How to Build Investor Pipelines with LinkedIn | Ben Padnos on Raising Capital

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (00:00)
I fail a lot more than I succeed.

sometimes when those wins, you know, those wins, when you help someone raise, I had a client this morning tell me he’s got a pipeline,

got half a dozen people who are gonna write seven figure checks from the work that we’ve done over the past six months.

So, you know, it really feels great when you have a, hear about those wins

Quentin (01:53)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And yes, y’all know what I’m going to say. I’m excited to be here. And I know, I know so many hosts, I mean, so many times I came on here and told y’all, I have somebody that has me pumped up and excited. But I’m telling you, my guest has me pumped up. We just almost had a pep rally like right before we came on. And so it’s like, are ready. We were ready to get at it. And I’m just excited because

He just brings a ⁓ unique lens to what he’s doing in business. He’s helping build investment pipelines for businesses. And I just can’t wait for you guys to learn about his great services, what he’s doing, the strides that he’s making, the opportunities he’s making. And so please help me, well, not help me introduce, let me introduce you to Mr. Ben Padnos. How you doing today, sir?

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (02:45)
I’m great. It’s great to meet you, Q. I’m fired up to be here.

Quentin (02:50)
Absolutely, man. You got me fired up right before we got on. And so I know our listeners are really going to just get a great lens of what you’re doing, what you’re doing in the real estate space, how you’re eating and helping investors. And so I’m excited, man. I’m excited to talk about it. And so I don’t want my voice to be predominant here. I want your voice to be predominant. So, man, take us into your world. know, we may not be familiar with what you do. Give us a bird’s eye view. Tell us what your main focus are these days.

Tell us what markets you’re operating in,

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (03:21)
Sure. Well, ⁓ I run a firm called Thinkfish. Thinkfish is, ⁓ we’re LinkedIn monsters. And we help people use LinkedIn to become, be in lead funnels, lead generation machines, whether it’s investors, customers, business development, partnerships. We help unleash LinkedIn.

professional outreach on a day-to-day basis using AI and automation and humans to build pipelines. Sometimes it’s investors, sometimes it’s customers, sometimes it’s joint venture partners, but we become essentially an extension of founders, entrepreneurs, ⁓ fund managers, sponsors. My team becomes an extension of them, doing a cross between digital marketing, investor relations with a heavy

VA or virtual assistant component to go build these pipelines of prospects so that all people can do is keep focusing on their business and they just show up and meet really interesting people.

Quentin (04:30)
I absolutely love that. Like I said, I I love how you’re helping build the investment pipeline. It’s like, you know, what you need, we can get you plugged in. That’s what it sounds like you guys are doing, you know, out there, you know, doing what you do. And I guess, I guess my question is, you got it running. And I know it’s not always easy. So give me a peek of what’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (04:53)
Well, the key is I got a great team. I got a 20 person team actually in Philippines that does the day to day

And what I tell people really is everybody, had no idea how powerful LinkedIn was until I started working on this business. And…

But, but doing it, grinding it out day to day. mean, I describe it as soul crushing. If you’re sitting there grinding out and it’s not necessarily for up for a high level entrepreneur or fund manager or real estate sponsor. It’s not the highest and best use of their time. So, but when you engage us a couple thousand bucks a month, you get dozens and dozens of hours back. They, they like when you’re in real estate, you’re always raising capital. It seems like that.

But when you’re…

spending time prospecting, sending messages, sending emails, booking meetings, all that kind of stuff. You’re not looking at deals, talking with investors, managing your properties, all that kind of stuff. So the highest and best use of your time is that other stuff, not booking meetings. So people hire us. mean, and that’s what, you what you asked me, kind of what’s led us to getting here, having a great team that in our core really actually cares. And people say it, we really care when someone gives us their hard earned money.

and pays us, we go to work every day grinding out prospects for those people to build that pipeline and set them up so that they’re in a better position to success to raise that money or strike that deal with that partner that they’re looking for.

Quentin (07:13)
with me. Yeah, my bar is from my last interview, automate and delegate. And that’s what it sounds like. You guys can come in and be that portion that helps free up people’s time. Getting your time back is the most valuable thing that you can do as a person to be able to take control of your own time and be able to put it where you need to. And it sounds like the business that you’re building is helping investors, helping people do just that. so

I absolutely love it, man. Absolutely love it. ⁓ Now I know, you know, there’s times when moments when things get real, when things go sideways, the time when you have to pivot fast. And so Mr. Ben, I would love if you have a story like that, because I just want people, you know, always say, normalize the hard, right? There’s always a hard that you have to choose. Like we were talking about basketball and gym. you, listen, it’s easy and it’s hard to stop moving.

but then you’re going to find out once you start moving, it gets incredibly hard again to keep moving. And so we always got to choose a heart, right? So within business, things go sideways. So I would love if you can share a time where maybe you had to fast.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (08:13)
Yeah.

Well, you know, being an entrepreneur is lonely and probably a lot of the listeners ⁓ and your other guests are entrepreneurial. And you know, what I could say is I’m always a person who will just admit

I fail a lot more than I succeed.

And I have, build a lot of rapport with people by, kind of being just being human and admitting my failures, you know, like, and like when we’re a services provider, that’s ultimately what we are. And look, I’ll give you an example. Like you’re a great podcast host, but you don’t book your meeting. Someone does that for you. So, but you’ve got, you know, so that that’s kind of what we do only for investors or business or other things. But you know, I’m a big believer in team like.

you’re only as good as your weakest link. So we try to provide people a great service. We try to ⁓ empathize with people and be compassionate because we’re services provider. We’re taking people’s money in exchange for a service.

⁓ And sometimes we fail, but sometimes when those wins, you know, those wins, when you help someone raise, I had a client this morning tell me he’s got a pipeline, a half a dozen people. This is a pretty good size institutional level developer or sponsor. He’s got half a dozen people who are gonna write seven figure checks from the work that we’ve done over the past six months.

So, you know, it really feels great when you have a, hear about those wins and you know, when we fail and we don’t,

when we don’t succeed for our clients, we try to do our best, tell them the truth and try to always make it right.

Quentin (10:42)
that approach. I love that honest integrity approach. And you’re right, you know, one thing as a people we can bond over is hardship. Right. But, know, it’s not like a woe is me. It’s actually learning from our failures. Some people even call it failing forward. Right. And every success story, there is a point of failing, but fail forward. Like get the failing out the way so you can get to the success and don’t be scared of it. And so, you know,

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (10:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, and learn a lesson from

it and admit your failures and view the journey, View it as part of the journey. You’re one step closer to success by that failure.

Quentin (11:20)
There you go. Yeah. There you go.

Absolutely. You’re absolutely right. Listen.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (11:28)
A lot

of the stuff that sounds trite, the reason it sounds trite, but it’s really true. It’s right, like when you, if you don’t learn from failures and try to like, try to channel those things. I mean, I look at all the, what I always do when I have a win is I look at what led me to that win. Like I’ll never, one of my closest friends is someone I met through a failure.

Quentin (11:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (11:52)
And it ended up,

⁓ two deals later, worked out phenomenally well, but if I wouldn’t have had that failure, I never would have met that person. So I always kind of think about that, especially when I have a win, I think about the failures that happened to get me to the place where the win. And a lot of times I do that, because I just rationalize all the money I lost on the failure. like, well, I gave the house some of it on that one, but I made it back on this one.

Quentin (12:20)
Yeah, yeah, I definitely get it. That’s the kind of stuff people don’t talk about enough, And so, for me, that’s what separates the folks from who just dabble, from the ones who stay in the game for long term, right? That perspective, that mind shift when things are not going the way that they thought it was going to go, but still persevering, knowing that if they keep pushing forward, there’s better days ahead, right? And so, I love it, man. Listen, let me ask you this.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (12:45)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Quentin (12:49)
What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? Like what’s the next real goal for you, Mr. Ben?

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (12:55)
Well, I think what we love to do is our best clients at Thinkfish, we work with founders of startups. We work with emerging VC fund managers. We work with emerging hedge fund, private equity fund managers, and we work with real estate sponsors. The truth is our most success comes on the real estate side. And that’s simply because of the risk profile is lower and the return.

streams are more predictable and they’re asset backed versus if you write a $50,000, $100,000 angel check into a startup company, the best guys in the world fail eight or nine times out of time, the best in the world. know, volatility in the stock market or other things correlated to the overall economy, but real estate.

There’s something about having assets and people understand the preferred returns and the upside when it, when a deal trades, our best deals are most successful clients. So we’re, we’re investing heavily in growing our real estate channel and building investor pipelines for real estate sponsors.

Quentin (14:06)
I love it, You know, I’m so happy you talked about building these pipelines for real estate, because that’s what this show is all about, real estate leaning. And so I’m glad that you get your most success from that. That’s good for our people. That’s, Right.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (14:19)
It’s not just a coincidence that we’re here. That’s right.

And that’s the truth. It really is the truth. And I’d also say, the fun thing, I see a little ⁓ gray wisdom here. As you get older, you get a little bit more perspective and you kind of, you, think become a little bit more thoughtful about approach. Cause you’re more conscious of time. Yeah. So you want investing your time and your

Quentin (14:32)
Yes, sir.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (14:48)
you know, your good hours of the day toward things that are really working for you.

Quentin (14:55)
Yeah, absolutely. And I know you deal with a lot of, you

name them all, VPs, different other people from different other, ⁓ you know, business worlds. But I know you know this from your own experience that the next move can either compound things or create total chaos depending on how you play it. Right. And so, but what it sounds like to me is that you are mastering, built, finding with

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (15:47)
Yeah.

Quentin (16:04)
finding the beauty within the chaos, right? Be able to take the chaos and put some kind of structure to it for the service and the people that you are serving. And so, man, I love what you’re doing. I love the strides that you’re making. so you mentioned people, so I want to go to relationships. know, a lot of people that are listening, they’re either early in their journey, they’re looking to level up, you know, and I think they’re benefited from hearing this. When it comes to building relationships,

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (16:18)
Thank you.

Quentin (16:34)
and growing your network, what has made the biggest difference for you, Mr. Ben?

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (16:39)
Yeah, I’d say it’s a real easy answer. It’s always take the high road. Always take the high road. it’s, you know, there’s quicker ways to make money, taking shortcuts, scalping an extra little bit of money here and there, but…

Quentin (16:45)
Mmm. Mmm.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (17:01)
And younger, it’s in young kind of hustle culture. It’s understated. know, people see it and you see bling and you see stuff on Instagram and you, you, you do that. So people are encouraged to like get your bag. But so it’s, and it’s easier to say when you’ve reached a level of success as I’ve had, but what I tell people, especially younger, when I, I’m talking to my son or talking to my younger brothers, whenever possible, always take the high road, meaning.

Leave a little money on the table, give a little bit of extra services or give people a little bit of extra time, give people grace. ⁓ You don’t have to make all your money in one deal. ⁓ Try to tell the truth whenever, you know, as much as possible. Business is hard. You sometimes you see people who are not telling the truth, but they’re gonna, it catches up with you. So.

My advice to every, anytime I get into a mentorship opportunity is I take, always take the high road.

Quentin (18:04)
I love that always take the high road, tell the truth, build relationships, because relationships are everything in this space and building relationships from an honest perspective is everything. Like, let people choose, give people the courtesy of being honest with them so we can build a very integral relationship. And I think that’s good in business and personal, right? Let people choose. If you want to deal with me, let me just tell you who I am. Let me tell you what I’m about.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (18:31)
100%. Yep.

Quentin (18:33)
And so

we can choose, if we’re have a relationship, it’s gonna be a real authentic relationship. Know what I mean?

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (18:38)
That’s exactly right. Over-communicate and get, address the elephant in the room. Don’t have someone in or a deal with you and be surprised, especially if it’s something, if you’re gonna surprise them, it darn well better be something good.

Quentin (18:55)
Yes, absolutely.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (18:56)
Like, gone well, better be something good. But when people are

surprised, I tell people that. Like, I just did a deal with somebody and I’m surprised by something that that person knows they should have told me. And I’m like, you know, when you surprise people with bad stuff, it’s just like, creates a contentious relationship that, you know, and look.

Again, when you’re in a fortunate situation, it’s easier to do that. Sometimes you have to, when you’re younger or when you don’t have the success or track record, things like that, you might have to, you might feel the need, but it’s just never worth it.

Quentin (19:35)
It’s never worth it. Man, you’re so right. Brene Brown has a saying and it’s actually is one of my wife’s favorite saying. said it to her when I was being honest with her about who I was, because if you’re going to love me, I want you to love me for me. The last thing I want you to do is to fall in love with somebody that I can’t be. Right. So Brene Brown has a saying where she says clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. So like.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (20:02)
Hmm.

Quentin (20:02)
Kindest thing I can be is to be crystal clear. Like you said Over communicate that’s the kindest thing that I can do to use to be crystal clear And I think that translates again in our personal life and in our business life as well like because we will build these partnerships Relationships, let’s be as clear and kind with each other as we can be. You know what mean?

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (20:23)
Yep, 100%. And look, and I win and build rapport with clients by talking straight to them. There’s never any ⁓ meanness ever, but there’s sometimes where I deliver like, hey man, this deal just isn’t good enough to raise capital, or you’re too early, or your pitch stinks. And I’ll say that to people and they’re like, and every once in a while you piss somebody off.

But more often they’re not, say, thank you. You’re a services provider and you’re actually telling me the truth. I know that you’re not just out for the money because you took risk in saying that in that you might have upset me and I walked away. I walk away from deals all the time where people want to hire us, but I’m just like, hey man, no one’s going to invest in that at this stage. It’s not come back to us in six months or work on the model a bit or get your pitch right. You could, which you, which you can appreciate. And look, I think people can tell authenticity.

⁓ versus, you know, in earnestness versus fake. You know, I can spot, I can spot, I can spot fake in inauthenticity from a mile away. Yeah. And again, part of that’s also from, from lots of failures I’ve had ⁓ making bad investments or going into wrong partnerships or things like that. So

Quentin (21:34)
Yeah.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (21:39)
⁓ Anyway, it’s part of the journey and sometimes people’s journey is doing something deceptive to learn that lesson. But again, if you take the high road whenever possible, and usually there’s a path to disclose honestly, communicate with integrity. Yeah.

Quentin (21:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, listen, we’re coming up on rapping, but when I talk to somebody like you, I love sometimes to go into this question. And this is not a scripted question. know, I like to prepare, but this is kind of like off my head. You know, I want to open up the floor for you just to talk to our viewers pretty much about anything you want to talk about. When I say that, I mean, if you have something inspiring or if you have something inspirational, like, or something that you’ve been thinking about, like,

When I talk to somebody like you who has the lens that you have on life and business and perspective, I like to open up the floor to give you a chance to really share with our viewers, maybe from your heart. So I just want to open up the opportunity to have anything you want to share.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (22:39)
Sure, it just happens that this past weekend I went to a conference in Vegas called, it was called the Entrepreneur Level Up Conference. And some amazing speakers, Marcus Limonis from The Prophet. Yeah, great. mean, he was five feet away from me, speaking in front of a room of 600 people, awesome. Robert Herkovec from Shark Tank.

Quentin (22:52)
My favorite, that’s my guy. That’s my favorite.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (23:02)
Damon John was there, amazing speakers. Kim Perrell hosted it, really good inspirational people. Cody Sanchez, Alexis Ohanian, venture capitalist started Reddit, married to Serena Williams, just awesome speakers. ⁓ And one of the most interesting, there were two takeaways that I’ll kind of share. One was just they talked about entrepreneurship being a community and…

that you’re not alone. know, entrepreneurship and kind of doing deals can be lonely. So that was just one interesting thing about just thinking about like the importance of community of having a group of people that you kind of do deals with together or that you have a community of like-minded people that you can commiserate, celebrate, you know. ⁓

Quentin (23:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (23:52)
So that’s one thing. And the second was just something that frankly comes naturally to me is just likeability, is being likable. People who are likable, who are authentic, who have empathy, have compassion, tend to have more success raising money, ⁓ raise money faster, have deals work out, ⁓ keeps you out of trouble.

you know, avoids lawsuits, things like that, which can happen in deals. But we talked about likability and being somebody who’s, you know, enters relationships more givers than takers, right? People who go out of their way to make introductions, offer wisdom, offer advice without the expectation of reciprocity, you know, of something in trade.

What got a laugh in the room was when someone said, everybody’s got that friend, but you know when they’re calling that they’re gonna ask you for something. You just know, phone rings, what’s he gonna ask for? And you don’t wanna be, don’t be that guy. Be the guy who’s.

Quentin (25:00)
Absolutely.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (25:06)
man, I got a text from Ben about this and like to help, know, to add, you know, so I’m just an upbeat positive guy. That’s how I live my life. And I want to be surrounded by people like that, partners, investors, ⁓ know, colleagues, whatever, all my clients. And I, know, it kind of, ⁓

you know, say no to people who don’t fill your bucket. You know, you are only as good as the people that you hang out with, you spend time with who are in your podcast feed, in your home, the investors. Again, I have the good fortune of having a pretty good success in life, so I can say that. But the path to getting there is being really careful about who you let in and what you let in.

Quentin (25:51)
Absolutely so well stated, my friend. But listen, before we wrap, Mr. Ben, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate, learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you,

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (26:03)
Sure, my website, our company’s website is Thinkfish, www.thinkfish.co. My email’s ben at thinkfish.co. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter, I’m at Ben Padnos, B-E-N-P-A-D-N-O-S. And love to hear from people. Anybody who hears me and wants to connect, just shoot me a note, I’ll send you a Calendly link and we’ll spend half an hour, get to know each other.

Quentin (26:28)
man, I love it. There he is, y’all. Mr. Ben, listen, sir. I just want to thank you, man. I want to thank you for your story. I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for your perspective. We definitely need more people that’s doing it the right way like you’re doing it, man. And so thank you for your time today, man. It’s been a pleasure.

Ben Padnos – ThinkFISH (26:45)
Same with you Q, really fun to meet you.

Quentin (26:47)
Absolutely. And everyone else, come on. You know what I’m going to say and I’m going say it nice and slow. Make sure you’re subscribed.

You do not want to miss out on these amazing conversations. Wasn’t that an amazing conversation? And I’m telling you, you don’t want to miss out on the other future conversations that we’re going to have because they’re going to be just equally amazing. And so thank you all for tuning in. Thank you, Mr. Ben again. And to everyone else, I will see you on the next time.