Real Founder Questions, Real Operational Answers | Founder’s Office™ Lunch & Learn

Well, hello there. Tom Powell with Lunch and Learn, and I think I waited the whole 7 seconds, Angela. I'm not sure if I did or didn't, but, uh, I'm very excited to be here today. This is the day of the month that we take questions from the people who are watching the show. Some of the questions are from previous shows where we didn't get to them, and we thought that they were still of value to go over. And then of course, we highly encourage— and you can start off right from the beginning if you have any questions out there, we'll try and get to them today. Uh, joining me today, uh, pleased to have Miss Jackie Kuiper, our general counsel and entrepreneur founder and just extraordinaire in all things, uh, that we do here at the Founder's Office and what we do with our, our own family office. Uh, Candace Powell joining us as well, and Candace has It's hard to believe, but 20 years experience close in this, in this industry. I don't know how that's possible because I don't think I have 20 years hardly experience.

I didn't know what you were going to say. It felt risky there for a second.

It's always risky with me. It's always risky with me in there. But it's not, you know, so many people that will talk about and say, hey, you've got 20 years of experience. And I say, no, you have one year's experience 20 times. Candice has not personified that. She is truly one of the people that has come along on this crazy journey with all the ventures we've done. And has, you know, nearly 20 years experience from raising capital in her early 20s to building large-scale companies that are international. So happy to have you join us. And then new to Lunch and Learn, I think we've had you on one Lunch and Learn, maybe two.

I think so.

Dr. Katherine Ann Powell Hinnett. And yes, I do have her ringtone that says that. I know.

I just got full named too, not even Katie.

Are you in trouble?

Must be.

There you go. Well, we're pleased to have Katie join us at the Founder's Office. It's a great addition again, having you come back to the family office, and I feel very pleased about that. Katie's claim to fame, as I love to introduce her, is with her education and experience has helped a number of unicorns, companies that hit the billion-dollar valuation, valuation. And is in that executive office area, uh, to help them actually get their systems and structure. And I gotta tell you, Jackie, I don't know what you think about it, but, uh, Candice and I had a chance to talk about this yesterday. I feel like we're getting systemized and structured, and she's managing the founder of this operation.

Someone had to.

She is whipping us into shape. Yeah, it's incredible. It's so fun.

It is fun. It's fun.

So fun. And I was telling Dad yesterday, I said, it's unusual for me because I have so many ideas oozing out of me at all times. I don't often get to see them come to fruition. And by the time somebody would develop it in time, I probably have lost interest. So it's amazing to see me, spew an idea and then it's actually tangible, like so fast in between AI and then you coming on to do that specific job and being able to execute on it. It's crazy. It's very exciting.

You know, for those people and although Jackie is, you know, essentially one of the adopted daughters in the family, as we say, so adopted sister, adopted daughter, we have other team members that are just absolutely phenomenal on our show. Angela's running the engineering in the background here, and Kelly and Kirsten and the rest of our team. And just, I just want to say thank you and shout out to everybody because it is really pretty amazing to have this group of people and at the same time get reminded all the time, Dad, Dad, teamwork makes the dream work.

And sometimes you really need You need that.

Yeah, well, I, I would, I would agree. So with that, uh, the great thing is now— well, I'm going to just say this last one. When I was a young parent, one of the, one of the people that was one of my mentors gave me some great advice, and he had said, raise your kids to be the adults that you love to be around. And, uh, and I certainly am very blessed to be in that position because I love the people that I'm around in our team, and in particular the fact that they're my family in part of this. It also makes it just super cool. So that said, there's my shoutouts. Other than, uh, Candace, uh, your husband got us into this for this weekend, so you got to tell everybody what we're doing because this is very entrepreneurial.

Yeah, come on. I literally said in the pre-call, do not bring this up, nobody cares about this, don't talk about it.

I care about it.

I know you care about it. I'm so excited for you. For, for the answering the question no one asked, not a single Q&A about this, so ready. We are doing a family relay this weekend, so the founder's office will be open, but we, a few of us will be out, um, for a couple days. We will be doing a, uh, we, we like to do family relay races. This weekend we will be doing the Ski to Sea race. Um, in Bellingham. You are currently looking at, uh, 2—

16-hour drive. 16-hour drive. We—

our name is the Van Credibles because we are caravanning and taking a very cool minivan which will be driven by Papa P. And we have our— Katie made the swag. We, um, you're currently looking at 2 legs of the race. We've got our shockingly skiing leg. Dad really did a stretch there to try to train.

Hey, I gotta climb up 900 vertical feet in ski boots.

Nobody feel bad for him. And then, which is— and then no question the hardest leg of the race, the 18.5-mile canoe, uh, which will be Katie and I. So there you go. I shared that.

You know what? We didn't tell everybody. We didn't tell everybody else on our team that next year everybody in the company gets scooters.

Quit. Quit now.

Jackie's lovingly declined.

Jackie's volunteering for the snack cart job.

Well, let's see.

I like inside hobbies. I'm an inside girly.

We did, we did, we did a couple events earlier this— we've done a lot of events actually this year.

Angela's out too.

You think we'd be an event company, but we did Lift Pitch Tahoe earlier this year, which was a bunch of VCs and a bunch of founders riding up the American Lift on our ski hill in Lake Tahoe and making pitches there. A couple of those companies actually got funded out of that, which was super cool. And then later that week, we had 12 Olympians, World Cup skiers, and we dragged Kirsten, who was my new executive assistant. I think that it was like week 1 on the system, and she had to come out and ski with, you know, Daron Rahlves and Franz Klammer and some of the fastest skiers in the world. And the great thing was she could keep up. So that's our founder's office, is having a lot of fun. And yes, it is relevant. And I'm gonna start with just this. As a girl dad of 3 girls who recently graduated college, I love this whole family vibe.

That's all you needed today, isn't it, Dad?

That's it, I'm done.

Yep, you're right, you got it. He was trying to convince me that this would be a fantastic way to, Fantastic thing to talk about today. So, when I shot him down, and so then he opened it right on up.

Well, here's a real question from Gerald. Not that the other ones aren't real questions too. I know they're past questions, but this is a current present question. Gerald said, what to pitch? One expert said yesterday, the audience wants to see themselves in your story. Focus on what you want to create in the world. Create a movement. Founders often focus on the product. Investors focus on legacy and ROI. Gerald, we hit this really hard often, and in our world of teaching this type of stuff, and I've been teaching it for over 30 years, doing it for well over 30 years, it— I used to say it was the Betty Crocker method. Now we— the girls gave me a much better model. It's the HelloFresh in a Top Chef world. So most people are talking about all the complexities and things. I think whoever told you that yesterday is spot on if you want to shorten the cycle of what investors you want. And we call it the Capital Alignment Method. But it really starts with the 6 C's. And I know, Angela, you've got that back there. You can go do your pitch on our website. We don't charge you anything to it. We've built this backend model. And by we, I mean the team here has built this backend model that allows you to pitch it and get feedback on your pitch and it gives you it. And so in the 6 C's, the very first C, and it's the one that's critical in storytelling is what problem are you solving? What's the challenge? And in the United States in particular, we ask people, what do you do? And really the interesting stuff is not what they do, it's what problem they solve. So as a founder, if you can articulate the problem you're solving, you'll align the capital that's going to be interested in your business much faster. And more importantly, you're going to be able to identify the rooms to get into, because being in a room full of rich people doesn't get you your capital. It may slowly get you there, but if you get in the right rooms— Candice and I were just on a super cool call with someone who has plant-based scenario for— and they're doing a, what, $6 million capital raise, I think it was. Candice, that was right before us getting on here. It was, it was a super cool— we're not necessarily the right place, but we also aren't the wrong because we have a number of plant-based, uh, people on our team. So it, it's, it's about that. If you go here to our website, the 6 C's framework, which, uh, it's right there, 6 C's framework, and hit the pitch lab, you can practice it. And, uh, Katie, what is it since you are the creator of this? What's it look like when you actually get through it?

Yeah, so the first thing, and what Angela is, um, showing us here— thanks so much, Ang— is just you have to put in your name and email because we send you the report. Um, that— what's really important to understand about that is you're going to get a tangible asset when you do this, but we don't want you to type it. We want you to speak it. We want you to have a resource, a place to go to practice and get feedback from our method. So you're rehearsing it as though you are preparing for those conversations, both planned and ad hoc, right? Opportunities that come your way to talk about this pitch. What this does is it does show through the 6 Cs framework, you're going to get a score on each of the Cs based on the methodology that we teach.

Do we have what that looks like? Do we have one of those things?

I, I don't— this will take it through the flow on the website. You will see it. I would encourage folks to just go try. Um, so you give— you have up to 90 seconds to give your elevator speech, right? Um, it's a little timer, it'll walk you through it. But what's most important to understand is that you use this to get better. It's not a point-in-time score, it's something that we really built to help you practice and prepare for those conversations. Hopefully, back to this conversation, that will help kind of center into the pitch that is, is highest scored for the methodology that we know to be successful while also bridging this gap of information of saying, well, try and inspire people, right? That's, that's a method in the Six C's framework is the problem that you need to solve and help people understand that problem. So you both attract the people who want to solve that same problem and repel the people that don't, right? So really trying to tighten in this pitch such that you are aligning the capital as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I love that. Um, by the way, uh, Katie, we used to say and still do 28 seconds when it's the first initial pitch, because the pitch is not to raise the capital. The pitch is to keep moving down this what we call dating methodology. And when we're in the front of the room, for whatever reason, we can get it done pretty quickly in the 28 seconds. When I go into the system and I do it, we failed so Many times it was funny. Katie and I are sharing our scores back. I was like, oh, this is horrible. This is wrong. I cannot get it done that fast. So that's why we opened it up. It's still about being succinct. So if you can say it in one word, you don't need to use 10. But it really is about what problem are you solving specifically? Then how do you solve it? So when we say champion, it's not about you as the founder being this, you know, hero with a cape. It's actually what is the system that you're using or what proof do you have that this is how we've figured out what it's going to work like. And then what does that mean for the investor? And I'm going to jump into Parker's here in just a second. But what does that mean for the investor? So again, Candace and I were just on this call and the gentleman is talking to us about what it means for the world. What we never got to is what's it mean for the investor? And it really is important if you're doing a presentation to the— to, again, trying to seek capital. That you can articulate both because there are investors that want to see a world-changing impact. But at the same time, they want to know my quarter of a million that's going in there is going to in 3 years based off of our financials and other like companies in there, we believe that there'll be a 3x exit, which would mean that $250,000 is worth $750,000. That's how you do that. So then what that does is through there, if you can give credibility such as Again, they had $6 million in EBITDA, I think, last year in sales out of just their retail section, which was great. So they're going to be raising capital, but they're selling at that point. And then other things of where— who they were selling their products in, that's credibility as well. What stories— he used a bunch of movie stories within there. So there's so many ingredients that he had relative to the story that was phenomenal. It actually ended the call and Kent's like, huh, I think I'm interested. And she's a meat eater. I mean, there's a big—

Yes, correct. That, that was a great example. And I was interested, I am interested in that one. But there's a, I think, even a better example. Yesterday, you and I were on a pitch for a ski product. We are big skiers.

I forgot when we were on.

Yeah, yesterday. Katie, call the home, get them, have them get ready, have them get prepped. He can't remember yesterday.

My attorney is on this call.

She is, uh, he's helping us look for them.

He also, he also left paper towels at the grocery store this week and I had to go retrieve them.

Oh, in public. Thank you, young lady.

Yep, you're going rogue. We'll go rogue, Dad. But when I asked, they actually got better pretty quick. If they weren't talking to skiers though, and they tried to explain the problem they solve to a non-skier, a non-skier is going to have no clue what problem they solve. And so that wouldn't be their audience. It would have been really easy to go, nope, not the right audience here. It doesn't mean a non-skier is not going to invest, but that's an uphill battle to climb, really, we're gonna be the ones that are interested in a product like that because we really understand the problem that they're solving. It took them a minute to get there. They— I think what most happens most when we ask people, tell us what problem they're solving, they actually tell us their solution. They still don't outline the problem, and I actually had to stop them and say, ah, you told me the solution. What is the problem? Go back to like What is the problem? Your product doesn't exist. It does exist, but pretend your product doesn't exist. What was the point of going, if only I had this because this is a pain in my butt? That's the problem you're solving. And so help us understand what that is.

Um, and that's how you raise $30 million by the time you're 22. That's exactly that.

All right, Dad.

Uh, yeah. So by the way, uh, Angela, being cute in the, in the chat, says he went to the grocery store. What is this, Pick on Tom Day?

That is what the day is. Yes, yes.

Jackie, what do you see when we're underwriting the risk on a deal and they can't articulate the problem they're solving? We can't figure out what the market is.

It's— there's a host of things we can't figure out. And I'm going to jump to Parker's question actually too, because he says, I give an investor every detail, made the dream come to life. But when the question comes to what are you actually asking for, I feel like my responses are too vague because the reality is it all depends on how much they're ready to invest. $3 million, great, we'll do the whole deal in cash. $300K, great, we're ready to finance. Somewhere in between, sure, let's get it done. What's the best way to share that quickly without sounding like we don't have a plan? Um, I would say have a plan for both. If you are raising capital, you do want to be able to tell your investors the problem you solve, why you are the champion, why you're the one, why you're the best one to be solving that problem, what your solution is, and then what you're going to do with their money. As investors, um, we're looking for good stewards of our money in addition to a great product. Going back to the prior question about how you can you know, focus on product the whole time. Not every audience cares that much about product. If they're an investor, they might wanna know how quickly am I getting my money back? And are you gonna be a good steward of my money? And so, yeah, they, they do wanna see the problem you're solving and a very specific application of certain amounts of money. Maybe you can use $3 million, but then have a plan for the 3. And maybe you can use $300,000, but then have a plan for the $300,000. And show them how thoughtful you've been about applying those proceeds to the problem. And I think you, you generate this organic buy-in, which is what you want from your investors, right? That's, that's properly aligned capital. Investors who are bought in to the problem, the solution, and why you're the champion.

Well, if I can jump in there too, all the investors have different— if ideally the first date is just simply that quick 28-second, uh, as we said, the lift pitch scenario. But if you're going to be in with a vetted investor, then generally one of the things you want to know is what is their appetite usually investing. And there's things like Crunchbase where you can see, you know, are they a $50,000 investor, are they $100,000, are they a million? 'Cause one of the things you can do very poorly is ask too little of the bigger investor or not know what is going to— It's one of the things that out on the Substack, my Substack, I've written about. We don't do types of investments that are going to have no unknown scenario. So SAFEs are a perfect example of that. Y Combinator created these things in theory and they just love 'em and everybody in the world thinks it's the right thing thing, and we just think that they're garbage. Uh, doesn't mean that some companies haven't been started by, by safes, but if somebody can't figure out at least what the outcome looks like, they haven't put that much thought into it, then that's not somebody we want to do business with type scenario. So in that, and I don't know if that's going to answer the question specifically for you, but to, to Jackie's point, if you said we're, we're raising $3 million at this point and Achieving that allows us to do XYZ. That may be your last round that you have to raise. That may be the hiring of the marketing people that allows you to get to the next stage in there. It could be that you've got a lead investor, or you'd like this client to be the lead investor. If they say they're going to write the whole check, that's also problematic. We've had cases where, Candice, we didn't want somebody to be the entire investment— we didn't want to be the entire investment stack. We liked co-investors in there because it's kind of the, the brain of the crowd, right, scenario. So there's a lot of difference.

I don't want somebody to be a small part of it either. I mean, like, this is something that you need to really decide who you want to invest. And I think we see it occasionally, especially in earlier rounds, there's this lack of confidence in the ask Remember, you're not asking to— to— you're not like, hey, Dad, can I borrow the car? Although I do need to borrow the car, uh, but no, um, borrow the minivan today. Yes, you're, uh, you're asking— you, you're not just asking for money, you're asking somebody to be a part of this that has potential to be huge. Have confidence in that. Have confidence in what this could be. Not too much confidence. Don't be promissory, like don't make false statements, but also remember that you're offering to people to participate in what you've been working on and there's value to that. So have a little bit of confidence. I see hesitation when I flat out will come out and be like, what's the ask?

You know, we saw that yesterday, so I'm going to take it just a different side. So you and I are talking on the phone And we're just talking about the skill sets between you and Katie, right? And, uh, Katie is, you know, known in industry as being a product— what's the right title, Katie? The, uh, I don't want to say product engineer, but product manager.

It was like a part of my career. Yeah, yeah.

So, so you're able to take these financial products that people have created, some weird-ass finance person like myself, and you're like, and here's how we can actually take it to market. Right, type scenario. I can't take it to market. Katie knows how to take it to market because it's the genius of all those different things. But in certain cases, the other people can't create those financial products. They just keep making a vanilla product over and over and over again. So it's the creativity of both of those sides. And so our simple, simple model to give founders a value is if, if you looked at it as a pie, And a small piece of a big pie is much better than a big piece of a small pie, depending upon what you want to do. But that piece should start in the idea and the ongoing ideas, which is where, again, Jackie comes in on our Founders Law Group, is the intellectual property is a big value of those companies. It's the ideas. And in most cases, it's the founder that brought the idea. The reason the money's coming in is because they're searching for the people who have the ideas and have proven some model of being able to solve that problem. But the first part is, is what's your ideas of how to solve that problem? Right. So it's very important in there. So we always look at it in a simple model that a third of it's for the money, a third of it's for the work, and a third of it's for the idea. And when you're a founder in the early stages, when it's not worth anything, you're in all three pies, three, three parts of that pie.

I don't know, the whole pie.

The whole pie. You got the whole pie and it's worth nothing.

And it's worth nothing. Yeah, exactly. And, and sometimes you'll need to— you, you need to give away part of the pie. Oftentimes, most times, you need to give away part of that pie to make the pie more valuable. So, but have confidence in it, um, and, and don't have that level of hesitation. Um, and I think some of that is get back to when you know who you're sitting across from and you know that they're the right audience, you have more confidence in that ask because they can see the value in what it is that you're doing. You're not having to convince them.

Um, do we want to do next on question? Next question.

Okay, we, we have a lot of questions. We're— we've sprinkled in some questions from past Lunch and Learns, um, that, you know, we haven't— we weren't able to get to. There's quite a few. So do you want me to just start at the top? Dad seemed like you had a few you liked.

No, you guys, you guys Jump in.

I'm going to take this one. Should brands and product launches use AI-generated content alongside human-created content? Do consumers significantly care about the difference? This, I'm going to take what I learned from Alaric Heck when he talked about the YouTube ads. He said that they tracked viewership, right? Because on content online, it's all about retention and attention, or other way around, attention and retention, keeping people there. And the most engagement they had was in the combination of AI and a real human person. And I believe Alaric said, "AI alone, there's no trust, there's no credibility. There's so many different options for AI and it can spin up stuff left and right." So Yeah, low on the trust and credibility scale. A human alone can be valuable, but it's not as sexy, not as fun, not as like— there's no AI hook, right? AI is very modern, very progressive, forward. Everyone, like, we all have an, you know, fear of missing out. We want to be using AI and showing that we're using AI. And so human alone didn't get as much engagement, but it was better than AI alone. He said the best engagement, the best, the, the people responded the best to content that had a little bit of an AI hook at the beginning and then moved to human, human-created content.

I had an opportunity yesterday to be with a, uh, movie producer and we were talking about, he's ra— he's in capital raising right now. And there's kind of stalling and there's a number of reasons that he's stalling. But in doing that, I said, what about doing some of this AI-generated to get it out there because you're a good storyteller type scenario? And he said, we had a, you know, conversation. And he said, I think where the world's going, when AI will have this correction, is when it's going to become more about authenticity. And I thought that was really interesting because I think all of us are experiencing now when an email is sent and you actually thought about it and then the response comes back as though the person wrote it, but it was clearly done by chat or whatever and automated and right back, right back in your box. Right. It's like that person didn't even see it. And I wasted my time on sending out that original email. I'm not saying we shouldn't be using Grammarly or ChatGPT or whatever else to help us write the email, especially when we're stuck. But I think that authenticity part is going to be a big part of it. That doesn't mean you're not going to have quick hits and somebody is going to make $1 billion because they did something in there. Yeah, but I don't think it's going to be a long-lasting business.

I will say, like, I— easy example— I think that there's still a joy in getting like a handwritten note. So balancing the AI piece with the personal touches, I think, is a really nice way to go about it because it does show that you've taken that extra effort. I will tell you, I can tell right away when I get onto something and it's entirely AI prepped and it feels like not even well done, like they don't know how to use meta prompts and they're still kind of on that early stage of AI. If you're not really proficient in AI and that's what you're using, it can actually be a deterrent and a red flag. Because when I see it and it's still pretty early stage AI usage, meaning I can still see a lot of those AI tells, so you're not even using it very well. Clearly your meta prompts aren't really good. You're not maybe incorporating more agents. And I'm not some stellar AI user. I'm, I'm exactly the person I'm talking about here. That's actually a red flag for me. So you want to be careful that you're not creating something, because I'm going, ooh, you're using two tools but not in the best way. That's, that's a little nerve-wracking. But if you use them well and you're really proficient, and then you're incorporating those personal touches and the personal piece, I think that that's a great marrying of the two worlds, right?

Yeah, I would say, Ken, I think you're hitting on such a beautiful point there, which is leverage, don't rely on. And something that from like a product marketing perspective, right, you really want to take a step back and say, okay, what's the purpose? If you were to treat whomever, it's an investor, a customer, a potential partner. Whoever you're trying to reach, really center yourself in on that their attention that you are seeking to gain from them is valuable, right? It's like a currency. And so you need to give them something valuable back. And just from that single foundation, it forces you into a decision criteria that is AI enables me to give the most valuable value possible in return for the value of their time of attention. But more is not more. And so sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, we're so enabled that we can do so many ads. We can do all of these things. It feels like we can do more, but more is not always better. And so really go back to the foundation of if I am trying to market, what are the goals, right? Who am I trying to talk to? Treat that as currency and the value back determines the leverage of AI. And then, Can, what you're saying is, is, you know, Use it in a way that amplifies the great work that you're doing and ensures that it doesn't detract from the great work by having AI be done almost like too sporadically or just to get more out, because it, it diminishes your brand and it diminishes the hard work that you've put into that, that product, service, whatever you've stood up. So use it, use it. Cautiously in the sense of it's an amplifier to what you're doing, not something that can usurp the deliberateness that is required for a product marketing and launch.

You guys are fun to be on the show.

I gotta tell you, I just like how Katie has these little, like, little one-liners that summarize it so beautifully. I don't even remember what you said, but it was really nice.

I don't remember what I said either.

Yeah, you guys are great. Uh, I'm gonna go this one just because, uh, are there different approach in, uh, approaching investors for a land development company versus a product tech company? So I, I'm going to take part of this, but I want to see what you guys think of this first.

Oh, you want to see what we think?

My vote's yes.

Yeah, um, we're weirdly investors in both, but I would not say that that is the typical. I think investors usually have, um, have their, their lanes. Um, but if your product is overlapping these two, you would want to find investors who maybe are more— and I guess I need clarity on what the product tech companies are. But there are investors out there who dabble in both. Actually, there's probably quite a few. There's investors who have their really clear niche. So we work with somebody, his niche is health tech. Like, that is, he seemingly really loves health tech, at least the products that we tend to look at. We've got another buddy who's like almost entirely SaaS. So we know that when we're looking at deals that they're sending over, it's probably going to be in those, in those lanes. So we have to kind of put that hat on. But if you're really proficient at pitching to a land development investor, you're going to have to shift for, for a product investor, in my opinion. Dad, what's yours? I mean, I realize it follows the same 6 C's. That you're talking about.

That's where I was going to go. But so let's, let's back it up there for a second. When we have built large scale, both the financing side and then real estate side, and Katie's husband is actually in the selling of real estate side on residential for the most part. We've done some large scale developments, but usually we found that Candice and I, although she has a lot of skills on building stuff, I'm not a great developer. We're much better on backing developers. So we're real estate investors, but not on the developer side. So, and then we're really actually much better on the debt side as opposed to the equity side from our standpoint. Right. So it gets really nichey, really nichey, really nichey. The problem with real estate is, is that, or what we've seen in real estate is that everybody touches real estate. So they think they know real estate and it's an incredibly complex investment model. So when you start talking about real estate, it says, Is it a single-family home with a single tenant in there? Is it a 4-unit? Is it a 200-unit? Is it a multi-scale development that has mixed use? Is it, you know, what is it in that you're doing? Are you looking at right now doing, you know, these big server farms? Let's talk about your political risk that comes into that. So the real estate side has very much exactly the same kind of scopes and even more so risk. And the reason I say it has more so is because people people overestimate their knowledge of the space. I bought a home, I know about real estate. That's not true in most cases.

And you're really underplaying our level of land development experience because I can name probably 20 to 30 projects just off the top of my head.

Yeah, we've been, we've been, we've done very large scale stuff, but I still think we're always an amateur at this.

You still, yes, and actually we are.

Yeah, it's, you know, international scope and it's large scale. And I still think, well, it's like doing billions of dollars in oil and gas. I still think we're absolutely amateurs within there because there's so much we don't know and there's much bigger players. Right. So within that— so now let's move it over to the investor side of tech or SaaS, wherever you want to go into there. It's the same way. It's niche. If you're— that's why getting into the problem that you're solving. So in the real estate side, if what you're talking about is you've got a dilapidated piece of real estate and you're going to redevelop that, there's a right fit investor. And so if you start with that storytelling because you understand what problem you're solving and then you identify the right investor, it's the same methodology. And to that point, on our 6 Cs framework, actually, I think it's the— which one is it, Katie? You helped me build it on the Investment Probability Dashboard. That's it. That's it. The Investment Property Framework.

Sounds like—

sounds like— help me, help me, help me out. They're taking all this intellectual property that we have and actually naming it and getting it out there, which I appreciate. So it's the framework and we put 12, maybe a half dozen or so more than a half dozen samples on there and ran them through our own model. And in doing that, there's a real estate model. There's an exit model, there's a startup model. So you can go on there and see what these look like, and the stories still are the same. It's tailored to who that right investor is going to be. I don't know if that answers the question.

Be, be critical of your investors coming in as well, because we have had real, like, non-real estate investors that invested in real estate projects And real estate is not, like all industries, necessarily a linear industry, right? We had a couple projects during the crash. Those investors were not savvy real estate investors. They were your typical investor who's like, okay, it's all collapsing. Let's cash out now. Let's all get— and it's the worst. That was the worst possible time to be forcing a project. and it forced, it forced some projects. These, some of these investors who really were not savvy investors, they should not have, they were absolutely checked the boxes for being an appropriate and a suitable investor, but they oversold what they knew as far as being in a land development deal. They, they got scared and forced projects to exit at probably the worst possible time where we know that these markets make a turn and you gotta just be able to hold it out. It's the same thing for product and tech companies. We've got a group right now. Uh, they're, they really needed some investors. And I think in product and tech, sometimes you have to have investors who are able to be a little bit more flexible, um, because things change, opportunities change. You might have a product built for one thing, and then a buyer comes in for your product that wants to use it for something completely freaking different. And we have investors that are trying to say, no, you can't do that. And technically, they might be right, that no, you can't do that, because what they originally sold to these investors was that it's going to be used for this. So they're leaving money on the table because they cannot accept this opportunity over here. So it's Be, be critical of who your investors are.

Highly critical. I think you and you remember it is dating and marriage and you want to know who they are. It's not just, ooh, let's, let's get connected.

It goes beyond whether or not they can be investing. If they check all the boxes that it meets, that, that they are accredited, that they are suitable. And it goes to, should they really be in this opportunity? And are they going to be a good investor?

Hey, Jackie, one of our, one of our favorites, Ernest, is, is always there. You want to jump on? Do you see Ernest's question there?

Yeah. We have a project in development with proven operators in product development, marketing, and social media that have aided in producing recent 10-figure acquisitions and valuations. We're seeing no traction in the capital raising campaign for that project despite having extensive data and market research and verifiable team excellence. Does it not matter if you have a proven team or operators behind multibillions on your project when pre-seed fundraising? Ernest, great question. I would think, going back to the 6 C's, you've probably dialed in your credibility. I would look at what others of the 6 C's that you maybe haven't spent as much time focusing on or getting tight. Sounds with extensive data and market research and verifiable team excellence. Your credibility is super, super, super strong. Are you articulating the problem well, the challenge that you solve? Are you conveying that you're the champion to take this through? Are you giving a really clean and clear call to action? And I can let Tom and Candice and Katie also speak to others of the 6 C's that maybe, maybe doesn't seem like they're as important, but they really are. And maybe that's where the mark is. Is getting missed?

I'll jump into the team. So again, if you looked at the probability framework and you get into there, so the first thing, the first thing in attracting— what I have found, first thing in attracting the right investors is being able to articulate clearly and succinctly the problem you're solving. And then in that, in our 6 secrets that Bill Fisher and I put together, the secret really is finding through research, which has never been as easy as it is today, finding the people who are already funding that problem you're solving. So they're looking for that solution. So there are people that are, that are funding in big scale cancer research, and then you can get it down to they're funding cancer research, research on melanoma. And then they're funding cancer research on melanoma of the eye. I mean, that's how nuts-ass you can get down to on that type of stuff of being able to say, here's what it is. Then you have to be able to articulate your solution. And this is where your team comes in, because if you move over to you don't quite have the solution, but you do know how big the market is and you believe your team's going to be able to find the solution and you've got proof of your team, there are funders out there that will simply back a team. They don't even care what idea you're working on. You know, Marc Andreessen is one of those type of people. He's like, I don't care what problem you're working on. I— if you've got a great team, you're coming out of Stanford or you're coming out of, you know, Berkeley or whatever it is, and you guys are working in that space and we've identified that space and you've got the right people, we'll give you a check to go get it started. Now, it's not quite that simple, but that is the space. So team is one of the hardest things for founders to actually put together, especially a credible team. So it's getting that articulation in there. And I don't know if that helps you, but that's, that's kind of my feeling there.

I would add, having just run through all of these 6 Cs tests to get this kind of, you know, framework out to people to be able to use in practice and self- serve. Ernest, what, what rings true for me is the 6th C, which is connection, which is does the investor recognize themselves in this? And so that, that to me, just in reading the problem that you, you wrote out, feels like one I would be so curious if you do that pitch, like how it scores. It'll give you some feedback on that as well, but it's, it's finding that right person, right? Maybe it's we're not in the right um, we're not, not communicating to the, to the people for whom this would connect with, right? If you have all of the other 6 Cs, the 5 of the 6 Cs, you have one that's really hard to put together. So I feel very proud of that. And so I would be, I would just so strongly encourage you to go use that tool because it's just, it's there for you to use in practice, get some feedback and some tips and tricks on how to, um, improve upon it. And I would keep an ear out for it, for that 6th one in that report.

I love that. All right, I've got one point I want to talk about specifically, and we didn't even go into the SEC, by the way. Just kind of cool news this week. Yeah, you were supposed to open up with that, and you opened up with how great my, my team is and my family, and, and we're going on a van trip and it's super cool. Yeah, I know. We made national news, actually international news, uh, this week, uh, specifically more so yesterday. A lot of good, a lot of good things out there if you care to just Google Powell v. SEC. Uh, the SEC blinked. So for 10 years we've been, uh, talking with them in a unique situation because when you're talking with the government, it's— they're well-funded and they have a life cycle that is forever. So I'm proud of that. I'm proud of our team for hanging in there. They have abolished an unconstitutional— that didn't get to get proven yet in SCOTUS. We're still hoping SCOTUS will say yes, but the SEC blinked. So to Mr. Fitzsimmons out there, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to battle this for the last 10 years and help. We have received I don't know how many letters Candace and Katie and Jackie, you guys have seen these letters that have come in that just are heartwarming, um, of people that have said thank you for giving them their voice back, which is incredibly powerful. So thank you to my team for helping us, uh, go down through that scenario. I'm hoping it still will go to SCOTUS, but we'll see. That's not, uh, the, the biggest news. The biggest news is, uh, Women Talk Finance, WTF, Wow.

What a segue, dad. I want to just close out on that though. Okay. You, you go ahead. Dance Mom is in the house.

It hit, it hit season 2 out there. WTF Women Talk Finance, amazing guests, amazing hosts, uh, on this show. And, uh, I'm so proud, uh, to be a cheerleader on the sideline of this because it's super cool watching you guys and it is great to see. So where you get your favorite podcasts out there, Women Talk Finance. Guys want to talk about it? Who's the— what's coming up next?

Well, we will have a guest coming up on June 3rd. I think she was informed today that she would be a guest.

It was a surprise honor, I will say.

I told you we had to talk about it in my dream.

You joined us in our first season, one of our early episodes. Um, so it's gonna be a treat to have you back and just kind of know, like the evolution we've all been through since we first spoke. Yeah, we're enjoying it. We're having fun.

It's cool. I do want to say this because, you know, when we describe this stuff, this is a group that has an awful lot of education of the formal standpoint, you know, lawyers and MBAs and doctors and da da da da da. But the main thing is it's practical experience as well. And that's what's super cool because I know, you know, a fair amount of billionaires that don't have high school education. But that does not mean they're not educated, right? And so at the other time, we get caught up sometimes in the degrees and it's like, that's not what it is. It's that they're lifelong learners. And almost everybody that I know that has succeeded at anything, it doesn't have to be monetarily, they're lifelong learners, right? I'm active in the ski industry. The people that are the best in the industry are lifelong learners about skiing or physics or whatever part of that it is. So I love that WTF is out there. I'm a proud supporter of it and a cheerleader of it and just love what you guys are doing. So join and see theirs. Next week we have a guy talking about reputations and in the credibility side of the 6 C's, that seems to be it. So Charles Zakarin is going to join us on the show. I wanted to talk— just close out on this. So years ago, we'd hear this thing on people's presentations. It was kind of the go-to thing and it was this this supposed quote from Einstein that said, you know, the one of the greatest things is compound interest. And he never said that quote. First of all, he was a horrible investor. We know he was a horrible investor. And so people would put that up there, and immediately I would stop listening because I'm like, you didn't check your data, you didn't check your facts. So we were talking about the real estate, and there was one of these LinkedIn that I saw, and there's a whole bunch of things out there, so be very careful about your sources. This young man who is really raising supposedly a lot of money out there says in his post, big letters, 90% of millionaires became millionaires because of real estate. That's just not true. Now, 90% of millionaires probably have $1 million worth of real estate, but they probably did not become millionaires. And we know it because the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finance says so. It's number one is through business ownership. And 80% of business owners through EPI have most of their wealth actually in their business. Right. So when you look, take a look at that and you start going through there. So when you hear these statements that they start becoming commonplace, you actually want to go back and say, is this real? Because that's a quick way for me never to ever invest with you type scenario. And that's back to the point of credibility that we were talking about within there. So I don't know why I want to tie that back around, but when we're talking about real estate, I thought that was really important because that's credibility within there.

So important. Thank you for sharing, Dad.

Always. I didn't want to send him an email specifically or post it on LinkedIn, so I just did it publicly without him knowing.

That's great. We'll tag him in the playback of this.

We're not— nobody has to know who it is. If you ever see it out there, give him a gentle nudge type scenario. But that's super, super important type stuff.

Yes. We, uh, we're very proud of you, Dad. I know, um, we've told you, but I'll say it on here. We're very proud of you and all that you've done. And reading the letters that you've received over the last, um, several months has been really exciting. And so we're very proud of you. Um, and yeah, we're, uh, looking forward to seeing where this goes. You guys can, um, reach out to us if you, uh, want to follow Tom's Substack. You can follow him on, um, Instagram, LinkedIn. Um, and we really enjoyed this week. We still didn't get through all of the past questions we've had, but we so appreciate everybody's engagement in jumping in and sending questions. We hope we answered them. Um, we'll throw up our tool maybe one more time, Angela, just so that people, if they want to test it out, uh, go ahead and, and give it a try. Um, I would say give us feedback. I don't know how to do that, but if you have feedback, hold on to it and let us know somehow. And so, but, but we're really excited about all of these pieces that are coming together and the tools we're putting together. This has been decades of, of building these processes and plans and intellectual property. And so now building these tools around it, um, and, and having Katie join us and help us really expedite these, it's really exciting. So we're thrilled to have this out there, and thank you so much for joining.

Thanks everyone.

Bye.