In this episode Adam Gower shares his unique career path and experiences in different industries, including real estate and startup investing.
Adam Gower is the foremost authority on real estate crowdfunding (aka syndication) and has published five books on the industry. Dr. Gower combines a lifetime of experience in real estate investment and finance with best-of-class digital marketing strategies.
The conversation covers investment decision-making and using language that resonates with investors. Adam gives valuable insights for real estate investors and those involved in capital raising.
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[02:39] – [04:42] Adam’s experience and business focus.
[07:04] – [08:45] Adam Gower learned digital marketing skills, landed his first client, and developed the most advanced digital marketing systems for real estate sponsors.
[09:22] – [13:42] Two ways the industry evolves: through technological advancements and changes in communication language.
[14:12] – [17:23] Conduct regular surveys of investors using tools like SurveyMonkey.
[18:51] – [22:53] Current state of the real estate market
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Connect with Adam:
https://www.facebook.com/GowerCrowd/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gowercrowd/
https://twitter.com/GowerCrowd
Other resources from Adam:
Book: https://hub.gowercrowd.com/nows-the-time/ (not free but just $7)
Connect with Sam Wilson
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00]:06 – [00:00:23]:11
Adam Gower
You and I might use the terms principle preservation, but what you’ll discover when you talk to your investors, they won’t use that language. They will say, I want to protect my investment. So don’t try and be clever and say we’re big on principle preservation because no one will understand it. And they’re not using that language anyway. We are focused on protecting your investment.
[00:00:23]:17 – [00:00:34]:18
Adam Gower
That’s the language they use. Use that language back at them and that’s how you will animate responses that you want in terms of getting investments.
[00:00:34]:18 – [00:00:58]:18
Sam Wilson
Adam Gower is the foremost authority on real estate crowdfunding and has published five books on the industry. Dr. Gower also combines a lifetime of experience and real estate, investment and finance with best of class Digital Marketing Strategy. Adam, welcome to the show.
[00:01:02]:18 – [00:01:05]:06
Adam Gower
Thank you for having me. Sam it’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:05]:07 – [00:01:15]:14
Sam Wilson
Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. Adam There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. You tell me, where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?
[00:01:16]:00 – [00:01:46]:20
Adam Gower
I started pulling wires for an electrician in Southern California in 1982, and that’s how I started crawling around in basements and attics with dust mites and spiders. But from there, I started raising capital from Japanese investors for multifamily ground up developments in San Diego. I ended up in Japan actually heading up Universal Studios, real estate development across Asia Pacific.
[00:01:46]:20 – [00:02:14]:22
Adam Gower
I was president of that division and in 2012 when the Jobs Act passed, coincidently I was doing some seed and angel investing actually in startups, and that’s how I learned the language of digital marketing. And from there, I have built the actually the all modesty side, the foremost marketing agency for sponsors raising capital online.
[00:02:15]:10 – [00:02:34]:02
Sam Wilson
That sounds I mean, I got, like, a really colorful lot. I can’t speak today. Colorful career. It’s good. That’s a problem here. When we’re on a podcast and I’m on my own mouth to work. But it sounds like a really colorful career all the way. Not not the 2012 till now has it been, but it almost sounds like a shift. You know, one side of the business and then something completely new. Is that is that a fair summary there?
[00:02:39]:15 – [00:04:42]:08
Adam Gower
It sure is. I actually some you know, I went through the savings and loan crisis. I was when it hit. I was in my mid-twenties, mid to late twenties. And on paper I had I was a multimillionaire. I mean, I’d invested in all the deals that I was working on and considered myself to be very wealthy and successful and and the bottom fell out and I lost everything. I really went to zero. I actually went into that. It was worse than zero. Wow. And so that was my first experience of why this time it is different is nonsensical. I think about how this time is different. And then the second go around, after I finished at the studios running their real estate and Asia Pacific was the global. Oh my goodness me. Sorry, was the global financial crisis of 2007. And I had been lucky enough to sell my entire portfolio in oh seven. So I got out, I was cash rich, no legacy issues, and I was brought into a major bank to help them clean that balance sheet. And during that period, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of commercial real estate or the commercial loans collateralized by commercial real estate developments and value added, I mean, you name it, that had all gone bad.And so I saw the way that everything that was the second time I saw how stuff can go bad. And so I just it kind of made me gun shy, to be quite honest with you. And I just decided to become a somebody that produces the shovels for the miners. So I produced that. Yeah. Outside the gold miners, only very few made money consistently in the long run. But the guys that built the shovels, they’re the ones that you still talk about today. And so that’s what I’m doing, although I do do some investing as well, just to be clear.
[00:04:42]:22 – [00:05:09]:07
Sam Wilson
Right, that is. I love that. And yeah, I can only imagine, you know, having narrowly escaped because you’re one of the few in the oh seven, oh eight or nine crisis that walked away with your shirt on. Certainly, I would say 95% of the guests that have come on lost the talk about that lost a pile of money in that period. Yeah. So you get out of that, that’s actually very lucrative.
[00:05:09]:09 – [00:05:32]:19
Adam Gower
That was actually a very lucrative period for me. I’m sure what I was doing was transacting for both the bank and then subsequently for Colony Capital, who are one of the biggest private equity funds in the world at that time. Right. Real estate price, actually. And my job was to manage these last large portfolios of non-performing loans and to sell them, right? And so I made a lot of friends because I was helping people to buy distressed deals at discounted prices.
[00:05:40]:22 – [00:06:03]:05
Sam Wilson
Right. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s that sounds right. And we could probably spend the entire show focused on that. But I really want to hear what birthed your idea. Okay. You’re going to sell shovels. You’re going to. But this is this is kind of a left turn with a brand new set of people you’re working alongside of. How did that come to pass?
[00:06:04]:10 – [00:07:03]:12
Adam Gower
Yeah, it’s funny. I was actually telling one of my sons this yesterday that sometimes know you got a passion for something, but you don’t really know where it’s headed. Hmm. And the same was true. And I learned speak Japanese. People ask me, What are you going to do with us? Well, I’ll figure that out when I speak it, right? When I got my Ph.D., people ask me what you’re going to do with that. I’ve got I don’t know. I’m going to get it and then I’ll figure out how to use it. And the same is true of digital marketing. I actually started we were we bought a house up on the Central Coast and I was commuting back and forth from L.A., actually from Beverly Hills. So we had a house there. We had one on the Central Coast. And so spending a lot of time in the car and I figured, you know, I’m going to learn. I got I suddenly got this Ph.D. I want to do a podcast. So I started listening to how to do a podcast podcast. And I didn’t really know where anything was going to lead.
[00:07:03]:18 – [00:07:04]:08
Sam Wilson
Sure.
[00:07:04]:08 – [00:08:45]:11
Adam Gower
But I learned how to produce a podcast, how to edit audio, how to build a website, how to create an email list, how to market analyst. And it started to snowball. I suddenly started finding that there were people coming to me that I didn’t know, who knew who I was, who thought I was the bee’s knees, because there was always the, you know, the few people as well. And I’m like anything at all that I have to say. But I then spoke to one of my friends who was a major sponsor, and I said, Hey, listen, I can do I can build a machine for you that attracts investors based on the models that I’ve developed for myself. Why don’t you give me a shot? And he said, Well, have you ever done it before for a sponsor? And I said, No. And he said, Oh, I give ourselves. So he was my first client. And since then, if I can just wrap up, since then we’ve developed by far the most advanced digital marketing systems for sponsors in the industry. Nobody comes close and our clients manage over 35 billion, have over 35 billion of AOL and have probably raised and I say this now cautiously, I know they’ve raised at least 100 million because I have them on video saying that. But I don’t have on video what they’ve really raised. And that is probably in excess of $1,000,000,000 in real estate equity capital. So we’ve we that’s how we grew really was not really knowing what direction we were in and just going with the market and serving our clients basically what they need. Yeah.
[00:08:45]:20 – [00:09:04]:11
Sam Wilson
How, how much of what you do is just constantly in flux. I feel like there’s this, this constant moving thing of like even, you know, I have a somebody that works for me, can’t think of what our title is at the moment. Golly, I told you, I can’t speak and I can’t think. It’s a tough day here.
[00:09:04]:11 – [00:09:12]:12
Adam Gower
On the show. So drink that does it. You know, some that’s the problem. The only problem with that is I never know if it’s too much or too little.
[00:09:13]:17 – [00:09:22]:12
Sam Wilson
Well, that that would be an electrolyte drink here today several of those and maybe that’s maybe that’s what’s wrong the salts off in my head. No, but.
[00:09:22]:17 – [00:13:42]:19
Adam Gower
I think I can answer your question. I know what you’re asking. And at my my drink of choice is heavy caffeine in the morning. So I’m hyper amped. So you ask me about, you know, what, what kind of variables or how how does the industry evolve? There are two ways that it does that basically. Sure. That are tech technology variances that are constantly changing, are constantly being upgraded, constantly. There are new opportunities to, you know, for tech platforms and techniques to exploit to maximize your performance. And we stay on top of all of those. We have a large network of developers who we work with. We have an inner circle, we share ideas, we explore everything, we test everything on the gold crowd dot com website. And if it works, we roll it out as clients, so we stay ahead that way. But if you are not a tech person, there is another profoundly important flux in the market that happens all the time, sometimes with much bigger impacts. And funnily enough, some this is what you and I touched on in our pre podcast chat and that’s is the language of communication. So you have to as a kind of basic, basic rule, you need to be communicating with your network at least once a month. We did an investor sentiment survey at the end of last year and you got to be sending out newsletters at least once a month. And if you’re if you’ve got deals that you’re trying to raise money for, if you’re sending out newsletters, if you’re doing paid advertising, it really doesn’t matter. Or you’re on social media, LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook. It doesn’t really matter what the medium is that you’re using to communicate, you have to be tuned in to what investors primary concern is today and now. So you can use the approach language to draw them into your ecosystem, into your network. And I will tell you that at the beginning of 2022, just to underscore this, I’ll give you some very specific counsel now on this. At the beginning of 2022, you could still be talking about earning passive income and building wealth long term. And it’s like falling off a log raising money since interest rates have gone up since the Russian invasion of of the Ukraine, since cap rates are going up, prices are coming down, the stock market has fallen, inflation is eating away at savings. Home prices are coming down, investors are feeling less wealthy and they are migrating to a principle preservation investment strategy. They are primarily focused on not losing money. So you have to use language that encourages your investors to understand that you are taking a defensive posture with your investing today. Explain how you’re doing that and that’s how you’re going to draw them in. So, by the way, there is a second form of a second type, second language pattern that’s working, particularly well at the moment. And that’s, again, something that we talked about this on the live podcast, remarkably as hesitant as investors are today, and I’m talking about passive investors, our accredited investors to invest in deals. They can always be in, motivated to unlock their wallets when they think they are getting a bargain. So if you have distressed deals, if you’re able to find a deal that has some kind of distress component, the seller’s forced to sell for some reason, whatever the story is of the deal, particularly if it’s some kind of forced exit that has yielded a better the market price, that is the kind of language that you want to be using in your marketing because that is how you will activate an investor base that is otherwise sitting passively waiting for opportunities like that.
[00:13:43]:23 – [00:14:11]:15
Sam Wilson
I like I like that a lot that you’ve hit on some really I think valuable things there. And when you said the primary concern today, I wrote the question how so? You’ve hit on a lot of things. I think that investors are thinking, are there other ways that or other mediums or channels that you’re using that kind of let investors tell you what it is that their primary concerns are as well to kind of help craft that?
[00:14:12]:19 – [00:17:23]:21
Adam Gower
That’s a really good question. So as a digital so what we do with our clients is we encourage them to communicate, as I mentioned to you regularly. Yeah, that means no less than once a month, right? Periodically. It’s actually really useful for you to conduct a survey. Just conducts a survey sent out an email. You know, if you’re doing a monthly or weekly or biweekly newsletter that goes out to all your investors. Yeah, every six months or so. Whatever you want to know the answers, what’s going on, conduct a survey and say, well, no newsletter. In fact, says another Pro-tip in the subject line, which is what people drives people. To open the emails, use the subject line. I have a small favor to ask. Everybody opens those emails, but that’s just the coolest thing. So I have a small favor to ask. We like to set them up. We’ve sat them out with Google Surveys or SurveyMonkey. I like SurveyMonkey because they provide you some nice analytics. Afterwards, you pay for a month, like on Dropbox to get more than 100 it some functionality, it’s worth it. Just send out a survey to your investors and ask them. Actually ask them I want strong. But here’s the thing to be really careful of when you do it. When you build a survey, make sure that the questions you ask elicit answers that are actionable. Don’t ask questions that are like, okay, interesting, but what can we do with these answers? You can’t do it. So think ahead. If we get a set of answers to this question, how will we use those answers? So, for example, one thing that you could ask is, oh, and also trying to use multiple choice. So what’s driving your investment decision at the moment? What’s your biggest concern is inflation? Is it wall is a politics is just ask a series and then always include a other option that somebody can fill out. So that’s that’s another kind of pro-tip it’s just helps people move through faster and then always also include an open ended at least one open ended answer that doesn’t have a checkbox, right? So whatever. It’s I mean, just pick one question like that and then gather those answers and that’s they will tell you. The other thing is that once you get those answers from your prospects or from your list, use their language. So, for example, you and I might use the terms principle preservation, but what you’ll discover when you talk to your investors, they won’t use that language. They will say, I want to protect my investment, so don’t try and be clever and say we’re big on principle preservation because no one will understand it and they’re not using that language anyway. We are focused on protecting your investment. That’s the language they use. Use that language back at them and that’s how you will animate responses that you want in terms of getting investments.
[00:17:24]:12 – [00:17:42]:16
Sam Wilson
That that’s really sound, sound advice because we do we get lost in our own little world of phrases and, you know, acronyms and all this stuff. And then, you know, the everyday investor, they need their care and they just get confused by it and they’re like, okay, this is this is stupid. And they just stop.
[00:17:42]:16 – [00:17:53]:21
Adam Gower
Well, you know what they say don’t that they say that if you want if you want to impress people, use fancy language. If you want to raise money, dumb it down. You know how to use fancy language.
[00:17:55]:05 – [00:18:08]:11
Sam Wilson
I like that a lot. So you’ve built this platform, you’ve mastered digital marketing on the capital raising side of things. I think, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve written, what would you say, five books on the dot.
[00:18:08]:11 – [00:18:17]:09
Adam Gower
I think five now have five at least. Yeah. Five maybe six six actually. But five, five about commercial real estate investing.
[00:18:17]:15 – [00:18:46]:08
Sam Wilson
That that is really, really interesting. I want to get your thoughts on really where we are in the economy. I know you’ve mentioned, you know, talking about how investors appetites have changed, how raising money maybe a year and a half ago was like falling off a log. Things are slowing down. You mentioned earlier you just you kind of chuckled when you heard you said when they say the phrase this time is different and you kind of just laugh at them a little bit like you’re a bunch of idiots was kind of what the summary laugh is, what I, what I heard there. So give me kind of your thoughts on those three things I just threw out, if you don’t mind.
[00:18:51]:11 – [00:22:03]:06
Adam Gower
Yeah, okay. I’m not sure if I can remember all of them, but there are a couple of things. So you asked what’s going on in the market, by the way, just to come back to this this time is different. I didn’t laugh. I actually cried in 1989 when the market collapsed or 99, 89, 90. I actually believed what everyone was saying about this time is different. The San Diego was in San Diego. The economy is booming. People are migrating here. Prices are going up. This time is different. Real estate prices are never going to come down. I really believed it. So it was a hard shock when I realized, no, actually things do come down and they come down hard when they do. So just to correct that now I know there’s no such thing as this time is different. That’s a whole different story. Two things you asked about. So what’s going on in the market at the moment? So you mentioned that your listeners primarily are professional real estate investors, people who are raising money like capital raises, looking for capital to to, you know, to finance the deals. So there’s two things going on. First of all, you’ve got a lot of distress. I don’t care what anybody says. Everybody is starting to sweat bullets about interest rates, resets and debt and interest caps expiring. That’s there’s a lot of stress out there in the market. And so the first thing that that’s sponsors needs to be thinking about is risk rescue capital, maybe putting in some equity to try to push down that leverage if your banks will allow you to do that, because they’re going to want you to start paying down debt before they’ll refinance it. And it’s going to be very costly money as well. So you are going to need equity, end of story, right? Probably in Q3. Q4 is one, it’s going to really hurt. And the second thing is opportunities. The flip side of that is people that are, you know, sponsors who have who are new to the game, who have figured out how to do multifamily investing from, you know, an online education program or something within the last ten years. They’re going to lose a lot of assets and those assets are going to be considered distressed. They will sell at below market. They will, but they’re going to be tricky to unwrap as well, especially if you’re buying notes. But what it does speak to his opportunity to buy at below market period of wealth transfer both of these events or both of these factors in the economy require capital. You have to have equity capital and the best people to get that from today is individual investors, not institutions, not family offices. Everyone’s on the sidelines, individual investors that your best alternative source for equity capital, both to save your own deals, buy it through recaps and also to capitalize on deal flow when distressed deals start coming down the pipe.
[00:22:04]:00 – [00:22:52]:22
Sam Wilson
Yeah, that’s it. I mean, that goes back to your own personal experience in the 0708 period of being cash rich and seeing opportunity when it presented itself at that point in time. And it sounds like you think that’s kind of where we’re heading again, which I couldn’t disagree with you on that front by by any stretch. This has been absolutely fascinating. I’ve learned so much from you today from the digital marketing standpoint, from just how you your your experience both in commercial real estate and then also master digital marketing, talking about things that investors are concerned about today, how to discover what our investors are concerned about today and how to speak to that. So many things here to learn from Adam. Certainly appreciate you coming on the show today. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?
[00:22:53]:15 – [00:23:22]:23
Adam Gower
Thanks for asking, Sam. So really the best way is just to go to the website Gallup crowd dot com that’s gio we are crowd galore. Crowd Dotcom. There are over a million words of content on sites and totally everything you need. There’s all kinds of free courses and and training and sign up for the newsletter we have a newsletter, goes out every Wednesday covers the real estate syndication industry is free can always unsubscribe, but that’s the best way to find me.
[00:23:23]:12 – [00:23:26]:22
Sam Wilson
Adam, thank you again so much for coming on the show today. I certainly appreciate it.
[00:23:28]:09 – [00:23:30]:13
Adam Gower
Thanks for having me, Sam. It’s been a real pleasure.
[00:23:30]:13 – [00:23:51]:23
Sam Wilson
Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.
