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The sponsor I was about to wire to was the guest speaker at my own mastermind

I pay a bit over eleven thousand a year for an LP group. Twenty something people who write checks into other people's deals, monthly calls, one meetup a year in a conference room with bad coffee. My wife thinks it's a lot of money for a group chat. Most months I think she's right.

Last fall the meetup had a guest operator, mid sized value add multifamily shop, sunbelt, second fund. I already had a subscription agreement from them sitting in a folder on my desk with the signature page half filled in. I had done the work I usually do, checked the T-12 against the offering, read the operating agreement twice, called two references they gave me. I was maybe a week from funding.

So the guy presents, and it's a good presentation, and then a member I'd barely spoken to all weekend asks him, very flatly, why fund one paused distributions in the second quarter and why the investor letter about it went out eleven weeks later. No edge in her voice at all. She just wanted the date.

The operator answered. It was a reasonable answer, rate cap renewal, a lease up that ran slow. But he answered the first half of the question and never touched the eleven weeks, and when she asked again he said he'd follow up offline. Nobody in the room said anything. I looked around and about six people were writing.

I didn't fund. Not because of the pause, pauses happen. The eleven weeks is what stayed with me, because I'd be one of the people waiting on that letter.

What I actually paid for that year was one woman who reads investor letters closely enough to remember the date on one. I don't know how you'd price that in advance. I do know I never would have asked that question myself, because I'd have felt rude asking it in front of thirty people.

10 replies

The rudeness thing is exactly it. I've sat on calls with a question in my mouth and swallowed it because there were people in the room I wanted to like me. Someone else asking it out loud is worth money to me and I hate that it is.

canton, the part I'd want to know is whether she'd have asked it if the group cost two hundred bucks a year instead of eleven thousand. I've been in cheap groups where nobody asks anything because there's no cost to just leaving.

Every program I've looked at sells the content. Modules, templates, a deal calculator. Nobody sells "there will be one person in the room who reads the footnotes," probably because you can't promise it.

The eleven weeks would bother me more than the pause too. A pause is an operating outcome. Eleven weeks of silence is a decision somebody made on purpose.

On the build side we called that the second question. Anybody can answer the first one, they rehearsed it. The guy who follows up on the same question twice is the one who's actually done the job.

I'm still deciding where to put money and this is the first argument for a paid group I've found convincing, which is annoying, because I was hoping to conclude they were all a waste. keystone's point stands though, I have no idea how you'd screen for a group that has that woman in it.

Out where I look at deals there's no room and no coffee. Nearest thing is a guy at the co-op who's owned eleven rentals since 1988 and answers about a third of what you ask him. Free, and I've probably learned more from the third he answers.