GI315: Raising Capital for Real Estate with Dave Dubeau

GI315: Raising Capital for Real Estate with Dave Dubeau

Dave Dubeau is a real estate capital-raising expert, author, and podcast host since 2012, and got his start in real estate investing in 2003 by doing 18 deals in 18 months. He has helped over 200 real estate investor clients raise over $325M in private capital. He now works with real estate syndicators to help consistently book over 20 monthly accredited investor meetings.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Dave Dubeau. He is a real estate capital-raising expert, author, and podcast host since 2012, and got his start in real estate investing in 2003 by doing 18 deals in 18 months. He has helped over 200 real estate investor clients raise over $325M in private capital. He now works with real estate syndicators to help consistently book over 20 monthly accredited investor meetings. Thank you so much for being on the show!

Dave:
Charles, it’s great to be here. It was a pleasure to have you on my show about a month ago as well. So yes, great to be

Charles:
Here. It’s great. Yeah, it’s great to have you here and kind of share your story with our, with our audience here. But before we get started here, I always like to ask if you can tell us a little bit about yourself, both personally and professionally. Your background prior to getting in getting started in investing in real estate, and what you’re doing now, helping investors raise capital. Yeah,

Dave:
Sure, Charles. So, my background’s kind of varied after I got out of university with what I call a, a basically asinine degree, a ba in psychology, <laugh>. I went and traveled the world a bit, spent about two and a half years traveling through Mexico and Central America. Ended up down in beautiful San Jose, Costa Rica, kind of decided to plant my flag there. Started a language training company teaching Costa Ricans how to speak English, gooder, <laugh>, and <laugh>. Got married, had kids down there. And then in 2003, I decided to drag my poor Costa Rican family from the beautiful tropical paradise of Costa Rica back to my home country of Canada. So, you know, people go tropical paradise, Costa Rica, frozen hinterlands, British Columbia, Canada. Why would you do that? Well, Charles, you know, you don’t realize what you got till you leave it for a while. And as beautiful, as wonderful as Latin America is, you know, I thought raising kids, kids gonna school will be safer, better for them growing up in Canada.

Dave:
So we made that big decision. Moved here 2003, and I had to start all over again from scratch. Now, I wasn’t a brand new immigrant to the country, but I might kind of might as well have been because, you know, I’ve been out of the country for like 14 years. I left when I was young. I never built up any credit. I was coming back. I hadn’t sold my business in Costa Rica, so I didn’t have very much money, no credit pretty much unemployable, <laugh> ’cause I’ve been self-employed for so long. So I, there I was kind of trying to figure out what the heck am I gonna do. Now, this is before your time, my friend Charles, because you’re, you’re a much younger man, but back in the day there used to be these things called infomercials, late night infomercials on tv, these 20 minute, 30 minute commercials showing up in the middle of the night where guys like me have insomnia and that’s what we’re doing. I was watching TV and I saw this guy come on the screen and says, you too king rich, get rich in real estate with little or no money down. I thought, perfect. That’s what I got. Little or no money,

Charles:
<Laugh> Is that Carlton Sheets?

Dave:
It wasn’t, but it was that kind of flare. It was a gentleman named Ron LaGrand. So, you know, quick turn real estate. So I got set away for the course. I think there, there was definitely CDs in there. There might have been a VHS cassette or two, I can’t remember anymore, but took that put it to good use and basically did 18 deals in 18 months. Creative, low money, no money down type stuff in the small city that I live in, which only had a population of about 80,000 people at that time. So that’s when I kind of first got into the whole real estate thing. My background with my own business and whatnot, I, I had a bit of a flare for marketing. So one thing led to another and I kind of caught the eye of an up and coming real estate guru up here in Canada, kind of our version of Kiyosaki at the time.

Dave:
And joined forces with him, became kind of their director of marketing, helped him kind of grow his company from three or four employees to 128 employees in a few years. And, you know, doing lots and lots of events and raising lots of capitals for deal and deals and all that kinda stuff. And one thing led to another. And yeah, that’s kind of what my main focus has been for the last dozen years, is working. First of all, I was working with mom and pop real estate investors, helping them to get started with raising capital. And for the last year and a half or so, I’ve been working with syndicators and fund managers and more professional capital raisers to really help them create a pipeline of accredited investor leads using a podcast.

Charles:
So can you tell us a little bit, I mean, before we get into your raising capital and kind of some of the points and tactics that strategies that you utilize with your people, can you tell us a little bit about kind of your current real estate investing strategy and kind of how you got started in actual investing? Were you flipping houses? Were you, did you transfer into larger properties or commercial, which is kind of like that usual progression for real estate investors?

Dave:
Yeah, so those original 18 deals in 18 months, those were lease options, options, kind of paper flip type things. I never actually swung hammers or anything like that, but as handy as a foot. So <laugh>, I just, I really kind of focused on the creative side of things I did. And then when I got really busy with the guru guy, kinda left real estate for a few years, got back into single family homes, into lease options, did that for a few years, and then got into more on the passive side, partnered with a good friend of mine who’s into multifamily syndications. Worked with him on a couple of projects there these days. You know, I realized a while back, Charles, that I suck as an operator. So, you know, I might as well focus on what I’m better at. And these days, from time to time, I will partner up with, usually with a client and invest passively in their deal. So I’m more of a passive investor these days.

Charles:
Yeah. When you’re doing creative financing, creative deals, how you are doing it, it’s really like you mentioned that your you know, your specialty, your strength is in marketing. Those, those tactics are really marketing intensive, you know what I mean? When you’re going out and finding motivated sellers, people that are in unique situations you know, these are where, that’s a nice way to put it.

Dave:
<Laugh>,

Charles:
<Laugh>, we try to be politically correct, right? No. So people that are in difference.

Dave:
I might screw your show up here, my friend.

Charles:
No, I’m just kidding. Just, it’s one of those things where you know, the marketing is such a big thing. When we would go, we’re going direct to owner for buying apartment down here in Florida, it’s one of those things where you are, you know, you’re building a list, you’re going out and you’re it’s, it’s very marketing intensive. I mean, there’s a little bit of real estate in there when you start underwriting deals and you get someone that’s actually there, you get that one or 2% of people that you’ve been reaching out to that actually, it’s like, yeah, what do you got? And now you’re talking real estate, but that 98% of the time that you’re out there, I mean, you’re really just, it’s just marketing. You know what I mean? You’re really building a marketing machine.

Dave:
Yeah, definitely. So that’s, that’s what I was doing in the single family home space and back in those days, I mean, we’re talking over 20 years ago now. Yeah. It, it was, it was, you know, websites and whatnot were not as, you know, very big at that time. It was a lot of old school stuff, direct mail classified ads, believe it or not, in newspapers, still worked. Vehicle signage was where I got three or four of my best deals. You know, at that time I had a, a, a minivan and had I buy houses plastered all over, <laugh> all over the thing. That worked very, very well. So, yeah, I always enjoyed the marketing side of things. And the cool thing was for all of those deals, I never once cold called a seller. It was all marketing, getting the word out there and getting them to reach out to me and call me, which is a, a big part of the filtering process, right? So anytime you can get somebody to be calling you, it’s, it’s much more effective, I’ve found anyhow.

Charles:
I’ve also found too, before we go on to raising capital, is you, you mentioned some of these tactics that worked years back, and I think some of them still work today. I mean, I go around my neighborhood here in Palm Beach County, Florida, and a lot of older people obviously, and I see newspapers that are up, you know what I mean? So people still get newspapers, still people read papers. My dad still gets a paper. Nice. So it’s, it’s one of these things. So people read ’em and people that are, yeah, it

Dave:
Depends on your demographic, right? Right. If you’re going for older folks, definitely. So, question for you, ’cause this is fascinating, Charles, so when are, you’re focusing on multifamily properties, right? So yeah, it’s, the nice thing is it’s relatively straightforward, especially in the states to get the names and addresses of the owners of these properties. So I would imagine direct mail is a big part of your process.

Charles:
Yeah, when we do for our, ’cause we have like two parts of our business. We have stuff where we’re working with larger things. We we’re syndicating and then, which mainly when we’re doing our direct mail stuff like that, we’re doing, I’m doing a joint venture with one of my partners or we’re, you know, we’re taking down ourselves, whatever it is. But yes, I mean, we can go direct to those owners and you can really narrow down. Usually they’re older, that’s just how it is. You’re getting mom and pop people that have owned it for 15 years, free and clear. There’s not many people that own free and clear property. And usually the ones that do they are later in their years. So it’s one of those things as that’s kind of, you’re going after those more unique situations. And then also there’s a lot of building rapport when you get that, as we were talking before, that 2% of people that are actually like, okay, talk to me. What do you got going on? So

Dave:
Are you, are you going after smaller multi-families with like your direct outreach approach? Like what size? So

Charles:
Usually what we’re doing is we’re gonna go after 10, 12 units all the way up to usually like 30 units and they’re gonna that, and that’s where you’re gonna find it. If you start pushing that upper boundary, you start getting into investor groups, you start getting into joint venture groups when you start getting into like 20 plus units as I found. But you’ll find a bunch of people that might have, usually what it is is when you’ll speak to one of these investors, you’ll catch them on a 12 unit that you sent out. They’ve got a duplex here, they’ve got an 18 unit over here, they

Dave:
Got a portfolio, right?

Charles:
They got a portfolio of like random stuff that they’ve like purchased within like a, you know, 30 or 45 minute radius of where one property is. And you know, this is where you’re like, oh, you know, this is where you’re, this is where, you know, you start to seeing what they’re gonna sell, what they wanna sell, and then which ones they don’t wanna sell. You know what I mean? And figure out kind of the whole thing. That’s why when I speak to people that have been successful, I have a friend that’s about 45 minutes north of me, and when they’ve been successful in direct mailing, they’re buying one. And then they’re probably also getting another one from them too at some point later. So it’s like, it’s like building kinda like a, like you said, the pipeline of deals, but you don’t know, I mean, you send it out and it’s, it’s just something that if I speak to someone, if I’m coaching someone, I just say, if you’re not gonna do it, it’s like any kinda marketing. If you’re not gonna do it for at least a year, maybe even two years, don’t even do it. You know what I mean? So put that or X thousands of dollars aside, if that’s something that’s going do 18 months from now, you’re not gonna wanna do it. I mean, it’s gonna take a 24 month period to close on one deal, and you probably close faster than that. But really having that idea of, it’s a very long-term play. ’cause You’re not just, somebody just doesn’t call up. You’re not like selling landscaping or like, you know,

Dave:
Right. I mean, there’s a big ticket thing, so, right. It’s huge. Yeah.

Charles:
And it’s their biggest asset and they’re living off it too, you know. Well,

Dave:
You know what, you might, you might consider trying a very old school tactic that got me a few deals back in the day, if your target market is still reading newspapers, one trick that I learned from Ron La Grande was the circle ad in the newspaper. So you know how you got the classified sections, you know, houses for rent, houses for sale, properties for sale, that kind of stuff. You, the, the trick is you buy a small display ad, you make it look just like a classified ad. You know, the, I buy houses, I buy small apartment buildings, is what I’d put in there if I were you. And then you hand draw a circle around it, so when somebody grabs the paper out of the, the free paper box, it looks like somebody, it really looks like somebody circled that ad in the paper.

Dave:
And I can still remember, this is over 20 years ago, I had a lady called me up and she said this, this was a message from God <laugh>. That’s what she said, your ad was a message from God. I went and I got the paper out of the paper box, and I never picked the top one. I always get like the third or fourth one from the, the top. And I grabbed it and I opened up the, into the classified section. And I, you know, I was looking, I need, I need to sell my house. And I saw your ad and somebody had circled that ad in the paper and I knew I had to call you <laugh>. So it could, it could be effective in these days. I mean, newspaper, newspapers are dying business, so you can get really good prices on advertising

Charles:
In them. They’re getting thinner and thinner, that’s for sure.

Charles:
So, so Dave, let’s talk about what you kind of your, your, your strategy and your tactics behind what you’re doing now with helping investors. You have a, when I was doing research for this program, you said you have a kind of like a money partner formula that you’ve developed for raising capital. Can you share kind of like the high level points of what that formula is and how it can relate to assisting investors?

Dave:
Yeah, so my, my main focus these days, Charles is helping higher level, more experienced capital raisers, raise capital with a podcast. So I’ve been in the whole podcast world for a while now. I started this, well, I don’t have it here, the podcast I had you on my Property Profits real estate podcast back in I believe, 2018. And like everybody, I, you know, I saw everybody who was kind of, a lot of real estate guys were getting into the whole podcast thing. And, you know, I, I thought, hey, I’ll, I’ll do that. It’ll be a good way to kind of grow my brand and be seen as an authority and all this kind of good stuff. And the goal of most podcasts, as myself included, is to, you know, at least this is my understanding, is to try and grow a big audience in my case, try and interview a bunch of big name type guys and gals.

Dave:
You know, try to get the, the kiyosaki’s and the grant Cardones of the world on your show. Hope that’ll attract a big audience. Hope that some of those people in the audience will clue in that you know your things and might be interested in what you’re offering. Hope that some of them will reach out to you, hope that you’ll connect and that you’ll do business. There’s a lot of hoping and not a heck of a lot of happening going on there. <Laugh> Charles for a while. So I was, along with my show. It was a normal thing. It was like a weekly episode type thing or every two weeks when I got around to it. And it was kind of hit and miss, but it wasn’t, it, it wasn’t very effective for me for like a lead generator. And then I happened to be listening to a podcast and a young guy was on there, I think his name was Jamie Atkinson, this is where I got the idea from.

Dave:
And he said, you know what, I’ve just kind of flipped the whole strategy on its head. So instead of worrying about growing a huge audience and some of those people reaching out to me, what I do instead is I interview the exact kind of people I want as clients or customers, and I start the relationship that way. I don’t even worry about the audience. I focus a hundred percent on the guests. And instead of this being a show all about me, I make the show all about the guest. I make them look good, I make them shine, I feature them. And it’s just a wonderful way to connect with people you probably wouldn’t have connected with otherwise to get your foot in the door to start that relationship, to create rapport, to create a little bit of reciprocity. And if during the interview you see that there might be a fit between them and, and what you do for a service, then you can bring that up after the interview and get them booked into a follow-up discovery call to see what it is that you do.

Dave:
So when he explained that, it just, the light bulb went off in my head. I was like, wow, that makes a ton of sense. So this is probably, ooh, three, four years ago now, I switched my whole methodology to that. And that has become the number one lead generator for my company, for my, you know marketing agency for lack of a better term for generating clients, is through my podcast in interviewing the exact kind of people that I would like to do business with or, or do some sort of a, a promotion with. So I did that for a number of years and then the light bulb came on for me about a year and a half ago. I said, you know what, this would probably work pretty well for syndicators and fund managers and capital raisers who are looking to connect with high income, high net worth people, successful business owners, successful professionals, successful C-suite executives.

Dave:
‘Cause Guess what? Those people love free publicity. Those people love to be interviews. Those people love to be featured on podcasts. So about a year and a half ago, that’s what we did. We started a beta group and we started building out podcasts for our syndicator clients. Getting that built out, getting set, setting up all of the backend structure for that. Then getting them on average five interviews booked a week, 20 a month with their ideal target avatar, doing all of the production and nitpicky stuff for them, and then helping them convert those interviews into discovery calls and then those discovery calls into capital. So that’s been the, the main focus of my company for the last year and a half.

Charles:
So what I’ve found is, you know, you’re raising money, you’re dealing with you’re dealing with more experienced investors. And the first part I always see is, you know, there’s a lot of talk whenever you go. It’s all about raising capital. It’s, I mean, that is a large part of obviously buying property. However, there’s also the second part that happens other than just the executing on what you’re doing, but also the investor relationship afterwards. So, you know, as raising capital from investors is just the first part of successfully raising money. I mean, what are some of the other investor relationship considerations that syndicators should take into account to be successful in this business during that whole period That could be, you know, used to be three years now, maybe it’s five to seven years, something like that.

Dave:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, this Charles, I mean, communication’s, the number one thing, which is pretty easy to do when things are going well, where it’s not so fun or easy to do, is when things are sucking wind right? Like it has been for the last couple of years, for a lot of syndicators, their deals are going sideways. They’re at best, they’re flat, at worse, they’re losing money. The, the properties I’ve talked to some syndicators, the value of their properties they bought at the peak, there’s 20 to 30% less than what they paid for them back in the day. Plus interest rates have, have gone up. So it’s, it’s rough times for some syndicators. It, the tendency is just to kinda, you know, stick your head in your shell, you know, kind of turtle and, and pretend nothing’s happening. That’s the worst thing you can do.

Dave:
So, you know, the, the best thing is just constant consistent communication with your investors, whether things are going well or whether they’re not going well, just keep them apprised of the situation. That’s, that’s the biggest tip I can get. Now, it doesn’t have to be a daily type thing, but I would recommend, you know, at least well early days in the, in the deal, quarterly check-ins, you know, once things are up and going, depending on what’s going on with the deal, you know, I can do it once, you know, every six months to 12 months kind of thing. But if things are kind of shaky with your deals, make sure that you are communicating with your investors consistently.

Charles:
No, that’s it brings me back five years ago to, to COVID era when you were the beginning of it where no one had any idea what we were doing. And you know, for the, the, the best passive deals I was in, I was getting communication almost weekly, you know what I mean? Especially during the beginning of the month when you’re doing collections. And that’s the same thing we were doing for investors too. You know what I mean? Literally a rent payment comes in, you’re sending out an email pretty much, you know what I mean? ’cause No one had any idea of what was happening. So like in those times, that cuts down on a lot of phone calls as well, but it also opens up. So somebody reads and go, okay, this is, everything is like, these guys are on top of it.

Charles:
You know what I mean? And that’s something that you want to be the person that on the receiving end of that. But so you’re working with a lot more experienced investors. We have people that might be listening to the show that are, you know, they haven’t gotten to that point yet. They’re still kinda raising money or planning on raising money from friends and family, which is which is, you know, quite a different type of money raising and a different pitch, let’s say, compared to, like you said, of bringing in people that are your kind of avatar, interviewing them and trying to getting them on an investor call afterwards. Can you give us any advice you might have for people that are, I would imagine they’re just getting started if they’re raising money from friends and family. But any advice regarding doing this and how to keep everything even keeled when you’re getting into kind of this type of capital raising?

Dave:
Yeah, so for newer capital raisers, what I always recommend that you start with is something that I call the ninja strategy. Ninja strategy. Like it’s, it’s stealthy. It’s very, very effective and it’s helped a lot of people raise a lot of capital quite quickly. And here’s what you do Charles, and I’d love your input on this ’cause you got tons of experience with this, but couple of things. Number one, you create a database of your warm connections. What I mean by that, I mean friends, family members, coworkers, people you know from church, basically civic groups, sports organizations, PTAs, whatever, like you know them, they know you. You’ve got a, you’ve already got a, some sort of a, a connection, a relationship with these people. Put together a database of these people’s names, ideally, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, whatever you can get for these folks.

Dave:
Put that all into even something as simple as a Excel spreadsheet and have that handy. That’s job number one. So Target, when, when I was working with clients on this target is come up with somewhere between a hundred to 200 of these people. Okay? Job number two is make sure that you’ve got a presentation where you can show people what it is that you’re doing. You know, a pitch deck for lack, lack of a better term right now. Keep it super simple, remembering that most of the people you’re gonna be talking to don’t have a clue about real estate. Don’t have a clue about real estate terminology. You start talking about cap rates and IRRs and NOIs, you’re gonna lose ’em. So make sure you, you keep it super simple, you know, at a, like a, a 12 to 13-year-old reading comprehension level maximum.

Dave:
And I’m not insulting anybody, I’m just saying, Hey, if you wanna be effective, keep it super simple. Even the folks that are more advanced are gonna appreciate you not trying to sound smart, right? <Laugh>. So put together a good presentation where you show people what it is that you’re up to, whether it’s single family homes or multi-family or self storage or notes or land flip, whatever it is that you do. Just a simple A to Z explanation of how this works and what’s in it for you and your investor partners. How the money is made in these deals include a sample deal or two. Here’s a big tip. Do not include your home runs. Do not include the best deals you’ve ever done, which is our tendency ’cause we love to show those ones off, right? But I want you to show off a plain jane plain vanilla, you know, typical kind of deal so that you’re not setting up unrealistic expectations, right?

Dave:
So if you show off your home runs and people kind of remember those numbers, that’s what they’re gonna expect from you. If you show them something reasonable and and attainable, then that’s what they’re gonna expect. And then you might be able to overdeliver. Alright? So job number one, come up with a list. Job number two, come up with your, your pitch deck. Okay? Once you’ve got those two things put together, then a very simple three step email campaign can be very, very effective. And the first one of these emails is what I call the Christmas letter from Aunt Nadine. And what this is, Charles is, back in the day when I was a kid, my Aunt Nadine was very, very efficient. And back in those days, nobody called long distance. There was no email, there was no none of this stuff, right? People talked on the phone very rarely because the cost per minute for long distance call was about the same as minimum wage per hour at that time.

Dave:
It was crazy, it was really, really expensive. So people wrote letters and my aunt Nadine, every year she would write a nice long Christmas letter catching everybody up on what she and the family had been up to over the year. She would go down and photocopy that, she’d send that out with her Christmas cards and we’d all get this letter and we’d kind of read through it every year. So you don’t have to wait till Christmas for this, but this is the idea. I want you to assume that the person that you’re gonna be emailing hasn’t heard from you in at least five years and catch them up on what you’ve been up to personally for the last five years, okay? This is not about real estate, this is about a personal connection. Alright? So, you know, let ’em know what you’re, you’ve been up to, any job changes you’ve had, if you’ve moved what’s going on with the, the wife and kids, if you’re married, if you’ve got a family, you know, grandkids, he, if you’ve got grandkids, whatever, just a nice, you know what, you’ve been up to trips, you’ve taken cool books, you’ve read movies, you’ve seen just kind of, you know, a nice little catch up type letter type thing.

Dave:
It should be, if you typed it out, it should be about a page long, give or take. And then at the end of it, the job is to say, Hey, well that’s enough about me. How about you? How you been doing? If please hit reply to this email. You don’t have to write, write me an s an essay or anything, but just let me know how you’ve been doing, okay? Boom. You email that sucker out to all 200 people on your list. And then your job is when people respond, no matter what they say, even if they say, Hey Charles, this is weird. Have you been hacked? What’s going on with this? You know, no, no, it’s really me. Yeah, this is what I’ve been up to. I’m just trying something different when I reconnect with folks. How you been doing, John? What’s, what’s going on with you?

Dave:
Right? So start, start that conversation. So send that one out first and then three or four days later, send out the second message. And this one is different. It is a video message where you basically kind of talk about the same thing, but you’re film yourself doing that. You can do this on your phone, you can do this over the computer, whatever you wanna do, whatever you’re more comfortable with. But send a video message. Hey everybody, this is Dave. Chances are it’s been a while since we connected. I sent you a little message a a few days ago, maybe you may or may not have seen it anyhow, just wanna let you know what I’ve been up to what’s going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kind of talk about the same things you wrote in the letter, but this time you’re talking about it.

Dave:
Use visuals if you want to, you know, walk around the house. Just have fun with this, right? Get a little bit creative with that. And at the end always have that call to action. Well, hey, that’s enough about me. How about you? How are you doing? Please hit reply to this email. I’d love to catch up. Send that out to all 200 people. Again, even the guys that, that received it before, it doesn’t matter. Send it to ’em again. They’ll enjoy the video. And then again, reply to people that give back to you. Okay? And then the third step in the process, Charles, is what I call the transition message. This is short and sweetest. Another little video message, you jump on it, you say something like this, Hey, it’s Dave. It’s really been good reconnecting with you over the last week and a half or so.

Dave:
Just wanna let you know that moving ahead, I wanna do a much better job of staying in touch and letting you know what I’m up to with real estate. Real estate is something I’m very, very passionate about. I’m doing really well with it. And in fact, I think real estate is the best way for everyday folks like you and myself to make really good returns on our money back by something solid, tangible, real, real property. Hey, and who knows, maybe sometime in the future you might even be interested in partnering with me and sharing in the profits on a deal. But you know what, if you’re really not interested in that, that’s okay too. You can always click unsubscribe at the bottom of any of my emails. You’ll be taken off my list immediately. My feelings might be hurt for a little while, but eventually I’ll get over it.

Dave:
Alright? In the meantime, if you haven’t had a chance to get back to me, please, please, please, please hit reply to this email. I’d love to catch up. Take care, talk to you soon. Send that sucker off. Okay, so, so now you’ve kind of set the stage, you’ve broken the ice, you’ve reconnected with a bunch of people because the biggest challenge a lot of folks have, Charles, is they just hit it cold. They start reaching out to people and dialing for dollars. And you know, if somebody hasn’t heard from you in 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, and the first thing that comes outta your mouth is, Hey, I’m raising capital for a deal that’s going to justifiably turn them off, right? So if you do it this way, you kind of break the ice and warm people up first. Then the next trick here, I know this sound a little bit complicated, but it works very, very well, drew.

Dave:
So if your, if your listeners or reviewers actually do this, they’re gonna see some great results. The next trick is you take that list, you see, okay, who’s responded to me, who’s gotten back to me, who have I a kind of a good connection with? And then you reach out to those folks individually. You can call ’em, you can text ’em, you can, whatever. And let’s say I was reaching out to you and say, Charles, it’s Dave here. Been really good reconnecting with you, man. I, I was wondering if I could ask you a quick favor. I’ve put together a little presentation about what I’m up to with real estate. I could really use a second set of eyes to have a look at it with me. I’m really just looking for your feedback. I’m not trying to sell you anything. Probably only take about 15, 20 minutes.

Dave:
We can even do it on Zoom. Can you help me out? Question mark. Send that out. Alright, so you send that out to 10, 15, 20 people, probably 75% of them are gonna say yes. And then what you do, Charles, is you jump on Zoom or you meet them in person for coffee, you go through your presentation like it’s a practice run, okay? So you can be a little clunky, don’t sound too spiff or polished with this, go through it with them and you’re looking for their input. Now they’re gonna give you a bunch of recommendations that may or may not make any sense to you. That’s fine. All you wanna do is create engagement. We’re looking for a way to show people our deals, show people our, our, our real estate with their guard down. And that’s the beautiful thing, folks watch these things. They’re looking to help you out, give you some feedback, and at the end I’d say something like this.

Dave:
Well, Charles, thank you so much for your feedback. That was great. Yal correct the spelling on slide 15 and change the color in slide 27. And yeah, that was really good input. Now by the way, I know this probably isn’t a good fit for you, but do you know anybody who might be interested in these kind of deals? And then one of three things is gonna happen, Charles, either number one, they’re gonna say no. I can’t think of anybody. And yeah, I’m, I’m not interested at the moment that’s still a win ’cause you’ve gotten a practice run on your belt and the other person has watched your presentation with open eyes and an open mind. And when time and circumstances change for them, they might be interested in investing. Second option might be, Hey, yeah, you know what? My brother-in-law, Fred might be interested in this. You get a warm introduction to Fred, then you can do the presentation with Fred. Or the third option would, happens quite often is, well, hey, wait a minute, this looks kind of cool. I might be interested in this. Great Charles. Now I’m not trying to pitch anything, but yeah, if you’re interested, of course I’d love to work with you. Boom, get them engaged, get them signed off in an expression of interest, something like that. And you’re well on your way to raising capitals.

Charles:
Yeah, no, that is a thank you so much for going through that. That’s a great way of really, I think people have issues. Everybody talks about making the list of people, you know, but the problem is to approach them correctly and reaching out, like you said, kinda going in cold. It’s, that’s where you’re getting, you know, that’s where the walls go up.

Dave:
Well, it’s, it’s, it’s gross. It’s creepy. It’s like, it’s like, I mean, we’ve all been hit up by new network marketers, right? We haven’t heard from this <laugh>. I remember years ago, my ex sister-in-law hit me up. I hadn’t heard from her in years. Hey Dave, how you doing? Hey, really nice and connect. Then I find out, okay, now she’s into this <laugh> network marketing thing, trying to get me to sell go go juice. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charles:
So it’s, it’s a great way of doing it. And I think that’s, it’s kind of interesting way too is if you’re out with friends or you’re meeting friends of friends and they’re like, oh, what do you do? And you know, just like, oh, I invest in real estate, so you know, something easy just passing over. Then you have somebody that are very interested, you know what I mean? And then they’re like, oh, tell me more about this or that. And next thing you know, you’re like, oh, I got, I went somewhere, got another person on my newsletter, whatever it is, and see what happens of it. And now it’s something where they keep on seeing you every week or whenever that newsletter comes out, even if it’s not a, you know what I mean? A a sales pitch per se. It’s even better.

Charles:
They’re knowing that this guy’s consistently doing this, this person’s like doing deals, all this kind of stuff. And I find that as something, because when that opportunity comes up, when that event happens that’s gonna be one of the things is where of them having cash or something like this to invest or if someone asks them about something, that’s where you might be put in contact with that other person or they might invest themselves. And I, that’s kinda like the cleanest wave I found with doing it from people that you’re meeting like that. But I think also laying out the longer kinda runway to getting them kind of into the position you’re looking to get someone into, which is like being receptive of your real estate deals or looking at real estate deals. ’cause Most people won’t even make it that far through. They’ll already start selling you one email in like, like, what happened with your ex sister-in-law

Dave:
<Laugh>? Yeah. Well this is a great way to get your newsletter off to a good start with, you know, a couple a hundred people already in the pipeline. They’re gonna opt, some of them gonna opt out over over time. But this is a, a great way to kind of shortcut that whole process.

Charles:
So Kfa, we’re we’re closing up here. Just a couple questions. I know you went over really obviously what we just talked about, people going in cold with their kind of somewhat warm or previous warm market of people they know. Can you think of any other kind of mistakes or common mistakes real estate investors make when it comes to raising capital? Yeah,

Dave:
They go for the kill way too soon, right? I see this with, you know, newer capital raisers and guys that should know better. You know, when you, when you meet somebody at a networking event or something like that and they show some interest in your deals and or, or you convince them to jump on a discovery call with you, expecting them to invest immediately after that is, in my opinion, it’s a big mistake. It’s like going on a date and asking somebody to marry you. It’s just too much, too fast. So having a strategic plan of exactly what you wanna do makes it much more efficient. So when we’re working with syndicator clients these days Charles goal number one is get the the ideal person on an interview. Okay? So you’re interviewing them on the podcast, that’s job number one. Job number two is from that interview, get them booked over into a discovery call.

Dave:
Alright? So see if that you can make that happen 75% of the time, we can okay, interview to discovery call, then have a strategic objective with that discovery call. And it’s not to get a check for a hundred grand, that’s too much too fast, right? But you could get what I call a warm commitment from the person, right? So if we did a discovery call, Charles, and you know, it looked like you were interested in things, I’m not gonna go for the kill right away, but I’m gonna say, Hey Charles looks like this is of interest to you. Would you like me to add you to my VIP investor list? So you get first eyes on any new projects that come down the pipeline, you get first dibs on them. Would that be of interest to you? Chances are you gonna say yes? Okay, cool.

Dave:
Well, let’s go through a few questions here and then basically, you know, a lot of capital raisers have some sort of a know your client type checklist or, or questionnaire that they go through. Well go through it right there. And then with that person on the line with you, fill out all of those questions. Confirm that they are an accredit investor if you found a deal that made sense for them, what, how much capital they’d be comfortable investing, where that’d be coming from, what their timeframe would be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Get that all filled out right there. And then you automatically got them opted into your newsletter list from that. So that’s the objective that we have for our clients. Don’t go for the kill, right from the discovery call. That’s creepy. Instead get them to, you know, commit to a warm commitment, which is non-binding.

Dave:
There’s nothing legal about this, but it just pumps them up, jumps them up to the top of your prospect list. Then here’s a tricky thing that you can do. Wait a few weeks after you’ve sent them out a ideally a newsletter or two or a little bit more follow up information about what you do and how you do it. Then you reach out and you say, Hey Charles, we met a few weeks ago. You said they wanted, wanted me to let you know if we’ve got a really good project on the go, I’ve got one that I think might be right up your alley. Would you like to take a look at it with me? Boom. Get them booked into an actual presentation where you’re gonna show them through the specifics of one particular deal and then at that point, yeah, that’s where you can kind of be seeing if they’re ready to go or not. But give it a few, you know, be patient a little bit patient with this. Yeah.

Charles:
I’m on a lot of, I’m investor and a lot of deals and on a lot of even more passive investor lists and lists and I think I had just yesterday someone I knew and they were raising money and they, it was just like, you know, you you, it’s, you don’t wanna, you know, you said, no, I don’t wanna invest in this. And then it’s like coming back and coming back and coming back and you’re like, it’s just now you don’t even want to engage in anything because I just know,

Dave:
Yeah, now you’re get opt out. Right now you’re,

Charles:
You’re gonna, it’s just like, it’s, it’s way too much. Yeah. I said no, it’s like one of those things, same thing with investors. If we have a deal we send out and okay, you don’t have whatever you wanna do, it’s no problem. But I think getting people into your system, that’s like the, the magic of the newsletter. The magic of using some sort of email program. I found what we do here is like when we’re looking through it, you’ll see people that you added two years ago that are still opening up your newsletters, you know what I mean? Six days ago or whatever. It’s, and that’s the power of it where your name’s out there, your company’s out there for what you’re doing, you’re still doing it. So when a deal comes out, you’re going to be even have a higher credibility than something else that comes in. That’s a time of like nurturing that relationship, even if it’s not done by you manually calling them or emailing them. But Dave, thank you so much for coming on today. How can listeners learn more about you and what you’ve got going on? Well, they

Dave:
Can neither connect with me on LinkedIn. Dave Debo, I think, you know, just look for the guy that’s got the podcast, the real estate podcast. Or if you are a syndicator or capital raiser fund manager and you’re interested in getting 20 accredited investor meetings booked every month very consistently, you can check out my free book at 20 accredited investors book.com, 20 accredited investors book.com. That’s the number 20. Gimme your name and your email address. I’ll give you a copy of the book and you’ll be in my ecosystem. You can book a call if you’d like to see how this can work for you.

Speaker 3:
Okay,

Charles:
Well, Dave, thank you so much for coming on today. A lot of great information and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future. Thank

Dave:
You, Charles. It’s been a lot of fun.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Dave Dubeau

Dave Dubeau is a real estate capital-raising expert, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and podcast host with over two decades of experience in creative real estate investing and marketing. He began his journey in 2003 after moving back to Canada from Costa Rica, where he had run a successful English language training company. Starting with no credit, no capital, and no job, Dave completed an impressive 18 real estate deals in just 18 months using low and no-money-down strategies like lease options and paper flips.

Over the years, Dave has helped over 200 clients collectively raise more than $325 million in private capital. He is the founder of the Money Partner Formula, a proven system designed to help real estate investors attract and convert private money without cold calling, begging, or chasing.

In recent years, Dave has pivoted toward helping real estate syndicators and capital raisers leverage podcasting as a marketing funnel, enabling them to consistently book 20+ accredited investor meetings per month. His method flips the traditional podcast model by focusing not on audience growth, but on interviewing ideal investor prospects — building rapport, trust, and long-term relationships.

Dave is also the host of the Property Profits Real Estate Podcast, where he interviews real estate experts and shares insights on capital raising, marketing, and deal-making.

Whether you’re just getting started or scaling a real estate syndication business, Dave’s systems offer powerful, relationship-first approaches to attracting investor capital and building lasting partnerships.

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