Bringing Transparency to Private Investing feat. Pat Zingarella

I think the hardest thing in the last 5 to 10 years is that we have mistaken social influence for social proof. Now you've got retail investors who are making emotional decisions based on influence rather than, hey, I read about this person, they've got a massive follower count. Let's actually see if what they're saying is what they're actually doing. And that's where we want to come in.

You know, the other thing is too, that if you're an LP, you're really at the mercy of the information that's available to you. Running the background check is a pretty basic thing that should be done, in my opinion, on any investment that you do or any operator of an investment that you do. But as an LP, it's pretty difficult to actually do that.

I think there's a level of self-realization that LPs have to have based on how they make decisions. If they know they're not someone that can get into the weeds and do a deep analysis of pro formas and this and that, you have to either do the background check, you have to find the coach, you have to find the mentor, or you have to leverage a community of people who have already experienced what you're interested in experiencing.

Hello, future billionaires. Welcome back to another show. Got a fun one today. Talk with Pat Zingarella. We talk all about a platform that he's building called Invest Clearly that is designed for LP, limited partner investors, to bring more transparency to investing in private equity and private real estate and alternatives in general. Definitely something cool that they're doing, something I'm a big proponent of, and definitely want to check this out to hear what he says is you know, some of the big red flags that he experienced investing firsthand and why he actually created this platform. What he says differentiates between the good and the great general partners or operators that people invest with. And also, what are the most important factors that other LPs want to know and see in a transparent way that they're building out of this platform? So if you are enjoying the podcast, obviously we always appreciate you leaving a review, share with a friend, give us some feedback. It's always helpful. Help us get the word out. Thanks so much. Enjoy. This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you'll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra-wealthy, discuss economics, and interview successful investors. Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. Got a great episode in store for you today. I brought on Pat Zingarella. He is the founder of Invest Clearly. And when I first heard about what they're doing, I thought, hey, we definitely got to bring him on the podcast and kind of highlight of the platform that they're building. So super excited to bring him on, talk about what they're doing with Invest Clearly. You know, part of our goal of this show is investor education, helping investors become better, make better decisions, understand the kind of gotchas and things to avoid and to shortcut that learning curve. And what Pat's doing with this company is right in that vein of helping bring more transparency to the investment syndication, private real estate fund management world that historically has lacked a lot of transparency. So, Pat, thanks for coming on the show, man. Give us a little background on you, on what you guys are building and how your whole motive behind it.

Yeah, thanks for— thanks for having me. My background, I spent most of my career in corporate America. I worked for like a tech business consulting company and where I was advising startup CEOs on their go-to-market strategy, product development, things like that. And while I was doing this, I caught the real estate bug, was listening to podcasts while I was prospecting, turned that prospecting skill set onto a deal finding skill set, and then started doing some acquisitions like active investing in my own small multifamily down in Southwest Florida. So the further I got into that, I ended up joining communities, mastermind groups, a lot of mindset coaching where I got exposed to this world of real estate and what's possible and how much bigger you could and should go much faster than I would've in my day-to-day job. And I got connected with some people which led to that, you know, leaving the W-2 in full pursuit of entrepreneurship. And so during that path, I ended up getting connected with with a commercial real estate investor who was making a really, really, really big splash in most of the communities, I would say, was essentially the go-to guy, was doing incredible things. It was effectively wholesaling commercial real estate. I built a relationship with the guy, left my W-2, went out and, you know, moved across the country, did the long distancing with my fiancée, went from, you know, took a 75% pay cut, thought I was, I was on the path, I was connecting with the right guy. This is it, I'm going to make it. And it actually fell apart very quickly. The individual ended up committing a whole bunch of fraud. Recently got indicted on $35 million in wire fraud. Insane story all around. Yeah. And I tell that because that's part of what led to Invest Clearly. And so going through that journey and that experience, I ended up after leaving him, starting a sales consulting company. And I would do— one of my clients was actually an accredited investor lead gen digital marketing company. So they would hyper-niche specialized in ads and, you know, multi-touch nurture sequences for accredited investors so GP can book new capital on their calendar. And so during that time, I would spend a lot of time with sponsors, and I would talk to oftentimes maybe 10 sponsors within the same asset class in a week. And I was also attempting to become— thinking about becoming an LP myself. And so I would have these conversations and I would quickly realize like, I'm a pretty smart guy. I have no idea how to differentiate between any of these guys. And so I started doing my research and when I was doing my research, I found mainly like hyper-clickbaity articles by mainstream media about the space, or every guidance and framework of how to evaluate a sponsor was written by a sponsor. I was like, okay, this really doesn't help me all that much when you think about objectivity. And so at the same time, I also spoke to another individual when I was doing that digital marketing sales for that client that spent about another 13 years in prison for wire fraud. And this individual now had like a coaching program. So all of these things combined, I was like, okay, I want to become an LP. This is a value aspect that's missing in the market. I can't find a whole list of sponsors all in one place. I can't find a whole list of deals all in one place. I have no way to effectively communicate or evaluate them outside of their influence or paid media influence. And so the company I worked for, the sales consulting company, my original corporate job, had a subsidiary that did this in the software space. So they had a review site where CIOs, before making big purchasing decisions, would go to the site, read reviews of other CIOs, and to help with their decision. And so taking all of those three things together, we, we ended up building the framework that is now Invest Clearly.

Very cool. Yeah, it's, it's a— I'm glad you told the story. It's a little harrowing. I'm sure for some people that are maybe newer to the space and, you know, it's, it's unfortunate because I think, you know, I've seen this somewhere, not even people that are intending to commit fraud or run a Ponzi scheme, but a lot of times the public figures, the ones that, you know, have the big, big podcasts or the big influence, that doesn't always equate to being a good operator of deals, right? The good marketer necessarily doesn't mean that they're, you know, the best real estate operators. And I think it's difficult because as, as consumers, as LPs, you kind of conflate the two because we look towards expertise, and authority in a niche to kind of be a proxy for sophistication and diligence. But to your point, it's not only that, then you also have how do you get your own deal flow, right? As this kind of private equity industry is becoming more developed, you know, even 5 years ago it was very difficult to get deal flow other than what maybe you got through your network. Yeah, you know, you have an uncle or a cousin that's doing a deal here or there. You have a friend that invested in, you know, some startup, whatever. You're just, you know, trying to evaluate the best you can based on what's coming to you. But what you're trying to do is, one, simplify a lot of just discovery, number one. And then number two is create some basic frameworks and filters to weed out you know, at least some of the obvious bad actors. Right. And it's, it's really frustrating to me because as someone who is an operator sponsor in the space, you know, this does not help the space grow when you have these, these Ponzi schemes and these, these bad actors raising money illegally, doing wire fraud, running a Ponzi scheme. And it's, it's difficult because it puts a very big damper on the industry that I think is very beneficial for people. And so what you're doing, I love because it's, you know, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not, not all private deals and all private real estate is bad, correct?

Yeah.

But if you can weed out some of the bad actors, then all of a sudden this opportunity set that is very attractive actually becomes more attractive because you're reducing your, your risk.

Yeah. And that's a big part of what we're doing. And I always make sure I ask, like, we are not creating this to be the GP Reaper. Like, our mission is that the great GPs rise to the top because the way our platform is set up is this is the only place online that LPs can find GPs without knowing who they are. Simply by these GPs doing great things, leading with transparency, collecting testimonials, doing good deals, it allows LPs to essentially filter down these great GPs onto a shortlist based on their criteria. And so the mission, yes, is like, let's de-risk the LP to make sure they avoid bad actors or bad apples. And but also like, let's get them and help them find the great GPs faster, easier. Because like you said, when we were interviewing LPs, like product development interviews prior to launching this thing, we asked a lot about how they find GPs and it's simply read about them in a forum, got a referral, I, you know, they happen to be on page 1 of Google. I met them at an event and the journey is like, okay, now I have to wait till this very small segment of GPs has a deal that matches my criteria. It's like, well, what if we can flip that? Like, what if we can allow you to actually search for GPs based on your criteria so you don't have to wait and you don't have to sign up for 64,000 mailing lists to find the right one? So it's really— yeah, it's the aggregation aspect. And you bring it up, man. And when I talk about like the social influence aspect of it, I'm not— that's not a bad thing, right? GPs should be out marketing their products and services. I think the hardest thing in the last 5 to 10 years is that we have mistaken social influence for social proof. And so it's heavily Now you've got retail investors who are making emotional decisions based on influence rather than, hey, I read about this person, they've got a massive follower count. Let's actually see if what they're saying is what they're actually doing. And that's where we want to come in.

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. And, you know, one of the other things too that, you know, if you're an LP, you're, you're really at the mercy of the information that's available to you. Right. And so much of the time, like running a background check is, is a pretty basic thing that should be done, in my opinion, on any investment that you do or any operator of an investment that you do. But as an LP, it's especially as if you're a small LP with a big operator, it's pretty difficult to actually do that, right? As someone who's been operating for 10 years, I've been asked maybe 2 or 3 times over the course of that entire time frame for someone to actually run background checks. And so we actually do it as a standard and provide that for those that want to see it. But it's not something we just naturally hand out, number one. And number two, I'm not going to go and run a background check every single time someone asks for it. But it is something that I think as an LP, I'm always conflicted because I feel like it's something that should be should be done in a diligence process. A lot of times LPs want to know how to do it or to don't feel comfortable asking. And, and then you're the other, the other side of the social proof of not only are they not bad actors, but, you know, how are they doing? How are they performing on what they said they're going to do? How's the reporting? How's the communication? All these kind of things that are even more qualitative than quantitative. You know what, what in your, in your research when you were kind of developing, you know, the platform in its genesis stage, what were some of the things that you heard aside from getting information of how people found deals? What were some of the things that you're trying to solve for that are roadblocks for the LP, you know, when evaluating the deal? And how do you kind of separate between the, you know, the bad, the good, and the great GPs?

Yeah, that's a great question. And so one of the things we're solving for, for LPs is a direct pain point of my own. And it goes back to what you were just talking about because with like the background checks, I am an easy sell. I am an easy sell. I'm not an analytical guy. My DISC profile is like a lethally high I, so I am influenced very easily. And I think there's a level of self-realization that LPs have to have based on how they make decisions. If they know they're not someone that can get into the weeds and do a deep analysis of, you know, pro formas and this and that, like, okay, you have to make up for that somehow, right? You have to either do the background check, you have to find the coach, you have to find the mentor, or you have to leverage a community of people who have already experienced what you're interested in experiencing. On top of that, one of the biggest things, the way we separate it, the good, the bad, and the ugly is like it's, it's, it's on there and it's visible, right? If someone had a 1-star experience, they can write about it. If someone had a 5-star experience, they can write about it. The biggest thing to remember is we also verify every single review, meaning we require proof of investment before an LP can actually write a review on a GP. Undeniable proof, meaning I can look at it, you can look at it. This is undeniable proof that they have actually invested with this GP. So other LPs know this is coming from a real experience. Right now, one of the things we're trying to solve for is some of these forums are like the wild, wild west. People are bashing GPs, people are bashing the industry, but when you click into their profile, it's the only comment they've written in 4 years. It's really hard to trust like something like that. And so we want to help the LP get beyond the know, like, and trust and like get into the verification aspect, but make it really easy for them. And when we were interviewing LPs, one of the most difficult things, right, there's, there's really two parts of, of a successful— there's really two parts of, I guess, advertised, like, marketed returns or marketed experiences, I should say. You have the quantitative and then you have the qualitative. The quantitative is very, very easy to report. Okay, my returns were this on this deal. We exited for this. It's this. But like, what did the LPs actually experience during those returns? Right. And the reason I bring that up is because an LP I talked about when, you know, building this, telling me his experience, like, hey, I worked with a GP, I got a 30% return in one year, but I'll never invest with them again. I was like, okay, like, why? Like, well, yeah, exactly right. And so, so he's like, well, it was on the verge of failure. A cash buyer came in right before it was— they essentially got the benefits of the appreciating market we've been in. And he, you know, he made whole all of the investors what they were promised. But when you think about what that's going to be marketed as, it's going to be marketed as a 30% return in 12 months. And so how do we add the qualitative experience of the LP as it relates to communication, pre and post-investment, overall experience to some of the financial metrics so you actually get an understanding. And that ended up being the most important criteria that LPs are talking about right now is communication, right? Nobody I talk to is remotely concerned about being a half a point off on their IRR, but they want to know like what's happening is what I'm reading about online happening to you. If it is, what's going to happen next? And like, that's the hardest people are, are facing with right now is like in situations where there's a potential loss of capital, people are more bringing up that I haven't heard from this guy than anything else. And so like, that's huge right now.

100%. And I mean, I think it's a clarion call for GPs, right? Because in a lot of ways we've been in a massive bull market in real estate, especially for the past 10 years. And then, you know, we've had a little dip, Values have come down, interest rates are way higher, and a lot of the deals that were done in the past 3 years are struggling, especially if they were purchased with bridge debt, with floating rate interest rates, and the market's slower absorption and all the factors are coming to a head to create a more challenging market. And I think the worst thing a GP could do is try to stick your head in the sand and just hope it all works out. You know, let's, you know, wait till the 11th hour and hope that cash buyer comes in and saves our butts. But the reality is that's not always going to be the case. And you're doing a massive disservice not only to your LPs but also to yourself if you're not going to be transparent about where things are at right now. And I think, you know, one of the challenges in this, in this space that's always been a knock in alternative investments is transparency, transparency, transparency, right? You just, you don't know. And so it's difficult for investors that, you know, have a lot in the public markets, you know, despite the roller coaster that can be in the ups and downs and, you know, the whims and emotions of how the market reacts to things, you still know where you stand every single day pretty much, right? And there's some level of like comfort of knowing like, hey, I at least I know where I'm at. And even if it's not good news, knowing where you're at is really important. I think for LPs, this is something they should expect, right? This is something that, you know, not every deal is going to go according to plan. In fact, I've never seen a deal that hit pro forma, you know, to the exact number. It's just not reality. It's not— that's not how it works. But knowing how things are going, how things are trending is so important. And I think what you're doing creates more transparency and actually creates more trust. Even something's not going the right way you want it to, you know, that's not necessarily— if you're communicating on it, there's, there's, you know, hey, there's— here's how we're— what's going on. Here's how we're dealing with it. Here's how we're hoping to make, you know, lemonade out of lemons. That's really important for LPs to know. And to your point, is a big factor in how someone feels about how an experience went with a particular sponsor aside from just the overall returns.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's being reflected in reviews as well, right? People are bringing up, hey, this may be underperforming. We're being told what's happening every step of the way and therefore we are happy, happy, you know, you know, taking with, with, with that with a grain of salt. They're not at a complete loss of capital and still saying, hey, I'm happy I'm being spoken to effectively. But it's like people, the LPs, there is an understanding that, you know, things happened, right? As long as I'm being kept up to speed and transparent, like it's being reflected in reviews and people are still not holding it massively against them unless it's complete negligence or it's complete loss or something wild. They get it, you know?

Yeah. So let's shift to the platform itself a little bit. So someone goes to Invest Clearly, I think it's goinvestclearly.com.

Yep.

And what's the process, right? Do you have to be accredited? Do you have availability for non-accredited investors? Create a profile. You create preferences for here's the types of deals, asset classes, returns I'm looking for. And then you get, you know, here's all the deals that match your criteria. Talk a little bit about what the platform looks like and how you guys are building it.

Yeah, for sure. And we are at a massive pivot point. We're making a lot of these things easier. So for example, we're going to make it a lot easier for non-accredited investors to see which companies accept non-accredited investors. And it's, it's, it's, it's a pivot from where we were, where we were. I mean, we had it like classified as regulation, but not everybody knows what, what companies do 506s and s, things like that. But yeah, right now you come to the site, you don't need to create a profile to actually use the site, right? The profile creation comes when you want reviews and you want these notifications, but you can go to the site, you can search list of sponsors, you know, you can view all sponsors. We've got about 1,300 listed right now. You can search deals. And what you're able to do is you're able to put in filterable criteria based on your quantitative and qualitative needs. Meaning I'm looking for, I only want to see multifamily deals from operators that have 5 stars or better. And so what I'm saying is by us being pivoting, we're making all these search functions a lot easier. But when you do create a profile, we ask you investment preferences, right? What is your preferred asset class? What's your minimum investment? What states do you want to invest in? And what we're doing is we're creating a notification super engine that gets you deals and sponsors that match your criteria so you don't have to filter online. Um, at the same time, we're going to be rolling out similar sponsors, similar deals, where if you're looking at one sponsor, um, and you'll get notification based on comparables that are, you know, somewhat like that. Um, That is the journey of the LP, right? Is, is you could use it. Your, your goal is to find and evaluate deals and sponsors based on reviews. Now, our review writing process, you select the sponsor, you write your review, and then you have to upload undeniable proof that you invested with that sponsor prior to it being published. And it goes to me for moderation to make sure names match up. It's not a picture of your cat and like, okay, you're good, you're good to go. LPs do have the ability to post reviews anonymously. It is publicly anonymous. It is not anonymous to me. The verification steps are still the same, but they can choose to display their name as verified investor versus their actual name. So the, the weight and validity of the review is unchanged because it still goes through the same verification process. They just don't want to have their name displayed and we allow that. Now on the other side, right, this, this is there's a lot of value here to the GPs as well, where the GPs now by doing good things, right, collecting testimonials, proving they're a great sponsor, are now, notifications are now going to LPs that are looking for GPs exactly like them, where they may not have ever been found in the past. So like our mission here, when you think about the good ones rising to the top, is if GPs do great things, collect testimonials, they're posting their deals, whatever it may be, all these LPs are getting notified that may have never found them in the past. And so what these GPs should be doing is leveraging our platform to build trust with new capital, but also to be found by new capital where it would have been random in the past. And so there's a number of different, you know, tools for GPs where they can host reviews on their website, you know, a direct widget, it's called, where you can pull it off of our platform onto theirs. And what's crazy about this is the value for both LPs and GPs. We're actually showing up organically on the first page of Google when you search a sponsor's name, right? Like our most engaged sponsor right now, they've got, I think, 33 reviews on their platform. They're backlinking our reviews onto their website, third-party reviews. And when you type in their, their name on Google, we're showing up above their co-founder. And so it's crazy because we don't have an SEO strategy. We've never created a piece of content, but since we have so much user-generated content, LP-generated content in the form of reviews on our site, we are showing up. And, and the value that is our, our long-term mission. Anytime an LP search for a GP, we show up right below them. So you type in Aspen, right below them, Aspen verified investor reviews. So it's like for the, for the LP, it's quicker way to evaluate the GP without having to go to a million different places. For the GP, quick way to build trust, right? You're being— you're— if you're doing great things, it's sort of unavoidable that you're going to be found in the long term as we grow. That was a long answer to your question.

That's great. I love it. Where do you see kind of the industry as a whole going over the next, say, 10 years? And what's really your vision for Invest Clearly and where are you What are you guys kind of building towards?

Yeah, so our— the industry is— I mean, I think it's wildly unpredictable, right? Depends on who you ask is what you're going to be found. It was funny, I went to the Best Ever conference and there was an economist and an economist who was doing a presentation that was like, the world's ending, you know, the industry is toast. And then you go to Best Ever and they're like, we've raised more capital than we ever have in the past. So it's like, I try to stay out of the prediction game, but I could tell you one thing, there's a lot of fear right now. And I think over the next little bit of time it will be more indicative of what's to come. I mean, these interest rates are just unpredictable. You know, we've got one group of people predicting they're going to lower it, one group of people predicting they're going to raise it. We're seeing all these notes maturing and other people think there's going to— I don't know, it's really hard to predict. I don't think capital is ever going to stop being raised. I think there's a lot of people that still want to place capital. I just think there's a lot more people right? Like trying to raise that pool of capital, right? And I think trust is becoming a massive difficulty. I think the media is running away with the narrative, good, bad, and different. And I think GPs are trying to combat that with charts and graphs, but I think we have to align to the emotion of the LP and the perceived reality versus, you know, here's all the reasons why we're not going to crash in multifamily over the next X amount of time. But the way we're aligning to it is our long-term mission is, is built around 3 things: social proof, aggregation of information, and then analytics and insight. So right now we're focused on— let's— the reviews, right? Like, the reviews are the social proof. Let's help LPs find and evaluate GPs. Let's help GPs build trust with new investors. The next part is the aggregation, which is everything all in one place. All the deals, all the sponsors. We are essentially the single centralized source of information, and that will eventually lead to our ability to provide GP with really deep behavioral analytics on LPs. So one of our core differentiators in this market is we don't take any piece of the deal. We're not compensated based on dollars raised. We're not registered with any regulatory agency. We stay completely out of the deals, right? If an LP never invested, doesn't matter to us, and we don't sell LP contact information, but we are collecting like what LPs are looking for in the deepest sense, right? How many LPs in the Tampa metro are looking at multifamily with a minimum investment of $25,000, things like that? Or what are the search criteria that we see happening the most? Or where are we seeing to really help you guys with deal structure and eventually maybe marketing strategy, right? Without actually directly selling you leads. And so that's our long-term mission.

We're— I pause you right there because I think that's actually pretty important distinguishing factor because there are other platforms out there. I won't name any of them and they're not all bad, but several of them, they actually are registered broker-dealers alongside of running the platform. And so they, you know, it's not necessarily a conflict of interest, but it can blur that line because, hey, we're going and promoting these deals, but hey, we also have a separate engagement with this sponsor to raise money for them. Oh, it's, you know, they popped up to the top of the, of the feed, you know, because they're so great. But is that true or is it because you have a monetary relationship with them and they're there? It reduces that to me, that level of trust of true third party, true objectivity of, you know, if you're getting paid by a GP to raise money, then, you know, that's— there's a conflict there if you're trying to be a neutral platform and you guys are not doing that, right? So you are Correct. You're not a broker-dealer. You're not getting paid to raise money. And you said it, you know, to me, I think off air, but you guys are not doing any recommendations. You're not doing any analysis of the deals themselves. You're just trying to be a place that LPs can go and get the information they need to start the due diligence process and have a leg up of where they wouldn't have had without your platform.

Correct. So we see the LPs using us in two places, like in the beginning, let me create a shortlist of GPs and then at the, I guess, decision stage was like, I spoke to this GP, I spoke to the IR, let me read testimonials and see if what they're telling me is matching up to what other people are experiencing. Yeah. And it's funny you bring up like this conflict of interest because I built this because I was interested in becoming an LP, but I was having trouble trusting anybody. Now that I built it, I was like, well, I kind of can't become an LP because there'd be this perceived conflict of interest where if I invest with someone, maybe it's not objective. So I've kind of like built myself out of an investing opportunity. It's just a funny thing you can come to realize.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard because I don't want to just throw it all out as, you know, there's— it's the wrong way to do things. But, you know, getting paid to raise money can be very profitable. Yeah, I understand why they do it, but to me it reduces the value of a platform. Right, that is trying to be a true third party. And, you know, to me, it's a whole different model because, you know, broker-dealers, like, that's their game. That's what they do and that's how they get paid. So not a bad business. It's just if you're also going to run a platform that's trying to rank and, you know, garner kind of GP opportunity sets, then there's challenges there. And so to me, it's— it is important thing I want to point out with how you guys are structured right now, because that is a distinguishing factor in my, in my mind, that is a benefit to LPs, you know. So I guess to that point, do you ever see that being something that you guys do? What's kind of your monetization model long term? Because, because one of the platforms I'm thinking of, they didn't start that way, but they became that. And as far as I knew, it was never fully like Hey, we're making this big transition. That's a pretty big transition.

Yeah.

And it was just say we're doing business as normal and, you know, now we're actually getting paid to raise money. That's a pretty substantial change.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. No, we, we, we never plan on doing this. And there's a couple of reasons why. I mean, we— so like I said, we did this in the software world. There's a very, very key company that does this hyper, hyper successfully in the software world and they, They don't sell any of that, right? It's all, it's all based on profile upgrades, analytics, and it directly aligns to what we're doing here. And we think like, you know, is it the easy— the easiest thing for us to do would be to slap on an Invest With Us, you know, uh, and invest here. But it would, it would, I think, cannibalize a lot of what we're doing from a trust standpoint. Like, we then go from a source of objective information, which would drive a lot of LP traffic, which we could probably sell profile upgrades on alone, to then I'm a random person just looking for someone to invest with and here you go, right? It's just like, it's just not, it's not, it's not like doesn't align to our, our mission as a company. And I don't think it aligns to— I don't know. And it's crazy because I talk to real estate investors about this all the time and it's like mind-blowing that we're not actually trying to take a piece of the deal. It's, it's— that's what everybody wants to do in this industry. And I think it's a major differentiator between what we're doing and is what helped us stand out. Because the way we are going to monetize is by profile upgrades for GPs. And so what that means is right now there's, there's effectively going to be 3 different levels of profiles for GPs. Super, super raw profile, meaning if a GP doesn't like us, never hears about us, they still have a profile and LPs can still review them. The second option is what's called a claimed profile. GP can say, this is my company. They claim their profile, they get an admin login, and they can upload, update some of the things that I wasn't able to find publicly and use some of the tools we have lower-level analytics, a widget, things like that. And then we're going to monetize this as upgraded profiles. Upgraded profiles is more information, more content, more calls to action, more analytics, like just more tools where when an LP lands on your page, what do they need to see in order to engage with you quicker? Right. And we're seeing success from sponsors currently that only have clean profiles and LPs are finding them through our site. So like, is there a byproduct of you'll win business by doing the right things on our site? Definitely. Is that going to change our model and are we going to pivot to that? Definitely not, because like we think it'll ruin most of the things that we're doing in our user base, which is the LP, you know, because if you think about it as a sponsor, you may not— I may not be able to say, hey, you raised $50 million through LPs for our platform. But if I could say, hey, you guys have an extremely bare profile in comparison to GP ABC, you're having 10,000 LPs a month hit your profile and they're clicking off it looking for XYZ. That's pretty, pretty marketable, you know, and that's our, that's our mission. And because we want it to be LP-led, we think longer term that's the way to go.

Makes sense. Pat, this has been really fun, man. Love what you guys are doing, and I hope that people listening will go check it out, sign up, and, uh, help kind of support platform and bring more transparency to this industry. So kudos to you. And what's the best way for people to kind of go and get started and sign up on the platform?

Yeah, the site is goinvestclearly.com. My email is pat@goinvestclearly.com. Pretty easy to remember that. I'm on all social media, but yeah, you can go to the site, create a profile, write reviews on GPs that you've experienced. GPs, you can claim your profile, start collecting testimonials. And if anybody has any questions, this is my life right now, so I'm happy to help anybody in any way get started.

Awesome. Sounds great, Pat. Thanks so much. Put the links in the show notes and thanks for coming on.

Yeah. Thank you, Ben.

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