If you’re new to syndication or running a private equity fund, wouldn’t it be nice to bypass those rookie mistakes so that you don’t have to make them in putting together your syndication or equity fund? My name is Tilden Moschetti. I’m a syndication attorney with the Moschetti Syndication Law Group, and I’m going to go through those rookie mistakes that I often see, things that are easily fixable, and give you the tools to succeed quickly.
If you’re new to syndication or private equity funds, there are some mistakes that obviously get made time and time again. They’ve been made by the people before you and they’ll be made by the people after you, those people trying to raise money, buy assets, and invest with other people’s money. Now, these are the mistakes that I often see in my practice. They’re not necessarily mistakes on one particular deal, but mistakes made on the entire process of going from that first deal all the way down three years from now and growing into that large fund or that massive serial syndicator who’s doing three deals a month.
The way we think about things is really the keys to the kingdom. If we can fix these little errors and think about things a little bit differently, it’ll launch your career and your progression to that three-year mark much more smoothly. So I have five key points that I want to convey that will help you make that transition from new to very experienced and very successful.
The first one is building your book. There are two things that every investor or syndicator must do. First off, you’ve got to always, always, always be adding investors. Always be thinking about adding investors, talking to your current investors, and building your book of investors. Not only that, but you also need to always be thinking about building your book of other allied professionals that can help you. Certainly, brokers are a piece of that, but I’ll talk about them in a minute. Also, the loan brokers, the people in the finance industry, if you have marketing people, your attorneys – all those people need to be spoken to. You always need to be expanding that book, that Rolodex has to grow.
Number two that you must always be doing is always be looking for deals. If you are doing real estate syndication, you’re probably looking and talking to brokers. Brokers are definitely part of that book of business from that first step that I told you about. But don’t spend all your time talking to brokers. Brokers, most of the time, are not going to be investing in your deals. Most of the time, brokers are going to be coming to me to set up their own deals for them. So they’re probably not that interested in investing. They are, though, the keys to the kingdom of getting good deals, getting offers, and getting good deals out there.
If you’re not in real estate and you’re doing something else, always be looking for what’s that next thing that you can be doing. Even if you’ve got a project going right now, you’ve got to always be going because as you’re adding new investors more and more, they’re going to be hungry and need to get deals. If you bring somebody in and you don’t talk to them for a year, a new potential investor, because you don’t have an offer, they’re gone. They’re lost, you will never get them. So always be looking at deals, always be trying to find what’s that next deal.
Now, some of my clients are really good at bringing in a lot of deals and they drown in deals. They’ve got so many deals that they’re working on. That’s okay, that’s a better problem to have than not having any deals at all because if you don’t have any deals, you’re not making any money.
Number three is relying too much on just one or two investors. A lot of people have like that one key person who’s basically buying like half of their units that they’re selling. That’s okay that that’s happening, but you can’t start counting on it. Nobody owns an investor; they can go away at any given point. Even your mom and dad, if they’re your investors, don’t necessarily need to invest in your next deal. So always be looking for new investors and diversifying your investor pool because relying on one is just gonna sink you. You can have all this momentum and then absolutely stop because your next deal just fell apart because your key investor left.
Number four is always be thinking about your liquidity. You need to be saving money to get you through to the next deal, especially if you’re marketing. If you’re doing Regulation D Rule 506c offers where you’re going to be marketing, your marketing costs are going to be expensive. So make sure that you’ve got the liquidity for you to be doing that. Also, it’s important that you’re making money in the deals that you’re doing because you need that liquidity in order to continue to grow your business. If you put all the money towards the equity at the end, well, that’s all great. But how are you going to do the next deal in between where you need to come up with a deposit or you need to come up with something in order to do that next deal? You always got to be paying attention to that liquidity.
And lastly, always, always, always, like I said in number one, build your list of investors. You should be thinking about not only building your investor list as it relates to, if you’re doing 506b’s, just growing that list, but you should be marketing yourself as a syndicator. Not on a particular offer if you’re doing 506b’s, but as a syndicator so that you can have conversations, go out into the wild, talk to other investment groups, talk to other syndicators. Always just be working on growing that list of investors with you. That’s the power.
I have one client who started with the very first deal that he did, it took him six months to raise $2 million. That same investor raised $500 million in less than four hours. Now how did he do it? Because he grew the list. He just grew it to such a point that there was such a fervor of investors who wanted in with them that all he has to do is send out an email blast and he’s answering the phone, taking in orders. That’s all he has to do because he’s always been growing his list.
So key takeaways from this:
Number one, always focus on your book of business. Always be working on the list of investors, with loan brokers, with all those key players. Build that Rolodex.
Number two, look for deals. You don’t have time to rest. Just because you’re working on a deal right now does not mean you’re not working on the next deal.
Number three, don’t rely too heavily on one big investor. They can pull out at any time and then suddenly you are without anything.
Number four, syndicators should have enough funds, enough liquidity to warm up investors, to market, to do that next deal. A lot of times that needs cash, and you need that cash there. You need a war chest in order to do it.
Number five, build the list of potential investors. You always need to market yourself, market your company, follow up with all potential investors. You need your list to grow.
My name is Tilden Moschetti. I’m a syndication attorney with the Moschetti Syndication Law Group. I hope this video was helpful for you because I really do want to see you succeed from doing your very first deal all the way to doing that three-year plan where suddenly now you are a major hotshot and you’ve got all the deals and all of the investors. I’d love to see that happen. If we can be of service to you in that end, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.