How Chris Raised $1,000,000 in 2 Weeks for Real Estate (with No Experience)

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Guys, today we are talking about capital raising. We got a guy on here that's raised a million dollars in two weeks. If you are somebody who wants to go from depending on friends and family and not using your own cash to attracting and closing cold investors to be able to invest in multi family or commercial real estate, today's your day. We're going to be diving deep into those things. Look, raising millions of dollars is not just for the big shots, right? It's not just for the big people who have 10, 50, 100 million in assets under management. It is for everyday people that know how to raise capital, right? So we're going to be breaking down capital raising systems that actually make it possible for you to start raising capital from capital partners today and for your first or next big multifamily deal. All right, so we got a few killers on the team today. We got Randy and Larry here and these, these guys. All together we have over 500 million in assets under management. So, Randy, Larry, let's rock and roll. You ready to go?

Indeed, indeed, man. Looking forward to it. Chris is crushing it. So look forward to being able to hear about that and then also, you know, be able to see other folks that are listening, you know, watching here today can see that they could do the same thing Chris did.

All right, let's rock and roll. So Mr. Chris Caffrey's in the house. He is a good friend of mine. He's a real estate investor and one of our coaches at RA accelerator. And he's going to be breaking down exactly how he got started and how he has been able to raise a million dollars on his first big raise in two weeks. So you're ready. Chris, welcome. Thanks for being here, man.

Yeah, it's a blast. Honored to be with you guys. You guys are living legends. I always learned a lot.

Well, look, let's rock and roll. Let's, let's dive in. So share about the deal. How'd you find the deal? What was the deal? How did you structure it? Let's just start there.

Yeah, great question. And I think, you know, the quality of the deal is like number one, right? Like a great deal is like absolutely pivotal in the rest of the process. So, yeah, I made a lot of reach outs to different brokers, direct to seller. Kind of playing that numbers game. I like to say it's a timing game as well, right? Like the numbers game is the overall quantity of and volume of reach outs. But the timing game is the emotional intelligence of a follow up of realizing when it's Time to shoot that, you know, text to say hey, is this still, still available, still a thing. So anyways, finally a broker that I connected with found a seller financing opportunity. It was actually a 199 acre campground in Vermont. Totally not really the area that I was looking. I'm in Dallas Fort Worth, obviously a really good market, but sometimes the who is better than the what, right. The relationships that you make in networking leads you to an opportunity you can't pass open. So anyways, yeah, I went in with a partner, another good friend of mine, actually an REI accelerator border member, Steven Totter. We looked at it together, we ran numbers and yeah, we, we loved the park. It was lots of room to expand on it. Seller financing opportunity. I went out there personally and it was just had a good feel to it. But yeah, the capital race specifically, you know, I like to tell people it comes down to three things. With capital, raising your own personal network, friends, family, your own social media, everything you can muster up on your own. Number two, your you know, partner partners that you bring on the project. Right. Their network, whatever they're able to muster up. And then number three, I think this is actually really like underrated is joining a mastermind is joining a network is being in proximity to people doing the thing that you want to do and they've done what you want to do. If you're around people that have done the thing that you want to do, it's you're going to be able to do it. Right. The proximity is power. I know you say that all the time Jonathan, but like so for, for us on this particular deal that's exactly what we did. So practically that looked like creating a spreadsheet with every person that I knew from my phone contacts, from my social media, from the, the Mastermind network, places that I've connected with other investors and anybody that I assume would have at least 25k liquid or in some type of self directed IRA, they made it to the spreadsheet and then I made some posts like on social media. Right. Connect with people in the Mastermind. So yeah, so practically, you know, that's a really good starting place. Like you may not even have a deal but just you know, start by looking at your phone contacts, looking on your social media, like just start adding names. And one of the biggest mistakes I think I made early on was assuming that certain people wouldn't have money, honestly. Right. And you'd be surprised. People have money stashed away in CDs that are, you know, opening up that people have IRAs, people have money coming down from maybe somebody that recently passed. I mean, you'd be surprised. People have money and they find money out of nowhere. So don't assume people don't have money. But yeah, so a little bit of a monologue. But ultimately on that particular deal, we had the ingredients right, for an easy capital raise. It was a great deal. We had a great team and we had a great story.

Right.

I think that's what you need for a successful pitch deck. So you're saying, hey, the story component, this is where this property is located. This is what we plan on doing with the property. You know, come join us, be a part of the story. Don't just watch us succeed from the sidelines, like jump in with us and the great team. Right. You know, Stephen brought Stephen in because he had experience, heavy real estate experience. So even if you got to bring in a partner who just sits on the board in advisory capacity, makes your pitch deck really pretty, really recommend that, right? You show the assets under management, you make it, make it look nice even if you personally don't have anything, because at the time I had nothing really to show for. And then also the, you know, the financials of the project, showing them what they're, you know, tangibly practically going to get all three of those things, you put those in the same, you know, pitch deck, you present it well, it's a no brainer.

How did you structure the deal as.

Far as like GPLP split or.

Yeah, like how many partners did you have involved, you know, bank financing? Like, what was that? How did that look? How much was the total purchase price? What did it look like?

Yeah, so it was 1.3 million. We were going to put $300,000 down. The seller was going to carry a million. We had it on a five year balloon payment. And then we, as far as partners go, me and Steven were going to carry the bulk of it. And then we brought on an expert in the like, campground, RV space in advisory capacity. So we brought someone on. We were just going to give them 5% equity to literally meet with us every couple of weeks and just make sure that we're up to code, that we're, you know, doing things the right way with the, with the city, with the state. And so we brought somebody on advisory capacity. And then we were offering, I want to say roughly 25% to limited partners. And then Steve and I split the rest in half.

That's, that's huge. So the partners in the deal also made a major impact in the raising capital Right. So, yeah, I mean, was that a major factor in which you were getting people to invest based on partnerships that you already had in the deal?

Absolutely. You gotta have the right people in the right seats. Right? You know, this is, it's a team sport and these bigger projects, we have different roles. So if they kind of get the feel of like there's one person who's maybe like jack of all trades in there could get a little, little interesting. So it's really nice to like assign very specific roles to people who have qualified in that, in that seat. So, you know, specifically when I'm on a call with an investor going through pitch deck saying, hey, you know, this person's going to be handling the asset management and here's their qualifications to do so, hey, we got an advisor who's going to be helping us with the permitting process because they've done it on 30 other sites just like, right, I'm going to be handling this and here's the credibility there. So yeah, right. People in the right seats, absolutely critical.

That's awesome, man. Well, let's, let's jump into the key fundamentals that you've got to nail down. If you want to start raising capital, whether you have no experience or whether you are experienced and you just want to scale even further to raise more capital. Let's break down, what are those steps? Okay, look, first I'm just going to go over it and then I want Randy and Larry, I want you guys to jump in as well. Identifying the ideal investor. It's very critical that you know who you're talking to, what their needs are, what their pain points are, what they're looking to do. So we'll break that down. You need to also decide what, what type of raise you're going to do. Whether it's 506C attracting accredited investors, 506B non accredited. You need to understand that. Right. You also need to be able to create a simple pitch deck, a simple one page investment summary and then an overview of the actual deal. But to be able to communicate to investors, you need to know what is the structure of your deal. All right? And then you also need to have those systems down. And we're going to go through extensively right now on what are the systems webinars being able to get on social media and be able to blast. I just had somebody I was talking to recently raise $40 million in one year, just on, in the past 12 months, just on Instagram. All right, now you may be somebody that's not wanting to embrace Social media, I get it. I know a lot of successful people. That's not on social media, but today's world, social media is a major, major asset that if you can learn how to set up the right systems, you can learn how to scale in, you can really do phenomenal in. And then also you need to calculate who do I need to talk to, how many people do I need to talk to to be able to get enough investors to come in. Because look, people are going to back out. You can't just raise what you need. You got to over raise. So we want consistent streams of income or consistent streams of investors. But Randy, what's your as far as finding investors in today's market? What does that look like for you? What is the key fundamentals for you?

Talk to Chris. Praise the Lord. There you go.

Now ask Chris for money.

Yes, and I just want to comment before we dive in there though too. And again, Chris came off just like a stone cold expert here for sure in the way you've communicated these things. So kudos to you, Chris. But for those of you who are watching, this is a newer segment for him in that respect. I mean, he's worked together in the coaching arena, but this is a newer segment for him. And so he basically took the information, the knowledge, the wherewithal that's within the REI accelerator program and ethos and community and then applied it. And that's what you're hearing. And so you're hearing that expertise come out because he synthesized the information, meaning he owned it and then he was able to communicate it. And the end result was, boom, a million dollars in two weeks. So, you know, I think, you know, what you said at the start, Jonathan, is true. It's like, you know, connecting together with investors. You've got to identify, you know, who are the avatars, meaning who are the people that you're going to be working with. What is the type of group that you are? Because again, I talk with different folks, you know, I've seen guys that are, you know, in their mid-20s, let's say, and they're like, oh my God. Well, you know, I don't know, people like in my age bracket or Larry's age bracket. It's like, well, that you've got to develop what's the right fit for who you are and you have to be congruent to who you are. You know what I mean? And because congruency connects with people, like attracts unto like. And so, you know, you also need to be able to identify, you know, what are the people that are going to have a propensity or a probability, just like you heard in Chris, of having an interest in something like this, you know, because there are some people that potentially they're not going to have an interest in this. You know, like, I know guys that are like monster stock traders. Like that's their thing. Like they just, man, they just love it. And they're a little bit less inclined towards real estate. And you know, that doesn't mean that, you know that that's a right move. It just means that's how they're, you know, focused. So again, if you're going into a stock trading forum to connect with people and you know, recruit them or introduce them to an offer you have, it's probably less likely to be successful because they're in a stock trading form because that's really their key focus.

You know, that's a great point, Randy. I mean, your, your ideal avatar is based on who you are, right? And I think about my investors, they're probably closer to my age and I know some younger guys who have these investors that look like they're dressed to go play video games and they are worth, you know, have sold businesses and made a whole lot of money or they have an E commerce business and they've made a lot of money. So they've attracted those type of people. And, and that's certainly what you got to decide. And it gets easier as you go. I mean, my, my biggest point would be, you know, I'm blessed to have, you know, dozen contacts on my phone I can call. Cause I've made those, done that networking and made those relationships. But when you're starting out, you just gotta network, make those relationships, go to events and get yourself out there.

Social media, yeah, that's good. And I would, I would say every single person needs to be doing, you know, making a certain number of connections a week and whether that's using social media, you know, there's, there's ways to do that, right? Add value. If there's one thing I can say about social media and how that guy raised $40 million in the past 12 months, it's ADD. You know, if you check out, check out Randy's page, check out Randy's Facebook page. He's always on there, sharing weekly just about real estate, about the market, about key success things, right? Get on social media and just add value to the type of person that you're wanting to attract. If, if that's, that is the way that you're going to be able to attract People. And then whenever you make a call to action, which is, you know, your cta, you put in there, drive somebody to a landing page or something like that. And it just says, hey, we, we help people create generational wealth through multifamily real estate or whatever that is, right? We help people replace their income through multifamily real estate. You know, attract people that, and get people on the waiting list, have people put their email in and put them on the waiting list. It's a very simple funnel, but it works if you just stay consistent. Right. And so that's, and then you could be doing webinars, right? So that's another way to start attracting people and say, hey, this Thursday at 5pm I'm doing a webinar and I'm gonna be sharing about and just invite people to a zoom call. Right? So, so that's, there's, there's several ways to do it. There's people in our community that do podcast sponsorships. They jump in and, and they'll, they'll go sponsor a podcast, you know, 500 bucks a month, right? And they get shouted out on the podcast every time they do it. And I, this one guy, Stephen, he books, you know, from that sponsorship, would book two to three investor meetings a week just from that one, $500 a month investment. Now, what's that worth, right? You get two to three meetups. So there's many ways to do it. And so we can dive into the logistics, but just a high level, like, what does it take to raise a million dollars in two weeks? It takes, you know, getting out there, putting these things in place. Event funnels, you know, go to your local real estate meetups, go to the social media and invite people, hey, I'm going to do a dinner on this day, and we're going to just meet up and talk about real estate and talk about the opportunities in the market, if you're interested. Right.

Just to interject there too, I think, you know, a good number of folks maybe already going to meetups or doing those things. But you know what? I've shared and even like at Mastermind meeting, shared that, like, look, you need to, you're, you're, you're going to this meeting on Wednesday night and studying real estate. You're going to this thing on Saturday and Sunday and you're not communicating that to other people. That's good, you know, showing, hey, like, I mean, and I said this to a group of people a couple months back. It's like, how many people are spending, you know, Friday Saturday and Sunday, eight hours a day, hold up. Studying real estate techniques and strategies in Marketplace. The answer is the majority are none. And so when you're doing that, you're communicating and showing your commitment. The consistency that Jonathan said about how you're, you know, dedicated to this arena in this area and it begins to build a reality that that's part of what you do and who you are. So that as you begin, you know, communicating further about it, it is part of the congruency again. And it's like if one week you're in there talking about bitcoin and how great that's going to make and hey, let's make some money on bitcoin and the next week you're talking about Amazon stores and how great Amazon stores are, and then the next week you're talking about real estate. It's like you lack a congruency and you lack a clarity, which then again, confused minds. The answer is always no.

Confused mind doesn't invest. Yeah, they got to be clear. So that's, that's the key point about the one page investment summary. In fact, if you want that one page investment summary, you know, how we communicate to our investors and how we've closed millions of dollars in investment commitments. If you want that, just drop in the comments, Put one pager in the comments and I'll, and I'll shoot that to you. Okay? So just drop in the comments below this video. But that's, that's a key point, what Randy said. I mean, you have to be able to communicate that and be able to be clear about that, make sure that they understand exactly what are the advantages about this deal versus anything else. Right. You know, and have that story, you know, the owner is out of town, owner just mismanaged the property, you know, and, or maybe it's, you're buying it for, you know, 500,000 less than what it was purchased for or what it was appraised for. You know, I mean, what are the things that makes this deal stand out? What's the story? What is the, just the sizzle, right? What's the, what's that? Pop in the deal and make it simple and clear. Because look, if they're coming to invest with you, most of the time they're, they're people that have full time jobs. Right. At least, at least when we're targeting high income earners and Chris, you can kind of comment like, what, who are those people you were targeting? But you know, typically we're looking for a deal, you know, for a first time Investor, someone who's getting into their first big deal. We're looking for high income earners, high net worth earners. That's not necessarily your institutional capital, right? So these guys are looking for a clear, simple plan that is that they can understand, right? They're not looking for all the, the nitty gritty details of every single thing, right? So it's very important if you want that one pager, just drop in the comments that you want that. But yeah, Chris, why don't you chime in on that as far as who you're looking for when it's your first.

Time operating a deal, like whether they have a ton of capital or they don't, they usually will come in around the minimum. So you need to raise a lot. You need to over raise because they're trying to feel it out like, hey, you know, you know, do, can I trust you long term for future deals, right? So like we had people who could have easily knocked out the entire raise with just one punch, but they'd say, okay, you know, I'll come in with 100, I'll come with 100, come with 100. And you know, the beauty of that is if you have somebody come in with like the whole thing or almost all the whole thing and they pull out late, like you're in trouble, right? So it's kind of nice when you do have some of those, you know, 100,000, 150, $200,000 in there. Because if, you know, people do, things come up, life happens, people are out of town when they're supposed to wire, you know, whatever you do need to over raise. And if you, if you have, you know, more investors on the first couple of projects, not necessarily a bad thing. Obviously it's beautiful to have the heavy hitters in there who knock it out. So I mean, I think ultimately you're targeting those who have some level of investing experience, like maybe it's with stocks or maybe just a 401k. And then you have to, like Jonathan said, create that aha moment is what I would call it, right? So maybe that's a specific perk of that deal. Like, hey, this is a no brainer, this is seller financing. We're getting an interest rate 3 points lower than traditional lending right now. Or maybe it's the infinite returns concept of hey, even after you get your capital back, you're still going to have equity in perpetuity. Whereas guess what happens in a dividend stock when you take your money out, you're not getting squat, right? So there's certain components of, you know, whether it's the financials or the deal itself, the story itself that you can relay to, you know, investors or potential investors that say this is a better place to put your money than a savings or CD or the stocks. And that's really what you have to do is to, to get their mind on real estate if it's not already there.

Again, folks list and may not have really dialed in. Is that the IRA and 401k the, you know, Jonathan, just hit it, Chris, just hit it. But you know, a lot of folks don't understand or know that you can educate people. The fact that they can move their money into what's called a self directed ira. And with a self directed ira, you know, they have the ability to invest in real estate and other items that they otherwise wouldn't get in a traditional kind of 401k. So there's people that, you know that they left the company, they may have had 50, 150, 200,000, 30,000, whatever it is in their 401k. And a lot of them just either roll it over to an ira, you know, Vanguard or Schwab or you know, wherever, or worse yet, they roll it over to their next employer. So it gets stuck into that next 401k where there's extra fees. But you can share with people in your network and educate them that there are multiple companies or custodians that allow you to invest in real estate. And so that opens a whole new door. And so by educating those people, like Jonathan said earlier on providing value, they're now like, wow, I didn't know that my money's sitting in Vanguard and it's kind of going up and down like this. And you're telling me I could take that 100,000 and put it in real estate. And it's like, absolutely, let me show you how. And you connect them together with a, you know, IRA custodian that handles that self directed Iraq.

That's good. That's good. I appreciate you sharing that. That's big. And look, how about this 506C or 506B, which one should you use to raise your first million or raise on your current deals? I think I'd love to hear everyone's opinions that. But 506C, you know, obviously is a IRS or is a SEC regulation and regulation D, and it's an ability to raise from accredited investors. You know, it's how you set up your offering, right? We're not SEC attorneys on here, but we do have some strong SEC attorneys that are on our team. And SEC is your securities Exchange Commission. Right. So obviously they govern the laws and govern the rules when it comes to raising money. Right. For private investments. And so, so there's a 506C and a 506B where one is for non accredited, your 506B and one is for accredited. Accredited means you have over 200,000 in income per year or 300,000 with your spouse or you have a net worth over a million dollars. Right. And so with 506C accredited investors, you can publicly advertise. So some of these things we're talking about here don't apply if you don't have a 506C. Right. Because a 506B means you have an existing relationship with this person and they want to protect the guys who don't have a good understanding of investments from getting into bad deals. Right. Or losing money. So there's obviously a lot of trains of thoughts of, of what you should use. And you know, the obvious answer is, you know, who is your current client base or your current investor base, but would love to hear from you guys. What are you typically using and what would you recommend in terms of, of setting up your, your offering for for.

Most people starting out the 506C is probably going to be the route to go because you can advertise the deal, get it out there on social media, do run the webinars. That's if you don't already have a strong network, you know, maybe if you've been the bartender at the country club since you were 18 and you know, you got a host of guys that have been tipping you well for five years, maybe, maybe you go the 506B route, right. And you just, just raise the money. Or if you've got a big, a real large family and they all, they aren't accredited but they all have a money to invest. But for most people, you know, being able to advertise and get it out there and raise from accredited investors would be the route to go, in my opinion.

Yeah. The other thing too, just to be clear too on the 506B, it allows for non accredited, but they also need to be sophisticated. And so there has to be, you know, an element of reality that the person has a measure of sophistication or at least self identifying how they're a sophisticated investor, they may not be accredited. And then what Jonathan said in a real quick fashion was that you have to have a preexisting relationship that means you truly have a relationship with that person before offering them to invest with you. Meaning, like, you can't just put a post on Facebook and then, oh, my gosh, here they come. And now that could be a part of the deal. It's like, no, you have to have a real preexisting relationship with the person. So, again, you know, Larry's probably correct. And I would concur that, like, for many people Starting out, the 506C does mean they're all accredited, but it does give you wider latitude to be able to publish and market the deal, et cetera. And again, these are areas I would suggest also, too, you definitely need to have your legal team on it, but also not be kind of running afoul of that. Right. Like, if you're a 506B, meaning you're only going to work with people, you already have existing relationships, you can't be like, hey, let me slip it out there on Facebook and Instagram and all that. It's like, you really get yourself set up for not doing the right thing, and that's never a good thing.

Yeah, well, that's gold. So, look, guys, if you are serious about leveling up your real estate game, I would strongly advise learn to raise capital. Raising capital is one of the highest skill sets you can possibly have in this game and in life. Really, you learn to do this skill set is going to empower you to go exponentially faster than everyone else. Right. And so I would just encourage you, you know, get these tactics down. If you want more about this, drop in the comments. I'd love to get more on a certain topic. Would love to hear your comments. And, and we can create a video around that. So if any of this helped, you would love to hear it. Make sure to subscribe, like the video. And also, if you're looking to join a powerful group of real estate investors, you know, like Chris mentioned, like, look, you. You. You get around people that are where you want to be, and the game changes, everything changes. It's just one connection. You're. You're one connection away from changing your whole life. And so I would just encourage you. You know, we have a mastermind, would love to see if that's a good fit. You could schedule a call with one of our advisors. Obviously, it's. It's not for everybody, so we'll be pretty honest with you. We have no incentive to sell you on anything, but would love to connect with you if it makes sense. Because, you know, look, you got to find the person who's already solved the next 10 problems you have, there's somebody out there that's already solved the Next, you know, 10 problems you have. And so I want to encourage you, get in groups, get in where people have money, get in where people have done the things that you want to do. And that's probably the one of the biggest points here today. But big, you know, I appreciate you guys jumping on and looking forward to working with all you guys that are. That are watching and looking forward to helping you further. And it's a pleasure, guys. Thanks for jumping on, Chris. And thank you.

On to the next deal.

Yes, sir. Let's go.

See you guys.

Bye.

Bye, guys. Have a great day.