to us. And with a billionaire like Mark, we'll space it out by two or three months, so we're not bothering him three times a day. For a high-net-worth individual, maybe I'd approach every 10 to 20 days, but through different mediums, different subject lines. The worst thing is to send a long email. Someone has to read an essay to figure out what you're doing, so concise is always best.

Adding value to them is the ultimate way. So like when I moved to Arizona before I came to Hawaii, the first week I was there, I met a hundred-million-dollar network family that I messaged cold on LinkedIn because I was having my car serviced. And they had a subscription plan to their service company. I said, oh, that's a really smart model; I wonder if I could invest with them or something. And I looked at their website, and they had like 18 locations. So like, well, these guys are making a lot of money, and I reached out. I didn't pitch them on me; instead, I said I have an investment structure that, assuming you're raising capital for each of these locations as you open them, you'd be able to raise the money, pay off investors, and give them zero equity. You keep all the equity and give them a good return, and they go on their way using my gross revenue royalty structures. And would you like to have a cup of coffee and meet since I'm local?

And it was literally like a sentence and a half. And I emailed the two founders through LinkedIn. They didn't know I had messaged both of them; they both replied the same day that they wanted to meet. And I found out they had already sold their company for $180 million to Goldman Sachs. So like that, if you can get billionaires to reply and send millionaires to reply, then it's going to be easier to get angel investor size or high net worth to reply. But adding value is the biggest thing. So like we'll go to a billionaire who's written a book and say, "Hey, can I buy 500 copies of your book and give it away at my conference?" And really, okay, it's nice to give it away. I'm really just trying to get them to answer my three questions for billionaires.com so we can get to 100 billionaires interviewed. Or they don't care about buying their book, but it's giving value to them first, and I just say like, "Hey, it'd be really cool if you could answer these three questions as part of that." That's really what I'm going for, but I offered to buy 500 copies of their book first, and that's worked with a few billionaires, but I don't have the magical thing. With Mark Cuban, it's somewhat inappropriate.

But I'll say it anyways; I don't think anyone would be too offended, but like with Mark Cuban on "Shark Tank," he always says, "no balls, no babies," right? And so I did all these serious approaches; he completely ignored it. And then I said something about, I said like "no balls equals no babies?" in the subject line, and then he actually replied to that email. So that's one time where a sense of humor got him to actually reply. So I'm trying to use a sense of humor. I think that's probably the most inappropriate professional message I've ever sent to anybody, but like it's his own words, right? So he can't get offended by it.

But concise, add value, say something unique, you know, those are the top things I would use for reaching out. Ninety-nine percent of people reaching out are pitching, pitching, pitching. They're not offering value at all. So like it has to be in their best interest to reply, as if you're the most valuable email in their whole inbox for the whole day; nobody else sent over something more valuable than what you just sent them, you know?

Mm-hmm, yeah, so like maybe if I could find this for you, you know, would that be of interest to you? So like bringing value, like can I bring you a deal? Can I go find this for you?

I think that is possible value, but I think it's 10 times more valuable to say, "I have this for you; can I make the connection? I have a client for you."

When I feel like it's like actually having a deal, 'cause I found a lot of the conversations I strike up, like the best ones I have is that, 'cause I have something to actually share.

Yeah. I mean, be careful, 'cause like, if you say "I have this deal for you," it can still look like just a pitch, right? If you said it could be not even related to your deal, be like, "Oh, I have another $100 million family in the auto parts industry; would you like that connection?" Or "I have a client for your manufacturing business over here; could I help you with that?" Or "I have this for this one entity I know you own."

Because if you say, "I have this amazing hedge fund; do you want me to do the favor of allowing you to invest in it?" they're gonna feel like it's just like a sales pitch, right? It's like a thinly veiled sales pitch. And these are the most cynical, busiest, skeptical people on planet Earth, and they get a thousand pitches a day.

And we have sometimes people that like, we'll get like a list of leads or like investors from us. And it's really interesting dynamic 'cause they'll say, "Man, I emailed like a hundred investors and no one emailed me back. This list is garbage." And like in their mind, they don't even conceive that maybe it's the message you're sending them, and maybe no one owes you a reply. Like maybe your email sucks, right? Maybe it's just average, and no one owes you a reply to your random email, right? And so that's like the harsh reality is like, everyone's busy, everyone gets pitched a ton. So it has to be really unique.

And one family office on stage two weeks ago, the manager has a billion dollars; he's allocated to 200 investment managers. He says, "Just tell me why it's unique. Why is it compelling? What's your competitive value edge and link to some of your materials?" That's it, like three bullet points. I don't need an essay, you know?

And so I know it's like the long answer, but I think like what you asked is super important because if you don't get traction up front, then nothing else matters really, right?

Yeah, it's a very nuanced topic. What I'm hearing is that you need to really research like that family office, what appeals to them, try to do some research; maybe there's something personal attribute that can be bled in there. They're an author, they're trying to get their book out there and live their legacy; it appeals to that, and then kind of bringing in without it feeling like a pitch. So yeah, ideally, right?

I mean, if what you're doing is so unique, and you can say it so well in a single sentence that it pierces through their inbox and hits them between the eyes, then you're going to make a lot of money and raise a ton of money, and like good, good for you. But it's hard. It's hard to find something that magical that nobody else is offering them. So just, you know, we're always trying to improve what we do to have a better hit rate. And that's what we've learned, you know, to date. And like last, you know, we do tons over email.

So if you ever have some breakthrough idea on that, I'm definitely happy just to trade notes with you offline.

But like since we started our business, my Gmail account, I've sent 199,000 emails from my Gmail. So like we email a ton, and we're still learning. So I was happy to trade notes. Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I'll take a look at it. Cool. Any other last one question?

Yeah, I don't have a question, Richard, but I just wanted to restate what the conversation just was. So what I'm hearing is you need to offer something that benefits them that doesn't necessarily benefit you. So not something that's reciprocally beneficial, something that, as an example using the family office, instead of bombarding them with a deal—they don't need deals. They have 100 deals pitched to them every single day. So it doesn't matter how great your deal is.

But if you have a high net worth individual who is exploring family offices, and this is not a single family office, but a family office, you may be able to bring them that high net worth individual and say, "Hey, I have someone else that would be interested in talking to you about joining your family office." That's something where you're not getting a direct benefit, but it definitely could come back and open the doors to allow you to build that relationship.

Right, right. I mean, like one quick idea that anybody could apply is like, let's say you're talking to an investor, and they don't feel like they're 100% equipped on how to evaluate other real estate sponsors or funds. You could say, "Here are the 15 questions you should ask every real estate sponsor before you allocate money. Here's a little checklist. Here's a little one-page infographic on navigating the private equity world. Always ask or look for these 20 things, etc." Or "Here's a little AI due diligence tool that we use while evaluating opportunities. If you want to use this free tool as well, here's a link to it that you can use for free."

Like those are things that are like, "Oh, the investor's like, oh, that's actually useful." Because like even if you're in the market to buy a Rolex or Mercedes and you go to catch a flight on an airplane today, and you're walking through the airport and you're in line to order like a burger and someone grabs your arm like, "Hey, you want to buy this Rolex?" like who are you? No, I don't want to buy a Rolex, even though you're literally looking for a Rolex 10 minutes ago online. You don't trust this random guy; you're just trying to buy a burger, right? And so there's no context.

And so it's all about the context of trust, right? You walk into a Rolex shop and there's an expert there, and you trust them. It's like, okay, you might actually buy the Rolex. You're in the market for it. So it's all about the context and the trust. It's not about who's offering the highest return in my experience.

All right. Awesome. Yeah. Well, appreciate having me on here. Badri, I've got to run for a meeting down the street, but if anyone has questions or wants to follow up, it's just [email protected] or you can reach out to me through Badri, and I'll make sure to share my PowerPoint as well. Thank you, Richard. I will post up our points. Very enlightening as always. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. Yeah, take care.

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