But any tips for investors or capital raisers in the room, which most seem not to
understand if they haven't spent 10 years doing or 30 years doing what you all have
done investing, like a most valuable insight to leave them with today?
I think if you don't, capital raising, to set it all up,
you have legal,
you know, PPMs, you have, you know, start up with marketing. If you don't really
have $300 ,000 set aside to $500 ,000 to be able to go raise capital with,
stay out of the game, you know, save your money until you do, go find that
solution first because getting out and raising capital is always, there's bumpy roads
and you're going to get feedback that'll help you, you know, redesign your pitch.
And those are expensive lessons. And a lot of people just start out with not
without enough money to get them to the end zone. And that's, in my view,
the most important thing is having staying power. Right. Right.
Makes sense. I think the most Same thing from my perspective from both sides of
this equation is trust, right? So if you're an entrepreneur, you basically have one
shot at building trust with an investor, and if you blow it, you can't get it
back. So don't exaggerate, don't lie, be straightforward,
be an open book. If I bust you on something that you have said half truth,
it's game over, right? And same thing for the investors in the room, right? If you
have any reason not to trust that individual that you're thinking about making an
investment in, you're not likely to do it, right? So I think we're still very much
relationship driven even in this day and age, even though all these deals are flying
around, you know, the
and can I trust this person and money follows trust.
Right, I think that's a great point. Many times I think also, if you find out
something is a half truth, you might just move on to the next deal and that person
might not even get your feedback or know why it wasn't even worth responding to
them 'cause what they said one day was completely different than the next month and
then you're just moving on to the next thing. You don't have time to explain what
they messed up. Yeah, and I think Brian said it earlier too, like he hates the
phrase of fake it to you make it. And I absolutely agree because I think
entrepreneurs often they get the wrong message that like, oh, I have to like really,
you know, exaggerate this, or I have to really, you know, make it seem like
everything's so great. And to me, that just engenders mistrust. So that's, that's I
think really bad advice. Yeah, I think everybody needs to hear that because like
what Brian was saying is that like, you should document your journey and then ask
genuine questions to someone on your podcast or that you're interviewing on stage
because you're trying to learn yourself and then people can learn along with you
rather than pretending like you're the global expert on some topic while you're still
learning, right? You see that all the time, Russell? You know, you have a course
that you offer. It's a Certified Capital Raising Specialist. Fabulous course, Richard.
Oh, thanks. In there, they say, "Hey, how do you get money from family offices?"
And the advice is this, go ask the family office for advice. If you have a
business, start with the 10 family offices that you would really like to actually do
business with and go to each one of them and say, I'm doing this. And as Richard
said earlier, they're all founders. They've all been in that terrible spot of not
having enough money. So they may resonate with you. So if you ask them for their
advice, they will give you what you need in terms of a next step or an alteration
of what you're doing so that you can build momentum with the audience that you
ultimately want to do business with. Right. There's a saying in the industry saying
if you want capital, ask for advice. If you want to get advice, ask for capital
because maybe all you're going to get is advice. Cliff, is there anything that you
would add, like a final comment and say, no, okay, do we have a question anywhere
in the room? If you want to raise your hand, we'll bring the microphone over to
you.
Yes So
Matching right so I know Richard you you have a platform right where you can help.
I guess the right Founders or the right opportunities and the right investors to
find each other, right? So I you know what I'm hearing is that there are very
strict sort of criteria Sometimes it can be hard to actually get to the right
people any any Any suggestions for that?
- Any suggestions for it, Russell, go ahead.
- In any industry there are its leaders, the people who really deeply understand that
industry. If you are a founder, and again, utterly asymmetric, you're gonna take
space from everyone else. You should have actually talked with them in the building
phase. So as a founder, one of the first things you'll do is make your advisory
board, right? That it should be a reservoir of people showing you things about what
you should know to actually stand out. I don't know who said it earlier. Maybe it
was Brian, but you really do have to be the very best. There's no getting around
that. Am I wrong?
Anyone else want to comment on that question? Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know,
this industry in particular is all about the warm introduction, right? And I think a
lot of people spin their wheels on cold outreach, which to me just is a total
waste of time. So figure out how to get the warm introduction, make your target
list, figure out how to get a warm introduction. That is the only way really in
and people will give you all kinds of examples of the alternate views. But in
practice, that's going to be your 80 /20 rule, right? And everyone has a network. So
when you say to me, "Oh, I can't get to this person," you know, you haven't tried
hard enough or you don't believe in your own product enough to go that distance and
get to that connection point. - Yeah, I found that one way to make something cold,
not cold, obviously is if it's through a referral or they know you, then it's not
cold. But then if it's in your industry or you're raising money for something
medical and you go to someone who's local to you and made their money in medical,
then the opportunity won't feel as cold. But if they don't know your industry, they
don't know you and they're not local to you or the opportunity, then it's so 100 %
cold. It's a complete waste of time, uh, in my experience. Uh, any other quick, uh,
questions in the room, if you want to raise your hand, we'll bring the microphone
over.
Otherwise, uh, any last comments from someone on stage, you wanted to share something
else you prepared for today? Uh, well, I would just like to give a shout out to
Hawaii, if you're interested in getting in touch, you can find me as one of the
people here representing the ecosystem in Hawaii. There is a tech senior. There's a
startup scene and there's an investor scene. So if you're interested in engaging at
all with what's happening in Hawaii, come find me. - And there's also a very good
conference that she puts on called East meets West, which is a fantastic way of
learning about what's going on in Hawaii. And Beyond that to Japan, South Korea, and
pretty much the whole Pacific Rim. Great. Yeah. That's one of the reasons we are
here because the so much wealth is being created out of Asia as a percentage of
new wealth and some of it comes to the United States, some Dubai, some Canada,
Australia, et cetera, but we see Hawaii is right in between the world's biggest
economy and then the biggest wealth creation center, which is Asia. So I think a
lot of people besides just trying to enjoy life being outside side a lot here
because of that East and West combination. - I'd like to thank you because what you
brought up today and the tools that you're building, those are a big help. Those AI
tools, I heard about those a couple of months ago and I was glad to hear you
bring those up today, but if everybody wasn't paying attention,
I mean, those are great tools that being part of your club allows us to use.
Thanks for all your hard work there. And two, if anybody like to talk to us about
our vineyard investments, we got a booth next door. - Awesome, great. - If you're
stuck and you want a little bit of advice away from here, you can give me a call.
I won't bite. - All right, let's give him a big round of applause. Thank you.