in communications. There are a lot of entrepreneurs in the room, a lot of builders, operators, and
they're in the process of building out, whether they're building out their funds, building out
their investment plays. What would you advise them to sort of focus on during that phase?
Absolutely. You have to understand the mindset of the people that are your investor.
I think a lot of times people are having monologues and not thinking about the other side,
the receiving end. It's what is someone getting from this investment and take your pitch from that
standpoint as opposed to trying to throw in the kitchen sink of all the things that you do.
It's the biggest mistake we always see. And the first thing we ask a CEO and founder to do is give
us your elevator pitch. And if you've ever watched SpongeBob, it's like, you know.
Three hours later, the person is still going. And, you know,
people have the attention of a goldfish, which is about eight seconds or so and dwindling.
So you have to catch people with a soundbite that is memorable.
And then you can get them to lean in and listen, but start with something that matters to them.
Amazing. And I think just on one additional point here to touch on is really diversity and working
with international investors. We tend to be very focused on our own backyard.
But I think from some of the insights that Shirley had shared, what would you leave us with if any
of us get approached by international investors? What are key things that we should take into
consideration? Thank you. I think... First of all, I just mentioned the level of trust that we all
understand. So Asian, we're not transactional. All the relationships,
even the current clients actually came from a lot of relationships I built over 15 years. So that's
a level of trust. And they know who you are, although you have been in transition in different
principles, but they know they've been watching. So that's the first. And then second, I think
they're different. One family, if you have seen one family, there's one family. Because there's
different definition for every family of the store of value and also risk factors.
So remember that. Because some family, from the industry they're from,
they can understand when you have a pitch from maybe real estate. However, they don't understand
the difference between the real estate back in Asia. In China, we all know what happened.
And then with the real estate in the USA. And then another concern, and also the risk factor.
The risk factor I see, every family we advise will say, look, what is the risk to you?
For us, it's not market volatility because traders or funds,
they love that. That's when you get it. However, the risk is, what is the likelihood you actually
permanently diminishing part of your wealth? That is a risk. So we always address that.
And then the third, you got to look from the investor's point of view about opportunity cost,
right? So if you're pitching investor all full on, 100%,
how good your fund is, how good this project is, you have to see from their view,
they're maybe looking at 20, 30 other projects across different regions,
different countries, and that's... You're just one of them. So I think the opportunity cost is that
if they allocate that assets to your project, what are they giving up? Are you out competing on the
others? Yeah. Thank you. Great. I think that's great insight. We have these debates in our
investment committee all day long. And most of the time, you're not really allocating because
you're being presented a project. You're allocating because you have a strategy. What is the
investment thesis of that family office? What are they allocating to? Are they hitting allocation
caps? Are they actually allocating to certain geographies? Are they maxed out on a certain
geography? On our lending business, for example, we definitely allocate and we tap out. Like we
might have a great deal coming in in Florida, but we're tapped out on Florida, for example. So
sometimes it's not just about having a great deal. It's about deeply understanding what your ideal
investor profile is really looking like at this point in the market. I think going back to Alec and
we'll close with that. just understanding the shift like how have you with transitioning from real
estate into all these multi-faceted businesses and other ventures uh what was one thing that
you've sort of taken away from that transition i think as a business owner it's very important to
try to achieve a balance and that balance is between short-term execution and operation,
and long-term vision and strategy. On one hand, the former requires you to really dig into
details, establish your expertise, meet deliverables,
meet deadlines. On the other hand, the latter requires you to step back and evaluate what you have,
how to optimize your resources, expand not for the sake of expansion. but strategically place your
bets in the most effective ways, not to follow something that's trendy but might be a distraction.
So I think time and more importantly attention is the most limited resource. So how you allocate
those is the million or billion dollar question. Great. Thanks to all our panelists.
Thank you for your insights and sharing your stories.
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