Groundbreaker: The Gamechanger
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Abigail and Sean are joined by Quinn Butler. Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Groundbreaker, Quinn leverages his proven educational and consultative skills to educate real estate investment professionals on best practices for modern fundraising and investor relations. Today, Quinn informs listeners about the uses of Groundbreaker, how real estate investors can take advantage of the software, and how it can be used with Thomson Multifamily Group.
Key Topics
Groundbreaker and its uses
Benefits of software
How it can be utilized with TMG
Connect with Quinn Bulter:
-
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
investors, people, deal, invest, process, money, videos, property, documents, transparency, platform, check, real estate, investment, signed, distributions, create, happening, generally, information
SPEAKERS
Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson, Quinn Butler
Abigail Thomson 00:01
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean, will discuss how you can take your American Dream to the next level through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish our goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American Dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast. We have a wonderful guest for you today but first, please make sure you have subscribed if you haven't already. We also love getting your feedback through likes, comments, ratings and reviews. Today, Sean has a conversation with Quinn Butler. Quinn is a seasoned entrepreneur and business development professional with experience in technology marketing and the construction industry. Currently, as the head of business development at Groundbreaker, Quinn leverages his proven educational and consultative skills to educate real estate investment professionals on the best practices for modern fundraising and Investor Relations. Today, Quinn informs listeners about the uses of Groundbreaker, how real estate investors can take advantage of the software, and how it can be used with Thompson Multifamily Group. If you found any value from today's episode, please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com to start taking your American Dream to the next level through passive investing.
Sean Thomson 01:37
Hi, Quinn. Welcome to Next Level American Dream Podcast. Thanks for being on.
Quinn Butler 01:41
Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me.
Sean Thomson 01:43
How's it going today? Good?
Quinn Butler 01:45
Living the dream!
Sean Thomson 01:49
Well, thanks for coming on! Oh, you're with groundbreaker. And we just signed up with groundbreaker. Thanks, thanks for getting us signed up. And it's an investor management portal. So what I want to kind of talk to you about today, you deal with this on this issue a lot. You guys have built a whole business around it, I just kind of what is the importance of having an investor management system for syndication person like myself? So let's talk about why is it important to have kind of something like groundbreaker to manage investor relations?
Quinn Butler 02:18
Yeah, so we have, I think, sort of a new way or more of a prescriptive way of sort of dealing with your investors, right, I often talk about kind of the old way, and the new way, a lot of people use the hot button turn, you know, disruption around technologies, a lot of what disruption is, is providing transparency to processes, right. So if you think about, you know, banking, or mobile payments, or all these other things, there's a lot of things that are coming, and a lot of it is, you know, around transparency and sort of ease of use. And with real estate syndication, what we see is sort of this like, broken process, in a sense, right, the general real estate transaction is you talk to someone, you spend a lot of time with them, convincing them, you know why they should be given you capital to invest in something, and then you hand them all this information, you expect them to give you money, and all they really get in return is, you know, a check every three months, and maybe your report, right? I'd like it just it's a very opaque process, it's very broken, like, Hey, I'm going to end up usually a significant amount of cash to you. And all I get back, it's like a communication report with a bunch of numbers that I probably don't read and probably don't understand, I get that every three months and then a check every three months, right. Whereas with most other investments, there's just so much more clarity and so much more transparency around it, you have a ticker with the stock market, you have, you know, reports that come up more consistently with your financial advisors, etc. So we try to kind of take that issue and just and really boil it down and give you like, specific things you can go through with your investor.
Sean Thomson 03:56
Yeah, so just well, even the old school methodology was it was it's important to have something that that your investors can see what's going on with your deals, can see what's happening with investments, I can get understanding of their payments and their returns, you know, to kind of have that clarity. And I guess what you guys are doing is taking it to the next level, to where it's, you know, I think I just had this conversation, another guest about funding, you know, so debt funding, it's really kind of interesting how real estate has one foot in the past, very strongly, and it's being it's just being torn into the future, right with technology. And it's a very traditional old school business, which is one of the reasons I love it, you know, because I love being able to invest in something and just, you know, that I can see and touch and work on and things like that. But the expectation for people that we do business with is to have, you know, active information and very, you know, like you said transparency and clarity and, and all these other things. So I you know, I can see how it's having new technologies, it's going to be critical moving forward. So what are we talking about in terms of like some of the what are the some of the most important things that You're finding investors are looking for in the information that's provided or in the offerings that are provided, you know, what are some of the things that you guys are finding or that you're building on in your systems that that people are really excited about using?
Quinn Butler 05:14
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to that, that transparency, but also, you know, sort of predictability of process like where they are. And then I think generally speaking, the public is really getting more hips, who are more savvy, that real estate is a great investment. Right? So now we have sort of this appetite of people who want to get into real estate syndication, but it's just like, so opaque, they really don't understand what's going on. And then when you talk to a syndicator, that's kind of what you get is, hey, you give me capital, and I just give you returns, and they're like, okay, but how does it work? It's like, well, you give me money, and I give you money back. Okay, but how does it work? Right? And you don't have any clarity around that. There's no predictability of, you know, when you're giving me money, here's the steps that you go through. Here's how I get you educated to help you understand where your money is going or how the process works, etc. Even syndicators that we talked to that have been longtime LPs, you know, they may have invested in a number of different syndications before. Now, they're coming over as a GP, and we start to talk to their process. And they're like, yeah, I guess I really didn't know what I was doing. Like, I got these legal documents. And I was just like, I, I don't know, I guess I signed these right? Because I, I'd never read through them for I'm not an attorney, am I taking this to my attorney, so everything is just, you kind of get in there. And the expectation is just like, I don't know what's going on, I'm just going to do whatever you tell me next. And when you're investing large sums of money, that's always scary. Now, if you have done it over and over again, and you know, you're kind of part of that old school way of doing business, and you just have been around it enough, you kind of know how that goes in, you develop a level of comfort around that right? around that uncertainty. But for a lot of these new investors coming in, they want to be able to see step by step, how does this work? Right? Well, what the approach that we take is, is try to basically give you a process that you can just plug into, right. So when you're talking to new investors, I talk a lot about selling your process versus your project, right, your project is going to be subject to market changes and fluctuations, etc. and trying to explain all that to someone who hasn't really invested a lot in real estate is a challenging conversation. But if you can tell them, hey, here's how I that my properties, here's my due diligence process, here's how I get things done. And then as you come through as an investor, here's a predictable process, right? I give you this education on it. So I always, you know, create videos for it, or I have these deal rooms. And it's, I put all the documentation in there the things that I delivered to the bank, you get that same access, but I'm going to synthesize that even further and explain it to you or video, right. And then from there, you're going to get into a signing process, and you can sign everything digitally, right. And then you have to obviously give us capital somehow. So here's a way that you can give us capital. And then after that, here's what you can expect as far as updates and reports and distributions, etc. And in a general sense, that's not really laid out to the investor. A lot of times, it's just like, hey, come and invest with us, you're going to get these returns. But no one understands where those returns come from, or how that works, or any predictability to that. So what we've seen is that, in a general sense, syndication is hard, right? It seems really glamorous to be in real estate. But you know, everyone, everyone sees the final product of, hey, you just bought a 52 unit down the street. But no one realize that in your due diligence process, you know, you had to dig down and visit a family of raccoons underneath. And that wasn't pleasant in the crawlspace, right, like that was a scary and it's not all glamorous. So what we try to do is, rather than you take all that information that you would generally generate for the bank and dump it on your investor, right, really try and help you synthesize that down and give them a clear process of here's what, here's what happens when you come in. Because the bank financing processes, you know, very thorough, you know, they're going to want like everything you signed in the last five years, all of your tax documentation, all the documentation related to the property, etc. And I think what happens is, once you get bank financing, and people kind of think, Oh, I got this, I proved it to the bank, right? If I prove it to the bank, then any investor should just be like, Well, does, the bank gave you that much money, like, I should just give you money, too. So most indicators take that wheelbarrow full of documents that they gave to the bank, and there's like, hey, here you go investor and just bury them in documentation.
Sean Thomson 09:30
Yeah, that's a great point. What I was going to say is, you know, one of the things we were looking for, in what we were going to do next, when in, in serving our investors, was that transparency in that clarity and that process, right, I want to be able to provide them with a next level service level and have them very interactive with the information we're giving them. You know, a lot of the stuff that we do, like you were saying the bank funding, I mean, that's just stacks and stacks of paper and no one wants to dig into that. You know, the only the only people that do that are underwriters, and then they don't even enjoy it. I don't think you know, it's just horrible. And so how do you how do you get that information, that level of information into someone's hands and make it to where it's easily understood. It's interactive, you know, if they have questions, they can get their questions answered. You know, how can you do that is really kind of the hardest question. And it's okay to send people a documentation and things like that, that's important as well. But most people are going to fall asleep, if that's all you're doing. And so one of the one of the reasons we like groundbreaker was that it gives us the ability to, like you said, have videos embedded in our offerings and things like that. So that we can discuss the details of a property but not so dry. And you know, document intensive, right, let's, let's talk about some of those elements that you guys have that that allows me to, first of all, sort of, say, here's the property, here's what we've done with the property, here's what our expectations are with the property. Here's what our outcomes are. And here's your participation in it. And how do you guys kind of convey that in your system, and your process with the investors that are coming on board?
Quinn Butler 11:11
Yeah, so most of that is going to be in the deal room, right. So when you're creating a deal room with us, it's very flexible, kind of think like Squarespace for deal rooms, right. So you put as many documents and photos as you want, you can do video in there, there's a lot of different things, but what we're trying to do is paint a picture as completely as possible for the investor. And what we encourage people to think about is, what their current process looks like, and how you can make that more efficient. Now, the current process generally, is you send them an email that's got a ton of documents and says, here's the deal. Here's, you know, the deck that we build and all the information around it. And what generally happens is, if let's say, you send that to 50, investors, you are going to get 50, phone call, delay, right, those are either going to be inbound or outbound. But generally speaking, it's going to turn into a lot of phone calls, and all of those phone calls turn into let's say, they're 90 minutes on average, you have to walk through the entire deal with the investor and say, Here's why we think it's a good deal. You know, this is the population growth, this is what's happening in the area, this is the job growth here, the main employers, you know, whatever it is, you have to walk through all of that, and you're doing that over and over and over again, right. So now you have potentially 5090 minute phone calls, that is a lot of time, right? What you can do instead, or the approach that we encourage you to take is, you're basically repeating yourself on those phone calls. So why don't just do that once, put it on video, right? Put on video, when they go into the deal room, they can access all the documentation, you know, same as you would send an email, they can see photos, they can see you know, any text sections, you want to put in any financial information, etc. All of that is in there. But then right at the top, you're going to do a video that literally walks them through the deal room. So as I always say, just imagine they're sitting right next to you. So you pull up your screen, you're recording the screen, you say Hey, guys, welcome in. This is the, you know, American Dream deal here. Here's some pictures click like, here's the overall description we're trying to do. You know, if we click on this document in an hour's we try and keep everyone on the same page, the same tab. So it's not like download this or go somewhere else, right? So it pops out document preview, you know, hey, we're going to click on this document, this is going to show us the job growth in the area we're going to look at this document is going to show us projected population growth in the area, you know, here are the major employers, here's the, you know, density of the uniform population in the local Enchanted Forest, like, whatever, whatever metric you want to highlight to them. But then you're basically having that conversation that you would generally have to have 50 times you have it one time. I mean, that's really efficient. And I think not to get this too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because you're saying the exact same thing to everyone. Right, right. Everyone's got
Sean Thomson 13:47
a message. Yeah,
Quinn Butler 13:48
yeah. So you're not creating confusion or mixed messaging. And I think that's something that's different between like us and our competitors, as well, as we really focus on like, top of house automation. A lot of people talk about all these tools that they have, you know, they build tools, tools, tools, and I always think like, you're kind of sticking your finger in the dam, you're finding these like very specific problems and trying to like plug them with a specific, you know, check tool. Whereas, you know, we look and we're like, the most expensive people are people that interface directly with investors, right? So if that's the case, why not try and make them more efficient, if you're taking you know that that whatever that is 75 hours and turn it into an hour. I mean, that's huge, because your most expensive people are people that are dealing with your investors, and makes you really efficient. And the nice thing is, we what we try to do is try to take the lessons from you know, kind of e commerce and social media and apply them to your process, right? Everyone is very accustomed to the feed on social media. So the nice thing is in your deal room, you can keep creating videos. So if you create your first video and you have two people call you and say, Hey, that was really great. I saw that I saw this question about this, right? If someone's asking that question or two people are asking that question. It's probably a safe bet that other people have that question, go in record a 32nd video and say, Hey, I got this, you know, comment or this question? Here's the answer to that, and kind of expound on that a little bit. And now you're updating everybody at once, right? So it just makes you more efficient. And again, provides that sort of level of transparency that we're talking about. And as far as video goes, we have people do that property, little video, we will do like property walkthrough, we have people that will do like intro videos and put it in the deal. We have people that do like walkthroughs of the legal documentation as well. So like, actually pull up the legal docs and be like, Hey, here's what you're signing, just so everyone knows, like, I'm not an attorney. But here's what it is, right? So you're making that process more and more transparent, like the more you know, sort of videos you add in.
Sean Thomson 15:43
Yeah, and I really liked the consistency of the message, too. So like you said, if you have that conversation 50 times, you're going to have 50 different ways. And that's really not a good idea. So it's not it's not efficient for your time. But then it's also not good to have 50 people looking at the thing from 50 different angles. I think that consistency of information for anybody that wants to see it is really important as well. And then like you said, if someone has a question about something, someone else probably has that same question. They just may have not thought about it yet. Right? So then you can update people really quickly and rapidly. And people that may not have known that that was a question gets the information anyway. Right. So I like the fact that the messaging is kind of consistent and the same for everyone. I think that that just makes it easier for everybody to kind of to kind of understand and have that that's that similarity to what you're trying to convey. Right. And I think it's more efficient. And just like you said, having issues come up, you can just kind of consistently do that you can't go back and call 50 people and say, Oh, you know, someone asked me about this, I wanted to update you because I think it's a critical I mean, it's that'd be impossible, you know, so you're not going to do that you're going to answer that one person's question and move on. Right? Right. And so I think having a system where you can just kind of take that information base, or the information, giving it to the next level is important. Let's talk about so we talked about the deal room, let's talk about after the deal room. So what happens, we've given everybody information, we've got consistency, we've got as much as we can out there to everybody so they can understand what's happening in the deal. What's the next sort of phase for the investors in the process of going through this.
Quinn Butler 17:19
So then we get kind of, you know, if we think about the deal room as like the kind of hardest in social media, but after that, we're thinking more about like the checkout process, right? Like everyone's accustomed to kind of checking out online and having, you know, certain steps that they go through. And that's what we try and provide and make it very predictable, you know, for you as the person running the deal, and also for the investors. So as they go through, you know, they would say yes, I'm interested in this deal, they can submit an offer, or you can do pre-approved offers in our system, they select the entity they're going to go into invest with, because obviously, they may have different ones. And then they go into a signing process, right. So we use a full version of HelloSign that's built right on top of our software, you drop your documents, and you put in your merge fields, etc., they can sign everything, and we pull all the information from the system that we have to try and autofill as much as possible. So it's a very, you know, light process for them. They don't have to, like fill out every single field, for example, but they go through the signing process, right. And then from the signing process, then they go into the funding process and the funding for us, you know, you can put in check and wire instructions, we also have a CH so they can verify their identity, connect their bank account, and they can contribute via a CH, which makes your life very easy, right? Like you don't have to worry about you know, managing wire transfers or going to the mailbox and finding checks, you know, you get people signed up money goes directly from their bank account into yours. And then you can use a CH for distributions, that's more of the back end, we'll get to that in a second. But just having like that transparency and predictability in that checkout process is a huge help as well. Because in a general sense, what we see is, you know, you get stuff in email, then you have to have all these phone calls, right? And then you finally get a number and you get the registry information, perhaps right, and you're logging that, then you need them to sign something. So you're they're emailing it, and they're printing and signing and scanning and sending back. Or you're saying hey, I had this hosted in DocuSign, I'll sign up my own account now go create a login and you're sending them somewhere else, right? And then for the funding process, they have to go somewhere else. So you create this like really tangled web. And anytime your investors want or need something, they don't know where to go, yeah, they're checking their email. They're thinking, Okay, what's my, what's my login? What's my password over here, this just gives them one place. So you take all those steps and put it in a very linear platform, right? So it's just like you go straight through. You don't have to worry about jumping from one tab to the next. It's just you stay all the way through and guides you all the way through that entire checkout process is what we would kind of call that.
Sean Thomson 19:48
Yeah, so it gives them first of all, it gives them a very easy and clear place to get the information that they need to take the next steps, right. So they have all the legal documents that they will need at their disposal. They can study them to whatever length they want, as long as They need to, or as quickly as they want to get through that stuff, whatever the process is very defined so that they know, Okay, the next step is going to be, you know, setting up my bank account or whatever it is, or even if I have my bank account set up, I'm ready to go, I can create a new entity, if I want to, for this particular investments. investors can have multiple investment entities, like IRAs have their own entity. And you know, some people just invest with entities, like, you know, LLC, or whatever, for tax reasons or business reasons. Some people just invest in individually, you can have all those options. So you have all this front end stuff, that's all handled right there. And that, like you said, in one spot, and it's a very clear path, but then to take the next steps, it's not disjointed, where they're, like you said, they're having a call me they're having to figure out what their bank wants to do, you know, you can do everything in one location, which makes it so much more just efficient and, and painless, right. So a lot of this is really, a lot of this is really just pain points for investors that they have to go through to get this process taken care of, right. And so if you can eliminate as many of those pain points as possible, but still deliver the information in the critical details that you that you want them to have, I think that's what makes the difference, right? So we kind of went quickly over it, but and once they get these things set up, it's just, it's just a matter of clicks to get things paid. And they can be invested in a matter of minutes. Really, right. It's really, it's, it's amazing how different you’re the system that you have is compared to, you know, something in the past, it was more complicated, you know, and it took forever, but
Quinn Butler 21:26
but we always, that's always we comment that, you know, kind of the old school way of doing it, or the more traditional way of doing it, you go out there, you spent all this time, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies and doing all this to grow and develop these relationships. And then you finally get someone to say, Yes, I want to give you generally a significant amount of capital for your investment. And then you're like, Cool, so here's a hoop and I'm going to light it on fire. And then here's another hoop, I'm going to light this one on fire, and you just make it so difficult for them to get through it. And they have no, you know, transparency. So I, you know, kind of are one of the things I always talk about is if someone's trying to give you money, right, so I was trying to get me money, I want to make that as easy as possible. Sounds like, hey, Clint, I want to give you know, $25,000 for you know, as an investment and be like, Cool, let's, let's figure out how easy I can make it for you to give me capital, because I don't want to say, spend all that time. And then And then again, yeah, just like, Okay, well, awesome. I'm glad you want to do that. Now, here's all the hoops, you have to jump through to make this happen.
Sean Thomson 22:26
streamline it, you almost make it a job, you know, it's like, you want to be an investor. Okay, well hit, that's your new job. It's like, no, it shouldn't be it shouldn't be that difficult. You know, there's, there's ways to make that easier. And I that's, I think that's important. You know, for us, we wanted to we wanted to take our experience to the next level, right. So that's why we were hunting for ways to do that. So I think that's, that's a really important part of it. Because that's, you know, the, what we discussed, the beginning is really us delivering information, the investor hasn't really had to do anything at this point. But this is where the investor work starts, right? And making that making that someone's job is going to, it's just going to be a horrible thing, experience for the people that wanting to invest. If you can make that efficient, I think it's good. So we talked about this is how they can distribute or make contributions. What's the next step for I guess, once they're invested in something, they have access to sort of their own dashboard of information, how the property the property is doing all the documents that like the financials and things like that for the property? Right. Is that the next step?
Quinn Butler 23:24
Yeah. So the next step is kind of the post fundraising. Right. So this is something that we talk about a lot with syndicators are coming in, right, because I think the only thing worse than having that like, very difficult process up front, where you like, dump all this information on investors, the only thing worse than that is when you get their money, and you go radio silent, right? Like, that's very scary. So, so number one, you want to set the expectation of what's coming to them. But number two, you want to deliver on that, right? So that's going to take the form of distributions. So we do we had a CH, so you can do distributions via a CH on our platform, which makes it really easy. There's no more writing a bunch of checks, you just get everyone's information, set up distributions that way. And you can also do reporting and other reporting that we do on the platform, as far as what we track is pretty limited, because we're just doing like cash and cash out, right? That's what we're looking at. So we don't see the property level metrics and all that type of stuff. But what you can do is you can take your property level metrics, or whatever you're generally going to, like email out and upload that to the platform. And you can still do videos over that, right? So instead of just sending them like a page with a bunch of numbers, record a video over that and explain what those numbers mean. That's, that's taking it to that next level of transparency and kind of telling people and explaining people, here's what's going on, right. And you could also do things like if you're doing a value add on a property, for example, you're remodeling the lobby, let's say, if you do a quick walkthrough, just literally grab your cell phone and talk over the top of it as if you're doing any sort of video and walk through and say, Hey, you know, this is the new light fixture here's a new desk, you know, We repainted this. And you upload that, as part of your reports, you know, to that investment. What that looks like to the investor is, you know, it's much more engaging, it's much more real to them. It's not just I gave you money, and I got a piece of paper back, right? Like, I've seen, like, Oh, that's so cool. I pay for that desk, I paid for that light fixture, I pay for that drywall and paint right. Now, when they drive by that property, they're thinking, oh, I've actually invested in that property, they're telling their friends about it. It's just a much more like, shareable experience and a much more engaging experience, right. So that from what we have seen, that really creates, you know, sort of a viral effect, in a sense, like, now they're going to talk to their friends and be like, Hey, what's really cool is I get this money, I know exactly where it is, I see what's happening, I see the improvements that are being made, I see how my money is being spent, and earning me capital on top of that, right, so something that's coming in for us, you can continue to do that in the deal room. So basically, you know, just treat the deal room as if it's a social media page for that for that particular project. But we're going to be reworking our reporting section. So the reporting section is effectively going to be like a social media feed, right. So you just drop in videos, you drop in pictures, you drop in reports, etc. And again, it just keeps it going. So when people log in, they get to see exactly what's going on, and the most relevant or most recently on top, but they can see everything, you can continue to interact with them via video. So you don't have to call them and say, Hey, this is going really well, which hopefully, you're doing. But a lot of people I think just forget to do that once they get capital, but you could do a quick video and again, efficiency, efficiency of and clarity of message and consistency of message, right just like, here it is sent out to those 50 investors, and now they're here on the exact same thing, they're seeing the exact same thing. But it just shows a much better level of transparency and makes them feel a lot more engaged from our experience.
Sean Thomson 26:46
Yeah, and you know, real estate, for me specifically, I know a lot of people talk about diversification and stuff like that, but I invest only in real estate. And for me, the philosophy is, if I can't touch it, I don't want it because I like to have an element of control. And, and with a property I can I can paint it, I can put new fixtures like you said, I can do those things and improve it, I can make it worth more money, right. So that, to me is a philosophy that I can I can latch on to. And I think that's the appeal of real estate. I mean, you can give your money to an anonymous Wall Street firm. And they'll do something with it. Right? You know, you don't know exactly, maybe they'll put it in a fund or something. And it just kind of does its thing and there's some guy up there that kind of, you know, puppet masters the whole thing, and you're hoping they make you money, right. And I think the beauty of real estate is that you can drive up to it, you can look at it, you can touch it, you can see the improvements, you can, you know, you can do those things, it's more, I have a greater impact on what I can do with my real estate investments than I can ever have with any other type of investment. Right. And I think that's the draw that people have in wanting to be in real estate is that it's tangible. It's something they can latch on to they can they can feel it right. It's not just some random thing. And so being able to being able to share that with our investors, for sure, I look at our investors as partners in our deal, right? So you're partnering with me. So you're if you're one of my partners, I want you to understand every move that we're making, I want you to see it, I want you to feel it, because I know that's the experience that that makes it real for me as an investor. And that's why I'm in this business to begin with. So if I can do that, for people that are invested with us, I think that's you know, for me, that's, that's critical. But I think that's also next level and being creating an experience that our investors should have. Right. I think that's part of what they want to experience. I really do. That's important.
Quinn Butler 28:35
Yeah, I love that. Because I think, in a general sense, when people first approach real estate investing, most of what they look at is just the return, you know, they say, Oh, well, real estate does better than the stock market. But I think being able to sell that message to them or you know, get them in line with your vision and say, Hey, this is why Real Estate's great, we can physically do this, we can take something that isn't great and add value to it. But the thing is, most of them are just completely left out of that process. Right? All they do is contribute capital, and all they think about in terms of real estate is the return that they get not the actual, like physical difference that their capitals making. So being able to like, I mean, you're putting it I beautifully, I think you know like that, that's a great way to sort of help your investors visualize that and then if you can execute on that afterwards by like showing them videos and showing them hey, this is happening. Here's you know, here are the changes that are happening here's where your capital is going. I think that gets them even more excited about real estate and you know, they may become more like you where they're like hey, let's do more and more of this real estate stuff because a the returns are great, but be like I'm actually physically seeing what's happening and that does seem a lot more solidified than yeah the speculation that is the stock market. Yeah,
Sean Thomson 29:47
I have you know, have people approached me all the time about cryptocurrency and, and stocks and bonds. Mm hmm. I have people approached me constantly. I mean, it's pretty much a daily occurrence online. You know, you should be you just be in you know, a crib. Currently I'm like, I don't care about I don't care about it's not about making the money at some point, you know, it's, it's, you're going to make money if you invest into different things, but I like real estate because like I said, I can touch it. But you know, the second component for me anyway is that we're creating communities, you know, I'm creating a community for someone to live in, that they can, you know, feel safe and they can they can enjoy living and they can raise their families in you know, so there's really components to real estate that you cannot get out of cryptocurrency, you know, just, you know, I could be a cryptocurrency billionaire, but I don't care, you know, I invest in real estate, because it does these other things. For me, there's a lot of vehicles out there that can make you money, you know, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, make money, you know, but I like having the control. I like having the impact on the asset, I like creating something for somebody else to enjoy. You know, so those things, I think, I think that's missed a lot of times in this whole process. And I want I want my partners to feel that, you know, I want my investors to feel that because that's, that's what, that's what drives me to do this business anyway. Right. You know, we do make money, right. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's very important. But there's this, there's so much more to real estate than just that component to it. So I that's, I like this, this section of being able to share that. So that's, I think that's going to be good.
Quinn Butler 31:19
Yeah, I think the visuals are really good. You know, I just don't think again, people look at return specific. But what you're saying is absolutely true. You know, like, Hey, you can you can affect change, you can see things physically change, you can create communities, you can do all this sort of stuff. I think a lot of that kind of gets overlooked,
Sean Thomson 31:35
right? Yeah, you put a playground in the kids love it, right? I mean, I changed those little kids lives, you put a playground, you know, you do something improve, you improve someone's home, and it changes their life. Well, let's I guess we've kind of talked about this a little while. But so what's the next phase? So we're going to we're we've got them, and we've got them engaged with our investment. We've got the we're getting the information on how things are going well, how we're improving how their money, and then what is next. So I guess distributions are next, we're starting to make some money. We're making an improvement. We're making money. So now the investors are getting returns, right? Yeah.
Quinn Butler 32:05
So distributions, like I said, you can do through a CH, that's just on the manager side of the platform, really easy to do, you just like, put the total amount in that and, and you can create your distribution and send it right to their bank account. You can also do things like upload reports, you know, k ones will be part of that as well. So you're uploading k ones to the individual investors, portals, because what we generally see is after a deal is closed, two things happen. Number one, most people go radio silent, right, like we talked about. So like being in front of them consistently and showing them like, Hey, we built this playground, this is really cool, right? And 90% of the questions that you get from your investors post res, are generally like, Where's my k one? Or where's that document is signed? Or where is that, right? So having a document repository, which we have, allows them to just at 90% of your answers are going to be, hey, log into the platform, because it's there, right? So they can go in and everything's sorted and filtered. So they can find their k ones for specific properties, or any documents assigned anytime they execute something on the platform and automatically gets loaded into their documents section. So it just gives them all of the back end, and basically manages all of the, you know, kind of questions that pop up afterwards, the portal should effectively answer that, because you'll have all that information in there, whether it's reports that you're generating or videos that you're generating to update them, or K ones or documents, all that stuff is in there. And it really helps you manage, you know, the back end post rates.
Sean Thomson 33:28
So we're going to have the ability to do distributions pretty seamlessly and pretty painlessly. So they just money just pops in their account every quarter I The other thing I like about what you guys had was we can communicate, right? So the key ones are always going to be an issue. So tax time is coming up, everybody starts to panic, like, Where am I where's my tax documents, my accountants on the phone, wanting, wanting all my stuff. So we can communicate early on and say, okay, we expect those to be hitting around this week, please look for them in your portfolio. So we can send those messages out to the group with like you said, if we have 50 investors, we can send those 50 investors Hey, k ones are dropping on this timeline. Please look for them. If there's any issues, let us know kind of thing. Yeah. So you can you can take a very proactive approach to delivering what the investor is expecting. Right. So the other stuff we've been talking about is educating them on the deal, getting them engaged in the deal. And then now we're really talking about this is what they're looking for, right? They're looking for the returns. So where's my money every quarter, you know, and I could see that easily. And then, you know, where is everything that I need to when my accountant is ready to go do taxes in a can I find that easily? And so having that all that stuff in one place, and then being able to tell them, you know, how engaged with them, and here's where it's coming in how it's working. I think that's critical, right?
Quinn Butler 34:43
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really engaging with them. And there's other things, you know, in terms of like notifications and stuff, like to help them through the process. So you know, come back and sign come back and find right, here's your K ones, here's what's coming. So we try and keep them updated as much as possible. So it's a really nice, you know, I started notification tool with that as well. So
Sean Thomson 35:03
yeah, yeah. And it helps it just kind of helps keep them engaged in what they need to know, to make that investment work, you know, outside of the portal, right. So in their real life, right?
Quinn Butler 35:14
Yeah. And from an engagement standpoint, there are also other tools that we have, you know, when you build deals, for example, you can put them in fundraising mode, which obviously, you know, you're going to attach the documentation, you're going to set up the funding, all that type of stuff. But we do have a mode where you can build the deal and put it in what we call teaser mode. And user mode is effectively to generate interest, right? So instead of investors logging in and saying, you know, let's start the subscription process, because I want to give capital, instead, the button will say mark is interested, right. So basically, what you're doing is kind of pulling your investors’ appetite for a specific investment. So if you're generally investing in the same geographical area, or the same asset class, and you find something that looks really interesting, but it's not, you know, what you're generally doing, you can build a deal in teaser mode, and then send that to all your investors and say, Hey, this is, you know, a similar property what we invest in, but it's in a different market, for example, right? Are you guys interested in this? Right? So they can effectively get in there and say, Oh, yes, I am interested now you can kind of get a feel for is it worth it for me to go and do all the due diligence and put an offer in on this, right, because that's not easy and quick process. So before you get into there, you want to make sure that you actually have, you know, the investor appetite to support that. The other thing that teaser mode is really good for is investor engagement just out of phase, right? So what I tell people is, if you're coming in, if you're a newer syndicator, or you don't have you know, this incredible deal, flow, use user mode to just keep your investors coming back to the platform, right. So even if it's a deal that you're not super interested in, you can create a teaser, you know, grab the pictures, build the deal, run the exact same way you would always do, you can make it as robust or as sparse as you want to, but you're just constantly inviting them in. And what it does is it implants, the idea in the investors head of, hey, these guys are always looking out for deals, they're always trying to figure out how to put my money to work, you know, and they're always asking me my opinion, to see if I'm interested in property A, B, or C, right. And it just really helps with the engagement, they come back, if they're logged in, they're going to be checking other things. But it, it's, you know, kind of a nice, like marketing tool, in a sense, to kind of keep that engagement going. So also, if you're, if you're coming in, and you only have one deal, that's going to be on the platform, when you launched your investors, build a couple teasers, right, put two or three teasers in there, and it just makes you look a little more legitimate, because now it was like, You have four properties. Three of them may be teasers. But, you know, when your investors log in for the first time they're seeing for deal cards as opposed to one, right? There's some cool things you can do within the platform to kind of help you know, again, we're all about trying to help build your process and your credibility and make you look good to investors and give them you know, the ideal investor experience. Well, I
Sean Thomson 37:57
think and what you're responding there to gives me a lot of feedback, right? So I, you know, that's critical feedback. If you have investors that that like a property, it's worth looking at, you know, if they're interested in it, for whatever reason, there may be something that you need to take a second look at, too. So we may be, we may be looking at something and think, well, I don't really know what that market is for us, like you said, but then you have, you know, 20 investors are like digging into the deal and looking into it and asking questions, then it's like, well, maybe there's something to that market. Right. So let's go take a look at it more in depth, right. So I think that that I think that works on both sides, right? It helps, it helps kind of get me information in front of my investors that may keep them engaged. But that engagement gives me feedback. To help me do my job too. Right. So I think it's I think it's good on both sides to do those things. Yeah, that's, that was another thing I liked, was being able to sort of pitch something almost to say, Hey, what do you guys think? Right? You know, it's like, if they if they come back to me and say, we love it, then let's go right. So for me, that's, that's that that would be helpful. Yeah. And plus, it gives them like you said, it's like, gives them something to, to keep them kind of involved in what we're doing. And some of the activities we have going on, because we're looking at properties constantly. And we're always, we're always wondering, you know, should we move forward on this one? Should we do this one? Because, you know, if you have 10 deals on the table, it's like, which one do you want to focus on? And put our energy towards? Or which two or three Do you want to put our energy towards? We can't do 10, you know, so, a lot of times that would help to help kind of guide us through our process, too. So?
Quinn Butler 39:27
Yeah, absolutely. And it's, in terms of engagement, when they come back into the platform, they're probably looking at things like, you know, any updated reports, or if you're doing additional videos or updating on properties, right? So it's just encouraging them to kind of develop that habit of, you know, come back every couple of weeks or once a month, or whatever it is to look and see what's going on. And that just, you know, kind of further engages them and lets them know, like, hey, not only are we out looking for deals right and present them to you, but we're constantly updating what we're doing. So you're seeing new videos about improvements that are happening on this Right. Whereas other times, I could just potentially lose track of that. So you want to stress that as much as you can.
Sean Thomson 40:06
Yeah. And again, that's, that's, that's the next level experience that we were looking for, for our investors. Right? I keep saying that. But that's really what we were trying to do was engage our investors on another on a whole nother level, so that we were providing the best that we could, you know, so they're getting, they're getting the experience that we're getting that we have, you know, and it's sort of experiencing some of our passion for what we do. I think that's critical is because this is very, it can be a very dry component to your business, you know, and it's just, hey, give me money. I'll give you money back. You know, like you said, In the beginning, it's, you know, it's really that simple. But it's not right, because there's, there's a whole there's a whole other thing going on. So
Quinn Butler 40:43
yeah, I don't think it can be that simple anymore, just because so many other investment avenues have so much transparency, and so much reporting, and, you know, fancy graphs and all these other things that people are becoming more and more accustomed to, and real estate, especially to someone who hasn't done it a lot, or hasn't done it at all, it just looks like this big, scary, you know, black box, in a sense, like, I give you money, and then you just kind of go radio silent, and I not sure what's happening, and I know I have this money somewhere. If you clean that up for them, it just makes it a much better experience. So one, one thing I really stress, and I mentioned this, in the beginning, is selling your process versus your project, right? If If we were to compare two syndicators, for example, and one, let's say has a clearly superior deal, but all they do is kind of the old school way of, here's my project, here's why I think it's going to be a great thing to invest in, it's in a great neighborhood, and it's booming. There's this new employer in town, whatever, right? Like, really looks like a home run, you know, project. And then the other one says, Hey, I have a really great project. But here's the thing, here's how I vet my projects, I bet them this way, here's what your diligence process and for you as the investor, here's what you can expect from me, okay, you're going to get very clear articulation of why this is a good deal. I'm gonna make videos and be very transparent with you ask questions, you know, I respond to everybody via video, you log in, you see the responses to that, you'll see all the documentation, the photos, the paperwork, etc, then when you're ready to invest, you can commit, you can sign and you can fund all on the platform, there's no jumping around, there's no doing this, and that the other thing, right, and then when it's finished, I'm going to update you with reports, your K ones are going to appear in this portal, right? Those like cool you're gonna invest with, right, even though this is potentially a clearer, you know, a clearly superior deal, you're going to look and be like, I know exactly what's happening. I know exactly where I'm supposed to be, where I'm going, what the next step is, etc, as opposed to I hand this guy money, and then I don't know, right? So a lot of what I talked about is sell your process. And I think that what we have in terms of, you know, the software itself, we are kind of delivering you a process in a sense, right? Like, think about it, like we're almost delivering you like an investor relations like team, you know, it's almost like automated Investor Relations, and you white label everything, you slap your logo on everything, you make your own videos, etc. But we provide you with the process. And at the end of the day, I always say like, yes, we develop these tools or whatever, they're not our tools, they are your tools. Think of it that way. So when you go out when you think about talking to investors, when you think about engaging with investors, use these tools to attract investors, because this is now your process, you get to say, I have this, I have this thing, I have this checkout process, I have this level of transparency, I have these videos, etc. It's yours. Right? That's a really try and think about how that breaks down and build everything you do around that investors. From my experience, we're gonna be a lot more impressed with, oh, I really know what I'm getting from this person as opposed to, he says, it's a really great deal. What do I know? Right? It that's a totally different experience for an investor, the more you really clarify what your process, build the roadmap, you know, make sure they understand like, you're going to be there after the deal update, then you're going to see your face talking to them, etc. That's a much better experience that's make people feel a lot better, you know, especially newer investors, they're gonna feel a lot better about that process, as opposed to like, I don't know what's happening.
Sean Thomson 44:06
Yeah, and that was our approach when we were looking for a solution was, I want to accomplish certain things for my investors, I want to I want to present something that my investors can can feel good about. And I was looking for a tool that did that. I wasn't I wasn't just trying to do the basics, right. I was trying to I was trying to give a you know, better experience. Yeah. And you guys even Have you even have so if someone doesn't know how to use the groundbreaker system. You guys even have a chat service. You have tech support, you have stuff for people that need help with the program, not not my stuff stuff necessarily. But you know, someone says I don't know how to change my settings or something. And you guys have that, that for our our users, right?
Quinn Butler 44:48
Yeah. And our in general, I would say if we're known for something shout out to our customer success team. They are awesome. We have a very extensive process in terms of onboarding you So you're going through it right now. But you know, there's there's five calls that you go through, we train you on how to do absolutely everything, then we go beyond just showing you how to use the platform, we talk about what's the most effective way to launch to investors, right. And then we hand you to a customer success manager who's your go to person, and we set up intervals with you to check in, you know, if you have a race coming up, we want to be there at the beginning of it to make sure they set up with you, right, we are very hands on from the customer success standpoint, we also do things like we're going to do and with you, with your investors, as your race comes up, we're will do webinars to train your investors how to use the platform, so it takes all that pressure off of you, or we you know, at the very least, we can help you create videos that you can share with your investors that show them how to use the platform. So we're very hands on with that type of stuff. And yeah, like you mentioned, we have a system in the platform on both sides. So on both the LP and the GP side, there's a chat functionality in there, that puts you directly in touch with our customer support team. So if you have questions, if you're stuck, or investors stuck, you know, and they can't figure something out, they run into, you know, they don't know how to enter information, or whatever it is, they can chat directly to us, and we can help them get through those processes. So you, you know, with us, you effectively get a full tech support. Right? I don't have to deal with all those types of issues. But we try to give you, you know, as much control as possible over each investors portal, right to help them out. But we're always they're sort of on standby to help with those things. And there's, of course, like knowledgebase articles. So if you're looking for something specific, you can type it in, there's going to be videos and articles and add posts and stuff like that, that will walk you through how to do specific things. So we put a huge emphasis on that part of this.
Sean Thomson 46:38
So yeah, we well, we talked this whole time about, you know, kind of the setup and things. And then ultimately, there's going to be you know, one or two little things that you just get stuck on. And having that having someone to be able to go to at the end of the day, is gonna make it critical, right? So you know, it's like you said, you set it and forget it, methodology and investing is not good and set and forget it. And methodology and technology is not very good, either. Right? So you want to have some of that there. But at some point, you're gonna be like, I just, I just can't figure this out. Right. So having someone that has your back, and it's there to support you is I think you may never even use it, you know, it's just one of those insurance policies you may never use, but to have it there is I think next, you know, again, next level. So Quinn, I wanted to just touch on one thing of circling back to contributions and distributions, I forgot to mention this to you guys use banking level servers encryption, right. So explain that a little bit. So people can understand what what level of security they can expect with their money transactions.
Quinn Butler 47:35
Yeah. And in a general sense, we are I mean, etc, kind of bank level security for the entire platform. But when it comes to the actual fun transfers, that's actually taking place on bank servers. So we are basically sort of facilitating that. So we don't actually like do the transfers ourselves. But we use the a CH system. So a CH is, you know, 99% of banks in America have a CH that's what is used for like payroll deposits and things like that, it just automatically transfers money into your account as opposed to physical checks. So what we can do is we use a CH on the contribution side, your investors come in, they will verify their identity. So that goes to our banking partner, they will also do a KYC and AML check, which is pretty awesome. If they pass all that and their identity identity is verified, they will show up with a verified button next to their name in the funding process. Once they have that, they can just select their bank account, whichever one they want to invest with. And they are going to enter their username and password. So there's connecting their bank account to the portal, and then they can contribute the capital directly to the deal itself. So it makes it super easy. The verification process takes a couple of days. But outside of that, once they have that set up, every time they invest, rather than having to write a check or go to the bank and do a wire transfer. They just say oh, I wanted to pull it from my chase account. And I want to put in, you know, $125,000, like click like done. On the distribution side, it's the same thing. It's using the bank servers, obviously, because that's where the actual fund transfer takes place. But the distribution side, you're doing a waterfall distribution, you know, just like a pro rata by ownership percentage, it'll split that up, you get a draft, and then when you hit publish, it'll actually pull money from your account because you're connecting your account to the platform as well. And it will pull it from your account and put it directly into each individual investors account. And that's a really nice, you know, sort of sales pitch thing as well to tell them hey, you know, we all talk about like this mailbox money thing. Nobody actually wants mailbox money who wants to go and deposit a check? Like, how about I give you money in your bank account money and I just put it directly in there. We talk a lot about you know, taking the features that we have and making them your own and kind of selling them that way. But that is a big one. acth makes your life very easy, especially for repeat investors. You know, there's plug in information once they just grab it drop in whatever they want. distributions now become, you know, a few clicks. It's a very easy task as opposed to the arduous like right up. 50 checks or whatever it used to be. So those are the fun transfer is definitely a huge part of what we do as well.
Sean Thomson 50:07
Yeah. And I liked the security level. So the ease of use is one was one benefit I saw was was excellent. But the security level. So the security level throughout the platform actually is what's what I loved as much as anything, because, you know, you've got high level documents in here, very intimate documents that you're sharing with people, and then banking information and all these transfers and things and having it so high level security was, I think, a critical thing for us and making our decision. And I want to just touch on that really quick. That's good.
Quinn Butler 50:34
Yeah, we we touched earlier about like the chat functionality, right. So if we are chatting with an investor, one thing I will mention is we can't answer any investment related questions. Number one, because what do we know about it? Right? It's not our investment vehicle. And number two, we can't actually see any of the data, right? All the data is encrypted, from our standpoint. So everyone in our company, except for one person, which is how the compliance works, you know, someone has to see it. But everyone, engineers, customer success, people, anyone who's in there can't actually see any relevant data. It's all encrypted. So that's a really nice security level as well. And we also have, you know, two factor authentication setup. So it uses like the Google text message for the two factor. So there's a lot of really great security features, the data is various here, we've ever had the issues, obviously, we have all the insurance and everything for that specifically as well. And the other thing is you own the data, although we do get that question every once while like, you know, if I needed this out, you know, what would happen if I, you know, decided to shut down my font or whatever it was, like what happens with this data, you own it, you know, we will take it off, we will deliver it to you, it is completely, you know, expunged from our servers and everything else. So it's we work on AWS, you know, so it's encrypted in transit and at rest and cetera, et cetera. So if anyone knows data security, like that's, you know, kind of par for the course on things like that. Yeah.
Sean Thomson 51:51
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Well, Quinn, man, we did a really deep dive here, I really appreciate you coming on, you know, we, we were looking for this solution. And you and I met, I did a demo. And it as soon as I saw the demo, I was like, let's go, let's go deeper into this. And we signed up. And it's been a great experience so far. And I think it's going to help us kind of do our job better. So I wanted to kind of share that with everybody. It's a tool that I know a lot of my friends need. And they want to use, I think this is this, I think this section of the business is kind of forgotten as you're building your business, you know, until you get a deal. This isn't this isn't very critical, right? And so people people get their deal. They're like, Oh, no, what do we do now? Right. And so sharing this information is gonna be helpful, I think to somebody.
Quinn Butler 52:33
Yeah. And that's the biggest mistake we see is that people don't get it. And I think you're subject to this, like, people don't get it until their race happens that you're trying to do a raise and bring on software at the same time. Right? It's like, right, it's kind of nightmarish. So we encourage people get ahead of it, there's a lot of stuff you can do beforehand, like you can really use this as an effective marketing tool, as a lot of really great things you can use before the actual raise comes. So think about it ahead of time. You know, and for you, and for anybody, I tell everyone, like, when you hear us say something, feel free to use it, we develop it, so you can take it and use it in your pitch, impress your investors. And if you need help, you know, as you're building your videos, I take a lot of calls around that specifically as well. People call them like, Hey, can you give me feedback on this? Can you help us we're always willing to help on those things as well.
Sean Thomson 53:21
So yeah, awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing everything with everybody. It's, I think it's a it's a very elaborate very good tool. I think it you know, no matter what people use, they need something that they can deliver an experience to their investors. That's that's, you know, high level and very interactive. So I think this just this component of your business is critical. And we chose groundbreaker because of, you know, all the interactivity that you have and that kind of thing, but people can use whatever they want to guess I don't want everybody to think this is just a commercial break. I just happen to choose it. Right. But I think it's I think just doing this part of the business is important too. And then you know, having having investors in understand what their experience should be, you know, is important as well. But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all that with us. And we're looking forward to jumping on and getting the system all set up, I guess this week, so that's great. Okay,
Quinn Butler 54:13
there we go. Yeah, we really appreciate appreciate the time and and like you're saying, I mean, it's not to sound like a groundbreaker commercial that I think a lot of what what we talked about is relevant regardless of you though, it's just having a clear process for your investors. Because Yeah, a lot of the education out there doesn't deal with this and you don't you don't think about it until it's kind of too late in a lot of senses.
Sean Thomson 54:36
Yeah, you're rushing through it like I am is what most do I do. It happens we'll get you through. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thanks, Quinn. I appreciate you coming on and we'll talk to you soon, hopefully!
Quinn Butler 54:45
Of course! Thank you, sir.
Abigail Thomson 54:47
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact the team directly, or are interested in passively investing and being a part of our Deal Room, head over to our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com -- Before you go, please leave a review! Your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.