Welcome back. I'm so excited to continue this conversation on crowdfunding secrets.
do it better. Seek a fixed day investment to give back trying to get a big step.
So let's talk confessions because I think this is so fun
because you're talking about communication. And that was one of the things that we really
had to learn. So what are some of the biggest concerns that our new unaccredited investors
had? Like, let's give them the real. Okay. So
disclaimer, like you said, this is new to people, non accredited or unaccredited investors,
they may not understand they think that we're public already. And we have a ticker score,
ticker sign and symbol, and they should be able to see us on the NASDAQ. And the New
York Stock Exchange. Here, like what's your symbol, we're like, what, we don't have a
symbol? We will get one, you know, stick with this. However, we are private. So one of those
things is just really explaining, I did have to train my team to make sure that they are
patient and explaining, you know, we got the same questions. And that was really the one
of the main things just trying to understand. What is this investment. They invested? Right,
but they didn't really
understand. Yeah, they did not understand. So that was one of our challenges. We didn't
realize that people were investing and really didn't understand what they were investing
in. They thought they were investing in a publicly traded company and we're like, No,
you're investing in a start
up so I can see it go up and down. Yeah, fun stuff,
fun stuff. So now that we realized that we needed to do really good with customer service,
and explain their investment, because our unaccredited investors did not understand,
talk to me about this third party, that's like holding the money. Okay. For us, you
mentioned that,
yes, that's the process, there is the company or the platform that you do your investment
on. And then there's the third party who actually holds the money. And then there's a company
that you're investing in, right. And with that, it works both ways every time when you're
investing, and when you're getting your dividends back as an investor. So when you- as
the issuer or the company, you have to put the money back into the bank again, just to
issue it to the investor. So it's definitely a three step process. Yeah.
And I think they'll people didn't realize, though, that that protects them, how does
it it doesn't just protect the investor and the company, the banks?
The banks are insured that protects both the company and the investor. So sounds
like this third party that's holding the money, it has a true benefit. Why? Why do they exist?
Well they
protect both the investor and the company, when you- try to explain it better, basically,
your money has to go into the third party company, they actually have
to verify you. They have to verify the company to make sure they're legitimate. They have
to verify the investor, you know, they're going to check your identity and make sure
you are who you say you are. They also going to check like make sure you're able to invest.
Yes. To make sure that you're not spending your last just to invest. Yeah,
that was a part that we learned that I thought that was so interesting that there were people
that wanted to invest and they were turned down, and they think they turned down by us
the company, but they were turned down by the escrow company or the you know,
the verifier. Yes, yes. Yeah. Why?
Well, you know, what, we don't want anyone to go broke to invest. Yeah. And that's the
rules. That's the guidelines to make sure that you're able to invest, it should benefit
you. It's really is a protection for both.
I really like that. I really do so that people that they don't have enough money, they don't
We don't want them to invest their rent money or their money. It needs to really be discretionary
spending that this is an investment that you could lose, because of course you're
putting out at risk by investing in a startup. Yes. Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, so let's
keep sharing all these secrets, because people really want to know about crowdfunding, especially
for real estate. So all right, now we're to the point where we are raising money, we've
probably raised let's just say, $100,000, we're at 10% of our goal. And the money is
though sitting in this third party bank, and I obviously am learning all of this. So you
helped me get the money from that bank to us. How did we do that? Like, oh, you know, explain that
part. Yes. So while you're raising money, you still can get that money, so you can start
doing the business. Yeah, that's the whole point. Yeah. So you do have to go through
a process, has to sit a certain amount of time. 21 days also, before you even pull it out,
you have to notify the investors that it's coming, okay, or that it's coming out. So
it comes out of the account and it goes to the company. And at that point, the cool thing
now is you're an investor, you get your subscription. Yeah, you now have invested in the company.
Yeah, I've loved that. So they got like a certain sponsored? Stock certificate, a stock
certificate. So literally, when you are investing in these crowd funds, know that you're gonna
get a stock certificate and they all get a stock
certificate. Everyone gets a stock certificate.
I love it. I love it. So what we did with ours, I remember we did $1 per share. So if
you invested $500, for example, you got 500 shares,
it shows exactly how many shares you have it put it in a little frame. Yep. Yeah,
I love it. I love it. So we got to our goal pretty quickly, obviously, even through COVID.
In the pandemic, we were able to still raise money. So once we got to the goal of a million
dollars, and we are done raising money, we came into a really, really big surprise, okay,
there was a ton of people that had committed to invest, but they had not actually ever
sent their money. And now we were to the point where we were going to close the fund out.
So talk about what you did with that, because you were amazing. Oh, thank
you. So you just like I said before, you have to keep the communication we at this
point, since we've raised so much, we can now hire more people, and really get to communicating
with our investors. Those people that did not clear the KYC AML checks, we had to reach
out to them. We did things, we called, we emailed, we did videos, yeah. And we sent it out to
make sure that we hurried up and did this because though you have the other platform
working doing the same thing, they're not as quick. So you got to have your team
to expedite that. And that's what we did, we just stayed on top of it and make sure
we reached out before the fund close. Yes,
I so because there was tons of people, they would go to the website and they would commit
to invest, but they would never actually send their money or complete their checks. And
again, AML stands for anti money laundering. KYC stands for know your customer. These are,
you know, acronyms that the banks use. And again, they want to make sure that you are
using funds that are legal, ethical, and again, that are not putting you in harm as an investor,
this is not your last bit of money. So they want to verify that you make enough money
to actually do this investment. And so those people had to complete those checks. And it
was a lot of communication, getting people to understand that they needed to do all of
these things.
It was a lot. Not only that, just proof that you were who you were in your business was
actually existing. So there are a couple of ways that they could not clear, either because
they did not send the money, right or because they had to send a proof of human
work or driver's license or proof of their business. If those documents were not sent
in, they could not they could not invest. They could
not invest. That's crazy. So it turns out there were people that had committed to
invest, they thought they were done investing, they even- some people sent the money and we
had to send the money back. We
had to send the money. That was the other thing because if you invested and it was
just a proof of your document, right? And it was never proven, we have to return a refund.
Yeah, yeah. So that was fun. You actually raise more money than we can. According to
the crowd fund. Yeah, yeah. Fun stuff.
So we raised the money. We're about to close the fund, now what?
All right. So now back to me. So of course, now the ball is back in my court. So we've
closed the fund and now we have all of this money to buy real estate, to hire people, to
get cleaners, to buy furniture, to buy furnishings for all of our property. Where do you what
was like... Tell us like what were some of the first mistakes that
we made.
Some of the first mistakes that we made, was more or less with the property setups. The
property setups, we learn how to get a system down. But you had to actually
learn that so it will take longer in the beginning. Yes. A lot longer in the beginning, yes, these
properties. But once we got that system,
part of that, though, was due to COVID. We were having a ton of issues sourcing furniture,
a lot of the prices that we had price on furniture prior to the pandemic were completely different
now, inventory had completely changed, like there was just abundance of issues after the
pandemic that we ran into. But we did weather the storm did. We did, yes.
You're right, that furniture and finding the right sofa bed. Yeah, finding the right platform,
bed. The inventory was not. It got
scarce, scarce and it got expensive.
But we did well, we did. Okay, so we wanted to do the best that we could do. So how did
you find these properties?
So it's so funny because finding the best properties when I was not doing a crowd fund
really focused on finding property problems. And I did a lot of fix and flips and I did
a lot of properties that were not in the greatest areas. But because we were doing a crowd fund
and this were properties that I wanted the investors to be able to stay in,
I really went a different route I really went with okay, let's find the best properties
that we can for the least amount of money. So because of the pandemic and all of those
things happen. We started leasing some properties. We didn't just immediately go in and start
buying you know, we did buy an office and then we bought some condos and we
have videos and pictures and back. When we first started we leased some properties. We
leased some in clear water and we lease some in Kissimmee near Disney World. And we were
able to get like eight or nine units really quickly because we were leasing them so we
didn't have to have the big down payments. We didn't have to do any financing, any mortgages,
I didn't have to do those things, I could quickly just rent some properties, get them
furnished, and then get them going on live so that people could start renting them. So
we really were looking for location that was near great attractions. So again, for this
crowd fund, we had a really strong mission, it wasn't just about making money on the properties,
it was keeping these properties for a long time, getting properties that will go up in
value, and getting properties that our investors could enjoy so that they can stay in there.
Well, of course, that's
the perk. And that's the cool thing too about our investors. Not only could they invest,
yes, they also had a reward to stay in the property. Absolutely. I do want to talk about
that. Going back to what did we offer our investors?
Yeah. So in the beginning, we got creative, you know, like I said, when we first started
investing, we said, Okay, you invest $500, for example, you get 500 shares. And that
was really great for people. But then we started taking a bit further like, Okay, well, if
you have properties that you want to lease to us, we will lease them from you and we
still offer that to this day. And you can submit properties or investors can that we
can lease or we can buy so that we can build our portfolio really quickly. But then we
got creative, and we realized people were really liking these properties. So we started
giving them discounted stays. We started sending them coupons and free nights. And then if
you invested a certain amount of money, you literally got one, three or five nights and
one of our properties and that really made investors feel like okay, I'm a part of this
company. And this was a good investment
for this. I love it. Very smart. Yes. All right. So fast forwarding to today, what's
going on with investment investors?
So we have a bunch of properties that we now own. So most of the properties that we lease,
we actually let a lot of the leases go, we didn't make the profit off of them, we did
a distribution. But we realized that we weren't gaining any equity, we were losing out on
appreciation and for real estate, that is where the real money is. And that is why we
told people to invest in real estate. The properties are going to be going up in
value over time and the real money is made when you sell those properties. Obviously
you buy them at a certain price, you cashflow them, and then you sell them. So I'm really
focused on finding more multi unit properties. We have just one duplex, we have it on Airbnb,
again, showing you pictures of that. And we now need a bigger apartment building. So I've
been on the hunt, you know what I mean? For like a 10 unit, 20 unit apartment building
that we can put some long term tenants in and we can do some short term rentals, we
really want to diversify that that apartment building so that we have some diversification
of the income coming in.
Okay. Okay. Like I said, this is good stuff. And I know people are interested. So for others
watching this, where would they start?
So again, the thing you could do this with any business, I want to make that really clear.
This is not just about real estate, you could do this with a hair salon, a barber, a landscaping
company, you name it, you can do a crowd fund for it, and people will invest in your business.
All you have to do is give them a reason to invest what some of the perks that you can
offer them. What you know, like if you are a barber shop and you wanted to open a chain
of barber shops? Wouldn't you offer some of your investors a free haircut or you know,
just things like that. So you really want to start thinking about what are some benefits
that you could offer to someone in exchange for their investment, that is going to be the
key to this. These are unaccredited investors. These are normal Joe Schmo people, they are
not like looking on the stock exchange trying to find Microsoft, they really want to help
you and you want to help them. So create a win win situation, easily put together a pitch
deck and just get going. The thing about it I feel like it's too many people. Wait, just
go. There you have it.
Wow, that was an amazing episode. I hope you really enjoyed it. I have a perfect gift just
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