A Billionaire Said the Tone of Your Voice Matters When Closing Huge Deals.Here's What Else He Shared

0:00Hey everyone, I'm here in Dallas, Texas and we just had a billionaire keynote at our capital raising bootcamp up upstairs here in the RSM offices. And I just wanted to share some notes from what he shared on stage. He's got a couple of publicly traded companies and he shared that over the last 40 years building his portfolio, that you need to build a super diverse skillset. You have to basically be a decathlete to be successful in raising capital, building a platform, scaling something. You need to underwrite conservatively. If a deal doesn't seem to make sense and you don't even know why, then just back away from the deal and say no and be conservative.

0:37Don't load up on too much debt. Make sure that you do right by investors by not over-promising. Instead of saying this is the best deal in the world, say I am doing this deal and start with the problems. Start with the issues and say that this is what I'm gonna do and this is why I'm confident that the deal is gonna be great. Or this is what I found is the solution to that versus saying just right out of the gate, this is a great deal, it's an amazing deal. I've never seen a deal this great, you should really invest. like that just doesn't work and it's just not authentic and genuine. And he found it's just more transparent to just go straight to the problem to start with.

1:11He also said you need to be really passionate and high energy. If you are not passionate, why should they care about what you're doing? So managing that, whether it's tone of voice and how you come off. And then he went over some technical aspects of raising capital and doing deals as well. But it's interesting to point out that not all of capital raising is about the IRR and the payback period. or about LTV or debt rates, et cetera, that out of everything to share, a billionaire said that the tone of your voice matters when raising capital and closing huge deals. To me, that was super interesting because so many people are just so focused on the hard parts of getting deals done, like hard facts and statistics and financials, et cetera.

1:55And the most important thing I think that I need to emphasize is that family offices are long-term focused. They're medium and long-term focused. They're not focused on this week, this month, this quarter, the next 12 months only. They do want, like he does, cash flow. They value cash flow many times. Who doesn't, I guess. But many investors are okay with going in on early stage deals. Many family offices are. But in his case, he wants cash flow from day one. It's important to his model. And he looks at something over the medium to long term. If it can't scale to a billion dollars, in his case, he's probably not that interested.

2:36And also, he's looking at how do I treat somebody long term? How do I get to know them over the long term and build a relationship? And that should be your focus when working with family offices. He said most people don't operate that way. They don't think that way. And it reminds me of Sam Zell's book, Am I Being Too Subtle? He said in a tough negotiation, he'll give the other side a slight win because his real win is doing 10 deals with that person. He wants to be the first phone call next time they sell a portfolio of real estate, not the last phone call. Some people have the opposite attitude and their goal is to get one over on the other party.

3:07But then nobody wants to do business with you, right? And then you have a bad reputation. That doesn't work in the family office space. It's a small world, folks talk, word gets around. So I love the presentation this morning. If you're there with us in person, thank you for coming. And if you are a member in the family office club, don't forget, you can search for fireside chats, billionaire talks, centimillionaire talks, advanced due diligence strategies, vetting partner ideas, and deal structure strategies, how to architect a deal, all within the member portal for Family Office Club. If you want to learn more and come to our next event, meet in person, please go to familyoffices.com.

3:44Thank you. If you are a founder, raising capital, developing real estate, or you're an investor, we'd love for you to get involved in the Family Office Club. I've run this community for 18 years now. We've hosted 300 live events. We have 17 million social media group members and followers. We have the number one YouTube channel on Family Offices. We have the number one most popular podcast on Family Offices. You can learn more about us and our membership options at familyoffices.com. We have 30 in-person events planned in 2026 and another dozen events this year. Please go to familyoffices.com to learn more.