Raise Private Money Legally

Raise More Capital Through Digital Automation, With Dr. Adam Gower, Ph.D.

June 24, 2021 Kim Lisa Taylor Season 2 Episode 5
Raise Private Money Legally
Raise More Capital Through Digital Automation, With Dr. Adam Gower, Ph.D.
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, “Raise More Capital Through Digital Automation,” Kim Lisa Taylor interviewed Dr. Adam Gower, Ph.D., who has created a system for raising capital online that is revolutionizing the world of syndication. We’ve told you for years that the most successful syndicators have a system in place for capturing their investors’ attention, developing relationships and keeping their attention until they are ready for their investment. And Dr. Gower is the expert at automating the capital-raising process in a systematic way that will enable you to concentrate on deals and have investors who pursue you.

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Edited Transcript from the Raise Private Money Legally Podcast 

‘Raise More Capital Through Digital Automation’ With Special Guest Dr. Adam Gower, Ph.D.

 

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Welcome to the “Raise Private Money Legally” podcast. We just went live on iTunes and several of the other different podcast platforms last week. So we're super excited about that. 

The whole purpose of this podcast is to talk about topics of interest to real estate syndicators and offer the opportunity for live questions and answers at the end of the podcast. I am your host, 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 platform that is available to the public. If you don't wish to have your voice recorded, please use the chat; we won't give first and last names. We'll just give first names when we call on your chat. 

If you don't want to be recorded or you just want to be anonymous, that's totally fine. Please schedule a one-on-one appointment at our website instead of asking questions during the podcast. 

The information discussed during this free podcast is of a general educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice.

This is probably going to be broadcast later as an audio-only podcast, but we do have our pictures up now, if you want to see us. Today, our guest is Dr. Adam Gower. 

Dr. Gower is an expert and seasoned real estate professional. He's also a prolific author, podcaster and educator who's been perfecting his digital capital raising process over years and is committed to showing you how to find more real estate investors, raise more money and do more and bigger deals without having to spend all of your time networking. Dr. Gower, welcome. 

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Good morning.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Thanks for being a guest on our podcast. Did I miss anything about your biography that you'd like to add?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Oh, rugged, good looks and charm, I suppose, but apart from that … and seemingly endless modesty ...

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And is there anything you would like to tell the audience before we get started? Or should we just jump into the questions?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Yeah. Jump in. I suppose the only thing that I would say is that I am actually a real estate guy. My background is as a syndicator who recast his career about six years ago to become a digital marketer. So that's the important thing. I know what it means to raise money because I've raised it myself in huge amounts.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay. Well, that's important. I have a ton of questions to ask, and I'm sure our audience is ready to hear your answers. So let's go. You said you have some real estate syndication experience. Tell us about what kind of asset classes, how much money you were raising, what were you doing in your former real estate life?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Looking at the actual money that I've raised, I started in Southern California, raising money for ground-up multifamily real estate developments. And that was in the 1980s. So I don't know what was a dollar then worth today … I’ve got to figure a least five X if you'd bought something then, but I don't know; it was 30 something years, a long time ago. So anyway, 1980s money. I raised 30 million U.S. dollars for commercial real estate. This were all ground-up as well. These weren't value-add deals. This was out of the ground, so we raised the money and told investors, “We'll call you in three years when this thing is leased and we've sold it.”

So they weren't easy sales to raise money for. But that's how I cut my teeth, actually. And it's also how I made my first several million. I was around 25 or 26 years old, and I took a piece of the action and made millions and spent all of my salary living the high life, and then lost it all. When the savings and loan crisis hit at the end of the '80s, it all evaporated. And so that was my first experience that real estate doesn't always go up. 

And I ended up moving to Japan, because a lot of my investors that I'd raised money from for these developments were Japanese. And in Japan, shortly after getting there, I was hired by Universal Studios to run Asia Pacific. In English, my title was President of Asia Pacific. 

Although I wasn't really tasked with raising money, I did raise money and we raised two funds. One was a $400 million multi-currency facility to capitalize all the deals that I was doing in Asia Pacific and some other guys in the world as well. And then I also raised money from a very interesting fellow. Actually he invested $30 million, well “committed to investing.” I'm getting too much detail, but he was Toys’R’Us-Japan, and McDonald's Japan … a very famous man in Tokyo. 

And then I came back here, I see you're furrowing your brow, but I did raise a lot of money there. And then I came back here and did my own deals. And I raised money from high-net-worth investors, people in my own circle — by the way, up until this point, every single penny had been in-person, basically sitting at a conference table or going out for lunch or going to clubs, et cetera, to raise the money. It’s the only way you could do it.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's right.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Networking.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Marketing.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Exactly. “Can you introduce me to somebody; who do you know?” Going to conferences and getting business cards; it was brain damage, but I did it. I raised lots of money for my own deals. And then in 2007, sold out everything, completely liquidated my entire portfolio. So right before the crash…

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Lucky you.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Then I stopped raising money. But what I started to do was to work on non-performing loans. I was hired by a major bank, subsequently by Colony Capital, who are, I think probably now the third largest private equity real estate fund in the world. And they had me working on multibillion-dollar portfolios of loans, collateralized by real estate that were non-performing.

I did ginormous transactions there, all individual deals, but in huge quantities. And it was after that, that I learned digital marketing So I kind of semi-retired. I didn't really retire, but when the economy pulled back, I started doing seed investing and angel investment. I was looking all these startups and these kids were pitching me their deals in a language that I didn't understand … it was a foreign language, even more foreign than Japanese; it was the language of digital marketing. And that is how I started on the path to where I am today.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay, great. All right. What is digital marketing?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Digital marketing very simply stated is the digitization of everything that I did in-person. It's leveraging the in-person events … like what we're doing now. You are digitizing this podcast. We're having this call. There are people listening live, but you're going to take this recording, put it up online for potentially any number of people to watch it any time from now until eternity or through all eternity, right? Or until the internet comes down. That is digitization basically. When you're digitizing your pitch or your capital formation process, you don't just do great big, long one-hour pitches and throw those out. There's a lot more to it than that. But in a nutshell, that's what it is. It is the digitization and automation of what you would normally do in-person.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

So automation being you're setting it up. So it just happens in the background and you don't have to keep pushing buttons all day long, right?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Yeah, it's exactly right. Imagine sitting down and saying everything that you have to say about your background experience, the business that you're in, why you like the asset class you're in, about the deals you work on, what you think about the deals, how you looked at the finance, what all the terms mean, etc., etc. If you were to sit down and talk about that entire thing and create articles from that, or a book for example — articles are a better idea — you break that entire narrative down into small pieces and then push it out into the internet. 

So you push it out on your website. You push it out on social media. When you get advanced, you put it out on advertising or on webinars, through PR … there are various kinds of ways you push that out. And when you push it out, what happens is, it settles wherever you put it and prospects find it. And you always leave a thread to those pieces back to your website, to the center of gravity. I'm mixing all kinds of metaphors, but you get the idea. 

Now prospects find these pieces out there in the ether, and they have these threads that bring them back to your core message. And your core message is actually where you house the entirety of all this messaging that you've got, that is your website. So that is where everything lies. So when somebody out there — minding their own business doing something else —  when they stumble across something that's interesting, they end up at your website where they find this Aladdin's cave of goodies  that all speak to that one little piece that they found, but expand on it.

It might be an article about “how do you save taxes in real estate?” And they land on your website and they discover, "Oh my goodness, I didn't know you could make money passively in multifamily. I didn't know what a cap rate meant. I had no idea that Georgia was such a great place to invest." And they suddenly discover this and they establish a relationship with you now. And as they establish a relationship, they begin to get to know you. They come to “know, like and trust you” —  classic digital marketing expression. 

This is on your website. These are pieces you've sent out there that forever just sit waiting for people to find them. So that's the automation. Now what happens is that when you get active and say to them, “invest now” —  guess what? They are predisposed to investing with you. They already know you, they already like you, they already trust you. They know you're not a scam artist. You've given them all kinds of high-value stuff that educates them. They see you as a thought leader. they are ready to invest. They are waiting for you to say, "Send me money." That's basically how it works. That's automation.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. Wow. That would be fantastic. I know, for my clients, having that kind of a system in place would be a game changer. I can tell you that we have a lot of returning clients and the ones that excel and go on and do bigger and more deals are the people that actually take some time to develop an investor marketing program that not only gains the attention of their investors and shows their credibility from the beginning, but it also keeps in contact with those investors periodically over time, because there's sometimes a big gap between when you meet someone and when you're ready for their investment. But in the meantime, you don't want them to forget you. So it sounds like your system is going to help bridge that gap and keep them engaged and informed until you're ready. Is that correct?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Absolutely; 100% right. Not just keeping them engaged until you're ready. You are deepening the relationship with them all the time, but without actually having to spend time doing it. I know it sounds crazy, but it really does work. It's extraordinary. I mean, if I was to open up my inbox now, that is in just the few minutes we've been talking, almost certainly somebody has found something through a funnel just like I describe these threads and landed on my website somewhere. I mean, it really is remarkably powerful. Yeah, it is game changing. It is revolutionary, actually.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

The only thing I would add to that is that it's great to have a digital relationship with someone, but bringing it back to a legal perspective for a minute, if you're going to do Reg D Rule 506(b) offerings that can't be advertised, then there is one step … there is one point at which you are going to have to have a conversation with that person before you have something to offer them and just do a little suitability test with them.

We have an article about what constitutes a pre-existing substantive relationship on our website. It's just two pages. You can take a look at that if you go to syndicationattorneys.com, look in the library, go to “select articles.” It's the first one that pops up. I suggest everybody read that. But the way that that's going to work with Dr. Gower’s system is that when you initially engage somebody, then you're going to pick up the phone, schedule a call, have that conversation, record what information you've exchanged during that call. And I don't mean physically like audible recording. I mean, writing it down, keeping it in some kind of a CRM.

And then now you can let his system work for you to keep you engaged, keep them engaged with you and to keep the conversation going. And at that point, once you've had that conversation, that physical conversation, and you've had this constant communication line opened, then you're going to be free to invite those people to invest in any deal that you have in the future at any time.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

So that is so fantastic that you clarify that because it is a critical distinction, but what I build does not solicit investment. It is strictly educational, right? All you're doing is when you go to the country club and you meet somebody and you start talking, they interested: “What's multi-family?” “You're a doctor? Tell me what kind of doctor are you?" “Oh, right. That's good.” "What do you do?" "I'm a multi-family." "Well, what's that's about?" You just exchange, educating each other. Neither has said it doesn't matter for him, but for you, it does. You're not saying, “Will you invest?” I mean, that's different because it's rugby and it's so it's different. But nevertheless, what you're doing with the system, the investor acquisition system, is that you are drawing people to you and providing them with educational materials. 

And that was exactly the point. When you get to that moment, when you are ready to say, “I want to raise money, would you like to invest?” That is when Kim steps in with legal advice, because now you're going from education to solicitation. The game changes at that point. But until that … all that nurturing stage to get to that point … you can automate that process entirely.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's right. And what time period do you recommend that people engage in that continued communications?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

I love that you asked that. It's funny because my next …I've got a couple of notes down here and the first one was “takes time.” And I'll tell you exactly how long it takes as well in a second … I would say there are two CYAs, if you'll pardon the expression. One is that you build these things, but it’snot going to happen quickly, just doesn't happen quickly. So don't expect money to come raining in through the ceiling as soon as you build this; it takes time. The other thing that is important is you can build the best system in the world —  and we do, all modesty aside —  but unless you've got good deals with good terms and know how to execute, you're not going to raise a single penny. Those two things are really key. So the digital marketing is one thing; it's not like winning the lottery. It doesn't work.

So how long does it take? I was actually on a Mastermindy thing not long ago. And the theme of the Mastermind was how to raise $5 million in 30 days. And all the panelists were asked to answer that. My answer was, if you want to raise $5 million in 30 days, start six months ago, basically. That's how you do it. And if you do that, you'll raise $5 million in five minutes. We did a raise this last summer. It was a 20-point-something-million-dollar raise. It was live on a webinar when we opened it up, but we'd been preparing for nine months. And the first $15 million came through in the first 15 minutes. I kept texting the guy that was doing it —  my client, who was doing the raise —  I kept texting him, “Another million I can't get.” And afterward he told me he was horribly distracted. It's like, "Stop. Don't do that again." Seeing this stuff come in, it takes time. 

The beautiful thing about it is that it all starts with one step. Don't be intimidated. Don't think that you have to have some monster machine that's like Tony Robbins and dozens of people and filmographers, videographers and a casting director. No.

You know what you need? You need an article on your website, a post on social media, and a lead generation form. A post, a page and a form — and followup, and that's automated emails.

That's all you need. And then once you do that — one article one post, you've got your lead gen form and your follow up already in place —  you add another one to it and you just doubled the number. And then you add another. And then now you're three times where you started. And if you do that once a week, by the end of the year, you got 50 articles. And if you do it properly, you can have 10 pieces of content from each one of those articles … you have 500 pieces of content all out there working for you. 

That's two posts a day, every day, automated on social media, on all social media channels on a six-month cycle. And the more you do it, the bigger it gets, the more powerful it gets. It never goes away.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Okay. What are the most important things a sponsor has to do to successfully raise money online?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Okay. So I preempted the answer a little bit. The best thing is to not be overwhelmed by the process. Think small, there are some basic fundamental components …

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Once step at a time.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Once you start small, yeah. One step at a time. Like I said, there are four key things: a post, a page, a form and followup. That is the core of every marketing funnel. By the way, this is nothing new. I mean, I say it's brand new in all my stuff, I say it's brand new. It is brand new to real estate syndication, but it's not brand new in two ways. It's not brand new in digital marketing. Basically, every other industry in the world has been disrupted using exactly the same formula. I've just taken it the best of class and adapted it to real estate.

But you know what's even more interesting? And I said, this is the coolest thing. What I'm describing is actually over 100 years old. Here's this book, this is by Robert Collier, “The Robert Collier Letter Book.” … 

It is absolutely fantastic. And what he describes —  this was written in 1936 —  he was talking about marketing strategies that they deployed in 1904 to sell books, book clubs, and to sell shirts and slacks and all kinds of manner of things and the techniques that they employed then, with what was called then direct marketing, where they sent out literally millions of letters to people to see who came back and what type of letter words, and what didn't work and what, what enclosure works and what didn't work, the exact same techniques, the same language, the same language structure, the same NLP — even though it didn't exist then —  everything is the exact same today as it was then. 

Ultimately there's nothing new. Why?

Because human psychology has not changed. People still react to the same kind of messaging as they always have. They still have the same wants, the same doubts, the same fears, the same desires, the same dreams as they've always had. And so when you communicate to people, you can use these core ideas to tap into that psychology to create a response that you want them to have. So nothing's really changed. It's just applied to the digital marketing world. That's what I do.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. It's amazing that these old principles they're still tried and true and they still work. Anybody who's read “Think and Grow Rich,” right? And I can attest to that. And then looking at this book that was written so many years ago, that still has the same core principles that we have to apply. We just have a different media in which to convey them. 

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

That's right. 

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Instead of having to mail out the Sears catalog.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

That's exactly right. You can do this. You can become a media company. That's basically what it means.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

And we've done the same thing on our website. We started with just a skeletal website and then started adding articles. And then when people started asking me questions, I wrote down frequently asked questions and wrote down the answers and posted those. And then we started doing these videos one at a time, and now we've done 45 episodes and now we're turning them into podcasts. And so it just snowballs over time. At some point, somebody told me, “You have 700 pages of content on your website.” Like, wow, okay. I had no idea, but it's there. 

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

How did you start with one article? 

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

With one thing. 

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

So you just started with one.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

And then it builds. It's wonderful.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

It does. The articles that I write, I like to keep them short, but most of the articles are one or two pages. And I found that that's super-effective. I've been told by people that, "Oh, your blogs have to be 1500 words and all that." And I'm not going to sit down and write a tome and nobody's going to read it anyway. But everybody reads my one- or two-page articles, so that it's just much more valuable and it's easy for me to do because I can get it done in one or two hours.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Perfect.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

What's the hardest part of syndicating online?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

The hardest parts of syndicating online, I think if you've not done it, I think it can be very intimidating to migrate from the in-person world. It's something that you know, you understand, you're comfortable with. Getting over that — that's the biggest challenge, although that barrier is coming down. I get calls from people who are, I've had a couple of calls from enormously successful gentlemen who are old and looking to hand off to future generations and they recognize the power of it. And so they're hiring us to create systems really to replace themselves because they have developed the relationships. They have the relationships, they know the investors, their investors know, like and trust them —  not their children, immediately, or their grandchildren, immediately. 

And so they're looking to us to build these systems so that as they get old, think about this, you're got somebody who is looking to retire… we do this as well; it's interesting how it works … Somebody who's looking to retire, they create a set of content. And then what we do in the indoctrination sequence of emails that we send out when somebody signs up is, we'll have three emails come from that patriarch or matriarch. And the last one says, "I'm going to introduce you to Jimmy (or whoever it is). He's going to be in touch later because I want him to tell you about this deal." And that runs automatically and he hands off, and it's ultimate, and he does that once. And it could be a couple of videos embedded in that.

It allows for them to actually pass the baton to the next generation … automate that process. And that's very attractive because then they don't have to deal with anyone, once you set the thing up. So I think the hardest thing is just not being intimidated by the process, taking a small step, upgrading your website just a little bit. It's not that difficult getting it to a place that is functional and then watch what happens. And you'll be pleasantly surprised how effective it is.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

A lot of our clients already have websites. Is this the thing that they can just add a page or add some …

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

I'll tell you what, Kim, they do. As you know I've got this event going on next week … 100 people signed up … so I earlier this week, I went through 100 websites. First thing I did Monday morning, I need to know who's showing up. I looked at all those websites. So that's one audience. I would say that of the people that actually come to us as wanting us to take them on as private clients, I would say that including that set and the set I looked at, 99 percent have a website that is basically useless. Essentially of no value … it's a picture with, if you're lucky, it's got some message on it of some random sort. Doesn't really say anything.

If, if you are lucky, it's got a contact page, many cases hidden away somewhere. There's no functionality at all. There's no social media activity, there's no education section. Yeah, they've got a website because 20 years ago, somebody said, "You need the website." Well, 20 years ago, you did need a website, today, you must have something more than just a place holder on the internet. You got to have a machine. And so you have to convert your website into being a machine that attracts prospects, nurtures them and converts them into being predisposed to investing with you. That's the difference. Not all websites are built the same.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

No, no. They're absolutely not. And there's definitely some underlying psychology that goes into what you put on your website.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

There is.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

So talk about that. So tell us what unexpected consequences could there be from raising money online?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

I thought you'd never ask. I told you, I was thinking about this, this morning. So I did think, I wanted to ask this question because there is an unexpected consequence. You know the piece of music called “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” by Paul Dukas did … it's a beautiful piece of music. And the idea is that the sorcerer leaves his apprentice to do a job. And the job the apprentice must do is carry water from the well and bring it upstairs. And so the apprentice cast a spell on a broom and a bucket, right? And the broom and bucket go and bring the water and he sits back and relaxes, but he doesn't know how to switch it off. So the music just builds this crescendo and there’s water everywhere and he just doesn't know what to do until the sorcerer comes and switches it off.

This is like sorcery. Once the machine gets going, it's actually impossible to turn it off. I dream, I shouldn't admit, that one day I will switch it off, but when you get it going, if you are doing it in person, you can set the time and place of your choosing at the convenience of a prospect, to get together and answer their questions and meet with them and talk to them and pitch them. And everybody knows what's going on. But when you build one of these systems, it just runs on autopilot all the time. 

It doesn't matter if you're on holiday, if it's a weekend, they say one of the fantasies that they talk about in digital marketing that I bought into is “make money while you sleep, raise money while you sleep.” Okay, it does work. But the downside is that it works too well, can work too well, when it gets going really well. You never have a day off. If you're on vacation and somebody goes through a funnel on your system and you get an email or a text or whatever you've got that says, "I've got a million dollars I want to invest." Now you guess what?

Your holiday is over. You now need to deal with that. There is no control over, it's like the sorcerer's apprentice. You can't switch it off. So that is the downside. It doesn't happen quickly, but it's the reality of it.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I actually have a saying that the great thing about being self-employed is that you can work from anywhere. The terrible thing about being self-employed is that you can work from anywhere.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Is that you can work from anywhere, exactly right. You're always on, unfortunately.

I say that tongue in cheek, but it is the reality, I get emails all the time.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

So you've got to have the bandwidth to be able to do that, but I'm sure that if people are working with you, that you can help them temper that and figure out how to respond.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Yeah. Look, it's a problem that we all wish we had, I suppose, right? At the end of the day, it is an unintended consequence nevertheless.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Let's see, you have an upcoming event. Let's talk about that a little bit and see how, if anybody on the call wants to join how they can go about doing that?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Sure. We take on private clients where we build these systems for them, but for everyone that we take on, there's at least 100 people that I know would rather do it themselves, frankly. And so there's been this enormous gap between... I was doing it for folk and all those people that been falling by the wayside, unfortunately. We have courses and whatever, but next week we are doing a bootcamp. It's actually the first time I'm doing it. And it's going to be five days, Monday through Friday at noon Pacific time, for an hour. 

Then on Thursday and Friday, there's a VIP session at 2:00 each day, again, another hour, both of those days. And it's a learn-by-doing training. So this same exact formula. I'm going to be live. And I'm going to walk you through the process. We give you a website, like a canvas. It's actually a fully optimized website that we've built, and I'm going to show you how to customize it. It's super simple. If I can do it, it has to be simple. I will tell you, it took me at least two years to figure it out before I got done. But next week, we're doing it in five hours, five consecutive hours and compressing it. 

You're going to customize the website with your messaging, write an article. And what's interesting … you said earlier, spend a couple of hours writing an article. Kim, you never need to do that again. I can show you how to write articles without having to write them. It is miraculous, and we're going to do that next week. We're actually going to write articles without writing. I guarantee it’ll take you a fraction of the time to write way more than you've ever thought possible. 

And then we're also going to set up automation. We'll set up a call to action, a lead generation form, and everyone is going to do this yourself. I'm going to show you how, and I'm going to say, “Here, click here, click there, do that” and give you all the tools to do it. You roll your sleeves up and actually do it, it’s a bootcamp. And then we're going to post on social media and you'll have built an investor acquisition system. But first step: a full funnel from beginning to end all the way through that you can continue to build upon and raise money from. That's what we're doing.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I just put into the chat, a link where if anybody wants to sign up for that bootcamp, you can click on that link and it will take you directly to Dr. Gower's page where you can learn more about it. 

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

And just please note that enrollment is shutting down tonight. We've been marketing this for a little while and I need to send out some messages. It’s a lot of work, I’ve got to get stuff out. We've got a private Facebook group; there's a bunch of stuff going on. It's very intensive. It's not a sit-back-and-listen, it's a get-stuck-in-and-do-something bootcamp.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

If somebody cannot join your bootcamp, how else might they engage with you or find out more about what you do?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

The best way to do that, is to go to www.gowercrowd.com. We have a newsletter, educational newsletter. One is on the weekends that is strictly educational. And then we have a real estate crowdfunding news brief that we've started recently. It's very popular.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

That's interesting.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

It goes out on Wednesdays and we aggregate all media coverage of everything commercial real estate crowdfunding related. And that goes out on Wednesdays. People love that.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

I guess I'll add that to my required reading list.

So now we would love to go to live Q&A, if any of our attendees have any questions for Dr. Gower or for me; we can talk about whatever you want. This is your time. You can either type your question into the chat box or you can raise your hand. 

Let's see; do we have anybody that's raised their hand yet? Not yet. We have a lot of shy people on the call. Surely you must have some questions for Dr. Gower. I can't believe that nobody would have any questions for you. And I'm just trying to think. How long does it take to get something like this up and running? It sounded like you really just have a few core components that have to get set up, or could somebody be up and running in a week or two?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

You'll be up and running by the end of next week. If you join the bootcamp, you'd be up and running by the end of next week with a website fully optimized website. So you can either use the website that we build … that you build … we're going to give you a website for you to customize. I'll show you how easy it is to do that. And you can go live with that by the end of next week, quite literally. I mean, you have to put a bit more work in than the one hour a day, right? This is going to be a bit more work, but you can do that. And what you can also do if you've got a rudimentary website now, is actually copy everything over that your... 

Here there's a question. 

So I'll answer Andrew: you can either use what you learned next week and apply it to your website, or actually what I think if you're anything like me, you're going to want to do is to actually take everything from your existing website, put it onto the framework that you're going to get from me next week, and then switch it on. I can show you how to point your domain name to the website you're going to build next week. And the reason that that's attractive is that it is as easy as putting together a PowerPoint presentation. If you know how to drag and drop with a mouse, copy and paste and click, you can build a world-class —  I'm not one for hyperbole —  but a world-class customized website. 

I'm going to show you how to do it next week. It's so easy. You don't, by the way, for any developers on the line, I know I'm talking, this is a radical, but you don't need to depend on a developer anymore. You do it yourself, just do it yourself. You can put a new article up. It's as easy as pie. I do it all the time. Even I do it, I actually find it therapeutic. I'll show you how to put pages up, how to embed videos, how to embed photographs, and it's all drag and drop. It's mind-blowing how easy it is. 

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

All right. Chris asks, “Someone trying to figure this all out … would we be going to Dr. Gower's site first or to you, Kim?” Well, so it's hand in hand. Before you start any marketing campaign, it's really good to have a consultation with us so that we can help guide you on what legal issues you need to look out for. We actually have something called a pre-syndication retainer, and it gives you up to three hours of one-on-one advice with an attorney and as well gets you invited to our weekly syndication Masterminds.

And we'll give you our investor marketing plan template, which could be incorporated with Dr. Gower’s system. And we'll also give you an investor relations blueprint. So it really just describes the steps you need to take to make sure you've got a defensible substantive relationship.

If you do that pre syndication retainer, we can review anything that you're going to put up your website or any drip systems or anything like that, and make sure that you have the right disclaimers on them and that you're not saying anything that's going to gather the wrong attention from a regulator. Something you might want to do is have us under contract with the pre-syndication retainer, and then engage in Dr. Gower’s system and then just have us review things before you let them go live.

Let's see. Ray says, “I was not able to join until 10 minutes and can you cover the four keys again?” Ray, we will actually be posting this podcast on our website, and we'll also be sending it out to people afterward. So you'll be able to listen to it again on your own. 

Let's see, what else? Andrew's question was answered. And so I think that that's all the questions that we have right now. Is there anything that you think we should add to what we've talked about today, Dr. Gower?

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

No, other than always consultant an attorney. Basically seriously, what we do is educational. So the educational stuff is okay, but when you get to actually talking about money, and raising money, and projections, this is securities laws. You're in the realm of … excuse my sexist phrasing … but you're in the world of the “big boys” when you start playing in securities. So what we do is, I say, we create these great systems for marketing, getting your message out, strictly educational, but you need to be sure you know when you are drifting into SEC territory, and that's where I always say, here's my key term: AAA —  keep that in mind, at all times, Ask An Attorney or, Ask An Accountant. When it comes to law, I don't answer those questions.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. I think that those two programs could be very nice companions for each other, making sure that you have the confidence … have Dr. Gower to help you put that content together, have us review it quickly, just to make sure that it's okay, and then you can spin it out there and you know you're not going to get in trouble and you're going to have a good, well-thought-out plan on how you're going to use the system within your investor marketing program to make sure that you're getting the contacts, keeping them engaged, capturing their attention and not doing it in a way that's going to attract the attention from regulators. 

That's just hugely important. And making sure that it's effective … that you have an effective way to keep track of all the conversations and all the contacts that you've had with all of these investors, because you may be required to defend that at some point in the future. 

And there is another question: “What is the fee structure for the workshop?”

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

Somebody actually jumped onto that because I think it's $97. It expires tonight. I can't believe I'm doing it so cheap. It's ridiculous. For the exact same thing as I'm doing next week, we actually charge private clients $4860, it's not $48.60. So I think it's $97. Somebody go ahead and click on that. And if you want to do the VIP, I think it's another $97. 

The most important thing is be sure to sign on today because we are shutting enrollment down later. Just a minute, sec, I'll just have a quick look … Ah, yes. $49. Lovely. The link that I gave to Kim two weeks ago is the early bird special. So as ironic as is to have the early bird special at the last minute, it's only $49. Ridiculous. And it's all recorded by the way. So even if you miss one of the days, yes, it's all recorded. There's a Facebook group. You can look at it forever. So if you sign up and you don't show up at all, you can still attend in six months time; it will be just as useful.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Well, I know I'm going to be there. I'm definitely going to attend. And I think that all of my clients would do well to attend too, and maybe attendees on this call, if you're looking to raise money from private investors, this could be your ticket to standing out from the crowd. And you need to be able to do that. There's a lot of people out there that are competing with you, but if you can do it just a little bit better than other people, then you're going to get those investors on your deals.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

By the end of next week, at least another 100 people out there. So join the crew, yeah.

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

There we go. All right. Well, we're going to close. Thank you, everybody, for taking time out of your busy day to attend. And we're so happy that you listened. And Dr. Gower, thank you again for being our guest.

 

Dr. Adam Gower:

It was so nice of you to ask. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. 

 

Kim Lisa Taylor:

Thank you. Bye-bye.