The Customer Service Within Investor Relations
“How much money do you have in the stock market? I bet a lot of people have over $100,000 in the stock market, and you’ve just handed that off to someone else to manage for you. Right? It’s the same concept, you’re just putting it into a real asset that you can touch and paint and feel.”
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast. We have an amazing 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 Camilla Jeffs. Camilla has been a syndicator for the last 18 years and today she shares how she views herself as an educator to her investors. In their discussion, Sean and Camilla talk about how they service their investors and make the process as seamless as possible. If you found any value from today's episode, then please share it with a friend and help us grow.
Key Topics
Tell us about your background
How did you get into real estate, to begin with?
You have done a variety of avenues in real estate investing, which have you liked the most? Why?
Which do you feel has made the biggest impact on your business? Why?
What does the American dream mean to you?
Connect with Camilla:
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
passive investors, people, multifamily, real estate, invest, deal, money, cap rate, investors, investment, market, partners, vet, buy, property, business, american dream, camilla, passive investing, run
SPEAKERS
Camilla Jeffs, Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson
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 their 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 an amazing guest for you today. But first, please make sure you have subscribed if you have not already. We also love getting your feedback and likes, comments, ratings and reviews. Today, Sean has a conversation with Camilla Jeffs. Camilla has been a syndicator for the last 18 years. And today she shares how she views herself as an educator to her investors. In their discussion, Shawn and Camila talk about how they service their investors and make the process as seamless as possible. If you found any value from today's episode, then please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit thomsonmultifamilygroup.com to start taking your American dream to the next level to passive investing.
Sean Thomson 01:17
Hi, Camilla. How you doing? Thanks for coming on the show.
Camilla Jeffs 01:20
I'm great. Sean, I'm excited to be here.
Sean Thomson 01:23
So let's start by just telling people kind of where you come from and when what you have going on today.
Camilla Jeffs 01:29
Yeah, so I'll tell you about my experience in real estate so far. So I spent back when I was first married, and we were in college, and we were young and had no money. We were living in a garage apartment, somebody converted garage. And the I talked to the landlady one day, and she was and I knew she owned a bunch of properties and and try to understand, well, how do you do this? You know, what are you doing? And she she said to me? Oh, you should buy a house? And I'm like, no, no, no, you see, you don't realize we don't have any money. Like young married in college. Is this not working out? And she's like, well, well, yeah, actually, you could buy a house that has a basement apartment in it. And then once you you could live there and rent it out. And I was like, that's really interesting concept. And so that's exactly what we did. We bought a house and rented out the basement apartment, we ended up spending about $150 a month to live there. And it had a pool. It was awesome. It was like this giant six bedroom home that we never thought we ever could afford. But actually you really can't afford it if you if you if you're creative about the way you go about doing it. So that kind of sparked my interest in real estate. That's when I started getting thinking about real estate. And you know, fast forward 15 years, we had invested in lots of single family homes and small Multis launched a property management company, and kind of hit a point where I was just scratching my head a little bit thinking, Well, what's next? What about now what do I do, I've been doing this for a long time, kind of getting burnt out of you know, of being the landlord. And because we were literally like, we're taking our kids to the four Plex and having them paint, having them bust up ice in the winter, like all these things that we were doing. And so I was just feeling like, you know, stuck, because we kind of had run out of money, we didn't have more time, we didn't have more energy to keep adding to our portfolio in the way that we had always been adding. And so then I started thinking about well, I think if we could just buy an apartment complex, we should be set, right? We could sell a single families, we could buy an apartment complex, maybe we'll be okay. But apartment complexes, and they cost millions of dollars. And I've never bought anything in the millions before. So I'm looking at apartments, I'm looking at my bank account, like yeah, there's not millions of dollars in that make a couch. Yeah. So now what do I do? So I started listening to podcasts and reading books about how to buy apartments. And realize, oh, actually, the best way to do it is with partners, as they do a group investment to get a bunch of people together. And we pool our resources. And you know, some people put in their money, some people put in their time and expertise, and we buy this and share in the profits. I was like, wow, this is pretty amazing concept. And so first thing we did was invest passively into one of these because we're like, Well, okay, let's put some of our money into a group investment and see how it goes. And well and and we're as excited about the prospect of, you know, my money working hard for me instead of me working hard to make more money. Right. Right. It's a pretty cool concept. And from there, I just got so excited about passive investing. I thought this is the most amazing thing ever. And so I launched steady stream investments, which is my company now. I mean, it's an education company, educating passive investors how to get involved in these types of opportunities. And then I go out and vet operators and deals and markets and opportunities to invest through my company and it's been great. It's been really fun to to bring a lot of in pastors in and teach them about it. And I specialize in teaching the first time passive investor, you know, what it's what to do and what all the terms mean. And you know, just really do focus heavily on education.
Sean Thomson 05:13
Yeah, I have this conversation a lot with people on especially on the podcast is so many people are super comfortable with investing in Wall Street product, right? So stocks, bonds, mutual funds, because that's all they kind of know. And most people don't really know that there's this whole side of alternatives that you can invest into, you know, some people invest in coins, some people invest in oil futures, you know, all these different other alternative type investments that you don't hear about other than, because your financial advisors aren't selling mutual funds, you know, to you, outside of that, dude, that's all they're gonna bring you.
Camilla Jeffs 05:41
They don't make money. They don't make money on any of these alternative investments. So why would they ever suggest it?
Sean Thomson 05:47
Right? So there's these millions and millions of people that are invested in the markets that don't know that real estate is a possibility for them with their their IRAs and all the investment capital that they have they can put into, into real estate. So educating people on on the fact that it's even just possible to do this, first of all, and then how to get involved is a big thing. And the other thing about real estate, is real estate's a very fundamentally simple business you buy buy an asset, you improve it, you make more money, and you sell it for more money, right? Are you are you cashflow it for more money, it's a very simple business, but the complexity in there is quite a lot. And becoming an expert in real estate just to make $100,000 investment. It doesn't make sense for someone to spend a decade trying to learn all the complexities of buying and owning a multifamily property just to make their 100,000 investment. So like you said, vetting sponsors, someone like me, that goes out and hunts for Deals and Finds opportunities, you know, finding those people is, is complicated for just the average person if you're not connected in the network, and finding those sponsors that you can work with four or five guys or whatever, people out there doing deals, you know, you don't know who to go to. Right. So so having you as a conduit to sort of make that happen is a great thing. So you find some so how do you how do you reach passive investors? And and what's the process you go through with them? And? And how do you kind of show them the path?
Camilla Jeffs 07:11
Yeah, so I mean, the first one, how do you reach passive investors. So I do that through a lot of online marketing, really, like social media is the is my best friend, find more people love LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a fantastic place to connect with, with people who might be thinking about investing and who might be on that path. And, you know, and, and I especially love to help women to get involved in passive investing, because the amount of women who invest is few, but women make really good decisions about their investing. And they do really well once they get involved and understand it. And so that's one of the things that I'm passionate about, too, is just helping other women and more families to really invest in this type of investment. Because it, it's so perfect, because it helps you keep your time, right, you get to keep your time, but you are making your money work so hard for you in a very, you know, a lot more recession resistant asset class than, say, the stock market. I mean, I was just talking to someone the other day, and they were telling me while I have this old 401k that I might want to invest in real estate, but you know, I, you know, my husband's not really excited about that, plus, the stock market went down. And so if I take it out now, now I've like lost money in the stock market. And so maybe I need to wait for it to come up. And my response to her was, this is why I don't like the stock market very much. Because it's such a guessing game, right? Because you're like, Well, maybe it'll go up or, you know, and then it goes up, and they're like, Well, maybe it'll keep going up. And so it's just it's such a guessing game, whereas I feel like real estate is just more solid and predictable. Right. And and I'm all about comfort, predictable, predictable. Predictability, is that even a word?
Sean Thomson 08:58
I don't know if that's a word Yeah. predictability. Yeah. making up my own words. detectability. That's the one you're like.
Camilla Jeffs 09:03
Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, how do I educate them. So once people find me through through that, then I have a whole full system that I built out, I mean, I have videos that help educate, but I also have your weekly information that I send out, I'll write up blog posts, and post those on there. And then I hold webinars, and I have webinars twice a month, or live with me, that you can come and attend. And it'll be on a specific topic that has to do with the investment that you would need to know as a passive investor, and it's like 20 minutes of this topic, and then 10 minutes of q&a, so you can come and join me live and ask questions, and you know, and help and help do that. So, you know, it's just, it's just a process once you hear about it, and you're like, Oh, what is this? Then you you need to spend the time to get educated because you don't I don't want anyone making it a decision to invest just based up because I said so. Right? Because I said, Oh, this is a good idea right now. I want you to feel comfortable with that. He tries to do the research and to feel comfortable with it so that you can so when it when the time comes, that you're not just blindly investing. That's not the goal.
Sean Thomson 10:09
Yeah. And there's, it's quite a simple thing. You just essentially just someone can just give me money, I go buy a property, and we hopefully make more money, right? But it's that hopefully, that you that's the problem, right? Do you want to make sure that you're getting into investments or working with people that have sort of vetted that property and done all those things properly? And you that's what you're showing people how to kind of consider what was a good investment look like? What does a good sponsor look like? What are these things look like, so that they can make those decisions for themselves. It's really not that hard. If you find someone that's out there doing these successfully, you know, essentially just give them the money and they make more money, right? That's kind of the concept. But there's, there's a little bit that goes along with that to make sure that you're you're satisfied or happy or comfortable with the risk that you're taking. Because you're essentially buying into a business, you're, you know, apartment operates as a small business. And you're buying shares in that small business as a limited partner or an investor. And so making sure that you're, you're happy with that investment, because it is a longer term commitment that's illiquid, and there's some downsides to it, but it gets a tremendously good hedge against volatility for sure. Like you were saying, like the market is up and down. You know, real estate's tend to be, or at least multifamily tends to be a little more linear, and consistent. So it's really good. So what are some of the things you look at like market or sponsor? Who, what, what kind of the those processes? Well, maybe, maybe let's talk about the market that you like,
Camilla Jeffs 11:33
yeah, so I go through a whole vetting process before I ever, you know, offer an opportunity to anybody who's kind of in my system, I go through this vetting process and so I you know, start with the market, and the market is crucial to whether or not your investment is going to go well, now, some markets are more forgiving than other markets. And you know, you can make money in any market, I'm not gonna say that, that you can't make money in certain markets, you'll even in markets where people are moving out of you can still do well in real estate, as long as you know what you're doing. However, if you invest in a market that is growing, that has really great population growth, really good job growth, job diversity is landlord friendly, like that those four factors are going to make a big difference in whether or not your your property does fantastic, or if it just does good, right. And so for me, when I look at markets, some of the markets that I really love want right now and that I'm investing in currently today is the Arizona market. So Phoenix and Tucson are both really great cities to invest in right now. Huge population growth, really explosive job growth happening there. And, and really great diversity of jobs. People love living in Arizona, and I lived in Arizona for a while. I didn't love it. Other people love it. And it's a great place to, you know, to raise families and to and, you know, it's nice weather, right? Well, except in the boiling hot summer. But it's nice weather Other than that, and so it's a really great place to invest. So that's where I love to do I invest in multi large multifamily. There are another market that I really love is Oklahoma. And in Oklahoma, it's different from Arizona, it doesn't have the explosive growth, right? It is growing, it does have population growth, job growth has the job diversity has really improved in Oklahoma, maybe 1015 years ago, it was mostly oil and gas and farming. But now they have you know, they've done a good job of incentivizing tech companies to come in like Google has two of its main data centers, two of its five data centers are in Oklahoma. And so it's a it's a strong market, but it's a really strong cash flow market. Because prices there aren't as high as like Arizona, Arizona, we're paying premium for properties there. Oklahoma we can get in for for a lot lower price has. And it has a big, big a yield in there from how much they're they're paying. So for example, it's more affordable for the tenants to they're only paying about 25% of their income toward rent in the Oklahoma market as compared to like Phoenix where it's, you know, good 30%. So I like those markets for two different reasons. So after I choose a market, then I start hunting for strong operators in that market. And for strong operators. I'm looking for a couple things. So number one is track record. Have you done this before? How long have you been doing it? What has been you know? Tell me about a deal? Where if things went well, right, where you had your projections and you you overshot your projections and you sold it and things you do to that, but also tell me about a deal that things did not go well. I want to know what happened or what what decisions you made when things started to go south. How did you take care of your investors if things Things didn't go according to plan? How did you communicate that to investors because my job I feel like part of my job to advocate for passive investors, especially because first timers are coming in this is their first time they don't know, all the questions to ask yet they haven't gone through cycles. And so really, my job is to protect their interests and make sure that they have the the right information coming down to them. So that's what I want to understand from sponsors, and then the deal, right, third is the actual deal. So as it comes to me, I take a look at it, I will do all I will do my own underwriting on it, just to understand what's going on with the underwriting I try to dig into the business plan and vet whether or not there is, you know, if they say they're going to raise rents $200 a door, well, can the market support that? And so I do vetting on that, and just really dig into the the opportunity and and how it works. And so those are kind of the three three things that I the process that I go through before deciding to, you know, jump on a deal.
Sean Thomson 16:00
Are you are you concerned with property type it all you do like you're you're looking for a specific door count or a product or property style or anything like that, is that something that's considered as well.
Camilla Jeffs 16:09
So the the type I so looking for large multifamily, just because they are much more efficient to run and, and again, more forgiving of mistakes with just the economies of scale. So looking for large multifamily, a specific like style of multifamily. You know, I like the garden style better than, you know, just the one giant building, but I haven't found a big difference in those. So yeah,
Sean Thomson 16:33
so the garden is down more so than like a mid rise or high rise or something like that. Yeah. What is some of the things you have coming up in your business? Or what are some of the things you have going on that are kind of future forward?
Camilla Jeffs 16:46
Yeah, so So for 22, kind of the strategy for 2022 is is to invest in fewer more quality deals is what I'm what I'm looking for. So I want to invest in kind of bigger ones as well. And so just really looking at I've already said no to like, eight deals in January, but because I want to have a really solid quality opportunity for for investors to come up. And so that's what's on the on the plan. So to do like four or five deals, so have about one a quarter that that's ready for investors to take a look at. And then also just, you know, expanding asset classes a little bit too. So right now, I'm mainly multifamily. But I have one assisted living new construction project that we that we broke ground on late last year. So looking to do another one of those another new construction, assisted living, but then maybe expanded into self storage or industrial or, or things like that, and just looking and evaluating the different asset classes.
Sean Thomson 17:49
So what's sparking your interest in getting from multifamily the other to the other asset classes? Like you're saying? Just every
Camilla Jeffs 17:55
vacation? Yeah, yeah, I'd like to, I like to be diversified. And I'd like to, I'd like to just understand the different asset classes and the different things that you can do that you can get from multifamily and in self storage and multifamily self storage are very similar. industrials, a little bit different assisted living is very different, because you're not only having the real estate, but you have a whole healthcare operations business on top of it, but it can be a very lucrative investment if run properly.
Sean Thomson 18:22
Yeah, that's the funny thing about real estate is that you have they all sound the same, but they're all run very differently in terms of the operations for sure. You know, you don't run a warehouse, like you do a apartment building at all. Completely different, but they're both real estate, right? So fundamentally, on the front end of acquisitions, it's kind of the same as underwriting but you're underwriting to a different business plan, really. So, you know, buying those deals is, is good, but it's understanding the outcomes that that become a challenge, I would think, right? Yeah. Yep. For sure. So come on, let's talk about so you mentioned earlier vetting sponsors and things. So part of that comes with that is is partnerships, right? So you're essentially going into business with these guys in buying properties and, and operating those properties? What do you look for in partners? And when so what are some of the successes components that you've seen in your partnerships that you have now? Yeah,
Camilla Jeffs 19:11
well, so partnerships that that was, it was really hard for me in the beginning, to be honest, because I spent 15 years in DIY mode, right? And then I realized if I really wanted to get into apartments, I've got to be open to partners. But here's the problem. I remembered group projects in school, and the girl right here had to do everything herself, and all everybody else could just freeload off of me because I was the one who cared about the work, you know, and, and I'm thinking, well, if I can't trust, you know, five people to write a research paper together, how can I trust other people to run a multimillion dollar acquisition like it was it was really hard for my brain to accept and then also, right, I was relinquishing some control because I had control over every piece of my business up until that time. And now you're going to step into a partnership. And you don't do everything you don't call all the shots. And and sometimes you call hardly any of the shots. Sometimes you're, you know, the, you're the lowest partner on the totem pole. And so they'll listen to your voice, but you don't get to make any of the decisions. Well, that's, that was interesting for me and I and I was just super hesitant about it. No, again, we I invested passively first, because I felt like that was a little bit, you know, okay, I could rely on these people. But again, the trust factor I remember, you know, I was investing $50,000 into this deal. And it was, it was people I had just met a couple months ago, right. I didn't know them years, and years and years. And so it was kind of a little bit of a leap of faith for me. And I remember, you know, hovering my hand over the mouse to send that money. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I hope this goes well. Being so stressed about it, because I've never done anything like that before. So I feel like that helps me have a lot of empathy for first time passive investors, because it is it's a lot. It's a, it's a big, it's a big deal to invest $50,000, right, the first time you, you part with that much money, and you're handed over to someone else. It's just like, Oh, man. But here's the funny thing. But what people don't realize is they've already been doing this for years and years in the stock market, right? Like, how much money do you have in the stock market? Right, right now, and I bet a lot of people have over $100,000 in the stock market, and you've just handed that off to someone else to manage for you. Right? So same concept, you're just gonna put it into a real asset that you can like, touch and paint and feel, right. Yeah. So it was it was really interesting with the partnerships and and then when I decided to become a general partner, so you know, the in the group investment, the limited partners are the passive investors like they, they don't have a say in what's going on in the property. But then you have the general partners, which is typically a group of five to six people, depending on how big the deal is. So I decided I wanted to be a general partner, and then all these crazy things in your mind about well, does it? Would anybody want me like, am I even good enough for this? You know, like, what can what do I bring to the table? So you have to get really clear with yourself first, about what skills do you have? Where do you think you can play in this general partnership. And in my mind, there's four main roles, there's the acquisition specialist, who goes out and finds the deal, there's the underwriter who loves to do spreadsheets, there's the capital reserve person who is helping to raise to bring money to the deal. And then you have the asset manager. Now, that's not always clear cut like that, right? Like, typically, all the partners will help with raising capital, you know, some of the partners help with asset management of acquisition. But those are kind of the four main roles or skill sets that are involved in a transaction. So which one of those is good for you? Which one of those was good for me, and, you know, as I looked at them, and I tried them all, and I learned all the skills and that you would need to do all those, I really settled on, you know, raising capital as probably my best skill set. And then my second best would be Asset Management. Because I had so much experience in real estate, and, you know, running my own property management company, I felt like asset management would be good for me to help run, you know, be able to manage the property. So I'm like, Okay, now I know, I'm clear on what and what I can offer to a team. But my raise capital before? No, never done that. Have I asked it managed before? No, I haven't done that. So it's this barrier to entry that that gets tricky for a lot of people who want to become a general partner, like, how, how can I convince a team to basically hire me to be one of their partners? How do you go about doing this? And so it just turns into a lot of networking, a lot of networking. And so, for me on the capital side, I'll tell you about my big failure down here, my big failure. So yeah, the first time that I did, I tried to I attempted to bring capital to a deal. And I was networking with a lead sponsor, and they said, Okay, I got a deal. Do you want to join? I said, Yes, I want to join. And he said, Okay, let you need to bring five at least 500,000 to the deal, like, oh, yeah, I got this, I got this, because I had been talking to people for a long time for you know, good six to nine months about what I was going to be doing, you know, and most people I talked to, were all excited and interested. And I go, Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. You know, I'm like, okay, great. So I, you know, put them on a list on email list. And then and then when it came time to launch the deal to the email list, I launched it to the list. And, you know, I suppose to raise 501 person invested $50,000. So, you know, Grant cardones says to 10x yourself, like I negative 10. Next, my goal
Sean Thomson 25:02
went the wrong way. Yeah, went the wrong way for
Camilla Jeffs 25:05
sure. And I was just so devastated. And I and it wasn't that, you know, it wasn't just as simple as I just sent an email and only one person responded, I was calling people I was scrambling, like I was doing everything I could to try and get people to invest in the deal. And it just did not happen. And so I didn't end up being able to join as a general partner, just it was just this complete failure. So I kind of hung my head for a week or so and just said, you know, and it was a pivotal moment for me, because it was a moment, I could have just quit. Like, I guess I'm not good at this, you know, I guess, I guess it's not for me, it caused a lot of anxiety, a lot of emotion, a lot of, you know, the angst about get doing it. And I could have just stopped. But then I took a step back and said, Well, maybe you can learn from this experience. And so I was looking at, what did I do? What were the what were the missteps that I made, because really, you know, if you look at something, if you if you fail, it's kind of a gift to help you learn the right way to do it, you know, because now you've done it the wrong way, obviously. And what's the right way. So I took a look back at what I had done different, and what I should do different in the future. And kind of the number one thing was probably my mindset about it, because I was so desperate to get in a deal to as a general partner, and to, like have that that I was just focused on myself, I wasn't really focused on the passive investor and their journey and what they needed to really understand it was more like, give me your money, like, Come on, man said you're interested, why don't why aren't you investing? You know? And, and so it was just a whole narrative that I had, I had I given the wrong narrative to passive investors, rather than saying, you know, what I said was, Hey, come on you, you should invest in this deal. Like, it's really awesome. Instead, I should have come came at it from, hey, I have this opportunity for you, right? I don't need your money. But I came at it from a scarcity mindset, like I need you, I need you to do this instead of an abundance mindset. So I was able to switch that. And then also, I learned really quickly that just because everybody's interested in real estate, doesn't mean they're actually going to invest. And so what does that mean? Well, did I give them proper education did i was i emailing them once or twice a week with more information, so they could really fully understand what they were getting themselves into, because like I said, 50 $100,000, it's a lot of money to part with, especially when you've never done it before. And so I really revamped my whole education, thought process and focus. And I created like an investor onboarding system. So when somebody comes into a to my fold, they are going to be put through a process to learn everything from A to Z, like I created a series of videos that walks you through the process from beginning to end, and what you need to know and understand. And then I have very robust, like newsletters, or you know, things that I that I send out, I email them every other week, they're hearing from me about this new, you know, what's going on in this market. And it's all story based, and just really robust way of helping passive investors feel that get educated so that they will convert in the end, that in the end, they will actually feel comfortable and invest in in a deal.
Sean Thomson 28:36
Yeah, I think everybody wants to be a real estate investor on some level, right? So I've been in real estate for a while, and almost everybody I talked to about what I do, they're just like, oh, my gosh, I wish I could do that. Right. I rarely meet someone that's like, oh, you know, I probably know, two or three people that I've talked to in the last decade that said, I would never do real estate, you know. And I've talked to 1000s of people. And so everybody, I think, fundamentally wants to be a real estate investor. But when it comes time to put the money on the deal, it's scary, right? And if you don't have the information, like you're saying, if you're not, you know, educated about good market, the good deal, the good sponsors, the good, you know, the good partners, all those things, if you're not sort of comfortable with that, if you don't know like and trust that deal, or those people, you're not very likely to invest, right. And when you're coming at it from like you said, you're early on, you were just like, we talked about this, give me your money, you know, that's just not adequate. Right. It's not, it's not giving people what they need in order to feel comfortable. I think people fundamentally want to be in the deal. But they have to overcome those hurdles of fear, right? And and trust of that, it's going to work out like you said, when you did your first deal, you put $50,000 down and you waited, thinking, I hope this works out, right? Because you don't really know you just have to feel comfortable enough to make that commitment. And so I think what you're doing by onboarding and teaching and and educating everybody on the process and what you're doing and what they're going through, and all those sorts of things is critical to just help them through the process because they want to do it properly. You know, even even the people that said no to you at first time, may have come back around and said, Okay, now that I got it, now that I understand it, now that I trust you, I'm ready to go. Right. Did you find that was the case with some people?
Camilla Jeffs 30:23
Yeah, I mean, there's a happy ending to this story, right? Like the the failure, the big failure taught me really big lessons, right, I made some big changes. And then the next time I went to, you know, raise for a deal, I raised more than 500,000, for that deal. And so it was, you know, it was a big lesson. And a very exciting to see that, you know, you just have to come about it from the right, the right mindset and the right focus, and then people will invest in your deals.
Sean Thomson 30:52
So how did you discover that path? I mean, you you said, Okay, I failed on this first deal. What was the what were the steps that you took next? You you, I guess you just assessed what you had going on? And what you were doing? And then how did you kind of find the tools that you need to make it better and approve? Or did you just create that yourself? Or where did you find resources for that?
Camilla Jeffs 31:10
I found resources for that. So I did join a mentoring program to help with with it, and to be able to get the information out and create the system. So there's lots of tech tools that I use to help with it with it also. But yeah, the mentoring program made a huge difference in what I've been able to shift into the right mindset.
Sean Thomson 31:35
Yeah, so the resources are out there, you just got to go look for them and put them into play. If someone was wanting to do what you do, or learn what you have learned, there's tools out there that can be utilized for that sort of thing. Yep. And so I guess we talked about you're going into different asset classes and things like that. But are you? Are you working on your education programs? Are you doing some more things like doing newer webinars or new topics? Or what kind of what are you doing on the education front?
Camilla Jeffs 32:01
Yeah, so the on the education front, I mean, we've launched How do you say it by monthly? No, I don't think that's right, twice a month, twice a month, we have a free educational webinar for anyone who wants to join. And I advertise that on LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you know, and of course, my email list, and it's a 20 minutes, just just a quick 20 minute webinar on a specific topic, followed by 10 minutes q&a, the one I have coming up this week is all about cap rates, what those are, because if you're a single family investor, it's not something I never thought about as a single family investor, right? And now all of a sudden, multifamily, like, what's the cap? I remember calling my first broker? And he's like, What cap Are you looking for? And I didn't even know what cap rate was. I'd never heard the term before, like a good one. But yeah, I had no clue what that was. And then I looked up cap rate, and cap rate is it is a interesting one, because it's a little bit tricky to understand, because it's an inverse relationship, right? It's its inverse relationship. So cap rates go down, that means the price of your property goes up. And sometimes that's hard for your brain to like crunch. So talk about cap rates, but not just like what they are. And you know, but why is it important for a passive investor, to look at a cap rate to understand what cap rates mean, right? Because you, you need to understand, well, if they're buying it this cap rate, what are they thinking they're going to sell for? And what's the cap rate in the future? And so And why is that important to have a difference, instead of have the exact same cap rate. So we're going to talk about that, at that at that webinar. But other webinars I've done, and I throw them all up on my YouTube channel to after I, after I do it had been How to vet a deal, right, how to vet a sponsor, how to vet a market, you know, all these things to that will just really help passive investors get comfortable with the concept. So I have that kind of education for passive investors. The other education I'm working on actually, for active investors is is done for you investor onboarding system? Well, because I learned pretty early on that you've got to have a really robust system in place. And so I'm working on a passive investor onboarding system. So you can just as something you can just grab a plug and play into your business, as well as like done for you newsletters. So as I know, we all know, we got to, you know, email our people. And then you sit down email, you're like, ah, what am I going to say, I don't know what to say, you know, like this blank canvas that people really struggle with and soak it. Oh, and they're all customizable, so you can rebrand them to your brand. So that's something else that I'm that I'm also working on.
Sean Thomson 34:33
Well, that's awesome, because I was thinking, as you were saying that earlier, that I was gonna have to talk to you offline about your onboarding system, because that sounded phenomenal. We do something similar, but not it doesn't sound nearly as cool as yours. So I was thinking in my mind, as you were saying that I need to talk to Camilla after we get off this podcast about how she can send me her onboarding. So now you're doing it. That's perfect. I'll just, I'll just subscribe to whatever you have going on and make it easy. Great. Yeah, that's perfect. So coming on, I asked everybody on the show, you know, the name of the podcast is next level American dream. And, you know, I think that the American dream of the past is kind of gone. But I think the American Dream is alive. And well, it looks like a, you know, a million different things. Now, a lot of people take different paths to the American dream. So what is the American dream mean for you?
Camilla Jeffs 35:18
So, the American dream, for me is just pure freedom, you know, in multiple facets of life. And so and but here's the thing, it takes work to get freedom, you know, if you want to, if you want to have like, a healthy body, for example. So you can feel free to run and jump on the trampoline, and go skiing with your family and you know, do all these things that requires physical effort, you've got to work on work on it, right? You got to make sure that you're you're putting in the work and the effort to get there. Just like if you want to have the freedom if you want to have financial freedom. Takes work takes effort, right? Yeah, I mean, there's, there's things you've got to do, you got to put in the work to be able to get there. It doesn't just magically happen, although everybody wishes it would. And real estate is the opposite of get rich quick, it's get rich slowly over time. And that's why I like real estate, because it's such a steady, strong asset class that, you know, more than 90% of the world's millionaires have real estate in their portfolio. So success leaves clues, follow the clues, follow the steps, have those in front of you, and you'll be fine. But I mean, all sorts of just the American dream, for me is just freedom.
Sean Thomson 36:30
For sure. Freedom. Yeah, for sure. So how can people kind of find out more about what you have going on and reach out to you is there like a website people can go to to get more information?
Camilla Jeffs 36:40
Yeah, really easy, camillajeffs.com is where you can start that could navigate you to steady stream investments.com to and then connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm probably most active on LinkedIn and Facebook as well. But yeah, I'm really easy to find not many people in this world are named Camilla Jeffs does reach out. I love it. I just this week, I had someone who reached out because they heard me on a podcast and I just I just love it to connect with people and happy to do one on one strategy calls with your with your group too.
Sean Thomson 37:10
Yeah, perfect. That sounds good. Well, thanks for coming on the show. You have a lot of jewels in there. A lot of good information. And I really appreciate you coming on and telling everybody about what you have going on. Yeah. Thanks so much, Sean, this is fun. And we'll talk to you soon we'll have you back maybe to do some deeper dives on some of the specific things maybe you're something like that. But we'll we'll talk soon.
Abigail Thomson 37:29
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 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.