How To Build Relationships With Investors For Real Estate Syndications – Jared Asch

 

Building investor relationships is key to real estate syndications. You want to really know them and understand why they are investing in you. It’s always quality over quantity when it comes to any relationship. Just like a school dance, you want to ask someone who is really interested in you.

Join Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz as they talk to the Partner in Crown Capital in charge of Building Relationships with Investors, Jared Asch. Jared is also the Founder of Capstone Government Affairs. Tune in to discover how you can create more meaningful relationships in your life, and learn how to adopt the abundance mindset in your daily life.

Get in touch with Jared Asch:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredasch/

Website Links: crowncapitalcorp.com, https://www.capstonegov.com/

If you are interested in learning more about passively investing in multifamily and Build-to-Rent properties, click here to schedule a call with the CPI Capital Team or contact us at info@cpicapital.ca. If you like to Co-Syndicate and close on larger deal as a General Partner click here. You can read more about CPI Capital at https://www.cpicapital.ca. #avabenesocky #augustbiniaz #cpicapital

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

 

Important Links

• Crown Capital
• Capstone Government Affairs
• Contra Costa County Transportation Authority
• The Real Estate Guys
• BiggerPockets
• Miracle Morning
• Jared Asch on LinkedIn
• Crown Capital Corp – LinkedIn

 

About Jared Asch

Jared is the Partner in Crown Capital in charge of Building Relationships with Investors. Jared is a general partner and investor in a 134-unit apartment building in Houston, TX as well as a GP on apartments in Lubbock, TX and Louisville, KY. He has been investing in real estate since 2017 and owns several rental properties in Memphis, TN. In addition to his work with Crown Capital, Jared is the Founder of Capstone Government Affairs. Jared has over two decades of experience in government affairs, economic development consulting and is an expert at building relationships. Jared has a Master’s in Public Administration from American University and a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University. He is LEED®AP certified by the US Green Building Council. Jared currently serves the City of Walnut Creek as a Transportation Commissioner, and he is on the Chairman of Board of Advisors to the Contra Costa County Transit Agency. Jared is a 2x Iron Man and an avid triathlete. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.

 

How To Build Relationships With Investors For Real Estate Syndications – Jared Asch

We’re joined by Jared Asch.

Before getting into our tremendous guest and his background, which is very interesting and fascinating as it relates to real estate and private equity, here’s a quick background about life and what’s happening. The Fed raised the interest rates by 50 basis points as forecasted. It did create a bit of a bull run in the markets. That is a deviation from the level of interest rates that we’re increasing, which was 75 basis points. Was it five times in a row?

Yes. It’s good news.

It’s good news, but they also said they’re going to continue raising until they bring control over inflation.

Following the data on what’s happening, I’m optimistic for buyers in 2023 and 2024. Everybody, get your investors ready because there are going to be some incredible opportunities that we’re going to be able to lock down.

 

Are you talking about distress deals?

I’m talking about the distress deals.

It sounds good.

I agree. I’ve had 4 or 5 conversations that said to look for Q2 for distress deals.

A lot of times, when a lot of people read our show, they don’t read it all the way to the end, where we have our Ten Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom, where we ask these ten questions from our guests, which creates amazing dialogue and conversations. If you’re reading this, make sure you read this to the end to get to learn about Ten Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom.

You get to know and learn more about the guests and fall in love with them. You’re like, “I like that person. They’re awesome.” I like Jared because Jared told me that he’s all about mindset and abundance, which is our people. I’m going to do a quick bio, which is an incredible bio. Jared is a Partner in Crown Capital and is in charge of building relationships with investors. Jared is a General Partner and an investor in apartment buildings in Houston, Texas, Lubbock, Texas, and Louisville, Kentucky.

In addition to his work with Crown Capital, Jared is the Founder of Capstone Government Affairs. He has many years of experience in government affairs and economic development consulting and is an expert at building relationships. Jared has a Master’s in Public Administration from American University and a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University. Jared serves in the City of Walnut Creek as a Transportation Commissioner. He is the Chairman of the Board of Advisors to the Contra Costa County Transportation Authority. Jared is a two-time IRONMAN and an avid triathlete. He lives in San Francisco Bay area with his wife and three children. August is super excited about that, everybody.

I have done a sprint triathlon, which is 50% of an actual triathlon. I barely made it, but I ended up in the top 15% of getting off the couch and doing it.

We believe this interview with Jared will bring great value to real estate investors looking to raise more capital and close larger deals. Welcome, Jared. Thank you for being on our show.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited.

Can you start off by telling us about your background and your start in real estate?

I have spent many years in the government affairs space, and I excel at building relationships, as you said. I started on political campaigns and fundraising. If you’re asking somebody for money, you have to know why they want to give and what’s going to motivate them. It’s the same thing years later in real estate. I started investing in real estate a couple of years ago now. I started buying single-family homes in the San Francisco Bay area that was too expensive. I started out of state through a turnkey provider. I own several homes in Memphis, and I get nice cashflow. I sat down and did the calculations of do I spend $25,000 on the house and get $350 to $500 back in cash.

If you're asking somebody for money, you have to know why they want to give and what's motivating them. Click To Tweet

That’s a pretty good return on a monthly basis, but it wasn’t necessarily reaching my goals, which was significant cashflow each month, enough to cover my mortgage, property taxes, car payments, and car insurance. At the same time, it wasn’t saving me enough money monthly to redo the bathroom for my wife instead of putting the $25,000 into a new house. I said, “How do I scale?” That’s what led me into the multifamily space. I spent a few years studying this space, watching it, and seeing what the opportunities are.

Instead of calling people for a losing political candidate or sometimes winning, now I’m calling people and saying, “Can I make you 10% cash back on your investment? Can I double your money over five years in a hard asset?” I’m having a different level of conversation. That talks a little bit about me and my mindset.

For me to quickly jump in and break this down a bit more, you’re investing in single-family, you want to scale, and you get into multifamily. Multifamily is an incredible legacy asset for people to try to grow their personal wealth and generational wealth, but we are also talking about you getting involved in real estate, private equity, and syndications where you’re not only buying these assets for yourself and your family, you’re also raising capital and syndicating deals. Talk to us about when you realized syndication even existed.

Being in real estate for several years, I knew there were large funds and Blackstones of the world, but I didn’t know that groups could syndicate and raise capital from retail investors. That’s something that, way later in my career, I realized and got excited and involved in this business. For yourself, what was that? What type of research did you do to even realize that you could raise money from others to buy bigger deals, larger deals, or syndicate deals?

It started by listening to podcasts like this one, The Real Estate Guys and BiggerPockets, two of the bigger ones in the industry. I was listening to both of those. I was an out-of-state single-family investor, so it was important for me to understand the process and everything. Along the way, I heard enough people speak, and then some other people were doing podcasts and listened to those, people like yourself and myself. One conversation led to another.

As I continued to network within this space, which is what I do is build relationships, one person referred me to another and another, and it started me on this journey. I had a goal in mind, and my goal has always been that cashflow number that pays those couple of key items that I was talking about in life, and that’s what’s driving me to hit those goals and help others hit those goals.

You mentioned you are still a lobbyist. Could you describe to our readers what a lobbyist is and how this background helped you in connecting with more investors?

Think about me as a middleman. Most of my clients are selling something to the government more than we’re trying to change policy. Sometimes we are changing policy, but they have a widget to sell to a city hall, school district, or state government agency. Maybe that widget is software, solar panels, gunshot sensors, prisoner communications, or whatever it is, and we’re trying to connect it to the government.

 

To do that, it’s a relationship game. I’m your middle man or your mayor’s golfing buddy and have that relationship and can say, “Mayor so-and-so or City Manager so-and-so, I’m working with a client that does this. Are you interested in that? Does it fit your goal for sustainability in the city? Can I provide an introduction for you? Can I help usher this along through bureaucracy?” By having those relationships with elected officials like city officials or state people, I’m able to help move things along for my clients. It’s all about building relationships.

That’s very true. I’m excited to dive into building relationships with investors and talking to you about a couple of items I’m excited to get your opinion about. The first question is, when discussing investors, is it quality or quantity? This is something that I am struggling with a little bit here at CPI Capital. We know that building relationship is the number one thing when it comes to keeping investors, building trust with them, and having them feel like they’re taken care of, but a good problem to have is you have so many investors coming through your funnel, how do you keep up with keeping those relationships tight-knit and not losing track of people?

These are discussions we’ve had a lot of time as well. Our resources and time are limited, so we can put those resources and time to cater, nurture, and communicating with the current investors who are part of our database, or we could put those resources and time into bringing more investors into the funnel, and that’s the struggle we have felt inside. Should we create more strategies? Should we do more shows? Should we do more initiatives to bring more investors in? Should we concentrate on the investors that we have who are sitting on the sideline who maybe haven’t pulled the trigger and invested with us yet?

Maybe you can touch on that side as far as quality and quantity, the difference between them. At all times, should syndication groups or people who deal with investors always be in the pursuit of bringing more investors into their realm, or should they be very focused on finding and refining the investors they already have in their database idea?

It is a one-on-one relationship that you’re trying to build. You’re not setting out to a big database. Those investors that you get on a call with, you do have to get on a call with them, maybe on a quarterly basis. I’m looking forward to learning more about how you do it.

Quality over quantity, but I also believe it’s a numbers game. My theory after talking to a lot of people in the space is if you have 250 to 300 investors who are qualified accredited people who want to invest or have invested for something else, you will be able to fund any deal from a capital raising standpoint that you have. How do you get 250 to 300 people? You’re not going to bat 1,000.

Not everybody you’re going to talk to or who is following you on social media will fit into that top group of quality, 250 to 300 people. Most networking books out there will tell you 250 to 350 people is a solid set of relationships you can maintain professionally, on top of the people you see outside of your kids’ school or your spouse.

To get there, I believe you have to talk to 1,200 people, which means you have to outreach to even further. I became good at political campaign fundraising and nonprofit fundraising when I created this strategy. It parallels capital raising for real estate investment, which is to compare it to a big dance in high school. You could use this in different scenarios for whatever your preference. Women could do this too.

 

If you are the only guy in the room and there are 100 women, you’re going to have to ask all of them out, but not 100 are going to want to dance with you, and not more than maybe 2 or 3 are going to want to ring from you, but you’re going to choose one of them. It’s about having quick conversations with people about starting the communications, but also finding out who’s serious and who wants to invest. Also, listening to them, so you build quality relationships with those people, but you have to ask 100 people to dance with you before you can find the ten that will say yes to dance and find the ones that you’re going to date and the ultimate one that you’re going to put the ring on their finger.

An advice that I got about what we’re speaking about is it’s just like life. The relationship with GPs have with investors are very similar to the relationship we have in life. Sometimes, no matter how much of a kind, great, and awesome person you are, certain people automatically don’t like you. They grind their gears, and this happens. It happens to me against others or others to me. It happens in life.

 

What I’m trying to say is that there are certain people that don’t matter how great your deal is, how great their returns on your deal and how great your track record is. They might not click with you or align with you. I totally get that you need to have these large numbers. That’s why it’s called a funnel in sales and marketing because people come in, and you end up with the people that align and want to invest with you. There is a balance we need to have in getting people coming into the funnel. Also, vetting and going through those people. I had a smile on my face when Jared talked about 250 to 350. We have over 500 accredited investors that Ava has spoken with.

We have 600 now.

Not all of them have invested with us. A lot of them are sitting back. We had an investor who has been talking to us for a few years to finally invest it in our last deal, so we know that it takes time. It is that balance between bringing enough leads through your funnel, vetting them, seeing if you’re fit for them and if they’re the right fit for you because this is somewhat of a marriage, and then also nurturing those relationships and keeping the communication going.

Before we get to this next question, I wanted to ask you quickly. An investor sees your content and what you’re up to somewhere. Maybe they sign up, want to learn more, or they come up to one of your events and they show interest. How many times do you reach out to them and try to get ahold of them like, “Jump on a call with me,” or so forth, or do you let them come to you because you can see they’re opening your emails and they’re engaged? I’m curious how many times would you reach out to somebody to get on a call and force them to connect on that Zoom call to get to know you, and then you can make them fall in love with you kind of thing?

It’s funny because we were having a discussion with my partners at Crown Capital about this. I am of the philosophy that I want the investor to slightly come to me, and then I’ll get them at that point. What does that mean? I want them to download and open our eBook and not just sign up for our Facebook or LinkedIn page. I want them to attend a meetup and discussion that we’re doing. I want something from them. We’re offering all this content and energy.

 

If somebody’s been opening the newsletter twenty times, I want to talk to that person. I will chase them for a call, and I’m not running after them and swinging a rolling pin like the little lady in the cartoon, but what I’m doing is I’m going to offer them the time and say, “I’d like to talk and get to know you.” I don’t believe as soon as somebody likes our Facebook page or something, that’s when it goes to the next one. I want the quality and the quantity balanced. I want to know that they’re interested in me before I put my time into them, but I want to get to know every single person who is also interested in knowing us.

If they go one foot, you go one-mile thing. We did some research on you, so we didn’t want to give up this question.

Not to give up any secrets, but you have a unique concept you follow in connecting with investors. I’ll let you get into it, but it’s something about asking how the weather is on an investor call might not be the best question.

No. You guys are in Canada, and it’s mid-December. I assume it’s a little cold outside. At the same time, in Phoenix in July, it’s hot. When I get onto a group conference call, my theory is if nobody knows each other and tries to banter, everybody’s like, “What’s the weather?” “It’s great.” Those things are obvious, but that doesn’t get to know somebody as an individual. That’s not why they are going to invest with you and trust you with their money. That’s not what is their why, what is driving them, why they would want to invest, what they do for work, or what’s important to them. That is essential in building a relationship with somebody.

I laugh when I get on a call, and somebody asks me about the weather because I try to pivot that to know, “What vacation have you taken? What’s your dream vacation? Is your son in the Little League World Series Championship right now? Is your daughter in a drama class?” What’s really important to these people?

I was talking to somebody who is 83 in investing, and he wants to get in and out of every deal in less than three years. Why does he want to do that? It’s because he doesn’t feel like he’s going to be around in more than four to be able to worry about it. His words, not mine. He wants in and out of a deal, and that’s his time period. I don’t want to bring him a deal that’s 5 or 7 years, and I also don’t want to bring him a deal that’s an equity play on a turnaround. I want to bring him cashflow because that’s what that gentleman wants.

I talked to a couple who are probably 38 and 45, somewhere in that range and have two young kids who are trying to buy their primary residents, but they want to get their primary residents out of cashflow from investing, and they have a number of other deals. Those are two very different styles of people, but they both had goals, and both told me about their families and about other people. You want to know somebody better and what is driving them to invest in you. When you talk about quality over quantity, what I did was I talked about starting with these higher numbers at that dance, but I want to find the people that we both want to dance together.

You want quality over quantity in your investing relationships. You want to know what is driving someone to invest in you. Click To Tweet

That makes sense. Is it fair to say that when you get on a call with an investor, you start the conversation off on a personal level, and you don’t talk much about a business model and the returns and so forth? Is that fair to say that you really get to know them?

I try, yes. Not everybody’s so open, but I just go with the flow. I like to get to know people to the best of my abilities because I like that, and then you could follow up with them.

May I ask how long you usually spend with an investor for the first time?

It takes around 20 to 30 minutes. It doesn’t have to be long. Nobody wants to talk longer than that, but sometimes they do.

Not so much anymore, but sometimes the conversation gets going.

She’s more interesting than I am.

I don’t even get any investor calls.

You’re not in investor relations.

If you want to know something simple like, “You’re a skier in Northern California. There’s been so much snow early this 2022 between mid-November and December. What a great start.” If somebody’s a skier or boarder, that’s a great way to ping them and follow up with that relationship. That is how you continuously build that relationship. I could generally get that out of people. Some go a little longer, and some go shorter.

I ask investors, “What are you investing in right now?” We get a talk about whiskey and all these other cool things.

Art and all these unique things that we never thought about.

They get excited about it, and then I talk about my investment, which they’re excited about. Thanks for sharing all that stuff with us. I was wondering. Do you recommend coaching for investors who want to raise more capital or maybe some other resources, books, courses, or yourself?

I’ve never gone through a formal coaching program. Two of my partners went through the Michael Blank program. I like to learn more hands-on than in some of these programs. I’ve attended workshops and conferences in the space. I like that aspect. I like participating in panel discussions. I love listening to podcasts. I feel like there’s a ton of free content out there where I would hire a coach in a very specific area that I want to improve, which might be a social media fix or how to tell a better story.

There's so much free content out there that you should only hire a coach when you want to improve in a very specific area. Click To Tweet

I’m working with somebody on a series of one-minute videos, and we were going frankly from the start of FAQs on real estate, “What does cashflow mean? What does conservative underwriting mean?” I’m now looking at changing those to what I like to talk about. We might still do some FAQ videos for our website, but what I want to promote is these videos about me, my mindset, and abundance because that’s what I’ve spent the last several years studying and getting passionate about.

The advice on that from somebody in the marketing space was to tell your story. People want to know you as you want to get to know your investors. Hiring somebody like that to solve a technical problem on how to automate something is helpful. The three of us have talked about mastermind groups moving into running a paid mastermind group where it’s holding people accountable, but it’s people who are going through the same difficulties and challenges I am at various different periods and coming together to solve them from everybody’s own experience in a way that’s beneficial to everybody.

It’s a great segue to our next question. We want to talk about mindset and other items.

Earlier, we discussed how you leverage your background in government affairs to excel in your real estate investing business. Now, let’s discuss another superpower of yours. You also do Ironman competitions, which is not an easy thing to do. Maybe you can talk to us about it and connect doing Ironman with the business world.

What you should know about me is that I am average. I am nothing special in a lot of ways. I was destined to be middle class. I wasn’t picked last on all the teams in high school, but I wasn’t picked in the first ten. I never believed that I could be wealthy or be a rockstar. That was not the way I was brought up, but nobody ever said, “What do you mean you want to do an Ironman? Do you want to run a marathon after you’ve biked 112 miles?” Don’t forget. I have an hour-plus swim before that in cold water. I’ve never done a swim in warm water.

The first full Ironman I did was several years ago. I did a lot of smaller races along the way. You got to start somewhere. That’s what first changed for me because once I realized I could do something physically that nobody believed I could ever do and I never believed I could do. I didn’t say I was winning the Ironman, I’m a finisher, but I’m proud of that. I made decent time. That told me I could do anything I wanted in life, and that led me through a cousin and a best friend starting to read books and listen to audiobooks, and podcasts, all about improving my mindset overall in every area of my life.

 

We look up to that. We call it a supreme being, but having that discipline shows you discipline within business every day. I always say, to have discipline, when you get up in the morning and make your bed, you’ve started the day off with success, but doing the Ironman programmed your brain to have discipline in everything else. August and I are big believers in the way that we live our lives.

We might be doing the spring triathlon here in UBC, and Ava is not a very good swimmer.

I’m a fast runner.

I’m a fast swimmer. I get out in the top 15%, and running was never my thing. By the time you get to the running course, all the runners are passing you because it’s further to run or there is more time for running than for swimming, so don’t worry about it.

Let’s get to the next segment of our show. Thank you so much for your transparency and for sharing all your golden nuggets with us. We’re into the next segment of our show.

Here’s the Ten Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom, so that’s whatever comes top of mind. Are you ready for this?

Let’s do it.

Who was the most influential person in your life?

I’m going to go back to my grandfather and my elementary school principal, who I should also point out was my next-door neighbor. My grandfather, my mother’s father, was my driving force. He was my rock in life when I needed it. That principal was so friendly and encouraging. I was inspired by the education and life of the two of them.

Next question, what is the number one book you’d recommend?

I am a big fan of Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning series. It is this concept of getting out of bed first thing in the morning, almost before the rest of the world wakes up. It’s starting your day off right and how to do it with affirmations, exercise, journaling, and meditation to get your body and mind into that right spirit.

Next question, if you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

That you will be successful. There is more to life than what you are being told to look at that bigger picture that the whole concept of mindset and abundance to your riches.

There is more to life than what you are being told. Look at the bigger picture of mindset and abundance to your riches. Click To Tweet

I love that. What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?

Proposing to my now wife.

That’s very sweet. What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made, and what lessons did you learn from it?

In 2007, I was living in Miami, South Beach, at the time, the other end of the country. I bought a condo that was overpriced with no money down on one of these low-interest or interest-only deals, which was exactly what was the mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession of 2008 was. I was losing money even after I had moved out of the place and walked away to pay off debts and everything else. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was following a fad, and I didn’t study real estate or investing at that time. Part of what has led me to this is taking the time to learn about real estate and do things right.

As a general partner, you have to have gone through some of those blood, sweat, and tears times.

We all got to have a nightmare story that makes us stronger.

Except for me, I graduated high school in 2007. Next question, how much would you need in the bank to retire now? What’s your number?

I’ve never put that together because now, I believe in acquiring more. I would look at a cashflow number as more than money in the bank. If that’s the case, to fully retire, it’s $400,000 to $500,000 per year coming in cashflow.

I like that you said that because you started off by talking about how you were calculating your bills and how much passive income you have to make to pay up your mortgage, car payment, and insurance. That’s an amazing number. I love it when people say that because it gets the readers thinking, “That’s possible? Wow. I want to work towards that.” Thanks for sharing that. Next question, if you could have dinner with someone, dead or alive, who would it be?

The two of you, let’s meet.

Dinner is on us.

We’ll meet in the middle somewhere.

We would love that. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing, what would you be doing now?

I’d be a lifeguard on a tropical island somewhere and maybe a ski instructor.

You’re saving lives.

My favorite question is, book smarts or street smarts?

Is there are both? You’ve got to have EQ or Emotional Intelligence to be successful in this life, but you need to always be reading a book, doing things, and learning, but I’m a hands-on learner. That’s the street-smart.

Last question, if you had $1 million cash and you had to make one investment, what would it be?

Our next deal that’s coming up is 8% cash-on-cash and 16% IRR on your return.

He believes in his own product. That’s awesome.

Jared, please let everybody know what is the best way that they can reach you.

You can find me, Jared Asch, on LinkedIn. I am the only one on LinkedIn with that spelling. You can follow Crown Capital Corp on LinkedIn as well as go to www.CrownCapitalCorp.com.

Thanks, brother. Thanks, everyone, for reading. We’ll see you next episode.