Hunter Thompson
Appearances
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
like i said went from struggling to raise my first deal and coming half a million dollars short on my first raise to um raising 100 million bucks from hundreds of investors buying hundreds of millions of dollars of deals and i feel like i'm just getting started a lot of my day is spent finding people that are very good at what they do and making them realize that to take it to the next level they have to learn about marketing
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But like, what else can you do? OK, well, I can call them the moment that they wire.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
right i can say congratulations welcome to the deal just got your wire like that's an experience i can send them a gift i can if we project to send the first cash flow check in three months which is standard we can give enough buffers so that we think we can actually send the first cash flow check in 30 days but we project three months right so then that first check comes in it's not a ton of money but they're like damn i was expecting this to be months so we bake stuff like that into our deals
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And, you know, another thing is the first couple of years are when the emotions are highest and that skepticism is highest. So like we really want to be conservative in that first couple of months. So that first month we're beating projections. Second month we're beating projections. That's when the referrals start coming in.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So like as I'm saying this, like maybe it doesn't apply necessarily to your business, but what can you do to be conservative so that you do over deliver, especially early on? in experience, in calling them and sending them a gift and sending them a Christmas card and doing things like issuing distributions faster than you thought.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And like I said, went from struggling to raise my first deal and coming half a million dollars short on my first raise, to raising a hundred million bucks from hundreds of investors, buying hundreds of millions of dollars of deals, and I feel like I'm just getting started, so stoked to talk about it.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Now, the caveat to this is that when you start to do this stuff, you'll see that the numbers change. If you're creating buffer, the returns are going to be lower, right? So now it's a balancing act. You don't want to make it so low you can't raise the money.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But trust me, if you do the hard work on the front end of selling a deal where the returns are slightly down, that investor is going to be grateful in month two and month three and month four. And all of a sudden, that dentist you got that's making a half million a year, his 10 dentist friends start coming in. And that's how your business scales in the five year period.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Otherwise, you've been having to wait. So hopefully that makes sense and is applicable to other businesses as well. under promise in short a hundred percent but like think about it whatever your niche is if you're watching this out there think about what way you can shorten time to value fear business like the quintessential example even if that thing is
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
isn't something you can do infinitely, even if it's just something that only works for the short term. Like an example that Alex uses is, you know, when people come into gym launch, they would maybe put them on a crash diet initially to just show them, if you do this, it will work.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
That doesn't mean you're gonna lose 60 pounds over the next two years, but like, if we can get you down five, now I've got your attention, I've got your buy-in, and maybe that's not infinitely scalable, but like, at least I've got that quick win. And so think about it.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
whoever meditates on this the most, whoever spends their shower time thinking about this concept more will win because it's a difficult nut to crack and no one is spending the time doing it because it's all about the customer, not about them.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
I mean, I think when people think about raising money, I think what comes to their mind is like having a really good pitch or like not taking no for an answer or something like that. And like the reality is the question about like when you should start I'm thinking like when you should start generating leads to have those conversations.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Yeah, good question. I'll tell a quick story. So I was an investor in a company called Thrive Market.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
You know, well, yeah, that would have been really good.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So my story with them, I actually knew the founder, Nick Green, and he's a co-founder with Gennar. And the reason that they gave us the opportunity to invest is that they got said, they were told no from basically everyone, right? They went in there like, we're going into the grocery. Yep. niche, we're going to take over. And all the VCs were like, whatever margins are thin, like get out of here.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Like Amazon's going to eat you. You know what I'm saying? And I just knew Nick, he's a smart guy. He got a perfect score in the SAT. I liked the niche and I was like, whatever, here's the money. And I feel very fortunate about that. Now I'm not going to go into the details of like how the deal was structured, but the point is it was structured by a convertible note.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Cause even if you know exactly what to say, it's like, who are you going to say it to? Maybe your friends and family, but then how far can that really get you? And even if you are from a family that's rich, even those families raise money, obviously. So like billionaires raise money all the time. So like, there's no time that's too early to start digging the well, meaning how can I generate leads?
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
That is a discount to the next round. Right? So I write this check and I'm like, let's go, baby. They launch it. This is my first time investing in a startup. You're going to start laughing where this is going. As soon as I send the check, they had this soft launch and start taking off like a wildfire. But my round hasn't been established yet. So they're ripping in revenue. And I'm like, uh-oh.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
They're going to have to be the next GoPro for me to make any money. Now, they ended up doing very well. But the point is... They ended up doing a very large series A, one of the most largest in California, and then a very large series B. Now, is it that they blew all the money and didn't do well? No, they were taking off like a rocket ship. And so because of that, you've got this little fire.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
You're like this little seed fire. This is when I invest and now it's turning into a freaking raging thing. And you're sitting there with gas and the gas is cash and you just how much can we pour on this thing? And so that's what they were doing.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And so when they went back to their investors, you know, there's an important distinction between like the people that invest in seed deals, like you just mentioned, you don't typically do that. There's people that's, that's all they do. Right. Then there's other people maybe closer to you where they want to see multi seven figures in revenue.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Then there's other people that are like, I only want to see a hundred million or more. Right. So like sometimes it's a profile thing, but usually you would want to go back to the people that made that early investment. For a lot of reasons, sometimes it's contractual, sometimes it's just relationship. Hey, listen, you're the one that gave us our first twenty five K. And so that typically happens.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But in the world of like private equity, usually there will be lead investors and those lead investors usually have like a profile based on revenue or EBITDA, which is kind of like net profit.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
and so that's the story of thrive market and now they're on a tear i mean i wouldn't be surprised if they ipo'd eventually you know at a multi-billion dollar valuation they did a really good job but the the margins are thin so it's not like they didn't do well they can turn it off at any time but that's kind of like the story of any business when you're trying to offset taxes when you're trying to buy employees you're trying to hire an onboard for the next year's growth
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Now, sometimes what can happen is you implement an aggressive strategy like that and that growth doesn't happen. So you're going up, up, up, up, up, and you bring a bunch of people on, take a bunch of software risk, and then that growth stops. You can BK a company and be net neutral in revenue by trying to be aggressive like that.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And, you know, I've learned some lessons like that where I'm just like, Let's go for it. Let's take over the industry. And, you know, there's a reason I own raisingcapital.com, right? That's the initiative. We're going to take over the industry, right? So I take risks like that. And we know, though, that balance sheet is an indication of health, right?
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So you got to use that thing appropriately and then raise money when you have to.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
How can I connect with people? How can I warm people up? Even if you don't have a deal yet, now you should be doing that.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
There's a million reasons. I'll start with one that's super basic. Even if you're 100% self-centered, money in the bank account kind of guy, you'll find you'll make more money. Just purely economically, you will make more money if you have a philanthropic element of your business. Also,
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
if you don't have that element and all the people that are more successful than you, that you look up to are telling you to have that element, freaking just trust them. You know what I mean? If you don't want to trust me, you don't want to trust him, like whatever. But like, there is a reason that people that crush at the highest level do it. And it's because it's not just the money.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
It's also like the fulfillment element. And We talked in the beginning about how my background is kind of getting a lot of real estate nerds to like tell their story and make it more compelling. There's nothing more compelling than helping people, especially if you can tie it into, in some way, something that's really deeply meaningful for you.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
whether it's your background, your situation, your family, your community that helped you out, it just really resonates with people. And I see it not being like a multiple, like it's so many great people have talked about this, but like you give away a dollar, you make 10 back. Now that's not why you wanna give away the dollar, but like I've just found that that's what the economics are.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And I'll give you a perfect example. We have an event. It's called Raise Fest. It's in Phoenix in a couple of months. And we are going to give away some money to a charity. And it's like a family-based charity. The charity is for people like pediatric cancer. I can't even freaking say it because I have a very young son. But that's why I'm doing that, right?
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But also, I mean, I know that if I write that check in front of everyone, number one, they're going to be way more likely to write that check as well. And also like we have a program, right? We want people to buy the program. And one way to get that is to have them understand that they are investing in someone else. And that gives them confidence to invest in themselves.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Now just real quick, I want to talk like behind the scenes, like think about it. If you're thinking about, okay, there's these people in the audience, they only have so much money. Are they going to run out of money on the charity thing? They're not going to want to, it's the opposite. It's like they're making that commitment. Like I want to do this for someone else.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
That's way more powerful to most people than even doing it for themselves. So that's my view on the whole charity thing. Like I view it as both a, a fulfillment thing, but you know, from a business standpoint, I've just seen it work miracles.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And so, you know, that's, I know it's a big part of your business and you're a business guy as well, but I'm sure you kind of feel similar to what I just outlined.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
You know, in the beginning, you mentioned like what's going to happen if you go tell a really compelling story to Dan and he got this pillow company and now you've got it and you've got the meeting and it's amazing and he wants to give you the 100K.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
To me, that sounds like someone that didn't have good mentors, you know, because a good mentor would never let that meeting happen without you being prepared. So like from my perspective, now is a great time to lean into the mentor side of things. And there's a whole world of like how to get good mentors and how to get them to give you your time and all that stuff.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But at the end of the day, it's like if you can show someone that you've got insane momentum and that you're going to accomplish amazing things with or without them, that's when your mentors will show up. The moment that you're DMing Dan being like, Hey, my pillow company, my pillow company, can I get 10 minutes of your time? I'll take you out to coffee. Bro, Dan doesn't need coffee.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
I don't need coffee. But we are thirsty for killers and momentum. And that's our freaking, what's the opposite of kryptonite? That's what we want to see in our DMs. This kid or this guy, this girl, they're freaking racing their motorcycle as fast as they can. They're going 150. And I bet if I just give them this little secret sauce, they're going to be able to go 180.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Cause in the back of our mind, like we're competitive people. I want to compete over when that person writes a book, I want to be asked to do the forward. Right. You know what I'm saying? And so like you inspire that by creating your own momentum. I'm crushing it. I'm crushing it. And I listened to all your shows and I picked up on these nuances about it.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
When you have good mentors, you're getting buttoned up and they're going to help you with all the nuances like legal documents, pitch deck, how to talk to investors. That'll just, that'll just be part of that journey. So that's my, that's my goal, man. And don't start too late. You can never start too soon.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Raisingcapital.com is the company. Raisefest.com is the conference. If you want to check out my book, RaisingCapitalForRealEstate.com. That's great.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Yeah, HunterLThompson underscore IG and then TheHunterThompsonKingOfCapital on YouTube, which is brand new. So go over there.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
why does someone with that much money that much reach that much social media power still want to raise capital from strategic investors yeah man i mean it's ultimately come down to leverage right so most people think of leverage think of debt borrowing money and stuff like that but there's other mechanisms think about leverage like what's a higher leverage activity how can i leverage my business how can i pursue high leverage things and so for for them
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
They've got money working for them, but they also want to bring in other money to grow something where they're going to profit on someone else's capital. And now that's what all capitalists do, including the investors themselves, is they want to rely on their brand, their reach to scale this business that, I mean, does anyone think that she's the best popcorn producer out there?
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Probably not, but she's got a huge audience. So I don't know the details of that deal, but I imagine there's someone that's really good at popcorn. that reached out to her that said, yo, let's do this thing together. You go on social media. No one knows us, but we're good at popcorn. You're good at attention. That's the art and science of raising capital. Let's do this partnership together.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Same thing with Connor, right? Same thing with the rock. Like it's not the rock and kitchen cooking up that tequila, but now they got a billion dollar valuation. That's why.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And I paid a lot less than most people think because I don't think people understand the opportunity in the space. I mean, people are only starting to figure it out now. Basically, the idea is... what you just said is really important because like people make decisions based on emotional connection to the operator that they're investing in.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And so in your example, maybe you think, oh, like Dan's stupid if he's going to invest with someone just because of the emotional connection. It's like, that's what most people do. But then they go deeper in due diligence to make sure that you're actually going to do what you say and already have your bank account. So like what he's saying is super important because you can get that story
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
You can tell that story in a compelling way, but you've got to be buttoned up on the back end. But the story is the really important part. We just assume you know what you're doing. If you don't, we're not going to give you the money.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Yes. I mean, there's two sides of the equation. One, the people that just they think their story is amazing. They think that they're going to present this deal and we're going to be super high buying and do it. Other people that are just so obsessed with the nuances and the details of their offering that that's all they really know. And they can't tell the story in a compelling and emotional way.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
For me, I was on that side of the spectrum. I got into the world of real estate at a really good time where, you know, post great recession, mobile home parks were for people that are knowledgeable in the space trading at 10% cap rates, meaning you could buy a property in cash and it would produce 10% cash flow like month one.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So this to me, I got in this world and realized how powerful that was and just was obsessed. That was torn property as I was meeting sponsors or operators. And like, I could see the writing in the wall, this niche was going to explode. And so when I get to pitch, the first time I went out to pitch, The language I was using was like as if I was speaking to a bunch of real estate nerds.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And the reality was I was speaking to like some friends and family, some dentist, some doctor, and they don't even know those terminologies. So like the story of raisingcapital.com is I bombed on that pitch. Even though there was $30 million in the room, I couldn't raise half a million. And earlier I said I was half a million dollars short. Yeah. on a half million dollar raise.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Like, so I was trying to raise half a million. I raised zero. I'm texting this girl. I'm trying to impress. Oh yeah. Like I'm going to raise a million bucks. And then I have to be like, oh, like it didn't go exactly as planned. Like, yeah, you couldn't have done worse is what you mean. So that was my story.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But then I realized like, it's not about just like delivering this amazing pitch about the nuances of the details. It's like, how can I get people in the room that are already bought in? How can I tell a story that will connect with their true wants and needs? Not what I think, not what I want for God's sakes.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And so it was a long journey, but that's how I kind of, when I started focusing on that, when I started focusing on, if I'm talking to someone, what are their pain points? What are their problems? How can I use the vernacular that they're more comfortable with? And then paint them a picture of how they can move from where they are to where they want to go using my product.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
And that will work for mobile home parks, self storage, you know, buying existing businesses, nonprofits, like you name it, if the money has to leave their account to go to yours, you got to paint them that story. And so that's kind of what I built my career doing.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So we don't like raise money for people. We kind of teach them how to raise money and they can rate, like we buy a deal in Phoenix, we buy multifamily properties in Phoenix. And so if you want to partner with us on a deal, we can teach you how to raise money and it's effectively your deal that you're partnering with us on.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
But then other people come to us and they're like, you know, I've got this, I've got this fix and flip business that I've raised a couple million bucks or a couple hundred thousand bucks, but like, how can I take this to the next level? And so usually that next level is us teaching them how to do things like basically marketing, right?
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Attracting leads, nurturing leads, building a brand, attracting attention, because you mentioned the example of the kind of Kardashian story, like that's the most pronounced example. And they've done it across multiple niches where you just take attention, interest, buy-in of clients and direct that to here's the bank account, right? And so that's her first,
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
popcorn initiative she raised four million bucks on her first go it has nothing to do with popcorn right and mr beast burgers has nothing to do with burgers it's all about the attention and so to answer your question directly a lot of my day is spent finding people that are very good at what they do and making them realize that to take it to the next level they have to learn about marketing
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
and operations of marketing. So, but it's a message that's lost on a lot of nerds and I'm a nerd too, right? But that's great. It means you're in a good market, to be honest.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
What's up? Honored to be here, first of all. Yeah, so name is Hunter Thompson. I have a background as being a slacker in college and not taking life too seriously, but getting into the world of business and entrepreneurship, I fell in love with it.
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So a couple things. One thing, like Alex Ramosi has done some excellent stuff, but one thing that he's done a really great job on that I don't think enough people have put enough thought into is the concept of time to value. Like the faster your clients can see results, the faster you can scale. And if you have a good product and you're getting good results,
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
you should be able to get referrals you should be able to get in my case repeat investors things like that but what you're talking about is that it's difficult to create those short quick wins in the game of investing because if someone gives you 100k like in our deal that we're about to close they give us 100k and maybe for the first couple years they get like four thousand dollars five thousand it's a it's a low risk real estate deal right and then in year five they can kind of see if they double their money which is kind of our target right not our projections not our promise but that's our target right
The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
So think about it. An investor to some degree doesn't really know if we can pull it off until five years. So we don't want to wait five years to like re-monetize that client. The velocity of your client's money coming into your business is imperative. So what we try to do is shorten the time to value. We can't do it by selling the deal faster because in my niche, that doesn't make sense.