Mastering Multifamily Syndication: A Guide to Raising Capital Successfully

John Harcar (00:02.109)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. I’m here today with Scott Kidd and what we’re going to talk about, you know, besides his journey in business and in real estate and what he’s doing is some of the projects he’s currently working on and how, you know, in this environment, how he’s going to work through those things. Remember guys at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra business. We provide tools and resources to grow.

the business they want, which in turn helps live the life they’ve always dreamed of. So Scott, man, welcome to our show.

Scott Kidd (00:36.79)
Hey, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. I really appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:42.783)
I don’t know if I should call you Captain Kid. I’m very, very excited to talk about, you know, the whole yacht captain thing and then your journey to real estate. But before we do that, let’s go into your background, man. Like what got you into the business? What got you into real estate and what got you to today?

Scott Kidd (01:01.016)
Well, what got me into it is working on the yachts. It’s an unstable business, you know, it’s here today, gone today. I’m basically working on a wealthy person’s toy, so…

their business takes a dip, they get a divorce, death in the family, or they just lose interest or anything can happen. The toys are usually the first thing to go and usually the yachts are the first ones. I’ve been through many cycles where the jobs have gone away and it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. just preparing for, always had some kind of a side hustle. so as my family got bigger, because I’m married with

kids.

you know, we bought another house and then rented it out and then moved up from there and then learned about multifamily and syndication. And I thought that that was a better scalable model because I spent quite a bit of time on the water. So I want to be able to add value to whatever team I’m working with. So I figured I’d focus more on raising capital investor relations, capital markets and things like that so that I could be of benefit

you know, because working on the yachts, I, I, I’m usually the team leader. Everything starts and ends with me. But, um, you know, and on the multifamily, as I’m not the most experienced as a lot of the other people on our team, um, just going through that and knowing what it takes to be a great team member. Um, it’s, it’s nice because I always just try to focus on adding value and seeing where, how it can be of benefit to the team, you know, and I’ve found that because I’m very good at connecting with

Scott Kidd (02:43.92)
people and making connections that, you know, we have to make connections really fast on the yachts. The timelines usually yesterday. So I’m good at finding. Yeah. When the wealthy guy or lady’s answers ask the question, usually you have to have a solution or have it solved before they finish. So it’s kind of a different world. you know, that’s what got me there is because I, you know, I just wanted to grow and saw the economies of

John Harcar (02:52.68)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.

Scott Kidd (03:13.84)
scale and commercial real estate and multifamily. And it made sense for what I’m doing because I can do a lot of this stuff while I’m still working on rotation on the boat and off.

John Harcar (03:26.014)
Right. So if you ever watch any of my podcasts, I like to go back. What first got you into yachting or being a yacht captain? mean, were you around boat your whole life? mean, is it just something like, hey, this is cool?

Scott Kidd (03:37.99)
Not, not really. mean, my dad, he had a trucking business and he, he, he bought a sailboat and I did a little bit of sailing, but, you know, in the late nineties I was in the tech world and I did, you know, I was, I got hit with the dot com bus and I also had my own business with my partner and we got,

We had some issues there and we ended up, long story short, lost the business. And I was back in Jamaica where I’m originally from. My dad’s Jamaican, mom’s American. And I was back there and friend of a friend said, hey, do you want to work on a boat for the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show? And I said, well, I don’t know anything about working on boats, but I’m not doing anything here. Things are not really working out here either. Sure. he said, is that going to be a problem that I don’t have any experience? And he said, no.

John Harcar (04:27.774)
But sure, why not? Yeah.

Scott Kidd (04:33.424)
just get here and work. So I borrowed the money for the airplane ticket and my friend Merrick gave me some money put in my pocket and I landed in Fort Lauderdale with basically about $20 in my pocket and probably a negative in the tens of thousands. I knew, you know, and I never really looked back but I knew, you you get back to the States, you know, it’s a…

you know, sky’s the limit, you know, because, you know, best country in the world, that’s all relative to your likes, dislikes, cultural beliefs and disbeliefs, but make no mistake, as far as like financial opportunity, it’s like no other. There’s nothing even close.

John Harcar (05:15.028)
So you work your way up, I would assume, right? You probably started on like a deckhand, worked your way up to be the boat captain, which is really awesome. I grew up in Southern California. We went out and did a lot of deep sea fishing. I’d always hang around the captain’s, whatever you call it, the wheelhouse. That’s why I couldn’t say, yeah. I’d always hang around there. And I’d always like, listen, I always talk to deckhands. I’d be like, man, this would be the coolest job. So where did real estate come in?

Scott Kidd (05:18.339)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (05:22.082)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (05:26.472)
cool. man.

Scott Kidd (05:33.164)
the wheelhouse and stuff. Cool, yeah.

Scott Kidd (05:40.333)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:43.412)
Did you have any type of influence or in your life? mean you I know you mentioned kind of like the economy and stuff and you were looking at different things. How did you find real estate?

Scott Kidd (05:47.374)
Not really.

Scott Kidd (05:54.327)
Well, the first captain I worked for that trained me and showed me is pretty much family. Well, he is family, him and their family. They took me in and taught me a lot. And he was telling me a lot about real estate and how he bought his house and everything else. And he said, look, you know, you don’t seem to…

spend a lot of money on a lot of things or anything. I’m not a very materialistic person, but he said, look, you buy some real estate, put it away, put it into something. And so I did buy my house there. And then how I got into the multifamily and syndication, I was with some friends.

on the beach and a friend of mine, was telling me that he bought and sold a 40-60 unit in Houston, Texas. And he said he had made X amount of money in the seven figures, him and his brother. And I said, well, wow, you can do that. And he said, yeah, you can do it. I did it. Anybody can do it. And I said, well, that was kind of my light bulb moment. So that’s where I started learning as much as I could, going to meetups, trying to meet as many people as possible, reading

every book I can get my hand on. YouTube University, thank you God for that because I still look up everything on YouTube because it’s just such a great platform to learn and do, you know, learn about anything. Anything you want, there’s a video on YouTube on it. I guarantee it.

John Harcar (07:05.556)
You

John Harcar (07:18.344)
Alright.

Did you seek out any mentorship, any coaching, any courses, anything to help accelerate or is it just the YouTube you stuff?

Scott Kidd (07:31.743)
I did and eventually I learned about coaching. got a personal business development coach. did masterminds up in several. There was a deal maker mastermind, which was Michael Blanc and then Greystone with my friend John Way and Octane Multifamily with Tate Seamer and…

There was another one. I was in Raze Masters, Mastermind for Raising Capital and currently I’m in Greystone Mastermind with my friend John Way. It’s more of a group and I started my own meetup and I just kind of wanted to attract more people that…

to the, cause I didn’t know a lot of, a lot about any of this stuff, even though my first captain’s job, I worked for a real estate developer that had been still, his family is still developing since the fifties, since after World War II. And they’re, you know, they, I think they develop in the 600 to 800 homes a year plus city centers and condos and stuff. And they’re, you know, pretty decent outfit and they’re actually pretty big and they’re privately held. they’re, you know, they’re, and I learned a lot from

the guy that gave me my first job. He actually helped me, gave me some advice on on

buying my first home. you know, I didn’t, you know, I always just kind of try to put myself around people that know a lot more than I do because I’m still always learning. And, you know, I didn’t realize just as far as everything goes that it’s always a learning process, like any career I’ve had. you know, for me,

Scott Kidd (09:13.166)
I always just feel like I’m just getting started. Every day get up, I’m like, wow, I can do this, I can do this. And it just gets, it keeps getting, any plateau I get to is you look up and there’s another peak.

John Harcar (09:27.208)
So how long you gonna continue the yacht, Captain Ford?

Scott Kidd (09:30.511)
Until from what I where they say that Charlton Heston said from my cold dead hands

John Harcar (09:35.336)
historical, the appeal is… What are some of the challenges that you’re coming across in your real estate business? Like, mean, when you got started, you started getting into the bigger… What are some of the challenges you came across and how did you overcome them?

Scott Kidd (09:50.093)
Well, and the challenges, a lot of it was just the first initial one was trying to do everything myself and trying to do it, you know, not realizing, you people had told me you need a team and stuff, especially when you get into multifamily and stuff. I, you know, we with the smaller real estate.

apartments and stuff. had joint ventures which was pretty, which I recommended a lot because it’s a big learning curve about all the stuff that goes into it and you know after doing a couple of those I realized that I wouldn’t be able to keep up that pace or be able to do it you know without a

a bigger team and more people. So that’s where I moved more into syndication and focused on the raising capital and investor relations, capital markets and creating those relationships because there you can really kind of grow with a team, especially if you have a great team.

John Harcar (10:49.32)
Yeah. What are some of the things that helped you excel faster, right? I mean, obviously when you’re going in, you don’t know much, you know, it’s going to be hard to get people to lend you money, right? So what are, what are the, of the, some of the things that helped you get over some of those sort of.

Scott Kidd (11:00.803)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Kidd (11:05.103)
Those were really just meeting people that were doing it and learning from their mistakes. That I would say was probably my biggest accelerator because

You know, they would tell me just, you know, because a lot of people when, and I do this myself, like if I’ve gone through something, I certainly don’t want someone, especially I see someone that’s hard charging and going, going for it. I want them to make that jump, you know, because, you know, on the boats, I’ve had five, five people that are now captains and I’m hoping that a lot of them have gone on and they’re, you know, going to supersede anything I do because their careers are still just getting started, some of them.

And so it’s, I’d like to see other people, you know, jump ahead. So I’ve learned more and accelerated it by just learning from other people and other team members that are, you know, my senior that are, you know, that have done it. And they say, well, look in the downturn, we did X, Y, and Z. So make sure you have these things in place so that you can jump past. that, you know, and those were things that I wasn’t aware of. Didn’t mean that I wouldn’t.

I’ve thought about it later, but putting that in place now is much better than 10 years from now when you’re under the gun and you’re fighting to survive. Maybe that gets you from the point where you don’t have to fight to survive. You can just kind of do the steps and get through.

John Harcar (12:22.184)
Yeah, save you time and money.

John Harcar (12:36.286)
When you started raising capital, right? When you started getting out there, a lot of people are afraid to ask people for money. I mean, it’s just that is their hangup. That’s their thing. It’s like, you know, they don’t feel that they maybe bring value or anything like that. So like, what were some of the things you overcame or used to overcome mindset to not have that problem? And maybe you didn’t have that problem, but like, what do you think mindset wise you need to have when you’re going in and approaching asking someone for?

Scott Kidd (12:42.764)
Yeah.

John Harcar (13:04.148)
a hundred grand, a couple million, whatever it might be.

Scott Kidd (13:07.886)
Well, I think the thing that took me a little bit to learn was that, you know, just because I think something’s a great deal doesn’t mean that it’s a great deal for somebody else. We’re all in different places in our lives and different, different, you know, risk tolerances. You know, I have friends that flip homes that, you know, people that, that, you know, they only deal with industrial and stuff. a lot of these things are things that I don’t know a whole lot about. Grant, I know the synopsis of it, but you know, like flipping homes or, you

I have another friend that has over 200 single-family homes and they told me they were afraid to get into multi-family just because it’s too big and everything. I said, what you’re doing is scaring me and I think you’re…

John Harcar (13:51.092)
You’re too big you have 200 doors. Let’s just have now just have 200 doors under one roof

Scott Kidd (13:56.559)
Yeah, you’re I would say you’re a lot more impressive to me than what I think what I’m doing. I think it’s a little easier. But I was like, you know, I had to give them, you know, tip my hat to them because they’re they’re still doing it and they’re and they’re still buying more homes and building and doing that. And I said the systems that you have, it’s the same thing. It’s going to be a much smaller task in the bigger, bigger properties. And you’re going to realize that, you know, maybe there’s a transition there. But, you know, it was was

John Harcar (14:03.144)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (14:26.512)
Basically alignment of interest, realizing that it’s all about the investor. What do they need? What problem or what am I solving for them? Or what value am I creating for them? Are they close to retirement? Or they don’t necessarily need the big cash flow? Maybe they just want an X multiple of a certain point. maybe they need the tax strategy or something. Because we’re doing most of our stuff right now

development. that’s not necessarily for somebody that wants the cash flow, you know, because there won’t be any for a couple of years. We focus on, yeah, if any, you know, until it’s developed because ours are all built to sell. So in three years or so when it sells, that’s when you really get your, your multiple or your partial return or your full return.

John Harcar (15:04.275)
a while.

Scott Kidd (15:19.646)
So it’s, you all things are not for all people. And that was something that had to kind of learn the hard way by talking to so many people. I’m, you know, also another thing that was is I don’t have a big sales background, so I’m not exactly your…

typical sales person, I’m a captain, so I’m in operations. If somebody asks me, hey, how does that work? This is, you know, it’s just this, you know, it’s, because we don’t have time and we, our speed of execution has to be yesterday. So we go like that and we go down the line and execute. So when somebody asks me a question, that’s what I give them. So I kind of had to learn a little more to kind of more focus on getting to know the investor rather than.

John Harcar (15:40.713)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (16:06.32)
and just showing them something and then talking about it. Because I didn’t really come up in a lot of things in other businesses where I was the front man or the salesperson or what have you. So that was a unique thing for me, but I’ve found that it’s actually been to my benefit, mean to their benefit too, because when they ask me they get a straight answer and I’m very open to communicating because as the team leader on the boat,

I have to make sure everybody has the tools they need to succeed. So that comes and starts first with me communicating what the actual goal is.

John Harcar (16:46.996)
Yeah, now that makes sense. So let’s talk about some of your current projects and things that you’re doing.

Scott Kidd (16:52.204)
Okay, well right now we’re building out a fund for a new development in

in Dallas and Kansas City. We have some medical offices in Kansas City and those have all been closed out, our surgical centers. And in Dallas, we have four multifamily projects with three parcels in each, each about 120 units. And they can all be done simultaneously and we’re focusing on looking for some JV equity partners and some retail investors that’ll, that want to take the ride with us and build,

out and develop all these projects and there’s it’s set up that way because for a hundred to a hundred and thirty units in each parcel so that the build out is a lot quicker and the return of capital is a lot faster because after about yeah after about nine months you’re looking at pre-leasing and then after

you know after the first of the year and a year and a half you’re still leasing up but it’s done and then you’re moving towards the next one and that one is starting to cash flow and payback so you know you can either move into the other one and with our development partner these can all be built simultaneously provided all the capital is there that’s why we’re looking for you know for a lot of different partners that want to go with us concurrently on all these projects we are one project in

Waxahachie is already under construction and it’s already going and closed up. So we’re just looking to do the other three and there’s more coming and that’s why we’re building out the funds so we can also continuously raise and keep moving in the same. And it’s all kind of on a formula where they’re all very similar to where that it’s the same product so that if the investors miss on this one, they can move into the next one or the next parcel or the next stage. And they’re all South Dallas, which we really like because

Scott Kidd (18:49.04)
You know, lot of, there was a lot of stuff that came online in 2024 and a lot of people were thinking that a lot of these units that were coming online nationwide, that there was gonna be a glut. But in Dallas and some other places, especially in the, ours are in the South Dallas in that triangle I-35.

A lot of the product that came online was in North Dallas. And most of it, I thought it would be saturated, so I kept watching and I saw that all of that got absorbed. Whereas like in Austin, Texas, a lot of it’s still being absorbed now. It’s gonna take a little bit longer, because there was a lot more built there. But Austin, think, is still gonna be a great market going forward, just because of all the people moving there. Dallas as well, Houston.

John Harcar (19:26.675)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (19:40.447)
A unique thing I think is a great opportunity for myself and for our team to be partnered with great developers that have three decades of experience. And they’ve built, I don’t know how many of these that have gone full cycle. They used to build for a family office. And they’re still managing about 2,500 units in the Missouri region, Kansas City, St. Louis. So that’s one of

John Harcar (19:51.976)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Scott Kidd (20:10.32)
The biggest pluses for me is just being around more people that are seasoned and that have that experience. When he explained to me that’s how he was going to do each parcel, because he’s built 350, 400 units at a time, and he said, then the lease up is 18 months to two years. So then you’ve got a lot of time to cover. You have to cover all that cost for relatively two years.

John Harcar (20:15.465)
Yeah.

Scott Kidd (20:40.24)
you’re looking at a little over one year so it made all made sense to me and and just being around people that have done it is a big bonus for me and I’m really happy about really excited about all of this moving forward.

John Harcar (20:54.46)
Yeah, it sounds like you got some great things coming up. If there’s folks that are on here listening and they want to maybe invest with you, they want to just talk about your journey. Maybe they want to rent you as a yacht captain. I don’t know. How do they get in touch with you?

Scott Kidd (21:05.486)
Yeah, well you can find everything that you need about me, my podcast, my social media, everything on investwithscotkid.com. Everything’s right there. And also my wife is a charter broker if you do need those services. At Ocean Independence, she’s in Florida. So I’m just the captain, she’s the admiral.

John Harcar (21:18.781)
Awesome.

John Harcar (21:24.808)
Very cool, wear it with Charter Broker Wear.

John Harcar (21:30.546)
Okay, in fact, okay.

Got it, right on. She’s the one that writes the checks. Well, Scott, I appreciate you coming on here, man, sharing your story. I love it. know, guys, if you’re out there listening and you maybe might be looking to invest in the Dallas area or join in some investments, please reach out to Scott. You know, thank you again. And guys, we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Scott Kidd (21:53.838)
Thank you so much.