It Does Work!
The first time I borrowed money from a private investor I was petrified. I think he was too. But he went ahead. I don’t really know why. I did everything wrong. I had no plan for using the money. I never met him. Never even spoke to him. It was a warm intro from a mutual friend, by email.
I emailed back saying what I’d pay. We chatted back and forth. I was willing to pay well, and regularly. It’s a miracle I ever got the money.
But £10,000 was sitting in my account, sent by bank transfer from a complete stranger. My first investor. Proof it can work.
I was so scared I kept it there, sitting doing nothing, and a year later sent it back. And I diligently sent him the interest each month. I’m not sure why I borrowed the money in the first place.
Stepping Stone
It all sounds so pointless now. Even back then, £10,000 wasn’t even a deposit. But it did one thing.
Now I believed.
It gave me belief. It gave me confidence. If I could do it once, I could do it again. And again. I think maybe the whole thing started when I heard someone say raising money from private individuals was possible and me thinking ‘not for me it’s not’.
Fight Your Lizard Brain
My ‘No’ brain kicked it and I didn’t believe it, but I liked the idea. So I had to see for myself. Had to do it myself. The monthly interest on £10,000 was small enough that I could afford the experiment. The lesson worked.
Here’s how you can do it too …
But first, a quick reminder. There are only two things in this game.
Deals. Money.
Deals and money.
That’s all you need.
Deals to buy.
And money to buy them with.
Everything else is window dressing. Necessary. But just window dressing. It’s procedure.
We’ll cover how to find deals another time. Today is about the money.
Raising Money Feels Scary
For some reason, finding money scares a lot of people. It doesn’t need to. But it feels difficult. It’s actually pretty easy. There’s a lot of it out there. More now than ever. You just need to apply yourself and you need to believe. Follow these simple steps and let me know when that first money lands!
Build Relationships Early
Start early. You need time on your side. You can’t rush it.
Expect it to take about 6 months if you’ve never raised money before. It just takes time. You need to build relationships. And that means having a lot of conversations. To begin with, you might think that’s tricky.
Investors really only want to talk about specific opportunities, not have a general chat with someone who might need the money sometime in the future. That can make it hard to get started.
Get Started!
But if you don’t start you’ll never get there. So start. Start as soon as you start looking for deals. 1 Hour of investor hunting for each hour of deal sourcing. Equal effort. 50/50.
Right, so what do you actually do?
It’s remarkably simple.
- ‘Name Storming’
Block out 30 mins for your own personal investor brain storming session. Think of every single person you know who might, possibly, maybe, EVER have some money to invest. In anything. You’re just harvesting names.
No over-thinking. No ‘would they / won’t they?’. No ‘I don’t think they like property?’. Every name is a good name (as this stage). No wrong answers.
Just names.
Write them down. A list, a spreadsheet, a CRM … doesn’t matter. Don’t stress. Just write them down.
Every. Name.
30 mins. Use the full amount of time. Don’t stop short. Use more time if it’s still productive.
- Filtering
Next, filtering.
Go through the list, check you’ve got contact details (phone and email, socials if possible). And review each name. Think about 2 things. Likelihood to invest. How much money might they invest? (A guess is fine, actual numbers are better).
Even if the name has a low score on both points, keep them on the list. In fact, never remove anyone entirely. Just keep their score.
- Talk
Get in touch with them. Prioritise the highest on your list, but do them all. In fact, from now on, practise telling everyone that you invest in property and work with investors. Every. One.
Against each name, write down how you made contact and when, and add notes on each conversation you have.
Do everyone on the list. All of them.
- Repeat
Have another Name Storming session, update the list, add new names. By going through the process of reviewing the list, your brain will magically come up new people you hadn’t thought of before.
- Let me know when it works. Because it will.
And that’s it. It’s that’s simple. It really is.
Best of luck and happy investing!
By the way, want to know if your property investment is giving you a good return? Click here
