The ONE hack to be Insanely Confident Around Investors (And Attract Them Without Trying)
When that somebody is here again, back with another video. In this video, I’ll tell you why your community is everything. The community you’re in determines the level of success you have. Really, community is the only thing that matters. So, who am I? My name is Natu Myers. I run a company called Raises Marcum, where we help multifamily syndicators and business buyers set up and raise $10 million plus for their new funds and acquisitions. So, why is your community so important? If you’re someone who’s been syndicating real estate or working on some small M&A deals and haven’t been able to get to the next level, or maybe you’ve been doing syndications by the hundreds or dozens and haven’t been able to set up an asset management vehicle or a pool of capital to deploy freely, there’s several things preventing you from doing that. One of them could easily be your environment. Environment is really everything when it comes to working on deals, raising capital and doing all this. I played football at a university called Queen’s University in Canada, and when we played it’s like one level below pro. (how to attract an investor)
So when we played, we had something called training camp. We always made sure that whenever we practiced, we isolated ourselves from everybody and lowered the friction for us to focus on football. There was no partying or distractions; it was just football and classes. We slept in the hostel where we practiced and the gym was right there, everything was conveniently located. We focused and spent 14 hours a day there. It’s the same thing with high performers, they were athletes everywhere, and they were locked down and focused. The reason why we were able to focus is because we removed all distractions from our environment. Similarly, a lot of people are setting up funds and want to do something they haven’t done before, but they’re the best in their environment. It’s funny because we had a guy in San Francisco who finished some syndications and in his network, he was one of the best at syndicating real estate. But when he came to us, he didn’t know how to structure basic private placements or set up a fund. The problem is that when someone is the best in their environment and leading it, they haven’t been challenged. (how to attract an investor)
It doesn’t matter how many deals you’ve done, how long you’ve been in the game, your assets under management, or the amount of syndications you’ve done. There’s always a bottleneck and something preventing you from getting to the next level, whether it’s setting up your own fund or asset management vehicle to deploy in real estate derivatives or mergers and acquisitions deals in a certain sector. If there’s something preventing you from doing that, it’s usually because you haven’t spoken to people who are doing what you want to do. The solution is to have a community of people who are doing what you want to do, who are setting up funds, structuring deals in a different way, and doing things you haven’t considered possible. By making this leap and talking to these people, meeting them, and not talking to people who are the “dumbest” in the room when it comes to what you don’t know, you’re able to evolve to the next level. (how to attract an investor)
And, you know, that’s pretty much it. You just change your environment. I’m mainly talking about changing your environment by changing the people you speak to and work with. Because if you’re working with people who are still syndicating small deals or doing one-off deals, how are you supposed to talk to people who have gone to the next level? This video is simple. The point I’m making is that you have to push yourself by being in places and with people who are doing what you want to do. You have to physically meet them, talk to them, and move among them. That’s the main thing. The second thing is, you know, your environment could be holding you back. For example, the amount of knowledge people have, the amount of friction it takes for you to get that knowledge. Like for example, when we changed our environment back when I was playing football, we had the stadium and gym right there, you just had to wake up and go there. (how to attract an investor)
There was no friction. Imagine if we had to drive to the gym or take a bunch of buses. It’s just too much friction. Forget that. It’s the same way, having subscription agreements and investors and fund managers right in your front door, in your neighborhood, even moving to a more expensive neighborhood, taking first class, doing whatever it takes so that when you wake up, you see people closing deals left and right. People closing deals like $40 million transactions, $20 million transactions like paperwork, like clockwork. And some people haven’t even seen that large of a transaction, even 10% of it, closed in their life, and they’ve been doing this for 40 years. Some people haven’t even seen that. So the point I’m making is, the more familiar you are with high performance, the more it becomes a habit and a way of life, a minimum hygiene standard. And when you put yourself in that position, you wouldn’t be intimidated by private placement memorandums, subscription agreements, JV LP structures, waterfall structures, hurdle rates, you would know what investors want, because the more you speak to investors, the more you see deals done by investors, the more you talk to investors, the more the feedback loop runs. (how to attract an investor)
And when the feedback loop goes, you’ll be able to see the cause-and-effect relationships behind why certain deals work and others don’t. Too often, many people will stay in their corner and imagine what they think the market and investors want. But the best way to know is to actually go to the market, talk to them, and see what they say. And if you’re able to see what they say, if they say yes, no, change this, change that, you talk to people with other funds, you work with people with similar contexts to what you want. For example, if you want to set up a real estate fund in San Francisco, you talk to more people who have real estate funds in San Francisco, then you’re most likely to have the right hypothesis to know what people want. So ultimately, I think I’ve said everything I need to say. Your environment is not the most important thing. (how to attract an investor)
It’s the only thing. And when you change your environment, you hang out with people who are performing at the level you want. You talk to them, get feedback, familiarize yourself with the concepts, paperwork, and deal flow, and remain the most inexperienced person when it comes to the things you want to grow in your network. Then you join a network of winners. And if there’s something you want to do, you just have to raise your game. And maybe that’s something that could happen. But outside of that, change your environment. Hang out with people who are closing the deals you want to close. Talk to investment bankers, private equity fund managers, and people who are directly invested in capital. Network with them aggressively and furiously if you want to get to the next level. And if you’re the smartest person in your network, it may feel good for your ego, but no matter how much experience you have, no matter how many millions you have, no matter if you have zero or 100 million, there’s always something that could challenge you to go to the next level. And to do it, you have to change your environment. So with this, I hope you change your environment, and we’ll see you in the next one. (how to attract an investor)