Funds on Fire
Welcome to Funds on Fire, hosted by Devin Robinson—a seasoned fund manager with years of experience launching, managing, and scaling multiple successful investment funds. Devin has also helped numerous entrepreneurs ignite their own fund ventures. This podcast is your go-to guide for mastering the world of investment funds and capital raising.
In each episode, Devin dives deep into the essential aspects of fund management, SEC compliance, and strategic capital raising, sharing the insights that have powered his own success. Alongside solo episodes filled with practical advice, you’ll hear from top fund managers whose funds are truly on fire. These industry leaders reveal the strategies, tactics, and stories behind their remarkable success.
Whether you’re an emerging fund manager or a seasoned professional aiming for greater heights, Funds on Fire delivers the knowledge and inspiration you need to take your funds to the next level. Subscribe today and turn your financial ambitions into a blazing success!
Funds on Fire
Faith-Driven Capital: Raising $75M Without Debt w/ Shomail Malik | Ep 11.
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What if your biggest limitation became your greatest advantage? Shomel Malik turned Islamic finance principles into a capital-raising superpower, building a real estate portfolio worth over $75 million without using a dollar of traditional debt.
This eye-opening conversation reveals how conviction and creativity can transform fundraising. Born in Pakistan and raised in New Jersey by a father working three jobs, Shomel abandoned the expected path to medicine and forged his own entrepreneurial journey. After cutting his teeth in multi-level marketing (where he gained invaluable speaking and sales skills), he found his calling in real estate during the 2008 financial crisis.
The magic of Shomel's approach lies in how he structures deals. Rather than seeing Islamic prohibitions against interest as a limitation, he developed an equity-sharing model that resonates deeply with Muslim investors who often keep substantial capital in non-interest-bearing accounts. This created a powerful niche - instead of competing with countless operators for traditional capital, he became the go-to expert for faith-conscious investors seeking halal investment opportunities.
Shomel shares his exact LinkedIn strategy for generating investor interest, his approach to hosting compelling investor events, and why he believes you should never "panhandle" for money. His mindset flips traditional capital raising on its head: "I'm not begging for your investment; I'm offering you an opportunity."
Perhaps most powerful is Shomel's reflection on a $20 million mistake. By selling properties outright rather than maintaining equity positions, he missed the massive appreciation that followed. This painful lesson shaped how he structures deals today, ensuring his investors and his company both participate in long-term wealth creation.
Whether you're raising capital, building a business aligned with your values, or simply seeking inspiration from someone who chose principle over expediency, this conversation will challenge your assumptions about what's truly possible in real estate investing.
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From Pakistan to Real Estate Entrepreneur
Speaker 1Let me start this episode with a confession. I've been in the capital raising game for a minute now and I've raised millions, built a fund, launched platforms and hoped others to do the same. But when I first heard how Shomel raises capital without using a single drop of debt by design, not by limitation it flipped the switch to me. It wasn't just impressive, it was principled right, because this man didn't just build a business, he built a standard, and that's what this episode is all about. The episode is for anyone out there who's ever thought I don't know enough rich people to raise capital. I'm not from the finance world. I didn't go to Harvard or grow up around wealth. How do I raise money without compromising my faith, my values or my community? That's the tension Shomel stepped into and it turned into his superpower. Here's what makes this episode different.
Speaker 1Shomel is a Pakistani-American entrepreneur. He was born in Karachi and raised in New Jersey. His dad worked three jobs to give their family a chance in America and, like many first-generation kids, he was expected to become a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, and that was the blueprint. But instead of following the safe route, he did something most people won't. He told his father no, and chose entrepreneurship. He started out in the MLMs, failed fast, learned how to sell, how to speak, how to hustle and ultimately found his way into real estate. And fast forward to today. He's flipped over 700 deals, raised $75 million and built multiple businesses, including Apex Capital Group, which is an awesome fund, a title company, an education company and a fund that operates completely interest-free. Let that sink in no hard money loans, no bank debt, no interest, just joint venture structures, equity sharing and deep respect for the Islamic principles that shaped his model, principles that say profit is fine, but asury is oppression. Everyone shares risks. No one profits from someone else's pain. Now, if you're not Muslim, don't tune out, because what Shomel teaches in this episode isn't about religion. It's about ethics, conviction and creative structuring.
Speaker 1We talk about it. How he built trust with investors who can't touch interest-based products, why not taking on debt has made his capital easier to raise and more sticky His process for turning no leverage into marketing advantage, and why he believes faith-first framework don't limit your scale, they enhance it. We also get real about mistakes. At one point he walked away from $20 million in equity because of how he structured deals early on. That mistake shaped the way he structures everything now. And then there's his LinkedIn game. This man turns cold connections into capital conversations like a pro. You'll hear the full system he uses to raise capital on LinkedIn, with no ads, no paid funnels, no fluff. And if you've ever wanted to raise capital the right way, the values aligned way, this episode will hit you hard and personally.
Speaker 1As someone who's trying to bridge the gap between culture and capital, this conversation helped me to see just how powerful conviction can be. It reminded me that the best capital raisers aren't just good at math, they're clear on their mission. So let's dive in. This is Funds on Fire. I'm Devin Robinson. Today's guest is the debt-free, faith-driven capital raising strategist, chomel Malik. Let's go.
Speaker 1Welcome to Funds on Fire, the podcast that ignites the passion of investment funds and capital raising. Here we turn the complexities of fund management into clear, actionable steps that drive results. I've invested into diverse real estate across the United States and managed thriving funds, and I'm committed to transforming lives through the vehicle of investment funds and helping others to do the same. Join me as we document the journey of scaling businesses, raising capital and impacting tens of thousands of people around the world. My name is Devin Robinson and welcome to Funds on Fire. What's up and welcome back.
Speaker 1Today I'm excited because we have honestly, I love this guy.
Speaker 1So Shamel and I we go, we're in the same mastermind, collective genius together, and so we've seen each other a good bit, but we always have a really good time on the basketball court.
Speaker 1That's one thing that I love about Shamel.
Speaker 1Him and I will go back and forth, talk junk to each other, have a really good time, and so we share that.
Speaker 1But one of the things that I really really love about Shemel is one he's got a really strong conviction on what he believes, who he is and what he's grounded in. And I think now more than ever, that is more important in this age, in society that we live in, in the way that we run our businesses, in the way that we lead our families. I'm just constantly encouraged by the things that I see on social media, by the interactions that I have with them, in the way that I see him give and serve at a really high level while at the same time operating his business and his funds at a massive level. And so I, just one man, I'm glad and thankful for you as a friend, but then also thankful and glad to have you on the podcast today, man, and so I would love if you could just, for a minute, give everybody like a little bit of a little rundown of who you are, what you do and where you're from, man.
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely Shamal Malik. I'm in the New Jersey market. First of all, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2Devin, it's an honor and it's a pleasure to share with your audience anything that I could hopefully impart and benefit them, even if it's one nugget to help them change their trajectory a little bit, I think it'll be worth your time listening to this. Who am I? So our family came here to the United States. I'm not born here. I was born in Pakistan. We came here in 1987. So I was five years old at the time and it was always drilled into my brother and my head was just two of us that you know the standard. You're going to be a doctor. I mean, that's kind of you know if you're Pakistani, indian, you're either a doctor, engineer or a failure. That was the three options, and so that was it for me.
MLM Lessons and Finding Real Estate
Speaker 2So I went into Rutgers University as a neuroscience major and I had economics as like a backup. So I took, you know, a double major at Rutgers and then, as I was, I bought my MCAT book. I was going to go to med school and I'm thinking to myself all right, so it's going to be this. I graduate four years of med school, three years of residency, killing myself, then I got to pay off probably medical school debt and then I finally get my life started in like my mid thirties'm like, nah, man, I, this is not what I want to do um, and I had to have this really tough conversation with my father, who, you know, basically, is putting all his eggs in these two baskets, myself and my brother that you guys are going to make generational change for us by becoming physicians or whatever, and um, and that's it. That's why we're here. We're in the land of the golden opportunity in America and and that's why I brought you guys here we left everything behind. We literally came. You know people tell these stories, but we literally came with four suitcases and a couple hundred bucks and I saw him work three jobs. We would only see him on Sundays, so he was the brown guy behind the cash register at the local convenience store. He was also a scientist. His background he's a mechanical engineer, but he couldn't find a job as an engineer. So he started working in the pharmaceutical industry as a scientist and that's where he built his career and we'd see him on Sundays.
Speaker 2So I learned work ethic at a very early age. I learned struggle, I learned that we didn't have that much money and I also learned that I didn't want to be in that position, and so getting out of school, starting earning and starting setting up my life at an early age was very important to me, and so I had this very difficult conversation. I thought my funeral was going to be the next day. I thought he was going to kill me, but I had gotten the business bug in college Red rich dad, poor dad. Back then I got involved in multi-level marketing and I was like it was like an eye-opener for me. I didn't even know what this world of business was, and multi-level marketing is its own thing, oh, wow.
Speaker 1There's no doubt.
Speaker 2Am and multi-level marketing is its own thing. Oh wow, there's no doubt Amway. Yeah, I got into Amway later, but this company was an internet company. So remember back in the day when you had AOL.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, You've got mail.
Speaker 2Messenger. So yeah, and then you've got mail. Yeah, so they were competing against them or trying to. A company called 2x2.net doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2But, they wanted to get that into small to mid-sized businesses, but they wanted to do it through distribution from independent contractors. I mean, you can build a downline and then earn. So I'm learning about this while I'm in college as an undergrad, taking some mind, you know, mind numbing courses on neuroscience, like extremely difficult stuff, and I started skipping my classes to build my downline. I'm having these meetings and I get to the point where I started making more money than my father as a chemist and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to retire, you guys, and I retire myself in my early twenties and all this stuff. And I retired myself in my early 20s and all this stuff. And the guys around us were driving like Acura, nsxs, porsches and stuff, like the leaders in this.
Speaker 2We took a team as college students out to San Jose to their big corporate event that they held and at that time they were releasing some kind of robotic AI voice over type of a thing and it looked super futuristic and myself and me and my friends were looking at each other like, holy crap, we're going to be rich, and we didn't even know what we were in. Anyway, three months into it, that whole thing came crashing down. There was no real product behind it. You needed a real product. Like you know, companies like Amway that are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, those are real companies. They sell real products. I did get into that later on because what happened is I'm coming out of college and I don't know what I want to do with my life at this point because med school I've kind of put that away and I've switched that part off in my life. And a friend of mine, graduated valedictorian from the pharmacy school, said you know what, why don't you try pharmaceutical sales? So you know, sell drugs, but these are FDA approved.
Speaker 2Yeah, legal drugs, legal drugs and I was like, all right, let me look into it. He got me some interviews and bro was like, all right, let me look into it. He got me some interviews and bro, like my driving record was absolute garbage in college, Like I used to speed through the campuses and stuff. So I had eight points on my record, new Jersey, all points you're done. So I'd kill the interviews, get the job. They do a background check and they're like this young kid, 21-year-old guy.
Speaker 1Can't even drive.
Speaker 2And they give you a company car. So they give you a company car, they give you a phone, they pay for the Wi-Fi in your house, like you have no expenses, you're single and everything that you make you're like banking it essentially. So you could, you know, start doing that, that. And then a doctor, um, in one of the offices, approached me and she's like, oh, I have this business opportunity and my husband and I expanding. And I'm like, sounds familiar.
Speaker 2I've done that pitch before yeah, yeah and then I'm in a living room before you know it and circles are being drawn. I feel like, oh, not this again. But I was like I really need this doctor to write more of my medicine. So I was like here, take my money, I'll join. And the intention was never to show up at a meeting. And then the husband starts calling me. He's like hey, we're having this meeting on Wednesday, you need to be there. And I'm like all right.
Speaker 2And then that's how I kind of got like stared into it. But you know, hindsight's always 20-20. You always look back. That's where I learned public speaking.
Speaker 1Yeah, I would imagine.
Speaker 2I was going to ask. You know every data point of your life, every milestone in your timeline, is there for a reason, and so you know there's a lot of benefits to MLM and multi-level marketing. You learn a lot. You know, speaking to strangers at a Barnes and Noble. That's not a real. First of all. It's not a normal thing to do, like you know just, and then all of a sudden inviting them into a business opportunity. And so what I was doing was while I was working.
Building a Real Estate Empire
Speaker 2I always had this thing in my mind that I'm going to have a side hustle, and initially it looked like this. Prior to this, it was going to be real estate. I got introduced to real estate in college through a downline from that previous company and his father had bought the franchising rights for Keller Williams in New Jersey, so he had opened the first office. I would drive an hour, skip my classes at Rutgers, drive an hour, learn about cold calling, prospecting I'm banging the phones and trying to get listings and stuff. So I got a taste of real estate. But then I went down back into the MLM world and I was there for about three years. Then, when I got married, my wife was like they're trying to pull you along as a couple. Oh yeah, this is too weird and it feels like a cult.
Speaker 1And I don't want to do this.
Speaker 2Yeah, no labor. So then I transitioned out of that and it was my brother had just done a flip, he was 22 or 23 and made like $140,000 on it.
Speaker 1Ah, huge money.
Speaker 2And they, yeah, like he went to deposit that check at our local TD bank over here and they're like getting the manager and stuff. They thought something illegal was going on because he's this young kid trying to deposit this six-figure check.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And he walked me through that whole process. There's a guy that he went to school with and he had these we buy houses signs up and down route 27 over here. Is that, what is this about? How does it work? And we there was no fortune builders or any of the yeah, you had Ron Legrand and you know Carlton sheets at that time this is like 2007, 2008. But he kind of like stumbled his way into doing a couple of flips and then he basically shared the game with me and I'm like, all right, this is perfect. I've got my corporate gig and I'm doing really well there.
Speaker 2And I started getting promoted really fast to management and so on and so forth, and I was loving that corporate Kool-Aid juice Because I didn't have to report to an office. That would have destroyed me. I can't live with myself if I have to go into a cubicle and I had done internships and co-ops during my time in college that I knew wasn't for me. This was field-based sales. I have a home office and once a month I see my manager. I have a home office and once a month I see my manager and my manager lives out of state. So I'm like, oh, this is phenomenal, and and so just fast forward. Oh wait, lehman Brothers crashed. That was the first big domino, and I would say that him and I, my brother and I are probably benefactors of that situation that was created because of so many foreclosures. As a matter of fact, new Jersey and Florida used to lead the race. There were like two racehorses back and forth who's going to be number one in foreclosures.
Speaker 2And so what we used to do is to get these properties, negotiate a short sale with the lender and then buy the property and then pretty much flip it the same day to an end buyer, and that was wholesaling. Yeah, so we closed on title. We wouldn't do any of that stuff with getting the buyer's funds or anything like that. We had capital. I had money from my W-2. So we closed on the property and sell it.
Speaker 2Now, fast forward to 2010, 11-ish, where banks started bringing in regulation that no, you can't sell the property. There were deed restrictions and so on. And so we're like, all right, well, if our capital is going to be tied up, let's just, you know, refurb the kitchen a little bit, let's redo the bathrooms, and that's how we started getting into the flipping thing. Mind you, this whole time, him and I have separate companies, so, you know, you start getting a little bit of sibling rivalry going on. It's a little bit weird and tense at the dinner table when we'd get together. Everybody wants to pound their own chest. He's younger, I'm older.
Speaker 2And then we were also tapping into, starting to tap into investors, because now our capital is getting tied up and we're like, all right, this is a limiting constraint, I have a finite amount of capital, and so now I got to bring my dad in or his brother in and say, all right, we're going to hold this property for about three months, 40 days or four months. Wells Fargo started coming out with the 120. Other banks had 90 days of hold, and then we would just flip it on day 121, basically, or day 91. And that's what got started in late 2012 with the whole raising capital aspect of it and then you ended up partnering with your brother, right yeah in 2016.
Speaker 2So for about six, seven years, we did it separately, on our own, and what we did was we, New Jersey's 21 counties we just chopped it up like a pizza pie and we're like all right, you do your marketing here, I'll do my marketing. We'll never step on each other's toes, We'll never have to compete. And this is before buying data, skip tracing and then calling. This is before that time. So this is direct mail, bandit signs and door hangers like door knocking. It's wholesaling 1.0. Yeah, and so we made a ton of money at that time, bought up a bunch of rentals. 2014,. I was able to leave my corporate gig. That was an interesting story in its own and yeah, so that was and then we evolved into doing a turnkey rental properties, so it basically became a lot of capital raising. I intentionally changed my office into there's a high rise over here that overlooks New York City, even though New York City is 45 minutes away, and so we got onto the 19th floor. It had this like hedge fund feel, like a boiler room type of feel.
Speaker 2Yeah, I hired up sales guys and said you guys are going to sell these turnkey rental properties to high net worth individuals. And that's how it kind of started, because I had done the pharmaceutical sales thing, I knew how to run a sales team, and so, yeah, we did that for several years and we saw this I guess you could call it fragmentation in the market where high net worth individuals would sit down at a coffee shop with a realtor and say, hey, I've got half a million to invest, can you find me some properties? And then they'd find them some distressed properties that would have some equity, and then, inevitably, dr So-and-so has to go find a contractor and that contractor might take them for a ride or whatever. Now you got to go back to your original realtor and say, hey, okay, we're done with the. I finally got the CEO. Can you get me a leasing agent in your office? Now you got to lease it and now you're dealing with the tenants and all that.
Speaker 2We're like all right, let's take this whole process and vertically integrate it and we'll do everything. We'll source the deal, we'll sell it to them. We'll source the deal, we'll sell it to them, we'll collect our fee, right, our wholesaling fee, and then we'll let them know that, look, year one your ROI is not going to be there because the first four, five, six months we have to take it through renovations and leasing. But this property is going to serve you year two, three, four and onwards and you keep all the equity. We make our money up front and then we'll manage it for you on the backend 7% property management fee. So we're making money on a wholesale fee and then we're making money on the backend with the property management fee.
Speaker 2And so, if you want to call this, I guess, capital raising, this was like that capital raising that was happening now, because prior to this we would just have friends and family participate in rehab, fix and flips and we would do like a 70, 30 split, equity sharing type of model, never borrowed money from a hard money lender because of, you know, some prohibitions in my faith of taking and paying interest. So we never dealt with interest. It was always equity based type of structure. And then now we were like all right, investors started asking us you know, these rehab, fix and flips are interesting, but we get paid after six months.
Speaker 2If a project gets delayed after eight months, you have something where I can make money on a monthly basis, and I noticed that a lot of older investors were asking that they wanted something steady coming in. I said, well, look, this is what I do with my money. I don't really know stocks that well. I don't know crypto that well. I learned that stuff later. But I put my money in real estate and that's how I left my corporate gig, because I bought enough rental properties where I had enough passive income coming in, where it exceeded my living expenses, and they're like, yeah, set us up with that. And that's how I got started.
Speaker 1Nice, so what?
Faith-Based Capital Raising Principles
Speaker 2I used to do was I took the apartment model, the multifamily apartment model, where the sponsor essentially collects a acquisition fee, then they participate in the cash flow and then on the back end they participate in the CEO appreciation from the equity buildup over time. And so I was like I could do that with single family houses. And I heard David Lindahl speak at the same event that I was speaking at and I was already doing this. And then when he said that that that's what they do in multifamily because I didn't know that world that well, I was like, oh, that's validation, and I was just doing this with single family, so I would just find investors. I'll like, oh, that's validation, and I was just doing this with single family, so I would just find investors. I'll say I'm going to sell this property to you, I'm going to make a fee up front, and then I'm going to get 10% of the rent. I'm going to manage it for you, so I'm going to get a 7% property management fee. And as long as I could sell that cap rate, I could sell that. Noi, I had a customer. And so we started beefing that up. We built a property management company. We were managing this stuff in-house 250 or so units in New Jersey, about 115 in Toledo, ohio. We ended up selling and exiting that company to a larger company and so we had a successful exit with that and we still get paid on that today as a matter of fact. So there's like a residual component to that deal Fantastic. And so we exited that.
Speaker 2Covid happens and I'll bring you to the present now that's where starting to look at Max Maxwell and others about this wholesaling 2.0, virtual wholesaling. So that's what we did. We bought data from PropStream, we started learning that side of it dispo acquisitions and all of that and so we had to reteach ourselves with the wholesaling side of the business after saying that, look, property management have got too muchd from that and, uh, let's get back into, like you know, that cash flow machine and and so, as dad started to do well, we said, all right, let's raise money in a different way. Because here's what happened. There's a town here called willing borough, new jersey.
Speaker 2Will holly, who's in? Um, collective genius, yeah, um know our colleague, he wholesale the property to me down there and I'm like yo, what is this town? And I kid you, not Devin. This town has six different houses as models and the builder built 11,400 homes that look like these. Six houses, so six models, so two types of capes, two types of ranches and two types of colonials. And they copied and pasted that, not in a development.
Speaker 1In the whole city.
Speaker 2Entire city. That's crazy, Entire city. So in a matter of like two, three years we did like 125 flips there Problem was this.
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Speaker 2We sold those properties for that same structure that I'm talking about. Had the deal structure been a little bit different? And this is where capital raising comes into this conversation, if I said, hey, why don't you come in as a lender? And before I say this, let me say this the people that own those properties today, they were all in for about $120K. All of those properties are worth $ 300,000 or more today, obviously because you had that COVID boost and all of that.
Speaker 2No one could have predicted that black swan event, but even then you knew there was going to be value appreciation in that town and so we left about $20 million on the table. Jeez, kicking myself, that's how much equity is in those properties that we sold. And now when I hear you know investors that have a sizable portfolio and they say I wish I could go back in time and hold anything yeah, and kept everything. And of course, yeah, there's some properties that are like just made for a fix and flip. You're not going to keep it because the numbers don't work, but the thought is still, you know, somewhat true, Like you would have kept the majority of them because you would have been sitting on generational wealth.
Speaker 2So we started to do that. We said let's deal, structure it differently. Where we can keep the equity, bring them in as a lender. We'll be a borrower, we'll set this up. They'll get paid from the rental income a certain percentage that's tethered to like 6% to 7%, and that's what a lot of our retiree type of investors care about like an ongoing thing and capital presentation, stable, right, yep, and along with their social security income that's coming in and so on, and so they can just ride it out in their golden years. And so we started building up the portfolio this way. Had we done it with those other 230 properties before? That's fine, it happened, we learned from it and now we're redoing it, and so that then evolved into like all right, now let's put this thing on steroids and come out with a fund and go after accredited investors and so on.
Speaker 1Nice, okay, all right, my man took us from beginning to end, which is great. So we've got where we are now. And one thing that I love and this is what I love because I think about this all the time People don't know what a couple of things people don't know about me. One I worked as a, I did fundraising. So I guess in education or no sorry, elementary school there it is Sorry, I don't know why I was blanking on that Elementary school fundraiser. So I would go to each class, every single, from K through fifth grade when I was out of college, and give character lessons I don't know what is that 80 character lessons a day, five days a week, to elementary school kids, and so at the time for them to go home and raise money for their fun, run for their school, and so, essentially, if I could keep the attention of a kindergartner or a second grader, I had learned how to do that at the time. And that plays into now, my life now, which I wouldn't have seen that back then.
Speaker 1And very similar to you, you went through the MLM.
Speaker 1So I mean, you went through from Rutgers to rehabs.
Speaker 1Right, you went from the MLM side.
Speaker 1You're in Rutgers, you had this huge boom where you learned what was possible in your 20s which is crazy to even think about, just like the effect that that has on a 20-year-old and then moved into a place in which, because of the capital, even just the structure that you started doing things with in the beginning sets you on a pace now which even allows you and as you and I have talked before in the past to be able to structure the way that you offer what you do very uniquely, partially because of your faith, and you and I talk about that a lot, because we both are very, very convictional on our faith and what we believe in and how we live that out, and I'm extremely encouraged by that with you, especially in this way, because the one thing that I know is you don't take on debt, which means you probably own a lot of the properties free and clear, and then you also, when you raise from investors, you're raising without a debt model, and I think that's super unique, and so I'd love to even just talk about that a little bit, because that's, I think, one there's a lot of people that are probably afraid to do this because they don't know how, and so I don't know if this is all proprietary or anything like that, but for real, for what I know, I think you've said you've raised about $75 million, and so for Muslims, like for Muslim investors who avoid REBA, is that what it's called REBA?
Speaker 2Yeah, interest, yep.
Speaker 1REBA, how do you educate them on halal real estate models and how do you earn their trust?
Raising $75M Without Using Debt
Speaker 2them on halal real estate models and how do you earn their trust? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll show you like some of our like marketing pieces and things like that, it's clearly targeting a certain demographic. You know Muslim families. So Muslim Americans happen to be, in one study, the second most affluent demographic in the United States and in another study, the third, most. Very educated, good stewards of their wealth, not very wasteful, or, you know, very consumer minded, and so on, if you want to say that. And so what I've noticed in the community is that they want to compartmentalize their wealth that they've earned. They won't put it in savings accounts because savings accounts earn interest. Yeah, stay clear of that. They'll put all this money in checking account. Wow, and we do all of this education. As far as, look, you are shrinking your purchasing power because of inflation, so why are you putting your money should be in? You know there should be some velocity to the money. The money should be moving and it should be invested in something and you should treat your money as if it's your employee, that it's going out there earning you more.
Speaker 2Right now, there are vehicles that exist, and there's tons in Malaysia and in the Middle East. They're far ahead in terms of the discipline of Islamic finance. But the main premise behind Islamic finance is number one not to put your money into things that are highly speculative. Not to put your money into industries that are prohibited, such as the pornographic industry, smoking guns, things like that, and so, like I can't buy Marlboro stock, for example, right. And risk sharing. So there's a level of inherent level of risk sharing.
Speaker 2So in our holy book, the Quran, there's a very clear ayah, a verse in the second chapter, that says that they will say and this is how I want to break it down they will say that interest and profit look the same, but in fact they are not the same. God has made profit and doing business permissible upon you and taking interest prohibited, right. And so what's the reason behind that? People ask well, why is that? Well, when a lender gives money to a borrower, the only thing that has to happen is passage of time and they can collect on it, right? If that borrower is not able to make payments, then they're in a very oppressed position where the lender can now come after them, seize their assets and things like that which creates classifications in society, which creates disparity in income, which we're seeing today, and we're seeing that as a major problem between white collar, blue collar and so on and so forth. Sure, you've seen that in medieval times, but it exists today as well.
Speaker 2And in Islam, if a lender gives money to a borrower, if there are moments where they're not able to pay back, you have to express clemency and mercy to be able to pay it back. And if they can't pay back at all, then you consider it charity. And you, you know, you say that my reward is with God, right and? And so with equity sharing, those I guess you could say boxes are checked in, that both parties are taking on risk, whether it's gain or loss. Their speculation is removed because you are relying on the operator to have done due diligence. So we don't buy things sight unseen, right and I had asked scholars about this as well Like, hey look, I can pull the trigger on this house.
Speaker 2Sight unseen is like no, it's better for you. If you are going to invest other people's life savings, then it is a covenant and a trust upon you to go and see that property with your own eyes, or at least your team, to make sure that you are doing right by them, like true fiduciary responsibility Um and and, and that's how it manifests in the business world Um and uh. And so we said, all right, well, you know, we want to abide by this. And where we thought that this was going to be, this was going to niche us so much, that's going to be so hard to raise capital, it ended up being our superpower.
Speaker 1Well, and that's what I was going to ask Like do you feel like the no debt model limits your scale or does it attract higher capital, quality capital?
Speaker 2It limits my scale as so much as when people tell you that, hey, devin, why don't you invest in Houston? It's a great market. And you're like, well, I got enough, right here in my backyard it's the same with capital raising, right, like, yeah, we have non-Muslim investors as well. Yes, they like that model, they're like.
Speaker 2I can make more money in this model as well too, and they understand it, um, but at the same time, um, I've got enough to. There's about two million muslim americans, uh, some studies say up to five million, and they are. The central hubs are houston, dallas, southern californ tons of Silicon Valley money there are, you know, a lot of Muslims in tech, michigan, chicago, and then of course, new York, new Jersey, where you have all the Wall Streeters and stuff. So I've got enough in terms of addressable market and target audience to you know, go after.
Speaker 1Well, and that's awesome, man, I have a couple Okay. So I've got some questions and I also have some personal questions. One, because I and I don't know I think we've talked about this, but I guess four or five years ago I actually found out that I was half Middle Eastern, like half Moroccan, my dad. I didn't know this so I thought this guy was my dad all my life. And about four or five years ago I took a 23andMe test found years ago I took a 23andMe test, found out that there's this other guy that was my dad all my life and he's Middle Eastern. And so I joke, I say that I'm the two worst things you can be in America black and Middle Eastern and so. But it also brings like this really unique for me, almost like a different, almost a different vision for my life in the sense of like, okay, and we you and I don't think we've ever talked about this, but there are and I've talked on this podcast before but there are $82 trillion worth of assets under management in the US currently In private equity, real estate, hedge fund money.
Speaker 1All of that in the US, 1.4% of that is managed by minorities, women and immigrants, and so that means that, out of that $82 trillion, 98.6% of that is just managed by white men, and so I think there's this massive disparity between access to capital and information and minorities, women and immigrants.
Speaker 1And so one of the things that I've wanted to do is be like, okay, what does it look like for me in my life to even potentially try to bridge that gap between the opportunity that Middle Eastern people have, because, like that's my heritage, Like that's I'm learning about it, I'm loving, I'm learning Arabic. I'm doing all these things because I want to see if I can figure out how to bridge that gap between the access to information and capital. And then even like opportunity in how capital was raised in a almost like a no debt model similar to yours and Middle Easterns, and even, just like I even think like, have you considered an international feeder, like fund type model, where people you're gaining capital internationally, or what does that look like for you? Because now I'm just curious, because I'm like I want to be able to raise capital and understand how to reach and engage with a whole Middle Eastern demographic in America that doesn't have a model to invest in, not that like they don't have the money, they don't have the right models to be able to invest in.
Speaker 2Sure, yeah. So yeah, we have talked about that, and when we were doing the turnkey rental model, I actually sent three of our reps out to Dubai to attend a couple of it was the World Economic Forum, yep, and one thing is is that, like anything else, it takes a lot of relationship building and you're kind of playing the long game, but it's maybe a year later when you tap on that you'll get funds coming over. You have a lot of expats that have gone to the Middle East because there are tax advantages, income taxes, I mean, if you know Max Maxwell, move to Dubai, he's out there, yeah, he's out there. A lot of it was because for tax reasons, and I've seen several high caliber real estate investors also move out there for similar reasons and they're raising capital from expats. There's huge communities in Bahrain, oman, saudi Arabia, all of those places People working in oil, people working in gas, uh, people working in tech tons of money and they're banking a lot of it because, yeah, they're not paying too much taxes on it, but they do want to. You know, mobilize it and put it into new.
Speaker 2United states is still considered a safe haven in many aspects, right? So, if you know, wars break out and everything's going to hell like. United States is still considered, you know, a safe place to invest, right, and so people want assets, so we have some investors that invest from there. So, yeah, there's a specific classification though that you have to get, for it's slipping my mind right now, but in your PPM you have to just outline that, that you're going to raise international capital.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's an international feeder, international feeder fund, right, yeah, something or master master, master model, master feeder model, that's what it's called your model, but there's something with a, with an S.
LinkedIn Strategy for Capital Raising
Speaker 2I'll send it to you afterwards, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1Cool. So I guess, man, I want to talk with you more about that a little bit later, but I know one thing that I'm really, really excited to talk about, and you've been talking a lot about lately, is raising capital on LinkedIn. So you've got this really cool strategy that you've been using and, I guess, as much as you want to talk about it, I would love to hear, like, what those models are that have worked for you, because it seems like, as you've been able to engage with people, understand how to do that, you've been able to start up conversations and raise capital on LinkedIn. And so, for me, I'm like, man, how do you do that? What kind of strategy are you using for that, and what does that look like?
Speaker 2Yeah, I want to give you a few specific anecdotes. Cool, so my very first deal was right here by where my kids were born, st Peter's Hospital, and it was from a bandit sign 150K, purchase, 55 reno. So it's all in for about 205, with closing cost 210. And we ended up flipping it in two months and 23 days for $330,000. And what I did at the time was I did an 80-20 in reverse, so 80% to me, 20% to my investors. It still ended up being a 56% annualized ROI, because we've got it done so fast and when you finish your projects well before time, that really makes the annualized ROI look good. Right, because of that multiplier.
Speaker 2And what happened from that first one? And how do I get the money for that? So I had a small email list at the time and I said look, I've been doing this for four years. Here's a couple of before and afters of projects that I did, and every time these transformations happened I made a lot of money and I was doing it with my own capital. Now what I'm doing is I'm seeing that I'm limited and I'd like to bring in capital partners to participate, and so I just did a dinner at a local Pakistani restaurant over here and then did a slide presentation of showing them properties, who I am and if the next property that's available looks good, are you interested in investing.
Speaker 2And a couple of people jumped into that. It was kind of like a friends and family round Probably not the most you know kosher way to do it, but friends and family nonetheless. I knew all of these people. They knew me well more than a substantive relationship has been built and so we're doing just capital partners and it's a joint venture between myself and you guys. And that then set the stage for them saying, all right, well, you know, I was just testing the waters, I was just dipping my toe, but I actually have like $400,000 I'd like to invest. And then the next person said something similar. And then I've got a brother-in-law who's you know killing it in private equity and I think he would like to invest. And then it started to snowball from there, where raising the capital is fine, it's the execution, because then you don't have to market so much.
Speaker 2You don't have to be out there as much. Now I will tell you this when we had the turnkey rental property business, we were growing so fast. At one point it looked like we were going to implode and there were some service quality issues and things like that. And one investor knows another and people start talking and they're like, hey, it started off good, but things are going a little bit awry recently and that bad word starts to spread pretty fast as well, and so people started to like take a step back as well. So I know what it is to start from scratch, but then also how to rebuild that as well. And so had we kept going in that trajectory, I would have probably raised over like a half billion today. But there was a reset that happened during our and that's why we wanted to exit that business. We said that, look guys, our core competency is in property management. I know we sold these properties to you and you're the beneficiary, a benefactor, of like the equity three X-ing at this point, congratulations, right. But I also know that there was a lot of rocky you know rockiness to get to this point. Renovations took longer or whatever it was, and some of the properties in Ohio I think there was about six properties. They became absolute money pits and we recognized that. We said we can't just keep fixing these properties. These are old infrastructure, let's just sell them. They ended up selling in the red and what we did is we came out of pocket to make those investors whole and we said look, at least you've got your principal back. I'm sorry, you lost time and there was an opportunity cost, right, obviously, but I wanted to make sure that at least you get your principal back, so that if you and I meet and this is from that conviction and fade, like if you and I meet on the day of judgment, I don't want there to be anything between us, right, and that's what's keeping me from entering the gates of heaven and so on. Right, so we were and that's how we operate our business. That's our philosophy. It says it on our flyers and materials investor first. That's our philosophy. It says it on our flyers and materials investor first, investor first. We eat last, and so taking that now and then doing this reset. And you mentioned LinkedIn.
Speaker 2We have several activities that we do and we don't, and I always ask our team don't focus so much on what the results are going to be. The results will be the results right, as long as you do the activity. All I care about is did we do the activity or not? And the activities include one webinar a month with a self-directed IRA custodian. Why do we do that? And that's been one of our biggest ones. There's $9 trillion in retirement accounts and a lot of people.
Speaker 2We did so much education on this. Now, not everybody invested with us, but people were like, wow, I've been working in corporate for 30 years. Nobody's ever talked to me about a self-directed IRA. A lot of people just don't even know about this, and so we started doing that education and what's really cool, and for people that are watching this, if you feel like you're just going to start raising capital, a very quick way to get credibility is to put your logo next to a company that is a self-directed IRA. So if you start off with CamelPlan or NewView or any of the, well, rocket Dollar is the one that we work with.
Speaker 2If you start with any of these companies and you say, hey, we're doing a co-promoted webinar and what I do is we have the IRA company speak first. They present for about 30 minutes about the do's and do nots and all the ins and outs of a self-directed IRA. And then I talk about our company, our team, projects that we've done. If you're listening and we don't have a relationship today and we you don't know me and I don't know you would love to get to know you better you can come visit our projects here to start building that substantive relationship. Otherwise, if you are interested in a one-on-one private consultation, we always try to get them into a one-on-one private consultation because that's where I can really speed up the getting to know me. Like me, trust me, so you'll invest with me.
Speaker 2Path, and so that's one doing those on a regular basis, monthly basis. We do two we do a brunch and learn. So a local restaurant will invite people out and that's where you know folks have their hair down and their you know defenses down and they're just listening to the presentation. And that's exactly what I did in my very, very first one that I just talked about when we raised money. So we still do those, you know brunch and learns and investor dinner presentations to this day. So we do one dinner and one brunch every other week and so there's a steady cadence of that going on in different parts of New Jersey. We'll find a really nice restaurant, invite people out. You know it's, there's no obligations, you're just coming for an informational seminar. As a matter of fact, my dad gets mail here at my house coming for an informational seminar. As a matter of fact, my dad gets mail here at my house and it's like the Fisher Investments and other companies inviting him to steakhouses for the same stuff. So we do those.
Speaker 2As far as LinkedIn goes, I have about 11,000 connections on LinkedIn, so it's not the biggest account, not the smallest account either, and so what we'll do is we'll simply say we're excited to you know we'll chat to you, pt it, our company is excited to take on this new project where you know we're looking forward to, and we'll just kind of list out everything. And if you've ever considered participating in new construction deals and you're an accredited investor, go ahead and direct message me. I'll send you the link to the deal room. And all the deal room is is simply, you know, a google folder where you have the profit projection summary. We have, uh, probably architectural plans and like a one page deal summary sheet like here's what we're purchasing it for, here's how much we're going to do the rhino for, here's what we'll sell it for. These are all the things we're doing. This is the timeline, our target ROI plus or minus. We always give a range, not an exact number. If you're interested, let's do a one-on-one consultation and see if you're good for us and we're good for you.
Speaker 2We never panhandle for money, and when I do workshops on raising private capital, I always talk about this one. Think of it as this scenario I'm an employee, I get minimum wage at Best Buy and Devin, you're my friend, you've been working in corporate America for some time, you're polished and all that. And I've got this amazing thing coming up on Black Friday like a pre-Black Friday sale, where they're just giving employee discounts on this Samsung 100-inch television that sells at Best Buy for $4,000, but I'm getting it for $2,000. The problem is I get $15 an hour, right, and I wasted on other stuff, so I don't have $2,000. And I have a limit of 10 TVs I can buy, devin. So I'm going to come to you and I say Devin, let's buy all 10 TVs. I need 20K. Best Buy sells it for $4,000. You and I will sell it for $3,500 on Facebook Marketplace. Okay, we'll make $1,500 a pop and we'll split it 50-50.
Speaker 2This is an equity deal. Right, I'm doing the SWAT equity and you're providing the capital, and so there'll be you'll make $750 per, and so you'll get all your initial capital back when we sell all 10 TVs, plus $7,500 in profit, and I'll make $7,500. In this scenario, you brought value to the table and I brought value to the table. I found the deal. I am an insider, I'm at Best Buy working, so you would not get these TVs without me, right? Even though I'm a lowly $15 employee making minimum wage or whatever. And you're the capital guy. You've got this really nice job. You've got money sitting in your prior 401k, you're going to invest with that, and so we broke Barth Valley.
Speaker 2And a lot of people think when they raise capital, it's almost like they're panhandling or they're begging for money. And if that's the mindset and conviction that you're going out with, you're going to lose every single time. The conviction has to be like bro, I'm hooking you up, yep, right, I'm hooking you up, I'm doing you a favor, you got the opportunity. And it's not from like an arrogant sort of, so it's like let me bring you in on this deal. If you don't want it, that's fine. There's a line out the door that I have. But you're you're. You know, you're one of my best buddies, so you're one of the first people I'm calling. But if you don't do it, I'm just gonna kind of move you to the side, and it's something that I learned from.
Creating Investor Trust and Relationships
Speaker 2Guess what mlm? Sw, sw, sw. Some will some while some won't, so what next? Some will, some won't, so what next? And, almost like a robot, you turn off any emotions and you just go through the numbers. That being said, I make it very clear to the investors you're very important to us. I'm going to treat you like my number one investor, who's also my number one critic. My father, right, like brown dads, are ruthless, right, and they just kind of tell it to you as it is, and so he's also my number one investor. My dad, like I told you, we came with nothing. He became a millionaire through real estate when we had the turnkey company. We set them up with a bunch of properties. They all tripled. He got sick of landlording he was managing them himself, sold them all, and then he just had stacks of cash off of that while he was still doing his job at Bristol-Myers Squibb as a scientist. Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 2So now we've taken that money and invested it. You know with us and um, he's, he's good with that. But yeah, the LinkedIn strategy is simply that. It's, uh, putting out some teasers about the problem. People see before and after pictures. You can say so much and I noticed that when I get to the slide where I show a before and after picture, that whole HGTV thing kind of comes up and they're like, wow, that's what you do, and they instantly see it that there is a value appreciation. That happens when you take the property through forced appreciation by renovations and there's money to be made here. It clicks as soon as they see the before and after. And that's what we'll do. We'll put that up on LinkedIn. People will DM Now you're a lead, you've raised your hand and now's what we'll do. We'll put that up on LinkedIn. People will DM Now you're a lead, you raised your hand and now we're going to try to get you into a one-on-one private consultation and get an understanding of are you accredited? Just do like the pre-KYC.
Speaker 2Essentially, have you invested in real estate before? And most of the time I just have them talking. We don't really talk real estate as much and what I've also come to know is you never judge a book by a cover. I just had a guy show up at an event and there were six people there and he was like kind of came in like a little bit disheveled and stuff Right, met him on Sunday. He's known me, I've known him for a while but I didn't know like he had money like that and he had bought properties in Austin Texas. He's selling a few of them, um, and he's like yeah, I, I have a hundred K that's just sitting there. I'm happy to give that to you now, um, and then when these, when I get out of these, I'll have like 1.2 and I want to put that in your fund. So let's do something there. But give me about 60 days for that. But how we connect it is our daughters go to the same school and you find those points of commonality.
Speaker 2You go deeper into that and then the sale part of hey, do you want to invest, is just basically a no-brainer at that point. And I think not. I wouldn't say I'm fully convicted at this point that there's really two things they're looking for is the deal Good? Do the numbers work and make sense? On number two, can I trust you to not lose my money, like, yeah, making money is great and I'm sure you'll do that.
Speaker 2And what we do is we always say in our one-on-one private consultations is you're going to make money with us, I'm not worried about that part, right, like we almost make that as a foregone conclusion and I always say that statement you're going to make money with us, I'm not worried about that part because we bought this property so dirt cheap with us. I'm not worried about that part because we bought this property so dirt cheap. Like the only way to go is up with this one. But what I want to really do is build a relationship with you and see how we're going to send your kids to college through this, how we're going to do this and without being a CFP, a certified financial planner and so on and so forth and you can obviously never put yourself forward as such.
Speaker 2What you are essentially doing is you're showing them another path outside of stocks and whatever else that they're used to, with somebody that they can trust in the community. And you know I'm like at the end I always tell them here's my personal cell phone number, what's at me anytime you want, right, because our investors are like family to us and we do things like we'll do our investor of the year thing, where we'll get a nice little escalade, pick them up and take them out to a nice restaurant, just them and their family, and then the car brings them back home and it becomes see, I can easily send a $500 Amazon gift card. It's not the same effect as like this really nice evening with their family. They were picked up, wined and dined and all that and uh, and then they tell their friends about that, right, and so those types of things.
Speaker 1That's awesome, man, wow, I, there's so much that I want to continue to talk about, but I want to make sure we honor your time and maybe we can set up a part two, because, um one, I even just I'm like, okay, well, I want to talk about your family and how do you leave this legacy and um, and understanding of what you're doing to your kids and helping to leave that less, that lesson in that legacy, and then, um, what you're even doing moving forward, cause your fund is mostly a single family real estate fund. That's where you operate mostly, or what? No single?
Speaker 2family stuff is where we do it with one capital partner, joint Ventures. The fund itself is targeting multifamily properties, but smaller apartment buildings, so five to 20 units.
Speaker 1So that's what we're targeting here, nice, nice, well, good man, well, as we kind of land, the land, the plane and kind of um, to be continued, what, uh, what are you? This? This podcast is called funds on fire, and so what has you fired up about, kind of, where you're going, you and your fund and your business are going in the next, into this next season.
Speaker 2Yeah. So you know, when we joined CG, it was kind of like a reset moment that I was talking about, because we had to relearn wholesaling 2.0 and acquisitions and dispo and all of that. And what I think capital raising does is it's just ultimate freedom. It really sets you up to then go out and acquire as many assets as you want and then, for those of you that want to leverage and cross collateralize against those assets, there's so many things that you could do from there. But it's if you had to focus on one singular skillset, I would say learn capital raising as much as I can. Lock your shirt in a room. You know YouTube university. You know learn from Devin, learn from other resources Hunter Thompson and others that are out there. And you know, nobody has a monopoly on all of the money. Nobody has a monopoly on the knowledge. So it's there for you if you want to go out and seek it and then just put in the work.
Speaker 1Yep, that's awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you and I guess that was a good thing to leave everybody with, because at the end of the day, I really do think. I think if somebody were to ask me you could go back, what would be? What would you tell your younger self? Or like I think the greatest skill that you can have in business all of business because most at the end of the day, the highest level of business typically is a fund of some sort, right Like you got private equity, real estate, hedge, all that stuff Typically like the pinnacle is some sort of fund and all of that you need to leverage capital, have being able to raise capital, being able to have capital partners, investor partnerships, all those things. So I think the best skill in all of business not even necessarily sales Sales is just a part of this skill, but it's the skill and the ability to raise capital and I just think people just don't get there in order to experience that need and necessity. So you are so right, man, you are so right.
Final Thoughts on Capital Raising
Speaker 2I think a lot of people find it intimidating. They think it's a thing for Wall Streeters. But if you have relationships and people trust you right and you have a track record, just get out there and just fast forward. Nobody said you have to start off in wholesaling. Then learn some rehabbing and follow that model right. You could go straight into capital raising and just buying assets and go straight to the end game, which is cashflow.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it's almost like the fast track. We think that we need to stair step, but I think and you said something earlier about geometrical and I don't even know what you quite mean by that but you have this geometric ability to grow at, or grow at a geometric level from when you learn how to raise capital, and I think that's important.
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 1Well, man, I appreciate you. I'm super thankful for you and your time. Where can people find you? If they want to learn and they believe what you believe, like they have the same and share the same convictions as you and they want to invest with you, where should they go? Or if they want to learn from you, because I know you and your brother do a really cool thing on educating a lot of investors in this space.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So our website is the REI, like real estate investing, the REI bros, b-r-o-s brotherscom, so you can go there if you're interested in any kind of. There's a lot of free resources there that you can download. I'm on Facebook, shemal Malik, or you can email me, shemal at investwithapexcom, and I always get back to all the emails, and if you guys ever want to set up a one-on-one, I'm happy to do that as well. Sweet.
Speaker 1Well, man, I appreciate you and your time. Super thankful for you. I hope you have a great day, man. We're definitely going to do this again. Yeah, absolutely. This was fun. Wow, I hope you enjoyed that. I have a quick favor. If you've been enjoying the show, there's one simple way you can support us, and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app you're listening to. I want to level this podcast up in every single way possible, bringing you more value, incredible content and guests and new strategies. Following the show and leaving a quick review goes a really long way in helping us to grow and continue to deliver top tier content. It's the only free thing I'll ever ask you to do and it makes a bigger impact than I can possibly put into words. So thank you for being a part of this journey and I'll definitely catch you on the next episode, To great success and greater impact. Peace.