Welcome to a new episode. Today we are joined by Jay Conner, President of The Private Money Authority! Jay’s journey from Real Estate Investor to Private Money Expert is nothing short of remarkable. He’s ready to share his secrets to success.
Join us as Jay dives deep into his own experiences, recounting the frustrations and setbacks he faced early in his investing career. Like many investors, Jay found himself hitting roadblocks with traditional financing methods, feeling constrained and out of control. But he didn’t stay down for long.
Discover how Jay turned his setbacks into opportunities by tapping into the world of private money. With his innovative strategies for raising capital, Jay amassed an impressive $2,150,000 in private funds within just a few months, revolutionizing his real estate investing career.
In this episode, Jay reveals the keys to unlocking private money for your own real estate deals. From attracting private lenders to building trust and successful relationships, Jay shares invaluable insights that can supercharge your investment journey.
Learn how to leverage networking events to generate referrals and discover safe and secure investment opportunities that maximize returns. Jay’s proven methods have propelled him to 7-figure profits annually, and now he’s ready to help you achieve your own quantum leap in real estate investing.
Don’t miss out on this exclusive opportunity to learn from the master himself. Tune in now and discover the power of private money with Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority!
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
00:23 – Guest Intro: Jay Conner
01:52 – Jay Conner’s most recent book
05:28 – Strategies for attracting private lenders
10:24 – Building relationships and generating referrals through networking events
14:50 – The success of a private lending program
20:32 – Building trust and successful relationships in private lending
24:18 – Strategies for finding safe and secure investment opportunities
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
CONNECTING WITH THE GUEST
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/privatemoneyauthority/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/privatemoneyauthority/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfl6O7pRhyX5R-rRuSnK6w
Intro: Welcome to the BigMike Fund Podcast. Where you learn about advanced wealth building strategies from real estate investing to creating massive ROI and securing retirement profits. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab a notepad, and lean in. Because Big Mike has got the mic. Starting now.
Mike Zlotnik: Welcome to the BigMike Fund Podcast. I’m the Big Mike. I’m Mike Zlotnik, and today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome back Jay Conner.
Jay Conner: Hello there, Mike. It’s great to be back with you to talk about my favorite subject, that being private money. And I appreciate you having me come back on.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, thanks, Jay, for coming. I know you’ve been busy traveling. We didn’t get a chance to connect at the last CG, and it’s been a number of CGs. But we’re both still members. I was able to come out. And I want to crack this joke. You asked me before the call, what did I learn at the last CG? What was the most interesting thing, the most exciting thing? And as I told you, I’m repeating for the audience.
Because it happens in San Diego, it happens on the West Coast, a time difference. I get really excited about the pickleball in the morning, playing with the guys, at 6 a.m. We go to play pickleball and it’s 9 o’clock New York time, it becomes super easy. And of course we do real estate, of course we learn, but that’s the exciting part, 6 o’clock in the morning, pickleball.
Jay Conner: I love it. I love it. Well, it gives you a reason to get up early out there in California. Yeah.
Mike Zlotnik: Yes, it’s obviously very easy because of the time difference. In any case, yeah, the sunsets are beautiful. You don’t get them here. That’s one thing that they get over there. You don’t get here, beautiful sunsets.
Jay Conner: Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Mike Zlotnik: So let’s get back to the raising private money show. First of all, you got a book out. So what’s the new book? Yes. Would you be so kind as to share with folks and how can they get a copy?
Jay Conner: Absolutely. I’m so excited about my most recent book. It’s called “Where to Get the Money Now”. Where to Get the Money Now is all about raising money for your real estate deals.
Regardless of your real estate, whether it’s single-family houses or commercial or whatever. And this book is not a downloadable eBook. It’s an actual book book and you know, believe it or not, the United States postal service is still in business. So I actually priority mail three day priority mail, this book and on Amazon, it’s 20 bucks, but to your listeners and audience Mike, I’ll give it to you for free, just cover the postage and here’s how you get it.
I’ll autograph it. I’ll ship it out to you. And it goes over step by step, how I raised over $2 million in 90 days when I was cut off from the banks. So the URL that I’ll ship it to you is Jay Conner, jayconner.com/book. Again, that’s Jay Conner, jayconner.com/book, and I’ll priority mail it right on out to you.
Mike Zlotnik: Thank you kindly for the gracious gift to the audience. So, I’m sure some people will reach out and ask for the book. But let’s talk about some of the things that you have out in the book. Of course, just give a preview. You’re not trying to educate a book in the 20-minute podcast. But just to share enough of some of the cool things that you are teaching folks for the book.
Jay Conner: Sure. So, there’s multiple ways to actually raise private money and get the word out. And you know, it’s interesting ever since I started raising private money all the way back in 2009, I have not asked anybody for money. You know, the traditional way to get funding for your deals is there’s applications and of course, credit score income, et cetera.
And so how I have gone about raising private money is leading with education. So, I call it putting on my private money. Teacher hat. My private money teacher hat. So, I’ve got right now, 47 private lenders, individuals that are loaning money on our real estate deals. And interestingly enough, not one of those 47 individuals had ever heard of private money or private lending until I taught them until I educated them about it and how they could earn high rates of returns safely and securely.
And also interestingly enough, over half. Of those 47 individuals are using their retirement funds that they already had and they were not happy with the volatility in the stock market or the returns they were getting and so they moved and I taught them how to do this they moved those retirement funds over to a self-directed IRA company IRS to where then they could loan money out their retirement money out, either tax free or tax deferred by using their retirement funds.
So, we’ve just got so many private lenders that were, that are, have been recently unhappy with the volatility of the stock market. And the beautiful thing about private money is when they loan it out on our real estate deals. It’s just like putting money in the bank. They know exactly what the rate of return is going to be on their investment.
And of course, they get all that principle back when they cash out. But back to your question, what are some ways or, or, you know, techniques and strategies that I point out in the book? Well, there’s all kinds of ways to get the word out to people that have not been familiar with private money and private lending.
One of my favorite ways and very quick ways is putting on pride, what we call private lender luncheons or events. Well, I’ll invite 20 people to a lunch and I’ll feed them lunch and I’ll take 20 minutes to do my private lender presentation, which by the way, that presentation is in this book as well that you can just duplicate.
And it’s a, it’s a, there’s no pitching of any deals. Educating people on what private money is, how they can get high rates of return that are safe and secured because we’re not borrowing unsecured funds. We’re backing all those notes for real estate. So, the book goes into detail on how to have a successful private lender luncheon or an event. And another way that the book goes into talking about is how you can expand your market, your connections, your network so quickly. And one of my favorites is business networking, international organization that was founded by Ivan Meisner. We have a local B and I right here in Moorhead city, North Carolina, and I’ve raised millions of dollars.
From just being a member of business networking international, because the way that works, it’s not a civic group. It’s an actual organization where you join and you are to provide leads for business, for your other members and you have your other members providing you leads. So I’ve just had so much private money.
I’ve been able to raise by being active in business networking international. And so that’s just a couple of tips that the book goes into detail, the presentation, how to teach it, how to grow your network and how to attract private money without ever asking for private money.
Mike Zlotnik: Wow. That was a lot.
I appreciate that. So BNI. You’ve talked about them in the past, I think, and I guess that’s been always your success. So, you got that pat down. Lunch and learn or just, just these luncheons are a powerful tool. I agree with you. It’s either lunch or dinner. But how do you get folks to, to, to come out?
Because at the end of the day, what are you trying to do? You’re just trying to get them to know, like, and trust you. So, and that takes a while. The book is a tool. When they come out to any of the events, if they are just there physically, they’re listening to you speak or one of your team members, ultimately, you’re building, building that relationship.
But how do you get people in there? That’s the quick question. How do you get the right people in there?
Jay Conner: Yeah, well, I actually in the book I’ve got a script that you can use to actually call up the people invite them So I don’t send Written invitations. We actually just pick up the phone, call them. And here’s a phrase that is like magic.
And the phrase is, I need your help. I need your help. And what I’m asking people to help me with. Is to have a successful luncheon where I’m going to be teaching people how to earn high rates of return safely and securely. And I’ll tell them, I’ll say, look, even if you’re not looking to, you know, invest money in, in, in a, in a different way, I just need your help to be there and help support this luncheon and maybe ask a question or two to where the, to where everybody else can feel like they’re engaged.
And so that’s the whole framing of “invite them”. And I am sincere, even if they’re not interested over the phone and investing or having any investment capital, that’s another person in a seat that can hear my story and help me get the word out. That’s all there is to it. The more people know. About what we’re doing, even if they’re not interested in it themselves, then that’s another way that people can just help me spread the word.
Mike Zlotnik: That’s an interesting approach. You’re asking for help. Of course, who will say, no, I need your help. Most people will respond to that kind of a plea.
Jay Conner: Yeah. And in addition to needing your help. I want to feed you lunch.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah. Wine them and dino, at least get them a nice lunch. No, it makes sense. And you know, it’s kind of funny that you said that we’ve, we’ve been doing this kind of elbow to elbow, belly to belly dinners, or we’ve done lunch and learns at the same way.
That’s the best way to network with people, to connect. You really just need to need to connect before you can do anything. If you don’t connect with them, there’s nothing there. But if you connect, you have a chance at least to have a second conversation.
Jay Conner: Exactly. And you know and, and the book also goes into this as well. When you put on one of these luncheons, it’s very, very important to have your team members there. I mean, I mean, you said the magic phrase, Mike. You want people to know you like you and trust you and to help your credibility as far as being an actual person that’s actually in business doing deals, then I’m going to have my CPA there.
I’m going to have my real estate attorney there. I’m going to have my realtor there. And just as important, if not more important, if you’ve already got some private lenders or. You know, banker relationships, hard money lender relationships, people that you’ve done business with, have them there to share their stories about what it’s like to do business with you type of thing. And so having your team to build your credibility is really, really important.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, that’s a great point. You just got to ask the question, how has your experience been working with Jay and then they get up and then they get a chance to say a couple of words and that’s your testimonial without asking for a testimonial.
Jay Conner: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, what also happens is referrals start to come automatically, like I’ve, whenever I’ve put on a private letter luncheon, the word gets around not only quicker, but I’ll have people calling me up saying, Hey, I heard about this luncheon you put on. And my friend of mine was there and was telling me about it. Tell me more about it. So it’s a great way to like automatically generate more referrals coming your way as well.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I’m just curious. Do you, so besides the book, do you run an educational serious trainings, masterminds to, to do what you do? And I’m just, I’m just curious. I don’t know. I know you, you, you go around on a circuit you travel, but do you run your own mastermind?
Jay Conner: Yes. So, I’ve got my own mastermind right now. We’ve got about a, well, exactly. We got 43 members. In the mastermind group. And I also have my own podcast. So, for all of you that are listening to this show more conversations about private money, go to your favorite platform, Spotify, iTunes, whatever it is, and just search for my podcast, which is.
Titled raising private money. Imagine that. So, raising private money with Jay Conner, very easy to find that show. Follow me there. And we do two shows a week and we release them on early Monday mornings and early Thursday mornings. And I always have amazing guests on there that they’re talking about how they’re raising private money as well.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, I appreciate that. Jay. Next question. So. Have you had to change the terms that you’re paying to your investors? And what are the terms that that you’re paying? And the reason I asked the question is the interest rates environment has changed quite a bit. So, you’ve been doing this for a long, long time.
And a few years ago, you were paying them probably, I don’t know, 10%. Are you still paying them 10 percent or are you paying more now? I’m just curious. Well, what has changed and what hasn’t changed? And if you, if you’re an investor wearing a hat today and you are getting 10 percent before, should you be asking to get a little more, right? I’m just curious, your point of view.
Jay Conner: Sure. Well, interestingly enough, ever since 2009, I’ve been full time in real estate since 2003. I started working with private lenders. Back in 2009 when I was cut off from the banks like the rest of the world, but interestingly enough, I’ve been paying 8 percent in first position.
Ever since 2009, I’ve been paying 10 percent on smaller amounts of money in junior positions. But I still pay the same thing and people other real estate investors sort of scratched their head. And it’s like before COVID. The 12-month CD certificate of deposit got down to 0. 17%. And now that same 12-month CD, you can get four and a half percent or 5% as well.
So, it would seem as though you would be paying more. But you know what? All 47 of my private lenders still like 8 percent and 10 percent better than 4. 5 percent and 5%. So, I’ve been paying the same program ever since 2009.
Mike Zlotnik: So, you haven’t changed the program and nobody’s really gotten upset about this or said Hey, when the interest rates were zero, the bank paid less than 1 percent and I got 8%, which made a big difference. And now I should be getting 10 and 11 and eight is still better than five or five and a half.
Jay Conner: That’s right. I’ve had one private lender out of 47 asked the question and I said, well, if you can get 8 percent down at the bank, go for it. Otherwise stick with me. So, they stuck with me,
Mike Zlotnik: see, yeah, that’s kind of a funny, you’ve got them to study any solution that, that is good enough in, I guess, low interest rate environment and high interest rate environment still gets them to a good place.
Jay Conner: Exactly. Now you see, if any of these 47 private lenders had already been private lenders and were, you know, if that was like their thing, then now that becomes a negotiation conversation, right? Yeah, but, but I don’t negotiate with my people that I teach what private lending is and what my program is.
Here’s the program. And, and again, I don’t ask if, I mean, if they like the program, they tell me that they’re interested in how much they got to work with. And that’s great. And another reason that I’ve been able to stay at 8 percent and no points and no extension fees with these people. The reason I’ve been able to stay at that.
Is because there’s so much money out there that’s available. They don’t know where to put it. I mean, they’re sick and tired of the volatility of the stock market. And so I have a problem today. I got more than I can use. Right. So I actually refer some of my private lenders to my mastermind group so that they can, you know, have their money put to work. And it’s just not. Sitting on the sidelines, not earning anything.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean I guess a group, obviously you got to vet the people who you’re referring but from an investor perspective, if you’re taking them from no previous Experience to 8 percent that they did. That’s what they know.
And if they are professional or hard money lender, of course, then either you can’t work with them. They’ll, their expectations already too difficult, or I guess you can negotiate with them to whatever degree.
Jay Conner: That’s right.
Mike Zlotnik: And most of the capital that you take from me, from your private sources are deal by deal.
So, you, you would do a flip, a fixer flip, and then you put them on a specific asset, a specific market, and just kind of one at a time, you’re not pulling the money, you’re not doing 10 investors into one deal.
Jay Conner: Correct. Correct. So, everything that we do with single family houses. Is what we call one offs, so they’re not investing their money in a fund. They are Loaning money on a asset. They got their own promissory note their own deed of trust So yeah, it’s a one off.
Mike Zlotnik: Let’s do and do you do anything with pooled money any kind of fund or this is not your cup of tea?
Jay Conner: Not doing anything with typically, of course, if you’re going to do commercial or you’re going to do apartments or whatever, you’re going to do a fund. And, you know, I got a couple of friends that raise money in a fund for their single family house business, but everything I do is deal by deal.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah. In many ways it’s easier and simpler. Obviously if the. Properties are small enough, well, I mean, not necessarily small, but small enough to be able to get a single lender on a single property.
It’d be very different, obviously, if these properties were pretty expensive. But in a single asset type of market, where property, what is a property? I’m just curious, what’s a typical loan you borrow? What’s the size of a loan in terms of dollars and how fast do you repay them?
Jay Conner: Sure. So the length of the note is typically two years, but I’m typically not going to use the money more than nine months or a year, depending on how big the renovation is.
Pretty much every property we buy needs renovation. That’s why we’re getting it at such a huge discount, but our median price right here in this area. It’s now $350,000. That’s up a hundred thousand over the past three years as it is in so many markets. But I’ve got two houses that I just put on the market.
Both are under contract. One of them is under contract for 369,000. The other one is a very, very small house. We just went under contract on that for two hundred twenty-eight thousand five hundred dollars. So, on the low end right now, the low end is two fifty, and that’s really on the low end, and the super high end is seven hundred thousand. Most of them are falling in the three hundreds.
Mike Zlotnik: So that’s interesting. So when you do deals of this size, these are, I guess, exit prices for, or, or after repair value,
Jay Conner: right?
Mike Zlotnik: You’re borrowing less than that. What’s your typical discount? And do you have a hard money lenders or private lenders ever give you a hard time where you have to bring some skin in the game or limit your LTV?
Jay Conner: Right. So the maximum that I borrow is 75 percent of the after repaired value. So I keep it very, very conservative. For our private lenders, obviously they got a lot of trust in me because I’m getting all the purchase price up front. I’m getting all the rehab money up front. So they’re counting on me to make sure that house gets rehabbed.
And you know, renovated as it’s supposed to be. And of course I got a track record. I’ve been doing this with private lenders since 2009 and not one of my private lenders in all these years has not received. Every penny that was promised to them and on time, right? So there’s a lot of, a lot of relationship involved, you know, in these deals with the private lenders. And as I’ve heard you call it before Mike. This is relationship money.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, of course it’s a relationship money and they giving you the 8 percent where the market could be, you know, 12, 13. They, they’re trusting you. And I assume because of that trust, are you paying them monthly or you balloon most of these loans?
Jay Conner: I leave it up to them. Some of our private lenders are elderly and they’re actually counting on the monthly income to help subsidize their income. So, we pay them a monthly. Now, as I mentioned, when we started out over half of our private lenders are using. Their retirement funds. I don’t pay that monthly because that entry is interest is not going to them.
It’s going to their self-directed IRA account. So, I’ll pay them either quarterly or semiannual, but I don’t accrue anything past semiannual. Cause I don’t like those big interest checks.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So you actually pay them if not immediately, then there, you know, core.
Jay Conner: But as you also mentioned, we can structure these deals as well. If I’m only going to be using the money for six months or nine months from start to finish. If the private lender doesn’t need the income to live off of, then we can accrue the interest and not make any monthly payments and then just When we sell the property, we pay them all their principal back and the accrued interest since we’ve been using the money.
Mike Zlotnik: Are you compounding that on monthly or no? I’m just curious. It’s simple, just simple interest, no compounding. Of course, they’re better off getting the cash, but if they don’t want the cash, you, of course, you, you prefer to pay them on, on, on, you know, sure. Make, make sense. Any final thoughts, any other comments?
Obviously pretty simple, straightforward, really down to the ground but it works. And if you think, like you mentioned, asking for help is super powerful. You’re not selling anything. You’re just, just, just getting folks to get to know you as a, as a friendly way to connect.
Jay Conner: Yeah, when you’re raising your own private money, well, first of all, my advice, it would be established as many relationships as you can with funding sources, such as Mike right here with Tempo family have relationship with Mike, right?
I mean, the risk you run of doing business with individuals is you go to fund a deal. Maybe that money’s disappeared and they put it elsewhere. Well, if you’re doing business with Mike and you, and you’ve got a relationship with Mike, you can 100 percent count on that. Money’s going to be there, right?
You don’t have to worry about that disappearance. So, there’s, there’s benefits to having relationships with your institutional lenders, such as Mike. And there’s benefits to having a relationship with your, you know, individuals, private money lenders as well. And the biggest advice I could, I could give from experience is if you’re going to go out and you’re raising money from individuals, do not try to pitch deals and talk private money in the same conversation.
I never do that because desperation, here’s a writer down or Mike desperation’s got a smell to it. The worst time to be raising private money is when you need it for a deal, right? And so lead with a servant’s heart, own the real estate between your ears before trying to raise private money, lead with a servant’s heart, be an educator and just share with other people what you do, how they can earn high rates of return safely and securely and share it with people and don’t Yeah, that’s,
Mike Zlotnik: That’s great advice.
First, become their friend, become their educator, their comfort person. I don’t know whatever way you call it, but be in a position where they’re happy to talk to you and they just want to talk to you. And then when the deal comes in, I’m sure you’ve got a good, good way of presenting it to them. And especially if you tell them no, they want to invest and then you put them on a waiting list.
They sit and wait, and it’s funny in today’s environment. It’s not even the worst thing. If they sit and wait, because the bank is actually paying them something to sit and wait.
Jay Conner: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. And when I have a deal for them to fund and they’ve told me how much they got to work with that they want to invest.
If they’ve got retirement funds, I’ve introduced them to the self directed IRA company. They get their funds moved over and here’s the deal. When I have a deal for them to fund, I don’t call them up and ask them if they want to fund the deal. That’s the most stupid question in the world I could ask. Of course, they want to fund the deal.
They’ve been waiting for the phone call. So I call it the good news phone call. And what is the good news phone call? Mike, you might find it interesting to know here. I’m laughing already. We actually have landlines with handsets and cord. Yeah. But I call them up with the good news phone call. And I say, hey, I got great news.
I can now put your money to work. And then I tell them where the home is located. I got a house over in Newport. I don’t tell them the physical address. They could care less. I got a house in Newport, after repaired value. Is 200, 000. For example, the funding required is 150, 000. Notice how that is 75 percent of the 200.
I know they got the 150. They already told me. And then I’ll say closing is next Wednesday. You’ll need to have your funds wired to my real estate attorney’s trust account by next Tuesday. And I’ll have my attorney send you the wiring instructions. End of conversation. I don’t have to pitch the deal, sell the deal because the deal that they’re going to be funding.
matches the criteria of the program that I already taught them. So we keep it simple. We separate conversations from teaching them about how the program works, how they can get high rates of return safely and securely. Then we got to deal from the fund. We call them up, we tell them the overview of it and tell them when to have their funds wired and they’re ready to go.
Mike Zlotnik: Okay. I appreciate the wisdom, the good news phone call. It’s awesome. It’s just, it works and it’s simple and beautiful. It works. Thank you again. Again, final thoughts, any other, you already shared your website, but if you want to mention it one more time and any other final advice.
Jay Conner: Nope. Just one more time.I’ll be glad to autograph and mail the book. Where to Get the Money Now at Jay Conner, jayconner.com/book. I’ll rush it right out. Mike, thank you so much for having me back.
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