Meet Divya.
She had left her corporate career at the Nasdaq to build an empire of 300 multi family units. She moved her family to Buffalo to realize the margins she couldn’t realize in the metro New York area.
Now that she was returning 18% to her investors, she wanted to start a fund. The investment thesis would be the same: Class B and C workforce housing, but this time with outside money. Not just friends and family.
The problem was: She was extremely introverted. She was hard pressed to hold a conversation at a networking event, much less ask for checks.
Despite being an expert in the owner/operator space, she wasn’t sure how to overcome this. Then—-how to get investors interested in investing in her first fund?
She decided to work with me to find a new way to find her talk track and build her pitch as a fund manager
These were her results after JUST 3 months:
- Closed a $20MM for her first fund
- Hired an advisor who would connect her to opportunities
- Began speaking and moderating at industry events
Here’s what we did:
1. Got her outside her comfort zone
I invited her to a skydiving retreat, where 7 women were jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Doing something that radical, changed her perennial NO’s into a “YES”
I invited her to the 7 day sail of the Dalmatian Coast with her family. Photos of her on a private yacht charter in the Mediterranean went viral on her social media. Her colleagues started to see her in a new light.
Distilled big ideas into simple insights.
The biggest problem Divya had was being able to engage a room.
We used our MAP Method™ to map out the following:
- How to establish her expertise as an owner/operator
- How she returned 18% to existing investors
- Architected how the blend of her expertise was the “New Way” of investing in real estate
- Details of the strategy
She wasn’t the smoothest when she first started showing up pitch to rooms, but she started to learn the objections.
3. Built the Relationship-to-Results Method™
Women have to build 3 networks.
Operational. to run the day to day. I suggested a VA to help with this.
Strategic. to get in front of the right target buyer.
Aspirational. to get goals that are a year down the line.
Divya was actively engaged with the investor community. We leveraged this to create a list of events to speak at (her strategic network). She began pitching. She faced alot of rejection.
But she learned from it. She practiced responses to the objections.
She hit the road and began hosting lunches and dinners with some of the big players in her space. We helped her book private dining rooms when rental venues fell through.
The results were explosive -She had her commitment for her first $20MM within 3 months.
4. Inducted her into the Weekly Think Tank Calls
When challenges came up with a client, as they came up, she brought them to the Tuesday Weekly Think Tank Calls. On these calls, she would crowdsource from the group the best way to handle a challenging situation with a client.
The invites to speak kept coming in. To think, there was a time, she couldn’t hold a conversation.
5. Worked to construct her first signature talk on stage.
This activity forced her to think about how her superpowers applied to MORE than just the workforce housing space.
She gave a compelling talk about the parallels between her immigrant story and the strategy to raising investor dollars outside friends and family.
This is what she wrote me yesterday.
If you have just left corporate and are struggling with how get your client pipeline filled.
Or you're looking to become an industry authority like Divya
and are overwhelmed with trying to get LinkedIn to work by yourself.
We would love to help.
Click the link here to discuss your strategy