Josh Cantwell: So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. Hey, it’s Josh. And listen, I wanted to just jump on today and kind of do a little bit of a debrief from our event we held last week called Forever Passive Income Live. We haven’t taught a live event for five years. We’ve been running our Mastermind program and just focused on doing deals for the last four years, obviously, dealing with COVID and just all those crazy things that happened. We finally did our first live event. And so, today I want to debrief that and tell you a little bit about some of the things that I taught, some of the things that I want to teach you today for free on this podcast and talk a little bit about some of the major things that I think investors need to be successful going into this next recession, going into this downturn in 2023 and 2024. So, here is one of our major takeaways from FPI Live, specifically regarding our brand syndication system. Here we go. 

[EPISODE]

Josh Cantwell: So, in this episode, I want to kind of go back on day one of Forever Passive Income Live. One of the first things we started talking about and teaching around is what I call a brand syndication system. A brand syndication system is a way to push out your brand, a way to attract investors, to attract private money, to attract partners, and to attract deal flow. The way that I specifically define a brand syndication system, what is a brand syndication system, is it is the marketing process of regularly sharing your best of content with your followers, your friends, your potential partners, potential investors free of charge for the purpose of being the top of mind reference for anyone who’s thinking about real estate, about investing, about returns, about real estate education, about entertainment, around real estate, so that those people can buy properties from you, sell properties to you, invest, refer, and cheerlead. And so that at the end of the day, you can raise capital, fill up your deal flow pipeline, and locate partners. So, let’s break this down into four parts.

The marketing, number one. The marketing process of regularly sharing your best of content. So, that is important when we think about this brand syndication system. And what I talked about with our attendees of the Forever Passive Income Live is that, look, there are people out there right now, everybody in the world, everybody in the world wants to invest smartly, wants to save for retirement, wants to make good investment decisions, and they want to enjoy their retirement years. Yes or yes? Makes sense? Yes? Everybody wants to have a nice retirement, right? Yes. So, one of the things that we need to do is we need to make sure that we’re not pre-judging anyone about their financial position. When I think about investors, we’ve raised over $100 million, we have over 400 active investors in our apartments and in our fund and different things like that, those folks, there are people who look homeless, literally, who have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And there are people who are dressed up, dressed to the nines that have a big house and a fancy car who do not have any extra money to invest.

So, I learned at a very young age not to judge a book by its cover. And so, when I think about our brand syndication system and sharing content with everybody, friends, followers, potential partners, and investors, the first thing that you have to tell yourself is that you’re not going to judge a book by its cover, that you’re not going to prejudge anybody, none of your friends, none of your family, none of your colleagues, nobody that you know. That’s the first thing that you must do. That’s the first rule. Write that down. The second rule in getting investors and creating a brand syndication system to share your best of content, the second rule… One is don’t judge a book by its cover and the second rule that you have to make sure that you are pushing out is that you have to have capital before you can find deals. The rule is, look, you’re not going to find deals and then the money will follow. A lot of people say, “I’m going to find a deal and the money will follow.” I’m going to call bullsh*t on that right now. That’s not true.

Especially in the commercial real estate world, especially with apartments, sellers, lenders, brokers, they want to know that you have access to capital, that you can build a capital stack, that you can get your debt, you can get your equity, you have your down payment, you can execute your business plan. They want to know that before they’re going to show you any deal flow. Now, in residential, you can kind of fake it, right? You can tell a seller, “I’m going to pay all cash knowing that you’re not going to pay all cash, that you’re going to wholesale the property to somebody else who’s going to pay cash and you’re going to get a wholesale fee.” Right? Well, I’m here to tell you that the commercial world is much more sophisticated, much too sophisticated. There’s too many sophisticated sellers, too many sophisticated buyers for you to get away with that. So, they’re not going to show you a $10 million building or have you make an offer on a $5 million building or a $20 million building when you have no capital raise and you’re not sure how you’re going to close. Brokers just aren’t going to let you in the room. They’re not going to show you deal flow. So, that’s the second rule is that we have to have funding first. Funding equals freedom.

The third rule is that when you buy a property right and you buy a property, let’s say for $10 million, you’re going to need about 30% to 35% of your purchase price in private capital, in equity. You’re going to need that because that’s the money that you’re going to need for your down payment, your capital improvements, your soft costs, and your acquisition fee, and maybe your cash bleed. You may have a cash bleed on the property until it’s more stabilized. So, it’s really, really important that you’re in a situation where, one, you’re not going to judge a book by its cover. Two, you’re going to realize that you need funding first. And three, you’re going to need about 30% to 35% of your purchase price in capital. Now, with that being said, now we’re going to have to make the market aware of what we’re doing. That’s what we call a brand syndication system. It’s the marketing process of regularly sharing your best of content with your followers, your friends, your partners, and investors free of charge. Number two, for the purpose of being the top-of-mind reference, number three, so these people can sell properties to you, buy properties from you, invest, refer, cheerlead so that, number four, you can raise capital, create your deal flow pipeline and locate partners.

And so, everybody that you think about when you think about companies, when you think about major, major companies out there, they all have a brand syndication system, Harley-Davidson, Tesla, Apple Computer, Costco Wholesale, Star Wars, Starbucks. They all have a certain brand and they push that brand out to the marketplace in a certain way. You, as a real estate entrepreneur, a real estate investor investing in multifamily properties, you have a certain brand. My brand is Freeland Ventures. My brand is Freeland Apartment Communities. The way that I push that out to the world is called Accelerated Investor. So, with that being said, we really have if you think about it, there’s your company name, Freeland Ventures or Freeland Apartment Communities, and then there’s your brand syndication name, Accelerated Real Estate Investor. So, Accelerated Real Estate Investor is a way for me to be the top-of-mind reference to all of you. It’s a way for me to scale this one-to-many concept, this idea of recording content one time, and it’s online forever, and I can reach thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, friends, family, people while I sleep.

And so, the idea here is we’re going to use the brand, which is our position in the market. That brand is how the market will identify with your company. The goal is to raise capital, find deals, and to create joint venture partners. And what it does is it solves credibility problems with brokers, lenders, investors, so they’re able to research you online and find you and so they’re not going to have so many questions about providing a proof of funds. So, creating this online presence, this position in the market, the way the market identifies with you, ultimately, if you really think about it, it’s a way of overcoming the question from sellers, from brokers, from other investors, lenders about your proof of funds. If you have so much out in the marketplace, content, podcasts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, SMS messages, email marketing, Facebook, YouTube, meetup groups, newsletters, there’s all these different things you can do in a brand syndication system that creates awareness about who you are and what you do so that a broker simply assumes or a seller assumes that you have the cash to close. So, the reason why I’m adamant about my followers, my friends, my investor, my mastermind creates a brand syndication system is because you can’t fake a proof of funds letter.

You either have the 3 million down to 5 million down to a million down or you don’t. And if you want to get in the game, not only do you need partners, need investors in the deal flow, but you need to overcome when a broker says, “Hey, you’re going to need about $5 million for this deal. Do you have it? Can I see proof of that?” Well, when I go into a deal, I make offers on deals, I never have the $5 million just sitting there. I get the deal first and then I go raise the 5 million. So, what I’ve done is I’ve warmed up the market. I’ve warmed up investors to know that if I do get a deal under contract and then I’m able to get it under contract to get through due diligence, now I’m going to go tap in to that group of investors that I already have a relationship, I’ve already warmed up through my brand syndication system through YouTube videos, through podcast, through blog posts, Facebook lives, Facebook posts, LinkedIn, Instagram posts, physical newsletters, my websites, SMS, email marketing, all this stuff I’ve warmed up the market to the point where now I know that these are a group of investors that are already predisposed and predisposition to doing business with me.

And so, a brand syndication system, which is, again, this process of regularly sharing your best of content is a form of sales. It’s marketing. Marketing is sales in print. So, if you’re just getting started with buying larger apartment buildings and you don’t have a $5 million 1031 exchange or you don’t have $5 million raised, what you’re going to need to do is create a brand syndication system, a process of regularly sharing your best of content all over social media platforms so that your friends or followers and partners can find your information. I’ll give you a perfect example to wrap up with this. One of the guys that my daughter plays club volleyball with, as I’ve mentioned on this podcast many times, my oldest daughter, Julianna, has a buddy on her team. Her name is Ali and Ali’s dad, Vince, is a great guy. Mom is… Amazing people. Just salt of the earth, amazing people. And so, we’ve talked a little bit about business a little bit. He’s some sort of contractor but he’s just an amazing guy. And I, through my brand syndication system, shared one of the podcasts that I was on. Well, he and I have never talked in depth about business, never talked in-depth about apartments, or about investing. We stand next to each other on the volleyball court all the time. We stand next to each other in volleyball tournaments. We talk. We’re so happy that our girls are good friends.

And so, I shared just this past Monday a podcast that I was on. I was on the GRIT Podcast with Brian Charlesworth and I shared that. Vince, who has no idea that we’ve had a $400 million portfolio, no idea that we’ve raised all this money, Vince decides to listen to the podcast. He texted me about an hour later and he says, “You know, I had a lot of respect for you before but I had no idea just the level of business intellect, the level of investment, the level of leadership, the level of impact that you have in the marketplace.” And he didn’t say, “I want to invest with you,” and I’m not asking him to invest with me but for him to listen to that podcast and for him to consume that in his own time in his car or on his phone or wherever he was doing, and for him to listen to that and for that to almost completely change his opinion of me, to change the way he views me, for that to change in a positive way, the way that he looks at our conversations, that’s exactly what a brand syndication system should do for you. So, now, Vince may never buy a property with me, may never invest, but he’s at least a cheerleader. He’s at least a referral source. He’s at least going to say something positive about me and about my company.

If he ever comes across somebody and somebody says, “Hey, have you ever met Josh Campbell? Have you ever heard about this guy?” Vince is absolutely going to tell them what a good person I am, and he’s going to give them an amazing glowing referral of me. That’s what a brand syndication system will do for you. And if you stack those up like Legos, one on top of the other, and at the beginning, you put on one Lego onto another Lego onto another Lego and it doesn’t look like anything but then after you’ve added your 30th brick or your 50th brick or your 100th brick or your 1,000th brick to the Lego, and now all of a sudden it looks like a village, or it looks like a castle, or it looks like a tree house, or it looks like a sports car but it’s a Lego. When it starts with one block, one brick, it looks like nothing. Once you’ve added all the bricks together, it’s an amazing work of art. And so, that’s exactly, I guess, the analogy that I gave about this brand syndication system. As you do one video, it might not look like much. One post, it might not look like much. One newsletter to your people might not look like much. One Facebook Live might not look like much. But you’re stacking these bricks, you’re stacking these Legos on top of each other to the point where at some point your brand syndication system is so out there and it’s out there forever that you’re going to raise capital, have deal flow, and locate partners with ease.

And so, I was really excited to share that. This podcast is maybe 10 minutes. I shared that for 3 hours and exactly how to set up a brand syndication system. I did that for 3 hours at FPI Live. It was one of the favorite sessions of everybody that attended. So, if you ever get a chance to buy a ticket to FPI Live in the future, go to ForeverPassiveIncome.com. I’m sure we’ll be doing another of that soon. Get a ticket and instead of a bite-size chunk here today of 10 to 15 minutes, you get the full three, four-hour training so that you can have those same kinds of results that I had with Vince. And so, hopefully, that’s impactful for you. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of bite at the apple so you understand exactly how powerful this really, really is.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: Guys, listen, if you enjoy the podcast, please share this episode and all of our episodes all over social media. I would be so grateful if you would do that. And also, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast wherever you go. And also, if you’re interested in the ticket to Forever Passive Income Live, go to ForeverPassiveIncome.com. All right. We’ll see you next time on the show. Take care.