10 Secrets to Raising Millions & Building a Massive Network

Newsletter · Aug 18, 2024

🍩 Fresh from Sunday Doughnuts. A new batch lands in your inbox every week. Subscribe free →

An entrepreneur's recipe for sweet success

3.5min Read

Today I'm going to walk you through a real life story of how one Tweet that I read has led to a business partnership and potential future acquisitions of multiple businesses.

After that, I'm going to give you 10 incredibly effective ways to raise money and grow your network.

But before that, a word from the sponsor 👇

Me! I write these emails because I LOVE entrepreneurship and I want to share with you as much as I possibly can. But I think I can do better... so I'm about to launch something REALLY cool.

It's going to include videos, podcast episodes, step by step guides, actionable tips, interviews directly from experts and SPECIFIC courses on EXACTLY how to build, buy and scale your business. Not to mention other services to support you and your business every step of the way.

That was a lot. To summarize, it'll be One platform, all you need to build your business.

Click here to get notified for early access and exclusive content

10 Secrets To Raising Millions

I was scrolling through Twitter about a year ago and the algorithm hit. I found a post by a dude named Matt Ragland.

It caught me right away. “I have 3 kids, a full time job, workout 4x / week…”

@mattragland

I was hooked.

I read through the entire post and resonated with all of it. I immediately started clicking through his page. I subscribed to his email and started watching his YouTube videos.

This was my kind of guy. I became an instant fan boy. Not gonna lie, there were a ton of similarities. I was geeking out.

I was just starting up my newsletters and needed to figure out a newsletter service. Matt used Convertkit AND was one of their founding employees, so I figured why not. I liked his stuff. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.

Around that time, an email from Matt came through about a podcast that was about to launch from the founder of ConvertKit, Nathan Barry.

I liked Matt, I liked ConvertKit, I’d probably like this podcast. And I did.

“Billion Dollar Creator” launched and I binged it.

A couple months in they started talking about live podcast recordings they were going to have. I didn’t give it much thought, or even know where they’d be doing them.

But then, I saw an email from my man, Matt, saying he was going to be at one of the recordings in Venice Beach, CA.

THATS CLOSE TO ME!

I had to go!

I worked out the logistics and made it happen. It was brutal. Long day at work, straight from work into the LA traffic to Venice Beach over an hour away. But I got there with enough time to mingle a bit before the show. ✅

I talked to about 5 people (at the most). One of those 5 owned a bookkeeping company. It JUST so happened that I was looking in the accounting space for an acquisition.

Following the show, I stayed in touch with her. We had several calls and emails and are very much on the same page with a lot of different aspects of the businesses we have and the growth we’re looking for.

Fast forward to now, her and I are partnering with growing an existing business I have, as well as working to tackle another acquisition. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

This story is a long example of how ONE TWEET can change your life.

But it’s not just isolated to a Tweet.

That’s the way Matt got his message out that day, but for you it might be just having a conversation at a conference you attend, hitting reply to an email newsletter that spoke to you or even hosting a poker night and inviting some new peeps.

From conversations in those exact situations, I’ve bought a storage facility and started an overseas staffing agency. Its CRAZY how much you can accomplish when you actively pursue opportunity.

Networking isn’t just for extroverts. In fact I think the best networking is done in small circles. 1:1 even better.

Networking is a direct line to opportunity. And in most cases, what we’re seeking in opportunity is 💲.

With that, here are

10 Tips/ Tricks to Networking and Raising 💲 for Whatever It Is You Might Want to Do.

Start with your own personal network. Don’t underestimate the power of the network that you already have. Even if you don’t know someone directly who can help you, often THEY know people who CAN.
Most people either don’t know where to look or where to start with anything acquisition or start up related. YOU DO. The fact that you’re in the game is half the battle. Don’t be afraid to position yourself as such. This could mean making sure your social media profiles reflect your expertise OR just adding an elevator line to your introductions with people.

Elevator Line:

Stranger:

Hey, great to meet you, what do you do for a living?

You:

I’m working on a few projects, but right now we’re in the Mergers and Acquisitions space working to acquire other businesses specifically in accounting. We have other businesses in our portfolio but we've been focused on accounting for the past 6 months. Lots of growth in that industry.

THE MONEY IS OUT THERE. In the trillions.

Databases like this one are available to the public.

This literally gives you the name, number and email for companies that invest in small businesses. It shows you the investment type and the avg. amount invested. 🤯

Need a partner? Find an investment group. Google search with these terms:
Private Equity Investor Group
Private Investor Group
Accredited Investor Group
Angel Investor Group
ETA Investor Group
Search Investor Group
Search Fund Investor Group
SBA Investor Group
Real Estate Investor Group
Go to at least one conference a year. You don’t need a business card. Use an app like Blinq an let people scan it and save it to their phone right there.

Talk like a pro

Say “Capital” Not “Money” People get weird about the word money. Capital means the same thing, just use that.

“Financing” or “equity” also work, depending on the situation

Avoid needing CAPITAL all together by getting creative with what you’re doing
If you have a start up, validate your project first. Zappos started by the founder buying taking pictures of shoes from a shoe store, posting them online and then buying the shoes WHEN someone bought them online.
If you’re trying to acquire a business, understand deal structure; SEED deals, baseline deals, Acquihires, business giveaways, etc. We’ll go deeper into these later for sure.
Sometimes you might be doing all the right things, just not ENOUGH of them.

Alex Hormozi illustrated this perfectly here:

@AlexHormozi

JUST TAKE ACTION. This is how you take action and how important it is to have a network to validate at the speed of light.

@mhp_guy

I realize that was a firehose of information. The main takeaway here is this:

Building your network and raising capital starts by simply putting yourself in the path of opportunity. I gave you a bunch of different tricks, but you really only need one.

Just like the example with the Tweet. That ONE post is all it took for me to start on a path that led to an awesome business partnership.

The opportunities are there, you just have to be willing and ready to receive.

If you want help figuring out where you should start with raising money or building your network, let me know. I'd love to introduce you to people in my network OR chat about how you can build your personal brand.

You're an OG subscriber, so it's on the house!

Until next time...

Stay in the fight,

If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe HERE