How to Build Your Own Crowdfunding Platform

This webinar is— there it is. That's the one we wanted.

All right. We'll get our act together here shortly. Sorry to our chitchat as we get going here, but all right. Welcome to Syndication Attorneys free monthly podcast where we talk about topics of interest to real estate syndicators with the opportunity for live questions and answers at the end of the call. I am attorney Kim Lisa Taylor. Before we get started, please note that all of our podcasts will be recorded and may be used for future promotion. Posted on our website or broadcast in a podcast available to the public. If you don't wish to have your voice recorded, please schedule a one-on-one consultation instead of asking questions during the live call. Information discussed during this free podcast is of a general educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice. Okay, so today our topic is how to start your very own crowdfunding platform to get investors. And our guest speaker is the infamous Dr. Adam Gower. Okay.

I love the infamy.

If you've never seen—

They've all got an infamy.

If you've never seen Dr. Gower speak before, he's a very dynamic speaker and he's interesting. He's interesting and engaging and fun. So, uh, this should be an entertaining show. Um, so Dr. Gower, thank you so much for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we're happy. We're honored. Tell us about yourself, your company, what you do.

Sure. So I'll try and keep it brief because you have asked me the one question that I like talking about the most—

me.

Right. So I will try and keep it brief. I actually have been involved in real estate investments and finance since 1982. It's a very, very long time ago when I started pulling wires for an electrician. So that's how I started in the industry, although my family was in real estate in England many years ago and in Europe. And the short story is that my career spanned all the way through to 2007. in raising capital and doing deals. And I worked for institutions. I ran a division of Universal Studios in Asia Pacific, building their real estate. I did my own deals. I worked for— well, actually, until 2007, when I sold my portfolio right at the beginning of the global financial crisis. And it was shortly after— then I went to work for a bank because they'd done a lot of lending. to real estate sponsors, and a lot of the loans were non-performing, real estate collateralized. So I worked on their balance sheets, cleaned that out, and then I worked for Colony Capital, same kind of thing. They'd bought $7 billion of notes with the FDIC, all distressed. And shortly after that, I started developing— well, when the laws changed in 2012, allowing for general solicitation, I started building digital marketing platforms for sponsors because it occurred to me that this was a transformational shift, that you no longer had to have a pre-existing relationship with somebody to be able to say, do you want to invest with me? You could actually put it out on— you could advertise on Facebook, for crying out loud. So that is what we do now. We build digital marketing platforms, crowdfunding platforms for sponsors. We teach sponsors how to build them themselves in all kinds of different ways. And that's what we do. We help sponsors find investors and raise money big scale.

So let's just kind of give a little bit of foundation for what you're talking about. So for the attendees, there are 2 federal exemptions that are very commonly used for people to raise private money. One is called Reg D, Regulation D, Rule 506. These are exemptions that are promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So, well, first of all, when you're selling securities, you either have to register your offering or qualify for an exemption from registration. Registering your offering is like going public. It takes a long time. It's very expensive. You don't have time for that for real estate. So everybody does the alternative, which is qualify for the exemption. So the exemptions that everybody uses, if you're crossing state lines, so when you're bringing— buying properties in multiple states or you have investors from multiple states, you're going to use one of these federal exemptions so that you only have to follow one set of federal rules that supersedes all the individual state rules. And so the 2 that everybody uses are Regulation D Rule 506, which is the friends and family exemption, or Regulation D Rule 506. So 506, you can raise unlimited amount of money from an unlimited number of accredited investors and up to 35 non-accredited but sophisticated investors But you can't find them through any means of advertising or general solicitation. So the way to prove that is to be able to show that you have a pre-existing substantive relationship with those people before you even offer them investment opportunities. So a lot of people start there, but then when you've kind of run through all your family and friends and everybody that you know, you get to a point where you need to start advertising. And by then, hopefully you've built a sufficient track record that you can successfully advertise. And then you're going to go into the 506 world. So that's where Dr. Gower comes in, is that now you're ready to do 506 offerings, and he's going to help you set up a website that's going to be able to attract those investors to you, right?

Correct.

And some automated systems to keep them engaged so that you can get them to invest with you when you have deals. So that's the gist of this show. is talking about how you can do your own 506 crowdfunding platform that allows you to advertise and bring in accredited investors that you don't know before. So, so that's your foundation.

So that is the small print. That is the small print that lies behind I build crowdfunding platforms.

That's when you hear a pharmaceutical ad. And they tell you all the things.

Yes. You might die.

You might die. You might have horrible consequences. But yeah, go ahead and get the money. That's what that was. All right, good. All right, so now back to you. So we know about you and what you do. So you're helping your marketing company. So what does a typical Gower client, Gower crowd, client look like?

Well, it really depends. So we take on private clients, and our private clients, we build the whole thing for them. Right. And those clients typically are multi-cycle seasoned veterans of real estate development. So some of them, our biggest client has $16 billion, I want to say, last count, $16 billion Billion under management.

Wow.

And our smallest, probably, uh, smallest portfolio client, maybe $100 million. Yeah. So, you know, established, seasoned, uh, sponsors who have traditionally only ever done 506s. In other words, they've only gone to a very small network of investors that with whom they have preexisting relationships and who they have known forever, basically. It's the old school way of doing it. And they have realized that it is a brand new world, a brand new opportunity to be able to raise capital online. And so they come to us to help them expand their investor database. So that's one. That's our typical private clients are kind of larger scale. Established multi-cycle season sponsors. Then we also do a— we have a program where I personally guide clients or in small groups, I personally guide sponsors through the same process. Right. So instead of doing it for you, we do it with you. I personally teach you how to do it over a 12-week period. And those sponsors are typically Well, you know, varies really just kind of more or less institutionalized than the bigger guys, but still relatively substantial. It could be anything from— we do have— we have some that have single projects, for example. They just have one project that has a long tail on it. We've got one guy that has an opportunity fund For example, that's like a $28 million deal. He wants to do $14 million of equity. So we're going to help him build out a platform. And, you know, small, really small kind of sub-$100 million, anything under $100 million, anything $10 million and up, I suppose, would want to go through that program. And then we also provide all kinds of training, recorded training, and that is across the board, really. We have some larger clients that like to buy those and just do it themselves in their own time, all the way down to startups, basically folk that are just getting into the industry now. Look, the point is that you have to have— it used to be, right? So let's just look at the evolution of capital raising. It used to be— I haven't got any of my own cards because I don't carry cards anymore. We used to have a card, a business card. And you would meet somebody, you would exchange business cards, you go to a conference and, Gail, here's your card, here's mine. And you take that back and it would have an address on it and a phone number, right? You call them and you'd follow up and you'd send something by mail. You might get together with them. And then over time, maybe 20 years or so ago, beginning during the dot-com boom, it became necessary to have a website. Right. You needed a website. You couldn't just have a phone number. So you'd have a website. And 99% of people, 99.9% of people have websites. Not everybody. Most people have a website. But that website is nothing more than a glorified business card. It's got a couple of pictures, a bit of a blurb, and a Contact Me page. It's basically all there is. And that's fine. And that was fine until the laws changed in 2012. Now you have to have a functional machine that can leverage the power of the internet, leverage the power of digital marketing never allowed before in order to allow people to find you, learn about you, and come to you. It reverses the mechanics of what goes on. Now you don't have to go out and find them. They will come to you, but you have to have a presence online that enables that to work and to happen. And that is the next evolution. So that's a functional website, a lead generating website. I forgot what your question was, of course, but I'm going to stop right there.

Yeah, no, that's perfect. Yeah, because really there are 2 different reasons to have a website. There's one reason a syndicator has a website, and that's a credibility package, right? This just shows that you've got a storefront, you're a legitimate company, you're selling, you know, people that you're trying to buy properties from can check you out, brokers can check you out, lenders can check you out, your investors that you meet, you can send them to your website, they can check you out. But then the alternative to that is to actually have a dynamic website, which is more like our website, right? Our website for syndication attorneys has a ton of content. We're constantly doing things to try to drive people to our website that will schedule appointments with us and then ultimately learn about our services and hopefully become clients. And so that's the other kind of website that Dr. Gower's talking about is where you're going to be driving people to your website so that you can engage with them and turn them into prospective investors and get them to invest with you in the future. So that, that's the world we're in right now. There's nothing wrong with having the other type of website. You just need to understand which kind of website you want, right? Is one just for credibility, but you're not—

Yeah, I mean, look, I would, uh, I would, Kim, I would make the case that having a website that has no functionality is a complete waste of time. It's, it's good. It's invisible. You will not be found. You will not be seen.

You've got to send somebody to it. That's right.

You have to proactively send somebody to it. And if you proactively send somebody to it, And it doesn't have functionality, it is useless. It is useless. When I say functionality, I mean lead generation, prospect tracking, and educational content. If it doesn't have that, it's— I mean, it's better than having nothing. Absolutely nothing. If all you have is a Gmail address and nothing at all, that's not good. Although I've come across some Huge family offices that have just— that's remarkable how they've managed over the years. But those private, closely held family offices that want to come out from under the rock they've been under for as many years as they have. But for somebody that is trying to expand and build their business and grow in this incredible economy that we're in, as wacky as it is at the moment, having a website, For credibility means it has to have functionality. You've got to be able to capture leads and educate people. And that also, by the way, extends to your social media. Your website is the epicenter of all education. When I say educate, let's kind of clear this up because it can be slightly baffling. Let me explain how that works. Anybody on this call Has probably raised money somewhere, and if you think about how you've done that, think about one of your investors and just picture in your mind for the moment the first moment you met that prospect when they were just a prospect. It might have been through an introduction; it may have been through a conference. Who the heck knows? But you met them the first time, and now remember or recall. each stage in how you develop the relationship with them before they signed on a contract and sent you money. What were the stages? They wanted to know your background. They wanted to know your experience. They wanted to know your philosophy to investing. They wanted to get to know, like, and trust you before you could even pitch them a deal. Right. They wanted to get— you might have been at the country club, who knows? Right. Classic country club scenario. Think about what that relationship took, what it took to get to the close before they sent you a check. That is the education you put on your website. Everything that you talk about— you, your philosophy, your background, your experience, your view of real estate, how you, how you find deals, how you underwrite deals, what deals look like, what kind of asset class, why you like your asset class. Everything that you explain to them, that is the education I'm talking about. And all you do is you convert that into a digital format. You create videos, you create articles, audio, you can do podcasts, whatever it is, that is what you put on your website. So it is the corpus of knowledge that you have all domiciled on your website or put on your website for somebody to consume in their own time, on their own device, wherever, whenever they want to. They don't want to be pitched. They don't want to go through those dozens of meetings that you had to go through any more than you do, right? They want to be able to learn about you on their own anonymously. And when they come to you, they will be ready to invest. They will be predisposed. They've already bought into your Kool-Aid or whatever you call it, right? They've bought your story. They've learned about you. Now they're ready to invest. That is the— when I talk about a website, that's what your website needs to have.

That's interesting. So, you know, and again, using an analogy to our website, I think we have some of that, maybe not all of it, but, you know, we do these podcasts so that people can get to know us. We have our own podcast platform. We create tons of educational content. So when people go to our website, they're getting something of value. And then they feel like, oh, well, because they knew what, you know, they knew enough to write this article that educated me, they know what they're doing. So why don't we work with them? And that's where you're trying to get.

Exactly.

Right. So exactly, you're positioning yourself as an expert, would you say?

Well, you end up being perceived as an expert. Okay. All you're doing is really just talking about any way, shape, or form that you've raised money before. It's always been in person. You've had to explain it to the same thing again and again and again and again, right? Each time you meet a new prospect, You go through the same dog and pony show. When you digitize it and put it on your website, you never have to do that again. You really don't ever have to do that again because your prospects will consume that themselves. Think about it. When you go out and buy something, and I use the example of a vacuum cleaner because it's a $400 or $500 product, whatever. And not so long ago I bought one. We needed a new one. The old one clapped out. I spent an hour researching a $400 product, right? Consumer Reports, all the Google reports, whatever, the Amazon reports. I went to websites, I checked out, and I identified which one I wanted. It was ideal for me, right? That's what I did. You're asking people for tens, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars in the aggregate. Don't you think they're going to do research on you? They're going to research you. And so your job today is to make that as easy as possible for them to do the research. And trust me, if— trust me, I'm a doctor, right? I love to say that. They will— if you don't do it, if they run a search on Google that says, how do I invest in real estate? And I'm oversimplifying it, but if they run a search on your name and you don't pop up, or you're in a data center investing or self-storage or multifamily, whatever it is, if they run a search and there isn't enough information there and they want to learn something and run a search, guess what's going to happen? Somebody else's website, probably one of our clients, is going to pop up in the search. They will learn from that person and they will invest with them. Not with you. It's no longer optional. It is now mandatory. If you want to have— if you want to raise money online, you have to have an online presence, period. Otherwise, you don't exist. It's simple as that.

So what are the components of that online presence that you teach people to do?

I thought you'd never ask. There are, let's see, there are several key components. The first is on your homepage. I'll run through these very briefly. The first thing on your homepage, you have to have a very compelling aspirational tagline. You have to keep in mind what it is that you have to address your prospects' The conversation that your prospect is having in their own mind and the conversation they're having in their own mind when they land on your website, there's only one thing they're thinking about. What's in it for me? It's the only thing. So whatever you have at the top of your homepage on what's called the hero image, right, right at the top, has to grab them, has to say what's in it for— answer that question. Something cool is in it for you on this website.

Right?

That's the first thing. You have to directly speak to that conversation in their mind. And then immediately beneath that, you've got to have an opportunity, give them an opportunity to have that question answered in more detail with something like a button that says learn more. I'm oversimplifying, but a button that says learn more, that immediately requests 2 things of your prospects. Their first name and their email address, right? Critical. And this, again, this is 50,000 feet overview. Obviously, there's more layers to this. As soon as they give you their name and email address because you've inspired them to understand that you've got something they want— oh, and by the way, think about this. Everybody on this call, if you're a sponsor, if you're a syndicator, you have What everybody wants. It should be the easiest sell in the world because what you are offering is more money, right? Passive income and generation. Everybody wants that. You've got what everybody wants.

Say that again. More money.

Passive. You've got— you are offering— everybody on this call is saying this, right? What everybody— if I said to you, Kim, here, Let me give you passive income and double your money or whatever. I'm making these numbers up.

Sure.

Right. And you had no doubt at all in who I was.

Right.

If there was no such thing as distrust, if you trusted me implicitly, you'd say, great, that's all I ever want.

Perfect.

I'll give you all my money. Here it is. Right. But the barrier is everybody, all your prospects, they are suspicious. Right. You've got what they want. It is your job to help them trust you. And right, that's the key. You've got what they want. You've got to help them come to know, like, and trust you. And you want to do it remotely. You don't have to do that in person anymore. So you got to have a tagline on your website that says, here's why you should trust me, or here's what I've got for you. It's really cool. You're going to love it. Learn more, a button that gets their name and email address. And then the next thing that happens is boom. As soon as they send their first name and email address, you then follow up with automated emails that gives them value.

Boom, boom, boom.

What is it? Who is he? Gary Vee or whatever his name is, the jab, jab, jab or whatever he likes to talk about. You then send out 3 or 4 emails in a sequence. All automated that provide value. Now what you're doing is you are building a relationship, or you are establishing a relationship with your prospects completely automated. So those four emails are what I call an indoctrination sequence. Some people call them a welcome sequence. This is how you now establish a relationship with your prospects. That at the highest level. Is the most important thing on your website. All right. Now, of course, you've got to have educational content and your lead generation forms need to be embedded on those pages. And then once you have all of that, what you then do is you push this same content out onto social media. And guess what? You automate that as well. So now what happens is that somebody does a piece of research, right? You show up on Kim's show like me. In fact, let me get everybody to do this now, right? You can all multitask. Run the name— run Adam Gower crowdfunding on Google and see how many pages deep you have to go on Google before you find somebody other than me. Adam Gower crowdfunding or Adam Gower syndication. See how far. It's probably 5 or 6 pages. That is ultra-high credibility. All modesty aside, you can do the same thing when somebody researches you online. You want your, your LinkedIn profile is going to be the first thing that shows up. So what you do on your LinkedIn profile is you create essentially a facsimile of your website on LinkedIn and on Twitter and on Facebook. And if you can do videos, you do YouTube as well. So now when somebody researches you, which they will do, they're going to find you everywhere. And that is what builds credibility. That is— and to answer specifically your point, that is what positions you as an authority in the industry. You become seen as being an authority. You don't go out necessarily try to be an authority. God tried to do that. But by taking action and developing a presence online, you become recognized as an authority who can be trusted. So when you speak to somebody for the first time, they already want to invest with you.

That's fantastic. And of course, as you're saying that, I'm thinking, oh, do we have these things? Do I need to pay you thousands and thousands of dollars to do this?

Well, no, actually. I mean, you did say— I wasn't sure if you said I could pitch. If I said I could pitch, I've got to sell. $7 pitch at the end. I'll tell you how you can find it all in $7. All right? It's the easiest thing ever.

Don't worry. So what are the main mistakes that people do make when they're raising money online?

They don't do that. That's their main mistake. Yeah, they don't even know what to set that at. Well, they're not even— I think most people aren't even aware of it, that it's so brand new. Look, you never need it. Here's the thing. If you just cast your mind back to pre-506, pre-crowdfunding, or pre-online syndication— something flashed on my screen there, I'm not sure what. If you cast your mind back, you will find that— By the way, Scott and Tabitha, just make sure you're not seeing ads on page 2. I'm not counting ads, people advertising on page 2 when you do a search like that. If you cast your mind back, you had to engage people personally, right? You had to meet them in person, right? 506, you had to have an existing relationship. So you had to develop a relationship. You could not do it online in that world. In that world, you didn't need anything because you were doing it all in person. You could have a website that had naff all on it, basically, but because you were doing it all in person. And so now I'm being distracted by the blooming chat and I've lost my train of thought. I can't remember what I was talking about.

We'll get to the chat at the end. We'll go ahead.

Mistakes. Mistakes. So everybody. Yeah, everybody. Has a website, potentially has a website. We have companies that have billions of dollars under management who have been doing it for multi-generations, who have the worst websites you can imagine because you never actually needed one. So the biggest mistake people make is, I think, probably it's a mind shift, right? Appreciation that when you leverage the internet, you just have to do things differently. The other thing that's beautiful about it, the other big mistake is not realizing, kind of being intimidated going in. I don't know how to do this. It's overwhelming. I don't know what I would write. I don't know how to write. I can't write. I don't like video. I don't know how to do my website. All these kind of overwhelm that you get. Just think about this. You only need to do it once. Once you build the machine, it just runs. How long have you had a website? Years and years and years. You've probably never edited the thing, right? Well, it's the same. Once you build the machine, it just runs. It becomes an asset to your company. So the biggest mistake is getting over the hurdle From, I don't know how to do it, I don't know what to do or where to start, to, okay, I'm going to make a concerted effort to build this thing out. And then once it's built, boom, you've got something that now puts you ahead of the competition because there's very few people do it.

And there's one thing, if any of you are thinking about doing a Regulation A+ offering, which is not an exemption that we talked about, it's actually a public company, but some of you may have heard the name Grant Cardone and you may have received his emails in the past and he's had a Reg A+ offering. And the reason that he was so successful with his Reg A+ offering is because he set up a marketing machine that would, you know, anybody that expressed any interest would continually get information from him about, you know, adding to his credibility, making new offers. things like that. So if you're at all thinking about doing a Reg A+ offering, this is a necessary component because that allows you to raise up to $75 million in a 12-month period and a rolling 12-month period, so you can continue your company on forever. But for Rule 506 offerings, I don't think people think of it in the same way. I think they just think, oh well, that allows me to to advertise and I can put up a website and anybody can invest, but they don't think about this next component of how are you going to engage with them? How are you going to establish that credibility? How are you going to keep them interested so they're still around when you get a deal? And I think that's what your program does.

Well, exactly. It's marketing. I mean, if you do a Reg A, now you're going after non-accredited investors as well. Your minimum is likely to be much smaller, so you need vastly more people to actually fill out your offering, which means that you have— this is basically a Reg A, is what is colloquially known in the trade as a mini IPO, right? It's a mini IPO, just a downshift. It's an easier thing, whatever. Kim will tell you all the details. But basically it's an IPO, small-scale IPO. And that means you got to advertise. No good going ahead. And I don't mean to take any wind out of your sails, Kim, for a second, but it's no good doing a Reg A and putting all the dots together and then sitting there Exactly. But now what? You've got all your docs, you sent all of them. Now what? You expect people to just come streaming towards you with their wallets open? Doesn't work like that. Now you've got to go out, you've got to market, you've got to do advertising, and you've got to have a website that captures those leads. There's no point—

My best analogy for this is, do you remember the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner?

Yes. Build it and they will come. Build it and they will come. No, it doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

No. Only in Hollywood.

You would.

Well, maybe, maybe the ghost investors will come, right?

Yes. You don't want them.

They don't actually have any money.

No, they have ghost money.

Yeah, I told you this would be funny. Okay. Um, all right. So, you know, I guess how long could— if somebody sets up all these systems, how quickly have you seen somebody raise like $5 million in equity?

Yeah, it's a super question. You know, I was on a I was invited to a conference where the topic was how to raise $5 million in 30 days. How do you raise $5 million in 30 days? I'll tell you exactly how to do that right now. This is the ultimate, the ultimate answer to that question. You want to raise $5 million in 30 days? Start 12 months ago. That's how you do it.

Okay.

You just got to build it, but then you can raise $5 million in 30 days. If you need to raise $5 million today, Right? Because you're in escrow on a deal, then you're you know you're SOL. You pardon the expression. But if you build it, and if you spend three months, you can spend ninety days. Like for example, go through our syndicator program. If you work and put it all together in ninety days, you will be positioned to potentially raising whatever you know five million in thirty days. I'm not sure. I could make any promises, right? Your deal has to work. You got to have the right background. You got to have the right terms, the right docs, right? There's a lot of other things, right? You've got to have the right offering. Otherwise nobody will buy or invest with you. But you could potentially— you will have the system that you need to be able to put your best foot forward.

So what about a newsletter? Should we be advising our clients that they should Right.

So communicate— what number are we up to, by the way, on the questions?

We're on number 7. Well, 7, but number 1 was the Intel stuff.

Okay. And if anyone has any questions, they should lob them in to help both Kim and me out. I can talk for hours, by the way, but I don't want to run people over.

Well, that's okay. Yeah. In fact, this is a good point, time to mention it. You can ask a question in the Q&A. You can ask a question in the chat. And then we're going to— about 5 minutes, we're going to give you time to ask them.

Okay, ask me anything kind of thing, right? So the key to success is communication, right? That's absolutely critical. So first you got to start building your list, right? Everything that I just described— proper website, lead generation forms, and a good social media presence— that will start bringing traffic to you. People will sign up. As soon as they sign up, you're going to start communicating right away with a sequence of emails that are a high value add for your prospects and not pitches at all. You're going to add value, you're going to teach them something of value about real estate investing that is specifically in your field of expertise, obviously. And then once you've done that, then you have to continue communicating. And the way you do that is through a newsletter. Again, educational newsletter. Don't be sending out send me money emails all the time. You want to be educating. And we have a weekly newsletter that is incredibly popular, and I have a couple of blocks on that where I think I pitch my books on it or something. I'm not really sure at the bottom of it. But it's exclusively educational. And so we just put one out yesterday that was a podcast I did with John Chang, who's head of research at Marcus& Millichap, about impacts of war on—

I just met him.

Oh, did you really? John Chang? Fascinating guy.

I did meet him. Yeah, I actually had some drinks with him. He was a nice guy.

Yeah, he's very, very bright and very articulate. And energetic. So it's a very good podcast and it's very timely. So I sent out an email anyway to my newsletter yesterday saying, hey, you've got to listen to this podcast. Next week it'll be irrelevant because the world will have changed. So listen to it this week. I'll help you prepare, basically. And then I have a bunch of other stuff on my newsletter. So my newsletter is slightly different angle. But for sponsors, for issuers who are trying to raise money, you want to be Sending out an email at minimum once a month, at maximum once a week. Do not go more than once a week and ideally once every 2 weeks. I find once every 2 weeks is best because then you're not constantly scrambling for something to talk about. Now, the other thing that you want to do with your newsletter, don't put all the good stuff in the newsletter. Use the newsletter As a teaser and always include a call to action. In fact, in everything that you do, you want to have a call to action. And a call to action is here's something cool, click here to learn more, basically. So when you post on social media, always include a link back to your website, right? Find a page on your website. Here's a cool article on the IRR or Ukraine crisis or whatever impact of inflation on real estate. This is one of the findings, this is one of our opinions, click here to learn more, read the article. Always give people an opportunity to take another step in their relationship to you. So when somebody lands on an article on your website, inside that you want to have a call to action that says sign up, right, for my newsletter. Then when you send out a newsletter, that should also have a call to action. Here's something really cool that we just learned about the impact of I'm just picking the same topic because it's top of mind, everybody, at the moment. Potential impact of 200 basis point increase in interest rates. Gasp. Before the end of the year. That is staggering if you think about that. So well over doubling where we are today. What is the impact of that in commercial real estate? Boom. Click here to learn more. Take them to an article. Or you know what you could also do? You could do a short video. We've had clients do short videos that are pretty cool as well, where you turn on Zoom, right? And you say, here are my thoughts. Or you could even use your phone. It really doesn't take much these days. You've got devices all over the place. Post something on your website and in your newsletter. Here's some thoughts I had about the impact of interest rates and direct people. And on that page, sign up for my newsletter. Got to have a CTA there as well.

Let's go on. We've got a couple more things I want to cover before we go to Q&A. But I want to get to it pretty quickly. So email marketing, is that, you know, we kind of covered that already, or is there anything else you think we need to say about that?

Email marketing. So the thing about email marketing, yes, I will give you the best advice. The biggest mistake that sponsors make: never ever buy a list, period. Trust me, I'm a doctor. Don't do it. You will devastate your deliverability. You will not be able to get emails through. You will be classified as a spammer immediately you send out your first email, and you will not get emails through to your best investors, period. Do not buy and blast to email lists. Take the time to Encourage people to opt into your list and communicate with them. This is actually a very big topic. It's probably the biggest mistake that everybody makes. They think that buying a list is the silver bullet. It is the biggest mistake you can make. Seriously, you go out and buy a list where you think you're the first person that's bought that list. There are thousands of people that came before you and they've all blasted away. To that same exact list. And guess what? Those lists are seeded with what are called spam bots, honeypots, email addresses that are specifically engineered to identify you as a spammer. Number one. Number two, even if they weren't, these recipients have received thousands of unsolicited emails already. What, you think you can stand out against those? Don't do it. You will be labeled a spammer. And you— it's one of the hardest things we have to do for our clients is unwrap the mess they've made buying and blasting to lists. It takes months. And if you've ever had anyone say your email went to spam, then you got to clean up your lists. You need to change your practices.

I would also say make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Because if you don't make it easy for people to unsubscribe, then they will push you to junk, which actually then hurts you, right?

Yeah, well, that's it. And you don't be— don't be bothered if somebody unsubscribes. It's okay if they unsubscribe. It's like, I know people that get all panicky and they look to see who, they take it personally. Don't worry about it. They'll never with you. Think about this. Here's a great way of contextualizing this. I'm going to cast your mind back to high school math. Sorry to do that. You remember the bell curve? We called it the normal curve in England, right? The bell curve. Down the middle are the average. Those people could take or leave you. They don't want it one way or the other. You're on their list. They're on your list. You know, whatever. They're never really going to engage. On the far left, the more standard deviations you go to the left, The more people think you are a complete idiot, right? They are the people that send you F you emails, right? They're like the nasty, the nasty set that think you're an idiot, hate everything you do. For every single one of those way on the other side, that 99 whatever, 99 percentile, 1 percentile of people on the other side of that curve. They love you. They will read everything you produce. They will watch every video. They will eat everything up and they will invest. And they are a tiny proportion of the entire world that you will be communicating with online. And they are the ones who will change your life. They are the ones who will invest.

One last question and then we're going to go to Q&A. So is paid advertising effective?

Yes, extremely. We have— we run campaigns for ourselves and we run campaigns for clients. Let me have a quick look. And it is effective. However, it's much better. It's far more effective. We have 17 new accredited investors today. Past— this is my website— past 30 days, 990. Now that's not all paid advertising. That's a lot of numbers. That's a big number. That's not all accredited, but that's a lot of people building my list, all opting in, all opt-ins. But paid advertising is much more effective when you have a good mousetrap. In other words, if you've got a good website, a good social presence, because what's going to happen is somebody is going to see you on FaceChat. Facebook, by the way, is the best one to advertise on. Even bother with anything else. Facebook's the only way to go. Love them or hate them, that's how you find investors. The first thing somebody is going to do is they're going to research you. All right. They're going to see, you know, janesyndicator.com and they're going to look you up and they'll look you up on LinkedIn and they'll look you up on Twitter or your Facebook page or wherever they are. And if there isn't depth and substance, it's going to be harder for you to convert that prospect. into actually investing. You're gonna have to really handhold them. So yeah, you're muted.

I see that. What kind of a budget would you recommend for someone just starting out for paid ads?

Yeah, so right, I'll tell you what it costs. This, I'll just give you actual numbers, right? So then you can decide what budget you want. This is not— you can't spend $10 a day, all right? This is— you got to be investing. That's why you need to your mousetrap first. If you were to talk to any of the major crowdfunding platforms, they will tell you, depending on who you talk to, $200 and up to acquire one accredited investor lead. So that's somebody that says name, first name, last name, yes, I'm accredited, right? Those 3 fields, it's going to cost you $200, between $200 and $400. We run campaigns for clients with, you know, with these platforms that we build for them or that they built themselves. And I just want to be very, very clear, these are not normal results, right? Just to be clear, this is— these aren't market. Market is $200 to $400 per lead, but we are generating leads at under— I think the last one I looked at, we got one client we're delivering at $30 under $40, $39.91, I think yesterday per lead. And I will tell you, I'll have a quick look, my cost per lead and we're running campaign, we're testing some new stuff at the moment. I'll just have a quick look at this. Here we are. So for the April 5th webinar with the leaders of the top 4 crowdfunding platforms, my cost per lead accredited is $20, $20.11. So 1/10. of what the crowdfunding platforms spend. So it really depends on how many— by the way, I will tell you that one of the biggest problems that our clients have when we run campaigns for them is handling the volume of investors. That's the challenge they have.

Right.

How do we handle this? I mean, we build automated systems, but they like to do phone calls and they get a bit overwhelmed and have to hire new people to handle it. We deliver— I think that One of our clients with up to 1,400 accredited investors in just 4 months. New, all brand new.

Tell us about your offer and how people can reach you.

Right. So the best way to reach me, of course, is just go to gowercrowd.com and ideally just subscribe, hit the button top right. It's totally free. You just get on my email list for the newsletter, which is educational. Yeah, go ahead. Is that okay? So here's a $7 book that really dives deep into the best practices for a website. I basically skinned out the most important things that you need. It comes with a training. There's like a free training as well where I actually walk you through everything. It's really cool. I used a really cool tool. to do the training for this thing. 72 minutes. So it's over an hour. It's really cool. It's like I draw on the screen and you can see my writing. It's really— it's like Kana Kanabi, only way better. I got this tool from South Korea, of all places. Really difficult to install. That is— those would be the 2 places. And then can I also— do you mind if I just put in a link to this April 5th webinar?

No, go ahead.

Is that okay? So this is with— so just check this out. I'm interviewing— well, not interviewing, I'm hosting Torstein, founder of CrowdStreet, Jillian Hellman, founder of Realty Mogul, Adam Hooper, founder of Crowd— of RealCrowd, and Charles Clinton, founder of Equity Multiple. April 5th is the 10th anniversary, the passing of the JOBS Act in 2012. And basically I'm asking everybody who signs up What questions have you got? Because I'm still scratching my head. What should I ask these eminent people in the industry? And what I'd most like to do is to ask your questions. So if you sign up for that, you'll get an email immediately from me saying, what questions do you want to ask? All automated, of course. And it's a Zoom call. And then we've got to also review how this thing worked on Facebook. Kim, we've got to see how many millions of people are watching. We don't know, do we, right now? No, we don't know. You're burning up the internet.

That's right. Okay. So let's just kind of go through what questions we might have. Hey, Art, thanks for saying, hey, Google Kim Lisa Taylor and she dominates 8 pages. I don't know. Maybe I could do better, right, Adam?

That's a good one. Yeah, try yourself as well. Let's have a look.

Okay. Another one.

Yeah, very cool.

Best advice ever. Let's see. Anybody else have any questions? Go ahead and put it in the Q&A or in the chat. We're monitoring both of those. Um, let's see, uh, David says please consider including the top 5 portals. Um, and I'm not sure what he's talking about there. Um, so—

Well, the top 5 websites, the top 5 crowdfunding websites, the top, the top 4 are in that 10-year anniversary link, and you can hear directly from those founders on April 5th.

Okay.

Um, and then, you know, the other one that's commonly mistaken as being a, uh, kind of gen— for the general public is Fundrise. They're enormously successful. Ben Miller is, you know, a good guy, and I communicate with him more frequently. But he is not— he's a cra— he crowdfunds his deals, he does Reg A's, but they do their own deals. Whereas the 4 that are in the webinar on April 5th They bring in sponsors, outside sponsors, and they, uh, they promote outside sponsors. So that's kind of the distinction, uh, between those two— between, between— that's why Fundrise isn't part of it.

So, okay, uh, Kenneth asks, what was the name of the $7 book?

It's called Syndicate, and the link is in the chat. I put it to host and panelists. Everyone's a panelist, right? Uh, and it's actually not a book.

You gotta say everyone. There's another selection. You have to put it—

Oh, maybe, right. Hold on. Okay, okay, everyone. Okay, I got it. So here, sorry about that, right? So there is the 10-year anniversary. Sorry about that. And then, uh, thanks for letting me know. And then this is the book. It is only $7 and it's satisfaction guaranteed. If you don't like it, I'll send you $7 back, but it is probably the highest value It's probably the best book I've written, this one, Syndicate. You're gonna get an e-version of it when you buy it online, and it comes with that 72 minutes of training. It really is the motherlode of everything. You follow that stuff, you will move the needle substantially. I mean, you really will. These are the key lessons that you really need to do.

So Bob asks, There's some crowdfunders who will white label your deals and have hundreds of investors. Are they okay?

So this is a legal question, Kim. What I think they're asking is somebody going out promoting your deal and being paid to do it. Why don't you mention why?

I'm not really sure what he means by the white label crowdfunders. I mean, I know about CrowdStreet and RealCrowd and how they operate. And the way that they operate is that you pay a marketing fee to them. And then they push your deal out to their list of accredited investors. And they've spent lots and lots of money cultivating lists of accredited investors. But that doesn't come without a cost. First of all, they're very selective about who they take.

Yeah.

So they're only taking like the top 1% or 2%, less than 5% of the people that come to them will they even consider doing— allowing them to put their stuff on their platform. And then also, I have had several clients that have used CrowdStreet in the past, and they— their recent experience was that CrowdStreet was, was kind of driving some terms for them that they could not— they couldn't use. So they ended up kind of turning away from it, saying, you know, we can't, we can't, we can't meet the terms that they're requesting us to do, so we're going to have to do it on our own. So I'm not saying there's anything bad about CrowdStreet doing that. You just have to understand that that doesn't come without a cost, that you may have to modify your terms to suit their platform. And you also have to be able to pass their credibility test. And that usually— and it was kind of an ever-evolving number. As the crowdfunding industry matures, they look for people with more and more completed deals. start to finish dollar amounts that were palatable for their investors, I guess. And then they also— what was the other thing is a little different is that they wanted $25,000 minimums, whereas a lot of our clients when they're doing their own offerings will do $50,000 minimums. So you get twice as many smaller investors and they don't know you, so they are a little more suspicious of you and perhaps You know, a little more demanding. And that was the experience my clients had, was that the crowdfunding clients or investors that they got were not as, you know, as valid. I guess they weren't as trusting as the people that they took the time to develop the relationships with on their own.

Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is that they only take, like you say, it's actually, I think it's 5% of people who come to them. So there's 95% of people don't get on the platform. I mean, it's not easy to qualify.

Yeah.

Just one other thought about Facebook marketing. You did ask about that, Facebook advertising. So one way that we help some of our clients is we run webinars, masterclasses, right? These are training that's strictly educational, right? You can transition to a pitch at the end, a little bit at the end, kind of like this conversation, strictly educational. And we advertise those on Facebook and we guarantee 100 accredited investors will sign up. Right. So you're guaranteed 100 accredited investors. So if you're interested in that, be happy to talk to you. We are somewhat selective on that. You've got to have substance. I don't mean to be weird or anything. You have some experience and background and you've got to be able to do a webinar. Right. It's not so easy to do it.

Well, I know, I know there's some people on the call that are thinking, yeah, but what if I don't have that experience? Well, you can leverage off other people's experience. So you need to team with people that have the experience that you want in order to be able to propel your business forward if you don't have any experience. Otherwise, you need to build your track record and your experience by doing 506 offerings with your family and friends who already know, like, and trust you and who will invest with you before you've developed a track record. But in order to be able to advertise and bring in investors that don't know you, you have to survive the very first question they're going to ask you, which is, how many of these have you done before?

Have you done it before? Yes.

Yep. And so until you can answer that question, you can answer that by saying, well, you know, our team has collectively done this. Okay. And you just need to make sure that that's a true statement, because otherwise that would be fraud. David makes a cautionary statement here: be careful of unregistered finders. SEC is looking to bring them into the light. The SEC is also looking at some of these crowdfunding platforms and trying to impose some regulations on them. There's some proposed rules right now that would basically affect anybody who is an intermediary between matching investors with deals. And starting to put some regulatory requirements on them so that that could be coming. So anyway, there's a lot going on here, but yes, finders, illegal finders is a big rampant problem in the industry. And I do think what I've seen from this administration and the SEC in this administration is that they are much more regulatory focused, and they're starting to spotlight a lot of different issues that are ultimately going to make their way into this industry.

So let me answer Adam's question. Can I answer Adam's? Just sign up as developer, Adam, and you will get communication from me about all the training that we offer to developers. Yeah, so we do narrow it down. I used to have a whole list of— I used to— by the way, if you do have a dropdown list, to segment your audience, never put other. Don't use other as an option unless you have a fill-in box that's mandatory. Otherwise, you'll end up with others and it won't get you anywhere. So we just have— yeah, so put in developer and we'll take care of you, Adam.

Okay, Sam asked a question that I'm just going to give one answer to and then we're ready to go. So if I'm a small investor, what are the best pathways I should do to build up my profile, public resume to syndicate a large apartment complex? I think you go back and you listen to this podcast. And you do everything that Adam said and you sign up for all of his programs and you're probably going to be well on your way to doing that in about 12 months.

You'll be on the pathway to it much sooner, but much sooner and really be effective. It does take time. You'll be happy you did it in 12 months.

She says laugh out loud. Thank you. Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining. Dr. Gower, thank you so much for joining. Always entertaining, always educational.

Thanks for having me.

And yes, I will look forward to our next conversation.

Yeah, let me know how this live Facebook thing, how many people, if anyone showed up. I'll be interested to— we were on for almost an hour. It'd be really interesting to see how well that worked.

That sounds great. All right.

Yeah, do let me know.

Thanks. Thanks so much. Bye.