Key Concepts Of Raising Capital With Brad Blazar

 Josh
 Hey, good day, fellow dealmakers spoke up to the deal scout on today's show. We're going to have a returning champion. This is his first time on this show, but this guy and I have spent multiple times together and he's a Knight. He raises capital. He teaches other people to do it. If you are in the world of syndication, multifamily, commercial, real estate, raising money, you want to pay attention to the show, sir, Brad, welcome to the show, man. 

 Brad
 I love it. That's Brad. It's great to see you again, Josh man. Great to be here. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah. All right. You and I are hanging out in a coffee shop or, and we're just chatting along in a friend comes up and they go, Hey, Brad, who are you? What do you do? How do you typically respond? 

 Brad
 Well, you know, that's a long answer. I could probably go for an hour on that, but the bottom line, my background really is former CTO of a small oil company that I built in my early mid twenties. We built that up to a pretty sizable organization with about 35 people on our payroll, literally raising millions of dollars each and every month basically to go out and, it's more for natural resources in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. As I like to say, after doing that for about 10 years in the late eighties, two major events really affected the industry. One was just the tax reform act that changed the landscape or industrial capital. The other of course was just collapsing oil prices. I went home Monday and just made a really tough, difficult decision, which was to collapse the business. We never had to file for bankruptcy because were debt free, but I kind of went back to school, came out with a new perspective thinking, okay, it's not to go to work corporate America. 

 Brad
 And it was really disillusion. I didn't like that very much. One day, just a couple of years ago was, basically watching TV and a Steve Harvey said something that really impacted me. It was talking about kind of finding what he calls. You're something special. It's understanding what your primary hard skill is, what you're really great at and then creating content around that and delivering it to the world where it helps change the lives of other people. He said, man, if you can do that, it's a magical thing. Today, basically recently knighted, which is definitely one of the highlights of my career, but today we really do is we teach people through universal key concepts that will work almost anywhere, how to attract, how to raise and how to close capital from high net worth investors. The reason that this has been so successful, Josh is it's my belief that everybody has a desire to be doing something bigger in their lungs. 

 Brad
 We all have a desire to do something bigger, whether it's invested in real estate, whether it start a business, whether it's just having more abundance, more money, more wealth, and I continue to having conversations with people. I asked him the next couple of questions like, well, how long have you had this burning desire? Invariably, for a lot of people, it's like, oh my God, as long as I can remember, God, it's gotta be at least seven or 10 years. Wow. You know that long, like what's been holding you back. The funny thing is I never get the answer. Oh, I'm scared. Or the limiting beliefs, the answer always comes down to, I just don't have the money. What a sad thing that people have, all these big ideas, dreams, desires, goals in life. The one thing holding them back is a lack of count. Well, they just don't realize that all the money, they need to pretty much do anything in life is out there and smell the OPM, other people's money. 

 Brad
 So, you know, that's what we teach. Today we've got students literally all over the world, Australia, New Zealand here, of course in the U S we're based Canada, over in Africa, Finland, Puerto Rico. It really, I think just gets down to that one thing, man, everybody has this desire to be doing so much more. When they realize that they can attract that capital to them and then use that, it's like the key that unlocks the door to more potential mine, 

 Josh
 Man. That's so cool. There's so many questions that came up in this, but in the fact of raising capital, right? If we asked a hundred entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs or people in the corporate America, and we go, what's holding you back from your dream, right. Definitely one of the top answers will be money. Yup. Right? Yeah. I was having a conversation with a family member just the other day and they hate their job. Absolutely hate their job, but the benefits are so good that they won't leave it. I'm like the benefits of throwing your life away for something, for a benefit that a corporation gives you. I'm like, man, to me, that's that is it. It's scary. And, and my fear is that one day I look back and I go, I should have, that's my that's one of my greatest fears. 

 Brad
 And. 

 Josh
 You say, like one of the main reasons that's holding people back is lack of capital. Now is that a scarcity mindset? There truly capital out there waiting for a good deal to be deployed? What are your thoughts? 

 Brad
 Absolutely. 100%. That that is totally number one, scarcity mindset. It's number two, basically a false belief about yourself that you can't do this. I literally have taught hundreds of people all over the world, how to attract a race capital. The testimonials are coming in regularly, on my corner one, we have what we call a superstar every quarter of the year, my Q1 superstar, Nicholas who's in Vegas, $6 million. In the first couple of months of the year after basically a learning for me and understanding some of these key universal concepts, Dustin, basically who came to my last bootcamp, goes out three weeks later, sends me a message. Hey, I just got $102 million commitment from a family office for my shoulder business. People are definitely having this success, but I think it comes down to exactly what you said, basically, Josh and that is a scarcity mindset. 

 Brad
 They just don't think they can do it. It's also, I think overcoming that apprehension, a lot of people basically are raised thinking that it is not proper to go out and ask people for money. It's , borrowing money from a buddy of yours. Like what does that say? It says, I'm f*****g broke off my ass and I need some help. Well, when you approach investors, it's a completely different mindset. Most people that are a fluent or that have any discretionary income, they are looking for places to put their money to work. They understand some of these key concepts about building and creating wealth that your money is a tool. You understand this concept, that money is a tool and it should always be working for you. You're able to move forward through those apprehensions and that self-doubt and start understanding that it is okay to go out and actually ask people for money because I've got this wonderful investment opportunity here that people need to understand and basically be able to evaluate and potentially invest in why, because it's a good investment and more importantly, that good investment will help other people make more money. 

 Brad
 It's all mindset. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Let's, let's do this. I grew up on a construction site, swing and hammers. Right. I remember in 1990 ish, I was 10 years old. My dad and I would wake up and were praying in the morning, read the Bible. I just wanted to hang out with my dad. He was my hero. Right. I remember he was in construction and in one day he cried. I've seen my dad bad-ass dude, two purple hearts, bronze stars, Vietnam jumped out of planes, shot, bad guys. He cried. I've seen him cry. Maybe two times in my life. He cried and it was about money. Right. I vowed to myself, I will fix my family's issues with money, chased it my whole life. All right. That was one of the major pain points that my family had for decades until we met some investors. And then we started building some stuff. 

 Josh
 Let me ask you some, some thoughts about money, the mindset about money and capital and let's debunk it. Let's unwind of the things that I learned on an unhealthy side, growing up in church, the money's the root of all evil. Don't talk about money, right? Like it's not polite to talk about money, all these things. What are some of the things that you see that you have to help people like me unwind out of our brains. Actually have intelligent conversations with investors looking to deploy capital. 

 Brad
 Well, I mean, I think number one, you hit one of them. That is basically people raised with that mentality that, money is the root of all evil. It's not, you can do so many wonderful, great things with money. You can become a philanthropist. You can basically give to your Alma mater or give to something that you're passionate about. Like a institution that's doing research for cancer, those types of things. The other really is, I guess maybe the jealousy, that a lot of people have. They look at somebody over here that, living in a beautiful house, that's driving a nice car and they're somewhat envious where they don't realize that those same opportunities are available to them in life as well. It's just that I believe most people get to a certain level of comfort and then they acquiesce. They, they reach that cap. You have to understand that you will only earn as much as you think you're personally capable. 

 Brad
 If you have to raise your standards about your beliefs and what can actually be done in life. Once you raise your standards and you start thinking bigger and you start backing that basically decision with some effort and some action, your life will definitely start to change. I think what happens for so many people is that they are unwilling to take those first steps. The unwillingness really stems from the fact that it does take work to raise money. I mean, let's face it, for those of us that are in the deal-making space or the capital space money just doesn't show up in a wheel barrel at your front door. I mean, I wish it was that simple. You've got to put some effort in action behind this. You've got to make the calls. You got to have the meetings. You've got to invest some time to put together your pitch deck and have your offering memorandum and those things assembled. 

 Brad
 Once you've found those tools, then you can actually start that forward motion. I like to say money follows motion. It's that activity that you're doing on a consistent regular basis. The beautiful thing about raising money is it does not have to be a full-time job. I tell my students, look, if you just about two days a week, right? Two to three hours to be making the calls, to be having the meetings, to be using our systems, you will have success ultimately raising capital. If you're not willing to do the work and get in front of people, it ain't ever going to happen. You're going to be sitting here, like we've just said earlier, 10 years from now with the regrets saying, man, I had so much potential in my life. Like I had all these big, wonderful ideas, but I never took action. I never forward on any of them. 

 Brad
 And most of that's fun. It gets back to that one thing that we're discussing here, it's that lack of capital. It's the knowledge that you need the money, but you just don't have the desire or the willingness to go out and get it. The other big mistake I see a lot of people make is they have this false sense that, oh, I'll just go borrow it from a bank. They go and they have a conversation maybe with the local banker and they get turned down for a loan. Why? Well, maybe they just don't have enough assets or maybe they got marginal credit or maybe they lack the experience. Well, that's the bank investors in OPM and that's a whole different world. You don't need a track record. Look at all the people that have funded startups. Basically it's just, you just got to basically just create that mindset and that shift in your belief system. 

 Josh
 Yeah. This is so awesome. Some other lies about money or some misconceptions about money that I would love to chat about. Right? So, don't talk about money and I'd like to appeal this way because my daughter nine years old, she loves making money. My kids love making money. 

 Brad
 I love that, man. You got to teach him at an early age, same thing with my daughter as well, man. She understands the value of a buck she's willing to work, she's saving and it's awesome. The funny thing is, this is something that my grandfather did when I was a little kid and I'm definitely going to start doing another, my daughter's old enough. He used to have what he called bank night. Whenever went to visit my grandparents, what we'd basically would do is we'd bring our piggy bank. We'd all show up and he'd sit down at the kitchen table and say, okay, it's bank night. Right? We all get our piggy banks and he counted up all of our pennies and our nickels and dimes. He had his little ledger there and he'd say, okay, you got $19 and 82 cents. My sister over there, had whatever and he'd write it down. 

 Brad
 We'd all go to bed and we'd all wake up excited. Ooh, it's bake night. Okay. What are we going to do? We say, okay, here's the interest that you weren't in the bank. Of course, as young kids, we always got back more than we put in. It really started us at that very early age of understanding some of these principles of how banks work, how they pay interest, how your money can grow. So, it's really just teaching kids at that young age. I love the fact that, your kids love making money because most people basically want more, but they're tied to the belief that more is going out and getting a better job. That's going to play them more. Or that belief is basically that I can't have that more because I'm kept where I am and therefore I've given up. I, that we asked and I'm just of this mindset that's all there is for me in life. 

 Brad
 I can't get any more than this b******t to that. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Oh, it's so good. So, going back to the example of growing up on a construction site, we didn't have money. We saw people with money, but there was a big degree of separation. I would only see them maybe on church every once in a while. We see them drive away in the fancy cars, but I had no exposure. You said that the belief systems are people are kept and trapped in their current belief systems. Do you believe that financial success raising capital doing, big things are primarily kept in trapped? I guess that was cool way of saying it by our belief systems. 

 Brad
 Yeah. I mean, I think to a degree they are because your belief systems largely dictate what you believe it's possible or not possible. So, I think that people have this desire, for example, to invest in real estate, but they've never done it before. There's naturally that fear and that apprehension of, well, what do I even do to get started? Well, a lot of people, of course, what they do is they go and they hire a coach. They find somebody that's at a point in life where they want to be. They basically say, will you teach me, will you show me what you did to become hugely successful? Now, a lot of times these coaches, these gurus charge money, and that's certainly fine. The reason that they do that is so that you hold yourself accountable and you show up and you take it somewhat seriously, rather than thinking, you're going to get all this coaching and this mentorship for free, because we have found over time that people that basically have that expectation of getting something for free. 

 Brad
 They're just not going to do the work, but when you invest of money in yourself, it get that knowledge and to get that understanding, but then apply it. That's of course where the tremendous growth and that's where the transformation will come from. I think that it's largely also getting around people that are either doing deals or that want to be doing deals because, psychologists have shown that you largely gravitate and move in the direction of the five to seven people that you're spending most of your time with. If you start listening to this podcast and you start basically networking, and basically, having conversations with people that are doing deals, you're going to start doing deals. I mean, it's that simple, you're either going to learn how to raise the capital. You're going to learn how to evaluate a deal, whether it's real estate, whether it's in some other industry, it doesn't really matter what it's in. 

 Brad
 I mean, I got people raising money for all kinds of amazing things. Movies e-commerce, real estate, obviously many different types of businesses and industries because the ability to raise and attract money is not just limited to one specific sector or industry. You can raise money for pretty much, almost anything. Once you understand some of these key principles, but I think largely it's the desire to just have a better life. It's Tony Robbins, right? If you've ever read his first book, he says, man, I was so low in my life, man. I washing clothes in my damn bathtub and I was eating Mac and cheese. It's like, I had nowhere to go. Up in a lot of times you get to a point in life where you're like so low that like you just snap. It's like, man, something's got to change. My life sucks. And, and when that happens and you make that commitment, it's like a new year's resolution, either that commitment sticks and you go along in the same direction, right? 

 Brad
 You create basically that desire where you're working at it with regularity rather than just getting started, getting into of a, mental block because you're having basically some frustrations when people are saying no. You start believing, well, it's next to impossible to do this. You just give up, the people that persevere that have the grit that have the tenacity that really are so focused on where they're going, those are the ones I just love being around because they're going to continue to get up when they get knocked down. I mean, let's face it. We all know life ain't easy. I don't care how successful you are as an entrepreneur. You're going to get kicked in the balls. You're going to fall down, you're going to stumble, but it's the desire to keep moving forward to something bigger and something better that is waiting for you in the future. 

 Brad
 That's where you basically got to keep your eye on is you got to keep your eye on that target. That's, what's going to basically teach you how these skills that you need in order to be a deal maker in order to raise the capital in order to basically, do bigger things. 

 Josh
 Yeah. So one, I love this man. You mentioned like, if you want to go somewhere, right, you want to build businesses and beat, raise up fondant and do big things, find someone who's done it. And with people who are doing it. 

 Brad
 Yeah, 

 Josh
 Yeah. That's like a team approach, right. Even though they might be doing their own thing. When did you discover this? Right? It's cause CEO of oil company built it up, the world changed . You went back to school, became a, corporate guy. You, you saw Steve Harvey who inspired you do something that's, uniquely you and big. What did that look like for you? What was that? What was that change from corporate to cap razor? What did that look like? 

 Brad
 Well, I mean, in the corporate world, I was raising money for, large real estate sponsors, private firms, it was basically the president of capital raising divisions, national sales director. I was, highly compensated, nice mid six figure income with a very nice lifestyle attached to it. Inside of me there was kind of this quote, entrepreneurial bug I, an entrepreneur at heart. Here's the thing I think that I've learned. This really, I won't say it came out when I was watching the Steve Harvey show, but it's definitely come out as I've been on stage talking alongside some of the biggest coaches and speakers in the world today, people like boxing, legend, Floyd Mayweather, Kevin Harrington, the Brandon Dawson's of the world it's that most people are not doing something that they're passionate about. They're not living in their purpose. That's why today, if you look at the statistics, we have so much discontent in our lives. 

 Brad
 They say that 67% of the people that have a job already have one foot out the door and looking for another one. Well, hell what does that tell you about our work culture in about basically corporate America? If you're an employer, that's a pretty scary thing to think that basically, 66 and a third percent of everybody that works for you is out looking for another job. It's not that they're not making good money. It's just that they're discontent. They're, they're just not happy. They're not fulfilled. Once you can find kind of inside you, what that purpose is or what that really good gift is that you can then go out and live in your zone. It really changes things for you because now you're showing up every day, basically doing something, you love something that you're passionate about. For me, it was basically raising capital. 

 Brad
 That's something that I personally believe I can do better than most anybody I've ever met. I mean, $2 billion is a ton of money. That's what gives me this deep seated conviction inside of me to get up on stages, to get on shows like your spend more importantly, to teach people all around the world, how to do this because I've seen the impact it's made in my own personal life. Given me the ability to invest in real estate, to rehab houses, to invest in small multifamily and create that passive income. When I start getting testimonials from students in mind, like, Hey man, thank you so much. I just closed on my first deal or, pay. I just raised my first few million dollars. I'm like, man, that person's life is changing. They're going in the right direction. For me, inside, that's what really moves the needle for me. 

 Brad
 I mean, yeah, the money's great, but it's not the money. I'm way beyond that. It's impacting people, creating a legacy, writing the books, being on stage, taking pictures with people, signing autographs. Why? Because these people's lives are changing for the better once they're starting to learn this skill. Once they're starting to learn how to raise the money, once they're learning how to do the deals. I mean, that's what it's all about, man. It's really just taking your whole life to a whole nother level. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I joined your bootcamp and your cap raising school and I'm like, man, I got these big dreams and such, but my bank accounts limited, but I know that there's people out there's investors out there who want to put their money to work. I got the perfect thing for them right now. And I'm driven to do that. It's a, it's a mission driven mission, whatever. Right. And set the stage. I've got all the perfect motivations and I go, okay, teach mentor me, train me. I need to raise a hundred million bucks. Yeah. How do we, what, what are some of the key? You said key principles, the key concepts about raising capital. What are they? 

 Brad
 Yeah, great question. I think that's the one thing. Number one that sets me apart from these other people out there that are doing this because let's face it. There's other people out there are not going to mention names, but they have not raised $2 billion. They teach people primarily here in the United States. They don't have clients globally all over the world. It's because they're what I call methodology is not based on key universal principles. The biggest mistake that we typically see people make when they go out and they try to raise capital, is they talk too prematurely about the deal or the investment or what it is they have to invest in. One of the key concepts and principles of raising money is you need to understand people will only invest with you once there's enough trust for them to move forward in that relationship. 

 Brad
 Well, trust takes time. You just don't meet somebody, shake their hand, sit down over a cup of coffee and then leave that relationship where that person trusts you enough to write you a check for 50 or a hundred thousand dollars. So it takes time to build that. One of the key things we talk about is this concept called the trust sequence, okay? The trust sequence or six things that need to take place sequentially one after another, that I talk about. That subconsciously you now have an understanding of the things you need to be doing to build that trust in another person. Another one of these key universal concepts that I talk about is called basically the four-step blueprint. Think of capital raising as four steps. It could be basically for phone calls, for meetings for zooms. The first two are all about the other person. 

 Brad
 You're getting them to talk about themselves. You're getting them to open up about what they like to invest in what they've invested in before, where they've had prior investment success. You're really trying to uncover the temptation in their mind. That's going to allow them to move forward with you as a potential capital partner. The third concept that I touch upon is something that's very important. And I call it the validation phrase. What I tell people is you're largely just wasting your time talking about your deal until you ask this very important question, to verify that the person you're having a conversation with basically trusts you enough to now move forward in this process with you. Of course also, what you need to be focused on and how you need to be delivering your pitch. All of these things are really important. Key concepts in once you understand, that's where I've been making my mistake, that's where I've been stubbing my toe. 

 Brad
 Cause I've been doing this awhile and I've really been floundering and I've been trying to deal with my lack of success. It's like, bingo. I'm just like the mad scientist I come in. I ask a bunch of questions, like tell me what you're doing. Why you think it ain't working. Once I really dissect what you're doing almost nine out of 10 times, I can tell you exactly what you've been doing wrong and we can fix it. And usually that's where it is. It's you've been talking about the deal way too early. You haven't been validating that the person trusts you. More importantly, you're not coming to the meeting prepared. You don't have the professional appearance of really having your act together. You don't have a quality pitch deck or you don't have a website or you don't have, the collateral material that you need so that when somebody says Josh, man, it sounds like an exciting deal. 

 Brad
 Do you have something you can send to me? What are you going to send them? You know? Without those tools, you're naturally not going to have the success that somebody else would have. That's prepared that understands what they need. That has of coaching and mentoring to really know, understand how this process works and how they need to be moving through that. Capital raising is not really that difficult. Once you understand these concepts, once you set up what I call your foundation, because you need to have that foundation for success. Otherwise you're just like a little hamster on a treadmill, having unproductive conversations with people. Those people fall through the cracks because you're not following up with them. Well, you need a follow up system. What does that look like? And so understanding what you need to have as the building blocks for a successful capital raise to start building quote, a capital raising infrastructure, to start doing deals, we teach all of those things literally from a to Z so that people basically can go out there and have success and start seeing results. 

 Brad
 Here's the other thing that I'll also share with you? It's been my experience just through observation that people basically go out there. Cause I've had conversations with lots of other coaches, lots of other mentors. They say, yeah, people definitely fall off the bus. They never do anything. Why is that? It comes down to the principle that it takes work. Most people just don't want to work. It's basically a sad thing because you need to work in order to become wildly successful. If you want to create a business, that's generating a million dollars a year in revenue at an easy, he say that, less than one, 2% of all of the small businesses that are started in America ever get to that revenue level of a million dollars. Well, that's a big number. Now you're doing almost a, a hundred thousand a month in sales or whatever that is. 

 Brad
 Well, that takes work. Most people just they're willing to work, man. No, I'm just happy over here making my 60, 75,000 bucks a year. I got all my benefits covered. I got my health care, my 401k. Great. Why are you not hustling and busting your ass to make 250 $300,000 a year? Well, that takes a lot more work. Well, yeah, sure. It does. Look at the lifestyle that you're going to be able to live. Look at the great trips. You're going to be able to take, look at how much better you're going to be able to do for your family. So, the, the expression that I like to use is one that my good friend, coach, Michael Burt says, he said, man, everybody wants six pack. When you go to the beach, how many people truly have a six pack? Very few. It's a dedication to your fitness, to the nutrition, to working out. 

 Brad
 It's the same principle, apply to life. The difference between leading an ordinary life and leading one that's extraordinary is a little extra, 

 Josh
 A little extra. Yeah, man, this is so cool. The trust sequence, right? You got key concepts, you got your trust sequence, you got your four step blueprint. Let's talk about side-by-side right. Cap rates or a cap or B same exact deal pitching to the same exact family office, the same amount of money. There's going to be one thing that they say yes to that cap, razor, a versus cap raise or B what are on the person, right? You, you mentioned trust, hard work, get into, organizing the deal. Follow-up are there any other things that would be a red flag for the family office to say, I'm not investing in that guy or gal, what are some red flags? 

 Brad
 There's a lot of red flags and I call them stop signs. It's like every investor has reasons not to invest. I mean, it's like, the stop signs and I call it the credibility issue, and I learned something from somebody that's kind of a mentor and a good friend of mine. That's Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks on the hit TV show, shark tank. He said, look, a lot of people come on to the show. They're great people. Many of them are highly educated, PhDs, whatever, but they just don't get a deal. It's not that they're a bad person. The biggest thing you need to understand about attracting and raising capital is you need to basically convince the investor or that family office that you can execute on whatever it is you're doing. It's I got this dream to do this. This is what we're going to do. 

 Brad
 If you can't convince the person that's on the other side, that you can do that, you're not going to get the money. So how do you do that? Well, number one is you gotta be very confident. You gotta go in at every meeting with the degree of competence, you just gotta like exude confidence and have confidence just like oozing out of your pores. I keep asking myself like, how could this little 23 year old kid that lacked the college education that had never drilled an oil? Well, that absolutely knew nothing about running a multi-million dollar company, go out there and convince people to write checks or 50 and a hundred thousand dollars. When I launched my oil company is because I was as cocky little confidence son of a b***h that didn't know any better. I just went into every meeting with that as something about it, too, that people were going to invest. 

 Brad
 With that confidence and of cockiness, guess what they did, but it also comes down to understanding that you've got to close, people understand sales, but what they don't understand is that when you're raising money from other people, you're still selling what you're selling is you're selling the deal, you're selling your business. At some point in that relationship, you physically have to ask them to invest. There's multiple ways that you can do that. A lot of people basically show up, they have great conversations, but then they fail to ask for the actual order and they just, they don't have the same level of success. So it's number one, I think confidence. Number two. I also think it's going into each and every meeting with the assumptive attitude that people are naturally going to invest because as Ziglar said, whether you think you can or you think you can, you'll be right, a hundred percent of the time or whatever the mind can conceive and believe it will achieve. 

 Brad
 If you go into each one of these meetings with a degree of confidence and you have that confidence and it's just exuding from you, when you show the person that's investing, Hey, it's me. I've got this team of other professionals that I've surrounded myself with. I've got my attorney Bob over here. I've got my CPA, Steven, over here, I've got two advisors that have worked in the industry that are on my board. That potential investor is going to see of depth in what it is you're doing and going to be a much higher degree of them investing with you because now you're showing them, it's not just me as a solo preneur. It's not just me doing it all by myself. That's one of the big mistakes that I think a lot of people make when they go out there is they try to convince people to invest money, but they're doing it basically as a solo preneur. 

 Brad
 The person that is looking to invest is looking at you saying, man, I just don't see you being able to execute. 

 Josh
 That's so awesome because for a long time, and this was a, this is a misconception that I had to overcome in my life is keep, let's just keep it in house. I can, I could do that work. I could do this or that, one man band kind of thing. And, and it was such a struggle because, cutting up the pie and given equity, given ownership, that was a challenge for me. As soon as I started doing that, I started to attract more investors, more opportunity, more deal flow. When it comes to attracting, let's talk about attracting versus chasing. There's a lot of cap razors out there who are chasing, knocking on the door all day long, throwing deals down my throat, right? What's the difference between attracting and chasing, 

 Brad
 Chasing really comes across as desperate. You're you're basically pursuing somebody. It's almost like a dog chasing a car and the potential investor, the person that has the money can sense that they sense the desperation. They sense basically that persistence. That's where the red flag that's where that stop sign comes up. That we just talked about. It's like, eh, I don't know that I really want to invest with you because you're coming across as overly desperate. I'm looking to invest with people that are at a level of success. It's a change in mindset where it's kinda like, man, I do this every day. Like if you want to invest in this great, wonderful deal, we have great. If you don't, that's fine too. You know, some will some won't. What who's next in line, that's kind of the mindset you need to adopt, but the other thing also that's very important is you need to create the activity. 

 Brad
 So we started attracting capital to you. Number one, how do you do that? Well, you can leverage your social media. You can start doing things like webinars, hosting events, doing podcasts, creating videos, things of that nature too. As I like to say, become a person of interest. Once you come across basically to the world, as a person of interest or somebody that others will follow your ability to attract capital to you just comes naturally. And I always like to talk about somebody that I recently met a couple of months ago. His name is Roger Wakefield, and this is just an amazing to show you how this concept and principle can be applied to the highest level. Imagine this guy, Roger, and he's got, big old mustache, just like basically hall Cogan, but he is today, the most recognizable plumber on the planet. So what does a plumber make? 

 Brad
 A good one, maybe 120, 150,000 bucks a year. This guy basically just starts using his camera, his iPhone to start recording short little videos, Hey folks, it's Roger, let me show you today. How to fix your toilet when it's leaking. Hey folks, it's Roger. Let me show you how to install the new faucet on your kitchen sink. He started basically building this YouTube following and people started going to YouTube to watch his videos, to start learning how to do stuff. Okay. Today Roger Wakefield makes millions of dollars a year millions because the power of creating this community and this following on social media, he's got large manufacturers that come to him and say, Hey, man, we'd like to give you basically an endorsement deal. That in your videos, you endorse our products and he's got money coming in from everywhere. He is the most recognized plumber on the planet today. 

 Brad
 I guarantee if you go and you Google this guy, you'll probably recognize him because he's out there everywhere now. Imagine that you want to raise capital you're in the multifamily space. Well, why do you start creating videos? Hey folks, I'm over here today. Just doing a little walk through on a property. Let me show you some of the things I look for as it relates to deferred maintenance. You do another video a couple of days later, you're going to start creating basically this following. Once you start building that community, guess what? It becomes real easy then to market the opportunity to that community. What you'll find is a lot of people raise their hands and say, yeah, put me down for $50,000 or what are the next steps investing alongside you? That's how you attract capital. You become really a money magnet where people are reaching out to you. 

 Brad
 I have people calling me now basically that are like, Hey Brad, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. They told me that they have some money to invest. And I know that you do this. So, I'm getting a lot of referrals getting in front of people that naturally are investing in our deals, but it's just becoming what I call kind of that money magnet. 

 Josh
 Yeah, no, I, I love this man. It's so it's so true that it money in capital and things, chase momentum, right? When you get traction, when you're moving forward, people see that. What about in this process, right? You talk about events and speaking in community and following becoming a person of interest, where could that go bad? Like where can work in that actually work against you? What are, what are some guide rails that we could do? So, as cap razors to make sure that we are, that we, that we continue build trust and credibility. Where, where could this go wrong? 

 Brad
 Yeah. I think it could go wrong. Number one, if you have just bad intentions. Yeah. I mean, look at the Bernie Madoffs and I'm not saying that when Bernie started, he started day $1, one with the intention to defraud and rip people off. I'm not saying that Jordan Belfor did the same thing. I don't think you'd go into business saying I'm going to screw everybody. I'm going to raise a shitload of money and I'm going to be a crook and a thief. I don't think that's what happens. I think what happens is people go into it with good intentions and they get too far over their end of the skis because they haven't set the business up properly. They're like, there's a lot more to this to be compliant and to do this right than I thought. Let me try to cover up some of the mistakes we've made along the way, because I don't think that people go into this basically with ill will or the intent to basically harm. 

 Brad
 You know, that's just my personal belief. I think that, when you look at some of the mistakes that can be made, number one is you have to take the responsibility and role of raising capital. Very seriously. You become a fiduciary. Well, what does that mean? It means that you should really look at other people's money as if it was your own being basically a steward of capital. I always tell students, before you go out there and you raised dollar one, you need to set up your business. You need to get your LLCs. You need to get your bank account. So you're not commingling funds. You need to think about things like the investor reporting and what that's going to look like in your business, like a quarterly newsletter or some type of a webinar to keep people updated on what you're doing and what's happening. 

 Brad
 All of those types of things to provide the transparency, because those are the things that are going to keep you out of trouble. The other thing is having an understanding of the do's and the don'ts, as it relates to raising money, hiring other people, to work alongside you as capital raisers, recognizing that you can't pay them a commission. You can't do certain things because at the end of the day, the ability to raise capital and having the knowledge of knowing how to go out and do that is a beautiful thing. It's like having a superpower. Once you have that skill and you have that knowledge where you realize, I know I can go east, go out into the world and raise that million dollars that I need to launch this business or to do this real estate deal or to do whatever it is I want to do. 

 Brad
 Your life becomes a whole lot easier because the stress of worrying about what the future looks like is largely lifted. It's like this huge burden is taken off your shoulders because now you realize that you have the power to go out, basically do almost anything that you want to do in life using other people's money, rather than sitting there with the regret. Basically this desire that's just unfulfilled because you lack the capital and you lock the, know how in going out and actually doing that. You know, that's just really tough. I mean, I would just, I can't find them what it's like to play on this big goal to speak dream this big desire in life and just kind of let it fester and dwell inside you without ever taking action. I've always been a person of action. I think that's one of the reasons, man, that we've just been successful as I commit to something first and I make the decision to do it. 

 Brad
 Sometimes it scares the living daylights out of me, but then usually the solution presents itself. You realize it wasn't really as challenging or as difficult as you thought it was in the first place. 

 Josh
 Some of the things that I've pulled from our conversation about, raising capital is trust is vital, right? It is so vital. Within trust, here are some of the key components of trust, transparency, a team, right? Nobody wants to just invest in a solopreneur and traction momentum things moving forward when it comes to team, right? You have your own personal stack, right? You mentioned CPA attorney, you know, operations. You, you mentioned someone who could do, keeping them updated with newsletters and updates, right. Cap, razors, and investors. Do you look at that as a part of the team too, when you're talking to the family office, do do you look at them as an extension of your team or as a potential partner? How do you, how do you view that relationship? 

 Brad
 Yes, absolutely. That's a great question because you have to realize that everybody that invest with you, whether it's just, an entrepreneur like a doctor or a business owner, or maybe it is a family office, they're all connected to other people that are in their network. I've come to understand that you're just one person away from changing your life forever because you don't know who that family office might be connected to. You don't know who that other person might be connected to. Once you start raising money and you start performing and you start having success, hopefully those people will then introduce you to other people in their network. If you ask. I always believe that you should be asking for referrals, but I think that they are an extension of you and your business. I leverage relationships. I become an expert at leveraging relationships. I would certainly have to say Josh, 100%, they're an extension of your team. 

 Josh
 I love it, man. Let's do this for fellow dealmakers in the audience who are thinking about raising capital, or maybe they're during the Drudge of it and they're not getting traction and they want to go faster. They want to, eliminate some other there, the nos that are coming in and maybe even raise some more, what's a good place for them to connect with you and do a deal. 

 Brad
 So, the best way to reach out to us is just to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, shoot me a DM, shoot me a text or whatever. Our email is real simple. It's info. I N F o@bradblazer.com. Just make sure when you're reaching out that you don't put any ease in my last name, it's all A's. So it's brad@bradblazer.com. Blaz AR inquire about our bootcamps. We do eight boot camps a year or next boot camp is coming up in a couple of weeks, June the 10th and 11th here in Houston intensive two days. Most of the people that attend are seven, eight figure entrepreneurs that really want to just accelerate their business. It's a great place to build your network, to be in a room with other people, inquire about our coaching and mentorship. It's our flagship program capital school. And, it's all around the world. 

 Brad
 This will work anywhere on planet earth. Doesn't really matter where you reside. That's already been largely proven with the success we've had in other countries, or, if you're a real cheap master, just go to Amazon and buy my book for 25 bucks called winning at the Capitol game. It'll give you some of these key, fundamental concepts and key principles that I do talk about. Maybe once you read that inquire about some of these other things as well, but we're out there real easy to find. I'm not hiding under a rock, but just realize that, we have all these tools that are designed basically to educate you, to give you the knowledge, to basically give you a deeper understanding of how to do this. It's not just how to attract and raise capital. I also teach people how to put together your pitch deck, how to actually put together your offering memorandum. 

 Brad
 We give you the templates and the tools to actually do that. So it's really a very comprehensive training. Everything from a to Z, literally from, putting together your materials, launching a fund, we talk about all of that stuff. 

 Josh
 Super cool. Super cool. What we'll do is we'll include all those links in the show notes below. As you guys are running around driving a car or whatever, you could always go back to the show notes and click on those links and be directly connected with Brad and the books that he's writing and sharing with you guys. Brad, are there any questions that I should've asked you on this, in this conversation about raising capital that I completely screwed up and missed the point? 

 Brad
 Yeah. One great thing that I'll share it. I learned this many years ago, actually early in my capital raising journey is you have to basically raise the bar when you're talking to potential investors, because you really never know how much money they have. In your own mind, you may think that you've hit a home run. If somebody writes you a check for 25 or $50,000. So, most people that are raising money, if they have a fund or the raising money from multiple people, they'll either have what we call units or shares or a minimum investment amount or whatever. Invariably, most people go out with the intent and the desire to basically get people to sign up for whatever that amount is. If it's, let's say $50,000 a share or $50,000 a unit, you're kind of talking about a person investing at that level. Well, what if they could write you a check for 250,000? 

 Brad
 You see if you're not talking about that, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. I get to a point in a relationship with somebody where I'm basically asking them to invest, I usually take that minimum amount. Let's just say, hypothetically, it's 50. I say, Josh, how much of this do you see yourself taking today? Would you like to take 50,000, 150,200,000 or none? They might say, well, tell me exactly what 150,000 in the deal looks like. And then I'll tell them. I'll say, if you're comfortable with that amount, let's go ahead and get the paperwork and we'll show you how to fill that out so that we can get you on board. You see, I think a lot of people set the bar way too low when they're out there attracting capital. And they're talking to people about money. Always ask for more because you can always settle for less. 

 Brad
 If you ask for less, it's always a lot harder to get the more right. It's just like any other business, you can always basically down sell. It's just like, people basically in the automotive business, you're out here looking at a car, the guy realizes he can't afford it. He puts you in a car that's less expensive and boom, you drive off a lot, but it's really tough if you've got that budget for head Michelle, you have something that's obviously more expensive. It's just that mentality of basically always asking for more so that you're not leaving potential money on the table. That's just something that, you learn through the school of hard knots having done it for close to 35 years. 

 Josh
 Yup. Yup. Super cool. That's a great point. Once again, fellow deal-makers as always reach out to our guests. They thank you for being on the show by their books, join their programs, especially if what they're saying resonates with you. If you, if you have a deal working on a deal, looking for a deal and you want to talk about it here on these podcasts, head on over to the deal, scout.com, fill out a quick form. Maybe get you on the show next till then talk to you all on the next episode. See you guys.