Right About Now with Ryan Alford - From Oil Deals to Entrepreneurship: Brad Blazar’s Masterclass on Funding & Business Growth

Starting point is 00:00:00 Stop letting a lack of capital hold you back from your biggest business dreams. In this episode, I talked to Brad Blazer, the capital catalyst who has raised over $2 billion about how anyone can master the art of syndication and utilize other people's money to build massive wealth. That and more. Right about now. When you look at raising money from investors to buy businesses and then maybe buy another business that's complementary, you start building something very similar to private equity firm.

Starting point is 00:00:29 When you look at a private equity firm, what a private equity firm is ultimately owned. They own businesses, and they scale those businesses. There's a lot of synergy where businesses are complementary to one another. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Starting point is 00:01:05 What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always getting right. And it's always about what is important today and now in business and marketing. And look, we're all about trailblazing. That's what we got. Brad. Blazer here today. What's up, Brad?

Starting point is 00:01:19 How you doing there, Ryan? It's great to be here with you. It's good to have you. I'm ready to talk about how to race. some capital. It's a good skill to have in the entrepreneur tool bag. Whether you end up using it or not, it's important that you understand it. I'm sure you can talk about that quite a bit, Brad. I think it's one of the skills that a lot of people just overlook. So many entrepreneurs, business owners, they want to do something big. They go to the bank. They don't get approved.

Starting point is 00:01:44 They either don't have credit. They don't have experience. They kind of give up on those dreams and never pursue the things that they're capable of. They never really realize that every day when we get out of bed, we're pretty much surrounded by all the money we need. We just call these other people investors. Most people just don't understand how to build the interest, how to talk to people, the things they need to have, obviously, to do it successfully. Having literally coached thousands of people and raised over $2 billion, it's just one of those skills where I tell people, look, my past helps build your future, man. You want to learn how to do this. Let's have a conversation about it. Knowledge is power and wisdom is king of the castle. Brad, let's talk about some capital.

Starting point is 00:02:19 Where did your passion for sharing knowledge around this come from and some of your own endeavors that led to all this wisdom. I went to school not to be in the oil business. I actually was studying architecture and had I not stumbled into the oil industry, I'd probably be designing buildings and houses and stuff like that. Just one day responded to an ad and went to work in the oil field and the CEO of the company kind of took a liking to me. Show me how to raise capital from investors. That's what I did. And after a couple years, just kind of decided to bet on myself and took some money, started an oil company, built it up over the course of about a decade. Great business to the end. The shit hit the fan. Man, oil places plummeted. The tax laws dramatically changed. And so

Starting point is 00:03:00 investment capital dried up. That's when I went back to school and I came out. I realized that my primary skill, what I was really good at was knowing how to raise capital. And so I just kind of said to myself, I bet that's a skill that a lot of people pay a lot of good money for. And it's been great to work for some of the biggest financial services firms in the world. Some of the largest multi-billion dollar real estate sponsors. I've raised $2 billion and today even raise money for deals of my own. We just put an offering on a 252 unit self-storage property just north through Houston here. Kind of keep my fingers crossed that. The seller likes the offer and we get to raise some capital and take down that deal. The whole thing about raising capital, and this is actually in the book,

Starting point is 00:03:40 Rich Dad Poor did. Robert Kiyosaki says the key to really building sizable wealth is not to try to do it on your own. It'll take you such a much longer time. It's to understand the principle of OPM, other people's money. And when you understand that fundamental principle, wealth is knowledge, or this knowledge is power, once you understand that, and then more importantly, you know how to do that, Ryan, the sky's the limit. I know guys literally that are in their 30s, 40s that are sitting there with companies where they have multiple hundreds of millions of dollars that they own and control. If I could let go of some control and think about it to a degree, maybe things could go faster. The notion for me is always the moment you have someone else is money in the deal, you don't control your own time. I don't know if that's true either.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Most of these guys that are doing stuff that are real estate entrepreneurs or they're raising money to buy businesses. They're not giving up control. The investors are all passive. They have absolutely no say in the business. They really don't have any ownership in the business. Think of it this way. Your company is the sponsor of a fund or another entity that's raising money to do something else. If your company is up here, this is not what people are. investing in, they're investing in what your company is sponsoring that they invest in. If I've got a real estate investment firm and I want to go out and buy this apartment building, I'll syndicate that building and I'll bring investors in to go out and buy that. And now my company owns an interest in that building alongside the investors. Or if we're going to buy a business, my company owns an interest alongside investors that now own and operate that business. And I get my proportionate share for putting the deal together, but the investors themselves don't have any control of my peer and company. They don't have any say in really what it is we're doing. They're totally passive and

Starting point is 00:05:26 what they're essentially doing is they're relying on my expertise, my track record, the team of people that we put together and assembled. And so it's a beautiful thing. Define the difference with real estate where you're buying an asset versus the idea of a business. I use my own businesses. I own a digital ad agency. I own a media network. Those don't have necessarily the asset at the center of it, i.e. land or something like that, walk me through that path, the idea of business versus the tangible of real estate. If I'm going out and I'm buying something like an apartment building, at the end of the day, that is a tangible asset, but it's a business. The tenants that live there are my customers. You're a business where you have customers

Starting point is 00:06:09 that you've got to keep happy. I got to keep them happy. So they keep paying rent and they want to continue living there. I look at real estate. assets as a business. I'm buying a business. It cash flows and all the other reasons, expenses, things like that. When you look at raising money from investors to buy businesses and then maybe buy another business that's complementary, you start building something very similar to private equity firm. When you look at a private equity firm, what a private equity firm is ultimately own. They own businesses and they scale those businesses. There's a lot of synergy where businesses are complementary to one another, and we see a lot of people that will do that,

Starting point is 00:06:48 they'll go out and start a company, and they're like, I just want to raise money and buy cash flowing businesses. Things that are boring, but cash flow make profit like laundromats, HVAC companies, car washes. Imagine if you've got this company in over a couple of years, you now own and operate 8, 10, 12 cash flowing businesses. You're doing pretty good. There's really no difference in raising money from investors to buy cash flowing businesses or buy real estate assets because at the end of the day really real estate is a business just you know you look at it a little differently what about capital raising for ideas of business the idea of the business but you don't necessarily have a million customers built in day one or even a thousand or a hundred

Starting point is 00:07:31 do you counsel that side of capital raising when you're raising money you have to look at kind of the avatar in where you are in the growth curve Are you a startup? Are you a more mature business? Are you kind of on a trajectory where you've been around a couple of years and have a track record, prior performance? When you look at a true startup, somebody that's got this idea that's really unfounded or unproven, you're primarily looking for venture capital firms. They invest in startups, or maybe you're looking for an angel investor. That's typically a very wealthy person that may have been a business owner that sold their business. Now there were $10, $20, $50 million. They're willing to take those types of risk because they know if they could hit a home run.

Starting point is 00:08:11 Obviously, the return on investment is going to be substantial. But when you look at the different types of investors, family offices, private equity, venture capital, each one of these different groups likes to focus on different things. equity firm likes to buy traditionally existing cash flowing businesses. They come in, they put in some capital, they make some management tweaks, they scale the business, then they exit. The venture capital firm knows, okay, we're going to invest in five companies. Realistically, we're going to lose money on one. We're probably going to hit singles and doubles on the other three. And then that one, boom, is the home run that makes up for the others. And that's just the investment model. It depends

Starting point is 00:08:50 when you're a business owner and you're going out there trying to race capital, that the first thing you do is you identify the type of investor that you want to be focusing your efforts on. Because if you're out there with a startup and you're talking to investors over here that like to invest in more seasoned, more established businesses, chances are you're not going to be very successful because your message is not related to that audience. Identifying the right people to target. But even more so, should people when raising capital have different expectations, be controlled, whatever it might be, depending on the stage of the business?

Starting point is 00:09:25 If you're coming in more on the earlier stage and you're taking on more risk, you definitely want a higher return because there's more risk. If you're investing in something that's a little bit more mature, that's a little bit more proven, the host or the sponsor or the person that is offering that investment doesn't have to give up as much or offer as significant a return because they're like, look, man, you know, this is not nearly as risky as investing in a startup that's not yet proven. When you look at investing, there's this theory. We call it the risk adjusted rate of return. More risk, more risk, more return. And obviously, as people get older, as they mature, their risk profile changes. People that are in their late 20s, 30s, some degree in the early 40s, they can afford to take risk early in life. Their attitude is like, look, man, I'm making great money. If I lose 50, 100 grand, I can earn that back over the next couple years or my other investments will replenish that. But when I get up into my late 50s and 60s, I'm much more conservative. Why? Because, I'm beyond my peak earning years or maybe I'm a couple years away from retirement. So I got to play it a lot safer and I got to go into things that don't have that same risk profile. The higher risk, the higher reward. A lot of times people are willing to take those calculated risks. But at the end of the day, you really got a vet and you got to do due diligence on the people you're getting in bed with,

Starting point is 00:10:41 the people that you're investing with. I see so many people out there doing stuff and I look at people that are investing with them. And I just smile and I said, man, this shit's going to blow up. It has to because they don't have. have a foundation or some of the things in place that a guy like me knows has been doing this so long they need to have in place. The most important thing really is the regulatory and the compliance side. When you take somebody else's money and you do something with that to create a return on investment for them, you're in the securities business. Bottom line, I don't care if it's

Starting point is 00:11:11 two investors or whether it's 100 investors. You get state regulators. You got, of course, the SEC, and you don't want to get on their bad side because that can get real ugly, real fast. Tell us some good stories of some stuff you've done on the Capitol side or things you've seen that would be interesting. Back when I was about a 26, 27-year-old cocky little kid in the oil business, living high on the hog, had the Porsche, had the nice watch, had a nice house. I had this very wealthy doctor. The guy was a retired neurosurgeon. He told me that he was a business partner of Sheldon Aedleson.

Starting point is 00:11:43 For whatever reason, the guy would just not invest with us. I think it might have been the fear of investing in a drive. whole losing the whole investment. I'm like, doctor, come on out here, meet me, go out in the field with us, we'll show you the whole operation, we'll get you to a place of comfort where hopefully you can make a better decision. And so I said, I mean, I got a private jet, I'll come out, come into the airport, it's plain lands he taxis in, gets out, introduces himself. I get them in my nice suburban, go out to the oil field, we spend the day, treat them to lunch. And again, just would not invest. I have my sales team that worked for him, and I always told my sales team,

Starting point is 00:12:19 You remember the first time you climbed up the ladder to the high dive at that neighborhood pool and you crawled out to the end and you're, whoa, you look back and there's a line of kids going, jump, you pussy, it ain't that hot. It's about 5.36 o'clock. And what I used to do, Ryan, is I used to let my guys go home at three. A couple days we'd come in. We'd get some beers. We'd get some pizzas. We sit there dialing out to the West Coast or dialing to Hawaii because there's a five hour time difference. And I just, Dr. Schnack, it just takes two things to invest in oil well. And he said, what? I said, big brass balls and lots of money, dude. Which of the two don't you have? And they're silence. He goes, tell me again, Brad, how much are three units in your drilling? I said, doctor, go hit your checkbook.

Starting point is 00:13:01 Welcome to boy. The dude became one of my best investors, Ryan. Ring the bell, and I got my sales team together. And I told them, man, you guys have my permission to use this closing line anytime you choose to, because it will absolutely work. And he became one of my best investors, really great guy. The whole thing about getting people to make a buying decision, sometimes, you know, you got to squeeze the Cajonis a little bit and kick him where it hurts. What's the biggest misconception in raising capital, perhaps?

Starting point is 00:13:30 What bugs are you squashing every day, like, of misconceptions? A lot of people think, oh, I got to have gray hair, or I've got to have a track record, or I've got to have done this, and I've got to have done that. I say bullshit to all of that. Here I was, a little 23 old cocky kid that didn't know the first thing about. drilling in oil. Well, you know, the first thing about building multi-million dollar business, all I knew how to do was just raise capitol and I knew that I could find the team. You get a CPA, you get an attorney, you build a team of people. Cowbled of raising is a team sport. Most investors are

Starting point is 00:13:58 going to look at somebody and if you're doing everything in the business, there's going to be doubt. I've established some pretty good relationships with some of the sharks. I've talked to Kevin Harrington about this and Robert Herchevec and they said, look, man, you know, as we all know, a lot of great people come into the shark tank. Their steeds, their doctors, and they don't get a deal. And it's not because of them, it's because of one word. It comes down to execution. Can you execute on what you're trying to do? And if we see doubt in that, naturally, why would we want to invest?

Starting point is 00:14:25 When you're talking to an investor, what you have to be able to communicate is, hey, the collective experience of my team is this. We've done these things. Our track record is this. And so you eliminate the uncertainty that allows an investor potentially to move forward. Because at the end of the day, people invest emotionally. they invest in people they know like and trust. If you're good at building relationships and understand how to do that,

Starting point is 00:14:48 the world becomes your oyster. I'm so pissed off at our educational system because we don't teach people how to become financially independent. What we do is we teach people how to assimilate and fit in with the rest of the society, which is get your ass a job, work your 40 to 50 years, scrimp and save and hopefully you'll have a decent retirement. The option, which a lot of my buddies, you probably know many of them, like the Carlos Reyes is and basically Nick Perry's the world.

Starting point is 00:15:10 They're like, no, screw that shit, man. work your ass off for three to five years and I'll show you can be done in five to seven years. Boom. You just go out and wholesale or you're getting some real estate deals like we do and you get some passive income. Then you can double down and start focusing on the wealth creation or like you're doing, you just start building some businesses. You get one business to multiple seven figures and you focus on another than another.

Starting point is 00:15:31 And you just keep doing that. And that's the answer. Talk to me about where everybody can keep up with. You and anything else you had going on there? The easiest thing is just follow me on the website. It's just my first and last name, Bradblazer.com. There are no ease in the spelling of my name. It's just Brad Blazer, B-L-A-Z-A-R.

Starting point is 00:15:55 So go there, check it out. Follow me on Instagram. Just look for that little blue check or whatever that says you're following the right dude. And shoot me a DM. Love to get on a call. Love to invite you to some of the events that we do throughout the year. We do some big cool events. We do some masterminds.

Starting point is 00:16:08 And we just love connecting with people. I love it, man. I really appreciate you coming on. and dropping all the knowledge and look forward to staying in touch. Appreciate you, brother. Hey guys, you know to find us, Ryanisright.com, because we're always right. We're always now. We're always here for you.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Thank you. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening. Thank you.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - From Oil Deals to Entrepreneurship: Brad Blazar’s Masterclass on Funding & Business Growth

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