If you are trying to raise any amount of money, these lessons will be important for you and are areas you can always improve. We are in the home stretch to close on 130-unit apartment community. Below are three lessons learned from our money raising experience in which we raised $2,500,000 in 6 days.

• It Takes a Team. While it is possible to do it by yourself on a small scale or for your first deal, I encourage you to seek out the right team to help you scale. We take our investments very seriously so every item is completed accurately. What we did well with this raise was bring on the help of professional editors so our content was great and it allowed us more time to focus on high value tasks like speaking to investors. We paid freelance editors to help us create graphics, color schemes, and format design for our investment overview and presentation materials. In addition, we had a freelance videographer create a 60 second property video. Paying a freelancer is not super costly and they provide professional material so you can impress your investors.
• Share and Follow Up. We did a good job preparing our investment material and getting the material in the inboxes of investors we have existing relationships with. We tracked email open rates and click through rates to determine who and how much follow up was required. We were diligent about following up with direct personal emails or texts or calls to individuals to ensure they knew an opportunity was available. This allowed us to raise the money in less than a week.
• Practice. Everyone needs practice and continual improvement having investor conversations. Before you raise money talk to yourself in the mirror, try to raise money from your pet, practice with a friend, or practice with a local banker. Whatever you do, don’t have your first conversation be with one of your potential investors. You’ll want to practice at least five times to work out your important speaking points and be able to listen to your counterpart to understand what is important to them so you can provide the appropriate information.