Fund Raising Secrets: How to Win Investors' Trust Every Time

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If you've ever wondered how to raise millions without sounding like a sleazy salesman, then this is a conversation that'll change everything you know about investor psychology. 

All this and more coming right now.

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[THE GUEST]: Travis Jamison evolved from serial founder to full-time capital allocator, focusing on "boring businesses" – profitable, cash-flowing companies in unsexy niches that deliver less speculative returns. Through CapitalPad, he opens up the SMB asset class to other entrepreneurial investors.

[THE HOST]: Ryan Miller is an Angel investor, former VP of Finance, CFO of an insurance company, and the founder of Fund Raise Capital,  https://www.fundraisecapital.co where his strategies helped emerging fund managers and deal syndicators to report raising over $1B following his strategies.

Transcript

Ryan Miller  

My name is Ryan Miller, and for the past 15 years, I've helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it.

Ryan Miller  

If you've ever wondered how to raise millions without sounding like a sleazy salesman, then this is a conversation that'll change everything you know about investor psychology. All this and more coming right now. Here we go. 

Ryan Miller  

So Travis, welcome to the show, man.

Travis Jamison  

Ryan, it is a real pleasure to be here. Big fan of the show, and I was just watching the Walker Deibel episode with you a couple of days ago, something like that. Great episode, by the way, if you haven't seen it, check that one out. So I'm really excited to be here.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. We've had the privilege of knowing each other for a little while now. I'm curious, because a lot of people pitch you, they look for your capital. You invest in their business, or you don't but in your view, what would you say is the number one silent killer of deals that most fund managers do not even realize is sabotaging them?

Travis Jamison  

Probably poor communication in general. When I say poor communication, it's not necessarily like how they're speaking. It's creating that rapport with someone like the constant, not constant, but like regular follow ups, keeping people in touch with how the deal is going on touching base a lot more often, because this is kind of creating trust. And like, trust is the most important part of all of these deals, right, trust is everything in these deals. So if the communication is broken, then it kind of creates a sense of wondering, like, well, what's happening now? What's happening now? Where, if you're communicating all the time with all the little details, both good and bad, that that trust is really cemented, I would say. 

Ryan Miller  

And have you ever seen that, or has anyone ever done that in your experience with people that you've invested with? I mean, how has the lack of communication, how does that show up as self sabotage for investment fund managers? 

Travis Jamison  

Oh, huge. Yeah, it's definitely kill deals, you know, you start, you don't hear from somebody for a while. It's like, I don't know what's going on, but probably the bigger example is kind of like, post close, right? You don't hear from someone for a while, or you're having to pester them about updates, that type of thing. You're gonna be way less likely to do a deal with someone in the future if that's the case. Also, before, kind of my micro PE space, I played a lot in the venture world, I kind of found, like, in my opinion, the companies that give regular updates from the start, whether they're good or not, those are the companies that have the most success. It's a weird thing, but it definitely works out like that, where, if someone's not doing the regular updates, the companies, on average, tend to not do as well. But there is, like, a, you know, some sort of speed bump, some sort of problem in the company, as there will always be, investors are way less willing to help if you haven't, like, built that relationship up.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant, yeah. And, you know, I'm curious about, as someone who is a check writer, you bring a very good perspective on things, you know, I want to drill down into investor psychology and how this, this really percolates into the investment fund space. And from your opinion, what's, what would you say is one belief that investors hold about fund managers that they often ignore, but by ignoring it, they do so at their own peril. 

Travis Jamison  

Not everyone will love this answer, but the truth is probably that a lot of investors like cash flow. They like cash flowing deals, cash flowing assets. And this is far less true with the institutional area, actually, it's the opposite, they don't care. But if you're doing deals raising from mere accredited investors, then a fairly large percentage of them want some sort of cash distribution. It's not a deal killer, but it definitely spices it up for them, there's a lot more interest. Now, you could easily make the argument that that's illogical, right? You want to focus on the best, the highest total return, right? And that may be some distribution, some dividends, however you want to phrase it, maybe that's taking away from that. And that might be true, but illogical as they may be, I think a lot of LPs, a lot of investors really like that, and you can see the appeal. So let's take away the idea of the maximal total return, you can see how a lot of these accredited investors, they're wealthy individuals, they've had some success in something, and they're trying to replicate their income. So if they can invest in, say, 10 or 20 deals that are all cash flowing a fair amount. They can, in theory, relax a little bit more, they don't have to worry a little more and that is their mindset. Whether that's true or not, is a different story, but that's kind of where they're coming from. And so I think that fund managers, or not even fund managers, like people doing deals, if they take that into account, they can probably raise a fair amount more from those people. We see it all the time, like, when people are bringing deals to us to look at, like, you know, what do you think I'm like, well, it's great. If you add some sort of distribution, your interest level is going to go by 20% just by doing that, that's it.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, phenomenal. So that's, uh, that's definitely one, one, uh, trick from the battlefield is, is structure matters specifically around cash flow. And so does that drive the kinds of businesses that you look at like, how deep does that go for you guys at CapitalPad? 

Travis Jamison  

A lot of that is probably determined just by the structure so independent sponsors, they're using more traditional debt. You can't really make distributions. You can make tax distributions, but most of the time the lenders are going to not allow any kind of dividends to be paid out. For the smaller deals, like the searcher deals from the self funded searchers. These are probably the largest, it's probably around the $8 million range like that, maybe 10, if you really push it like that's the largest that and under those are a lot of times using SBA debt. And the SBA is a lot more open with that, right? They have all kinds of rules around that, but distributions are allowed as long as you're making the SBA payment. 

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So people are structuring deals that come to you to participate in that structure. Often, cash flow is the thing to do, and so don't ignore that if you're emerging fund manager or deal maker, really look into that structure, particularly around cash flow. Is kind of the opinion that we're shooting here.

Travis Jamison  

But it is illogical sometimes, you know, maybe it would make a lot more sense to just reinvest that. I mean, you know, think the easiest way is, like doing a roll up. Should you pay out distributions, or should you acquire more companies, you should acquire more companies get that multiple expansion easy. It still doesn't change the facts people want it.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, that's they want it to improve their life and not wait for 20 years or 10 years, however long that deal goes. So, absolutely love it, man and that's a great point. You know, a good friend of mine who's a, I would say, a great author on pitching investments, one of the things he said is, you got to have FOMO. FOMO is one of those things that closes deals with investors. Now you're a check writer, and so you've heard a lot of people, and maybe they tried to create FOMO, and maybe some of them did but, how do great fund managers, from what you've seen, engineer FOMO, which is, without being kind of sleazy or slimy, what have you seen? 

Travis Jamison  

I would say, if they're consciously trying to do that, it's probably not going to work, let me give an analogy. So one of my wholly owned companies, and I still wholly own several small businesses. It's an SEO agency, I'm gonna plug it, Smash Digitals, but the the way that we do sales is that we don't do sales. When an interested client comes in, or we've talked to someone, they bring their website, and we essentially hop on a call and, you know, our quote, unquote sales guy hops on a call with them and just walks them through the process. They walk them through, oh, using our tools, this is what we see from your site. These are the things that you can do to this and if you implement these tactics and these strategies, this is probably what will happen based on historical references. At no point are we trying to convince them to buy anything. It's more just like sitting down and explaining to them like, this is this is how it works. This is what we would expect and a lot of times, the customers and the clients, they see that enthusiasm, and they're just, it's like transparent. And so I kind of think from the investing point of view, it's almost the same when we do a deal on CapitalPad. The way I look at it is, CapitalPad is extension of my own investments. Like every deal we've done, I've invested my own capital, and I'm do CapitalPad is an extension of that. So when I look at a deal, it's more like, is this something that aligns with me? Is this something I want to do myself? If so, we allow others to invest with us. So we're not convincing them. We're saying, hey, I'm going on this ride, do you want to come with us? These are the details of the deal, right? You know, here's the deal structure, here are the terms, here's the sponsor, here's the business and the industry. But at no point are we saying this is a great deal, like, invest now or or you'll miss out. I don't think the FOMO works that way. I think the best way is just explaining it and sometimes, with some of these deals, it really is, like, capital constraint, like there's a cap to the amount that we can put in there. And so sometimes the FOMO just, it just naturally happens, like, well, you know, if you want to end this thing, better hurry, because the first come, first serve, that happens sometimes. I think that's the best way to do it. 

Ryan Miller  

I love that, man. And if I can add a candle to your flame here, I would say one of the one of the best things, just from my perspective on this, is way that I see it is, you hear this like pitching and you got to raise capital, and you got to and it's like this cheesy stuff where, you know, maybe back in our single days, where it's like, you have people that don't understand how dating goes, and they're like, what's the one pickup line that just makes all the ladies or men or whoever go for it? And it's like, what we're saying is it's, I don't think it's that specific, but I think if you address a human being on the other side, and what I do every time I prepare, if this is helpful for you or anyone listening, is, I see it more a shift in identity of a solution architect, rather than somebody positioning themselves to to sell or close the deal or all these silly, outdated terms from 90s Wall Street movies. If you genuinely come as you're authentic and you see yourself and present yourself as a solution architect to say, hey, here's an issue. We have a solution to that, and if you want to join us on that solution, it could go very well for you. And I think people are instead of selling a product, you're now positioning yourself as a fit into someone else, an investor's portfolio, and it's an entirely different experience, both for you and for an investor. Have you found any truth to that? 

Travis Jamison  

Yeah, you're much better with words than I am, Solution Architect makes way more sense. I think, of a very specific example of a family friend, quite a long time ago, he was doing door to door roofing sales, which is probably the hardest thing I can imagine to do, I would absolutely hate that. But he's a very charismatic guy, and he wasn't really having a lot of success. And I was like, all right, well, like, give me your pitch, because I don't understand, like, why you're not having success, and based on the historical norms for the business, right? And so the guy, he comes up, and he, like, looks at me, he takes a big breath, he puts his hands together, he's like, dear sir. And I'm like, stop, like, immediately, I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm giving you my pitch, no, like, talk to me, literally, just talk to them like you're talking to me right now. And you say, hey, you see that thing on your roof? Like that, that's messed up. Like we can have insurance company pay for that. Our satellite is checked out your roof, we can see the rest of it, you don't have to do anything. Can I get on your roof and tell you, we'll take pictures and show you that's a different thing versus the dear sir, I am here today, like that. Be a solution architect, as you said, Ryan, like you nailed it there, that's all you got to do. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, just be someone who they can rely on to say, hey, how are you how would you solve this for me? And that could be, I'm worried about inflation, I'm worried about paying for my daughter's upcoming University in five years, or whatever it is. And say, well, here's our approach to solve that and most people are like, thanks for, like, not selling me. It's kind of grossing me out a little bit. I feel like I need to take a nap and a shower at the same time. I don't know, after listening to that bitch and your defense is going, right? Yeah, yeah and because if it doesn't feel natural and authentic, then I think people start to exactly what you said is to be like, I don't want to meet a character. I want to meet the real Travis or the real Ryan? What, why are you not being yourself, right, and, of course, rightly so, the that would feel like a red flag and so it's like, don't produce FOMO. Just produce solutions that they desperately need. So if you provide solutions to a starving market, don't worry, there will be FOMO, because it's a starving market and they want to hop on the last food train out of hunger town. So let that haunt your dream, so with that just kind of talking about, I just really want to dig into the investor psychology here, but because, because this kind of ties into your friend who is doing the roofing. But what would you say are some of those unconscious ways that founders or general partners signal desperation to investors, even if they think they're being competent?

Travis Jamison  

Really just going back to, like the attempting a salesmanship, right and maybe that works in certain industries. You know, luxury handbag, maybe you can sell to somebody a little bit. But with finance, people's guards are up already, it's their money, there's scams everywhere. There's bad deals everywhere, I mean, how many quote, unquote, venture pitches do I get my inbox every single day, dozens, right? Just be real with people, that's all it is. There's not much more to it. 

Ryan Miller  

You know, something that I've really thought about as you and I are talking about the authenticity. And, you know, having known you for a little bit, I would say you're, you're quite an empath, I don't know if you would say that, but I think it comes in handy and you've taught me a lot about the power of taking different positions. So, you know, in your opinion, what would you say? Are those table stakes for anyone serious about raising capital?

Travis Jamison  

Well, I think you nailed it with the empath thing, being empathetic is, I mean, I think that's actually one of my few entrepreneurial superpowers, is seeing from the other person's point of view. And so if you're raising from someone, you have to really think from their point of view. We see, we get pitches all day long, and it's amazing how many of them are from their point of view, right, of what they need, and not explicitly like, right? It's a little, it's not as straightforward as that, but they're not covering the basics what the investor needs. You know? What are the terms? What are like? Help me paint this narrative of what this is before you just give me these blunt details of the stuff, right? The narrative is so important. So get inside of the other person's head and give them what they need. That's kind of the secret to all stuff, to the entrepreneurial success, to raising capital success there, just coming from that point of view, I think.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant, you know and I'm curious, have you ever had, you don't have to say anyone, we're not out here to out anybody. But have you ever had someone pitch you and you're you find yourself probably halfway through and you're still lost. Have you ever had that? 

Travis Jamison  

Yeah, all the time. 

Ryan Miller  

All the time. Me too. And you know that that comes back to something and so this is a challenge that, I think, even on both sides of that, people delivering a pitch and people trying to listen to one, because, right, you have capital, you want to put it to work, and you want to invest in good deals, and a great deal may not get a check because, just not because you don't have a great deal, but because you don't know how to let someone else know. And you know, like you talked about, they're just dancing around, and you're just like, what? What is going on, I thought I knew it, and now it's going to this year. And there's something that I like to call and I teach this in my community, where I teach people how to raise capital at Fund Raise Capital, and we call it the BLUF, I call it the BLUF. It stands for Bottom Line Up Front and that is my attempt, as I fumbled so many times trying to pitch deals, is I was the guy that I could tell I was losing investors. And this was, you know, 15-20, years ago. And the bottom line up front is essentially there to anchor people and I just say, hey, I'm so and so I invest in this thing at this place. I'm looking for this much money, and we're targeting an 18% IRR, whatever it is. And in my first 10 seconds out of my mouth, the investor should know who I am, what I do, where I do it, what do I need from them, and what they can expect to get back in return. And then for the rest of the pitch, I just add bones, or I add meat to those bones. And so the bottom line up front, it just anchors people and it solves that. So, you know, people don't have to do the BLUF or whatever, but I think that's just one technique. But I think the important thing here is it's really important to make sure that the way you deliver it, you're able to take the position, like you said, with the empathy, and take the position of the investor and see what is it like to view you, but also make sure that you're not so busy talking about the deal and what you love, and that's good that people have a hard time keeping up. And so there are tactical things, there are table stakes for investors to really convince other investors on, on what they're trying to do, is there anything you can add to that? 

Travis Jamison  

I'm going to completely agree with you. I love this, this BLUF analogy, Bottom Line Up Front, because for allocators like myself, we're having to look through so many deals, right? If you're if you're an independent sponsor, you're a searcher, and you're putting this deal together. This is your life. You've spent months on it, right? And so you know everything about it. When you give to somebody else, you can almost be too close to it. You don't see from their point of view. Again, try to be empathetic with it from our point of view. We're looking at these all day long. We want to be able to scan it, right? And because the idea is, you look at it and then really quickly you want to qualify or disqualify. Is this a good fit or is it not? I'm just entry level, right? And if it's disqualifying, it is a good thing, we get it off the plate. You can tell the searcher, the sponsor, hey, this isn't a great fit because of this and this. If it is qualified, then we go deeper and so if you just be upfront with these main terms, right? You know, the historical financials, investor perks, what the company does, maybe about you, just like the first page, basically. We say, all right, this is a good fit, we can go deeper. So definitely keep it up front.

Ryan Miller  

BLUF, yeah, keep that Bottom Line Up Front. So I got a question for it, I love these dichotomy questions. As you're pitching you're typically launching a new fund or a new deal or whatever and so if you Travis were launching a new fund and you had to choose between either a killer data room or world class relationship pipeline, what would you choose? And I'd love to hear why?

Travis Jamison  

Well, I don't think I've ever seen a data room that I really was in love with, but I think that is completely secondary to the relationships are everything. Trust is everything here. I actually have a specific example. I have a friend who is very successful, very financially savvy, and he invested in one of the last CapitalPad deals. And we use an SPV provider, you know, it's not a dedicated pool of capital, we do one off deals. And so he had allocated to it, and we finally ended up sending description docs through the SPV provider, and it had a data room in there. And so I uploaded the docs to the data room, and he just texted me afterwards. He's like, yeah, I just wired my money. By the way, I see the data room there, it would have been really good to have that on the platform. And I looked, and I was like, hey, just so you know, this is on the platform, he just kind of overlooked it. But the thing is, he wired the money before even looking through it, right? The relationships was everything. The data, like it, the whole point of the data room is to verify the narrative, to verify you already trust, right, here's the high level stuff. Now, let's go through and verify that. And so it's way, way behind the trust factor, like the trust is absolutely everything, again, he wired very significant amount of money just because he trusted what we had.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I love it so, and I've already preached many times on the show and also to you, I always say the three most valuable assets in your position as fund manager or deal maker, it's your reputation, your relationships and your results. And I think as you do that, you enter into a virtuous cycle, which then eventually makes money, and deals come to you. Now it's running funds, and you're doing the sexy deals and the pitch and the bottom line up front, and you're establishing trust, there's a lot of stuff. There's also these tiny things and finance is not only about trust, but it's also about leverage in many different ways. And I'm curious, just from your perspective, you've done a lot of deals, so what's one seemingly small task or touch point that actually creates a disproportionate leverage when someone's trying to raise capital?

Travis Jamison  

That is almost certainly being overwhelmingly prepared? When we talk to a search or a sponsor and they instantly have the answers for the craziest questions that we ask them. We know they have done the work because a lot of people don't. You know, they're trying to hedge their bets. They have to spend so much time to put these deals together. What if it falls through? You know, they really want to put in all that work to really understand it, but the ones that do it's so much easier, like that trust level is up like super high from the get go, because we know they've done the work, and if they do it here one, they're going to do the same post close. So it's a lot easier to back them. 

Ryan Miller  

Okay, so it sounds like really just reverse engineering trust really comes down to the level of preparedness that you have. It's going to show through. Investors hear this all the time, like yourself, and they're able to say, if you care this much, to prepare, if you have prepared this much, obviously you're taking this serious as much as you want us to take this serious, this is starting to look good. Or the opposite is true as well, is that, does that capture the essence what you're saying?

Travis Jamison  

Ryan, I think you're fantastic at taking my kind of shambles of words and putting them into, like, very coherent statements. So like, I'm impressed here, I'm not a wordsmith. But yes, that's, that's exactly right, you know, the deal that we're we just closed. I just wired the funds out a couple days ago. That was exactly the situation then as soon as we started talking to them, like, wow, this guy's done it. And when we did come across a question that he didn't have an answer for, it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like a red flag. He's like, oh, I'm not sure, I'll get back to you on Monday, get back to you in two days. Let me talk to council. Let me talk to seller, or whatever. We'll find out that answer. And that's a great way to do it, because we know he's covered all the other bases, and we feel very comfortable with him with that respect, he was great.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah and you know, it does show a level of confidence which then injects that into the investors. When you're able to say, you know what, I don't know, that's this great question. Let me back to you on that. Or someone who freezes and it's like, do you know this? Should I, you know now I feel like I need to try to catch you in other stuff, and it can go downhill. So the level of preparation to produce trust is absolutely phenomenal. 

Travis Jamison  

 I don't think people say I don't know enough. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah.

Travis Jamison  

I think that should be way more accepted if you don't know something, it's okay to say that you're not supposed to know everything in all realms of this world, right? But it's okay with the deal too, as long as it's something acceptable and as long as you figure it out.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely and that, that helps to reverse engineer that trust and and back to that original point of authenticity , man, it really goes a long way. So hopefully, you know, people are starting to figure out that you don't have to be something you're not. You just got to keep it real, be very well prepared. It's your deal. You love it. Help us love it, right? Help investors, got you a check, help them fall in love with it, too. But you know, sometimes people do get overlooked, and so from you as a capital allocator, have you ever seen a fund or a founder get overlooked just because something they did or missed out that had nothing to do with their strategy or numbers, you ever see that?

Travis Jamison  

Yeah, absolutely, there's probably been a lot of them that get overlooked. I have someone in particular we backed a few deals ago, and they were raising, attempting to raise capital somewhere else at first, and we're not having success, which, to be clear, is a kind of a red flag, right? But I was like, all right, I got to see the teasers like this, this looks great. Like, let's, let's find out the details. And I talked to the searcher, and he was awkward, frankly, like, frankly he was an awkward guy to talk to, and I couldn't quite figure it out. But I'm like, you know, he has all the right answers, the deal looks good. I'm not getting like, red flags of trust, like something's just awkwardly off. I do a little research and turns out his family, they're not from the US. I'm not gonna like out them who they are, but they're from a culture where body language is different, right? There's a culture where they don't use their hands to talk, they don't talk very animatedly, he just very stoical and just say the facts how it is, and don't really move and that was the culture. And he had picked that up, I think, I think he was born in the US, but he picked that up from his family, and so that was the whole thing. That was the whole reason of why he was coming off as slightly awkward. It was just that little thing. And this deal was gonna turn out fantastic. We're really stoked with this deal, and that was the only thing, and we raised all the capital for them.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So I think understanding, appreciating those cultures, especially foreign direct investment, and raising money overseas. You know, I have a lot of friends who are, you know, say, China, Taiwan, Philippines, and they tell me all about everything, about raising money. And they gave me a story that to complement raising money outside of the US, that to say this is a problem, that anytime you cross borders and cross cultural borders, need to appreciate those cultures, both how it's done, but also how it's not done. And there was a story that I recall where one entrepreneur created this wall paint. And the paint lasted 50 years, right, I mean, if you people live in homes a long time, you'd appreciate that. And so he was raising money over in China, right? A lot of factories want to build it here. We want to raise money. We want to stand it up. And how it worked was very much on a group, kind of like a family office network, right, and those exist in America too. But one of the people in this network had a Paintbrush Factory, and so they turn the person down as to say, we're not going to violate and it wasn't negative, it wasn't anything. But in America, we, you know, all cowboy style, we kick down the door. Say our numbers are the best numbers you're going to get and and you get the deal. You do that in, say, an Asian culture, and that might not be the same. And my Asian friends, if I'm wrong, you keep me honest, post those comments, but we really want to make sure that the point, in the spirit of that, is to say it happens very differently. And I think sometimes, if you're raising and doing foreign direct investing, or trying to get someone to directly invest in you, there's also cultural components. And we talked earlier about preparation if you're not American and you want to pitch American investors, how do American investors do it? How do Japanese investors do it? How do Russian investors? Do out of Russian investors or Brazilian? It doesn't matter wherever you're pitching, there are cultural elements that also play body language elements. It's all just about communicating something you're excited about in a way that transmutes that excitement as well. Anything to add to that?

Travis Jamison  

I mean, coming back to that, that empathy you have to, like, kind of do cross cultural borders thing, right? I lived in Asia for roughly about a decade. And any Westerner like, particularly an American who's went and lived in Asia, it's amazing. First of all, it's great, it's a great place to live, but your head kind of explodes sometimes at what, you know, we consider like this is so illogical, what is happening. But it flows both ways, it's just a different culture, they value things differently, right? And so they would come to us and say the exact same thing, like, why are you doing this? This makes no sense. This has no you know, this doesn't flow in how society should work, even if to us, it's completely logical. So you kind of look at outside the box a bit.

Ryan Miller  

 Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, speaking of of raising capital. So let's say I'm managing $10 million raise right now and I'm stuck halfway. What would you say is the most effective judo move I can pull to unlock that next wave of capital?

Travis Jamison  

Probably finding someone else in your shoes, so someone another search or sponsor who's been there, they built the relationships, and if you almost just become friends with them, right? Like, not become like a trusted advisor or anything like that, not bring them on for that, but just kind of gain their respect, they really unlock a lot of doors. So my, my partner at CapitalPad he's a independent sponsor, former private equity, and there was, there was a deal, there was a sponsor, sponsor was great, and he was having a little bit of trouble with that last little bit. And like, you know, our our network and platform is tapped out, and it just took, like, a couple introductions. That's all it was. Because my partner really liked this guy. It wasn't, he wasn't doing it as a service, like professional service. It's just like, he wants to see him succeed. And so those couple introductions changed everything, obviously, right? And that's probably the secret there. Entrepreneurs want other entrepreneurs to succeed, and they help, they go out of their way to help them all the time. But you know, when entrepreneur asks me, like, oh, can you be on my advisory board? I'm like, no, but I will help, like, I'll help you for free. And that's not always the case, but I think overall, entrepreneurs are trying to return the help that they have received from others. And so make buddy buddy with something like that. Make just like an actual friend. And then that tends to unlock a lot of doors.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. Yeah, you know, it reminds me of something when I went through that as well. I wasn't born with any advantage, we'll say, in this industry. And so it you pass through many layers on your way as you grow your careers, as most people do. And one of the things I found to complement your point, and I came up with what I call the UVE framework, it's umpires, vampires and empires. And so these are people, and it's more people habits. It's more of an energetic framework. Is to say, if I'm stuck raising capital, we can explore it. And I have been stuck at times in my career, like many people have and umpires are those people that just and habits and lawyers, accountants, best friends, those people who, maybe they're not on the path, but they still clap when you win, and they will not let you get a step away from your mission. Then there's vampires, most of those, as you I really did a deep dive and did my own energy audit, most, because we all think vampires, we think of, you know, some Karen in the cubicle next to you in the office and whatever. And maybe that's true, but really, what you find is a lot of those energy draining things are self inflicted, and so making sure that you are taking care of that, and often, I like to say that success is an inside job. And so if you're not succeeding, maybe start with what's going on in your mind and your body and your spirit. And so this is a spiritual journey, who knew I was going to be a monk here, but, but in all seriousness, really exploring those a lot of times, a lot of our success and failure has to do with just some of these micro decisions that we do or don't do. And then finally, that leads to what you talked about, entrepreneurs want other entrepreneurs to win. I call those empire builders, people who are building empires. You'll find I remember, I had the privilege of getting together with a bunch of fund managers collectively controlled about $4 billion and we just, we rented a yacht and hung out in Miami like it was just fun. I did it, I rented it out for these guys, we just hung out and extraordinarily normal people and but the thing is, is the conversation shift that when you're with people who are about that business, I call them empire builders, but they're builders, but they're just building their business. Whatever that is, they talk different the things they're interested the things they pay attention to, or don't pay attention to, things they focus on or not, it changes. And so when you have good people that will not let you off the hook and keep you accountable, those umpires, you avoid those energy draining things, and you have people around you who are also about it. Like you said, get someone who's done the raise right, bring that Empire Builder who's maybe done it a few more times than you have, and bring them in. And now you're surrounding yourself with a lot of these, these people, these habits, these ideas, these focuses, and now you're locked in. And boy, when you get locked in, I don't know if you ever had that moment. Some people call it flow, but when you're in flow and you're raising and you just feel like you can't lose you. And I, before we hit record, I was like, telling you about today, I literally did such a great I had a great day. And like, all these people are coming to me and these great things, we've got speaking engagements, and all these people want to sign up, and all these great things are happening. You're like, wow, your dopamine is flying off the hook today but that's that all came from years ago I started making the conscious decision to control my energy, and the UVE framework helps a ton, anything else you can add to that? 

Travis Jamison  

No, I think the last the E you were talking about the empire builders, I think it's a special bunch. I just actually wrote a personal newsletter, I sent out today talking about trying to get status that a lot of people chase like the status game, and how I feel like to a lot of the Empire Builder group, the little trinkets that maybe people are searching for status with don't work there. So like a fancy watch, a Lambo, something like that, like, it doesn't really matter to these people. What matters to the Empire Builder crowd are the ideas, the interesting topics, and a lot of those, what's most interesting to them is building more empires, whether that's their own or someone else, right? If you get in a room with a bunch of successful entrepreneurs, the conversations are wonderful. Just sit back and listen, just absorb it, because they're pretty unique. Get in those circles, those circles are amazing, even if you don't raise capital from it, or do anything, who cares, just a good time to be around.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, it dials you in. And we've all been at the high energetic states and low energetic states. And what a difference. And being in those rooms ideas currency, as much as currency is currency in a lot of those rooms. So, and, you know, I find you're good communicator and speaking of, you know, you sent an investor update, a lot of investor I would say investors, from the standpoint of deal makers, is more what I'm saying is, a lot of them see that investor updates is a chore, but I think you see it a little bit differently. So I'm curious, from your perspective, how do you see investor updates as a strategic weapon, instead of just this, this chore that the industry tends to overlook?

Travis Jamison  

Investor updates are very much like it's the relationship builder, right, you've built a relationship with an investor, pre close of a deal, but that's just the start. You now have a long term relationship you're forced to have with this person, right? And so that can go several ways, if you're not giving the updates very frequently, or not giving real details, or not, like pouring, I don't say pouring your heart out, but giving, like, the real stuff, right? You're gonna get surface level responses back from that. I have a little bit of example, a friend who is, he's, he's a fantastic operator. He raised some capital to for a little bit of a roll up at one point, and he was very careful and clear to do regular updates along the way. These are great entrepreneur like investor updates, where he's going into all the details of what he sees and why and his thinking behind stuff, not just saying, here's the financials, and this is what's up, like his thinking behind it. And so several years into that, the company hit, you know, a speed bump. This happens, these things always happen. And he needed to come back to these investors and hope that they would put in a little bit more capital. If he hadn't been communicating with them along the way, building that relationship, they wouldn't have happened. We know it like I talked to him, it wouldn't have happened but he built that relationship. They trusted his decision making and, you know, something happened in the business. It happens it happens in every business. So every single one of them participated in the capital call. And of course, it was the right decision. He ended up having a fantastic exit for himself, and all of the investors did great. But if he hadn't built that relationship along the way, I don't know where that company would have ended up. It might have ended up in a much worse spot, if anything, really. 

Ryan Miller  

Wow. So because he front loaded and put in that time that goes a long way. And it's funny when I talk to folks who ask for my opinion on raising capital, and I'm sure you get asked that as well, people are shy. It's like, how much time do you got? It's a pretty long runway, but it's not complex. And so everybody again, they're looking for that one silver bullet pickup line that's going to seduce investors to just drop hundreds of millions of dollars into my fund. I was like, those days do happen, but they're a function of a lot of pre marketing, we'll say, or pre raise, testing waters. And the biggest part back to the 3Rs that we talked about reputation, relationships and results and building that trust, I think, is the thing. I call it long game strategy, which is, we really need to do it. And short game, sure that works, gets you a little bit of money, quick, the long game gets you a lot of money, but it's not quick, and that's because you're spending time building trust in relationships. And if you're able to pull that off, what you just illustrated is, like the ideal situation is to say, you know what, I said it was going to be a it was kind of, you know, one sigma off of a, not exactly what I said, but there's variance in this industry, or whatever that might be, and people all sign up, and they all because there's trust built there, so.

Travis Jamison  

I invested in a venture deal years ago, and I was friends with the founder as well, and the deal didn't go well, right? But the founder had been doing great updates, and was very transparent along the way with his thinking. And he did great it's just, you know, it's a startup, they're hard. The industries don't work all the time, you're taking a swing. And in his last update, when he was letting everyone know, like, you know, the company's not working out, we're gonna shut down, he let me know, after the fact, there were so many of the investors who emailed him and said, hey, whenever you're ready to start the next thing, let me know I want to be the first check. Well, he built that relationship, right, they just had his thing fail, and everyone else is like, let me be the next check because it's relationship. They believe in him. They know how he thinks. It's not just the transaction, versus some of these other deals where it's like, here's your yearly update, which is, you know, venture the updates are all over the place, I'm not backing them, right?

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So look at the power that it's people, and that's what we always say if you think for high finance, like what we're talking about is about transaction, you're wrong. High finance is more about trust than transactions, and if you go for the transaction before the trust, you probably don't get either, but if you go for the trust before the transaction, you'll probably get both over and over and over again, and you just illustrated that in spades, brother. So I really appreciate that, you know, you've been on both sides, right? You've been on an entrepreneur, you're now a capital allocator. What's something that you've unlearned about asset management that changes the way you operate today?

Travis Jamison  

It's probably the shift in thinking between asset classes, right? So when I sold several companies over the years and kind of just started allocating my own capital to lots of different asset classes, and I was really heavy in the venture space for a while. And in the venture space, you're searching for winners, and you don't care as much about the losers. In fact, if you try to build a portfolio of things that are you know, probably won't fail, your venture returns will be horrible. And so you're really looking for those outlier returns, those category defining game changers, that does not work in private equity, or in my world, the micro private equity, right, that doesn't work at all. If you try to go that route, you're going to lose all of your capital and so that was a big shift in trends. You're looking for to avoiding losers, instead of looking for winners, you're making sure to avoid the losers and this is especially true in kind of the SMB space, again, the search or independent sponsor deals. Because these businesses, they trade it, you know, 3-5X multiples, right, they're fairly cheap. They're not the big private equity deals at 12x they're cheap and so like Rick and Royce from like Harvard Business, Harvard Business School, their famous saying is, like, the magic is in the multiple right? Which means, to me, at least a deal, you just have to make sure it doesn't die. And because it's so cheap, everyone wins. It's just avoiding those failures. And so with the deals that we do, you know, personally, and with CapitalPad, like, that's really what we're focusing on, is like just making sure we can never make sure, but really curating for the deals that have a very, very low likelihood of failure, because if, as long as they stay alive, the chances of a good outcome increase exponentially. Yeah, that's the big shift for me.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah. So not just looking for the upside, but covering your downside. That's one of the things that you had to unlearn as you kind of went through the VC, onto the PE and now allocator role. I think the unlearning had to be a lot of just making sure you avoid the losers, rather than just you get winners, you get losers, neglect the losers. Go all in, double down on the winners doesn't work like that in PE. So I think so, how does that feed into how you run your business? Does that put underscore more importance on due diligence? Or how does that show up now that you've unlearned that and you avoid the losers, how do you do it? 

Travis Jamison  

It really is just like the ultimate exercise in curation, which is really just saying, no, a lot, right, kind of going for that, like Buffet and Munger approach, of like, we're looking for the easy swings. That's basically it. So, you know, there's all the things that everyone watches out for, but they kind of choose to ignore that from time to time. You know, the cyclicality, the customer concentration, is it like a need or a won't type of business, like all these things, I can go over the checklist that everyone else does. It's fine, but those things really matter a lot, CapEx is a huge one. Do these things eat capital on the regular? Can something break in the company and next thing you know, like, there's no capital to like, you know, move forward or pay down the debt. These are some things you got to watch out for, and if they, if you take care of those, and you're very diligent about saying no to all the things that don't fit, and the rest just takes care of itself.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Yeah. So, you know, my final question for you is, let's say there's, we're in, you know, well, over 100 countries, and so for the person listening to this episode, they're in the middle of a hard raise. What would you if you if you could put your arm around them like a true bro and just tell them something to change their trajectory? What would you say?

Travis Jamison  

If it's not hard, it wouldn't be worth it. I don't know how often there's a raise that's not hard, unless somebody is just insanely well connected, just probably, like, 5% of raises, right? It's always going to be hard, and that's maybe a good thing. You're not going to get great returns, or great not even returns, but like, great things come from the hard stuff, right? When I was starting CapitalPad a couple years ago, or whatever, I told my wife, which I was probably prepping myself to, I told my wife, like all right, this can be really hard. I'm going to get my ass handed to me sometimes, but that's fine, because I'm going to come out the other side much better. Even if this thing fails, I'm going to have learned so much that I won't be the same Travis coming out on the other side. And so that's probably what I would say with these deals, is, it's supposed to be hard, that's the point. It's hard for everybody. You've just got to push through, persevere, and even if it doesn't work out, which I hope it does, but even if it doesn't work out, you're going to be better for it, you're going to learn how these things worked, right? You can move forward with that. You'll be a better person at the end. And none of us really know for our failures if they're good or bad until much later, right? I think all of us know a lot of things at the time, oh my god, this end of the world ended up being a gift in disguise, and so you never know. So treat it that way.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So I love it. If it's not, it wouldn't be worth it if it wasn't hard. So before we wrap things up, any closing remarks, anything ways people can reach out to you if they're wanting to learn more or anything at all? 

Travis Jamison  

I'll say that, you know, we kind of covered, you know, you kind of mentioned like a capital raising master class, and I don't think I have that much to give in that respect, again, I don't really see myself as that. I see myself as somebody who's going through and finding things that I find interesting and sharing them with others. And that's probably the best way to take this, right, I'm finding things that really align with my internal compass of what I think is a good deal, what I think is a good place to put capital, what I'm enthused about with my own and if you don't have your own capital, that's fine, that's normal. Would you feel like that if it was your own capital, right and if you find those, and then you're just explaining to people, you're taking them on the journey that you're going on yourself, everything's way easier, like that is the 80/20 that is the 99/1, right there. So follow that, I don't have other advice. Otherwise, if you want to follow me, hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn, Travis Jamieson, you can search it, I'll pop up. That's about it.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, man. So just to summarize everything that we talked about, be empathetic. Try to take the position of the investor and what they experience when listening to you. The other thing is, authenticity almost puts a bit of a spell on investors and just encourages trust. So make sure you show up being authentic and honestly, if it doesn't work out, like Travis says, you're going to be a better person for it and just like Nelson Mandela has said, I either win or I learn, but I never lose. You do these things, and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better, and make sure to come back for our next episode, where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends, stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.