How to Raise Capital: Sell the Underwriting, Not the Real Estate Deal

Jillian Sidoti (00:00)
So that’s why you have to become an a force to be reckoned with in your area of real estate, in your area of expertise.

And stop focusing on the properties. If you have good underwriting and you can explain that underwriting to your investors, sell them the underwriting. Don’t sell them the deal.

Joseph Crooms (01:48)
Hi everyone, welcome to Investor Fuel.

Real Estate Pros Podcast. And I have a very exciting guest today. ⁓ her name is Jillian I’m gonna let her tell her first name, last name, and all the details. And I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to. So you’re gonna have a great time. And ⁓ Jillian, glad to have you here. Would you say hello?

Jillian Sidoti (02:15)
I would say hello. Thank you, Joseph, so much for having me. My name’s Jillian Sidoti I’m very happy to be here today. I love talking about real estate. It’s it’s like one of those things that is just in my blood, I think. It’s in my DNA.

Joseph Crooms (02:30)
I think our listeners are really going to take something away from you and how you’re approaching your business, especially your ideology about interest rates. Yeah. So, ⁓ let’s dive into it. So go go so first for people who’re not familiar, give us a short version of what you might focus on these days. just tell us exactly what you’re doing and what market you’re operating.

Jillian Sidoti (02:58)
So I have invested in probably every different type of real estate. I’ve the one thing I’ve never really gotten into is land. ⁓ just like land banking. I’ve never I’ve never done a lot of land banking, but I have done, you know, multi f I’ve done a lot of multifamily. I’ve done a lot of ⁓ small hotels, I’ve done ⁓ self-storage, mobile home parks. ⁓

d office buildings. I’ve actually had a a pretty you know, I f for a a while there we thought, you know, office buildings aren’t a good idea, but I’ve actually had some success in office buildings. ⁓ so so I’ve d I’ve done a lot of differ I’ve done single family flips. I’ve done a lot of different businesses, but right now where I’m focused in in on is the luxury travel space, boutique hotels and experiential stays. I think there’s gonna I think there’s gonna continue to be a market for that.

with the with people with travel itself becoming cheaper and cheaper. I I know a lot of people say, well, few prices are driving the cost of air travel and things like that. But the reality is is we see it. We see places like Barcelona like basically try to shut down travel altogether because they you know tourists are are constantly there and running running through the town. So ⁓ the world has just become a smaller place. Air air travel has become so much easier.

Traveling has become less scary for people. We are connected at all the time. And I know, I know air travel, this is this is kind of off the subject, but it I think it’s important to say. Like, I know air travel has become like one of those things where like, well, air travel’s become so miserable. The seats are smaller and there’s to there’s too many people on the plane and you have to pay for it. They nickel and dime you on paying for luggage and things like that. But think about it for a second.

You have Wi-Fi on flights now. You used to have to stare at the back of the seat. Like, right? Airports have lounges. You know, you can go into a lounge. They have tons of different restaurants. They have tons of different selections. They have they have booze. So if you want to get a little tipsy before you get on a plane, not too tipsy though, because they’ll kick you off. But you have these options that we couldn’t even imagine, you know, 20 years ago.

Wi-Fi on an airplane, you can adjust the air above you to make it colder or hotter, you know. The I don’t think it’s I mean, nobody likes to sit at the back of the plane near the bathrooms in a tiny little seat. Certainly, but i it you can still do it. You can get to anywhere you want to go in the world because of air travel. And so I do think there’s there’s value there’s opportunity in the real estate market because of that.

Joseph Crooms (06:39)
So let me ask you this question, Julianne. You mentioned AI to me. ⁓ and and you’re now you’re talking about traveling. Yeah. How is AI going to benefit your business and this new avenue that you’re looking to get involved in, this traveling, luxury traveling experience? Can you connect the two for us?

Jillian Sidoti (07:03)
Absolutely. So, first of all, the thing about AI is that you have to look for things that AI complements doesn’t take over. That’s the way I look at it, right? And and the thing is about real estate, like travel, is AI can complement it. It’s not gonna take it over. We’re not gonna see a bunch of people with virtual reality headbands on, you know, traveling anywhere. And I I’ll give you a perfect I know this to be true.

⁓ just by my own experience, my own business, ⁓ I was mentioning to you earlier that one of my business partners and I started a luxury travel business. We it’s we call it Adventure Club. It’s not a very inventive name, but it’s called Adventure Club. Yeah, yeah. And so z the whole purpose of Adventure Club is to get experiences that you cannot get anywhere else.

And they’re pure they’re curated by myself and my business partner. My business partner and I go stay in the hotels, we go do the thing, we and then we come back and we sell it. That’s how we do it. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, we already sold out of our trip to Egypt. That’s in 2027 next year. Because it this is why. You because anybody can go to Egypt at any time. And let me let me tell you this: the trip is in the end of July, beginning of August of next year.

No one in their right mind wants to go to Egypt in the middle of July. It’s hot as hell, right? So why are people willing to buy spaces from us to go on a trip to Egypt that is over a year away? and and give us all the money for it right now. ⁓ and I’ll tell you why. It’s because it’s a curated trip where we’re gonna go see the eclipse over Luxor.

And this eclipse over Luxor has not happened in thousands of years, has never happened before in recorded history and will not happen for thousands of more years. So it’s a once in a civilization opportunity. And so what we’re really looking for is those types of opportunities. And while we’re doing that trip, we have to stay in a hotel. We gotta stay in multiple hotels. Which is again like this is where the opportunity is. ⁓ and and that’s why I’m so

like focused right now on those experiential stays that are adventuresome, that are enjoyable, that take you from your own reality into a new reality, ⁓ and and just a little a little bit better than your regular life.

Joseph Crooms (09:40)
Thank you, Jillian.

Let’s talk about your

Jillian Sidoti (09:43)
I didn’t

even answer your question. You asked me about I’m so sorry.

Joseph Crooms (10:21)
No, that’s not that’s this is good what brought you to this realization that, you know what, me and my partner need to create something because to enhance what we’re doing. Yeah. Let’s talk little bit about where you were moving in your tradition quote traditional ⁓ real estate niche. Talk about that. And then what piqued your interest to create this new business?

Jillian Sidoti (10:46)
Yeah,

no, that’s a great question. I so the first the first part of it is, I mean, and it’s like there’s no one thing, but the reality is is I’ve been using AI since twenty twenty one, like very religiously since twenty twenty one. I started off with, you know, like we all do with ChatGPT and ⁓ was just creating stuff with ChatGPT and then I tried to create, you know, chat GPT to be in a voice that I wanted it to

to be in and so on and so forth. And I got ChatGPT to do quite a few things. I built custom GPTs where people could come in, put in information and make an investor presentation for the real estate deal, stuff like that. ⁓ and then I kind of graduated from there and started using ⁓ other AIs. I use Gemini, I used Grok, but the one I’ve like landed on and I use vi like all day long is Claude and Claude Code. And and I realized in using

those tools, you can pretty much automate and AI your entire business, whether it’s real estate or something else, using these tools. I’ve built countless websites using Claude Code. I’ve built software programs. I’ve built hospitality apps using Claude Code. And and now like this house that I’m living in right now, this this is actually one of the best real estate deals I’ve ever done. This house I’m living in right now has an ocean view right there.

And it’s in western Puerto Rico. I found it online, on a website here called Clasificados, which is like kind of like Craigslist. And the pictures were really bad, but the house had been abandoned and it had had ⁓ it been foreclosed on by a bank. And so I, you know, I I did what any good real estate investor, you know, does. I haunted the agent.

until the agent called me back and gave me the opportunity to buy the house. So I I bought the house and I like the pool is right there. I wanna actually show you the pool. This this house has the biggest pool, private pool in Puerto Rico. So and it’s a super luxury pool. The guy who built this was kind of a little bit insane. And we had to rehab it and everything. But once I finished rehabbing it, I was like, you know, my kids my have three kids.

You know, and and they barely go in the pool now. So we decided to start like renting out the pool for weddings and other events and things like that. And so that’s when I really started realizing, like, I can automate this entire business. You can go to our I built my website on Claude Code, right? So it’s a real estate deal. I built my website for hospitality, so you can rent out my pool. You can go right on.

You can get a quote, it will email you, it will put you into a funnel, and the whole entire thing was built and oper and is operated with AI. You can go on and talk, and you will talk, you can talk to an AI agent, or you can talk to myself. And that’s just from a little rinky-dink pool here in Western Puerto Rico. Imagine what you can do for your real estate business with AI raising capital. Like that’s one thing I’m I’m really good at, it’s raising capital. Raising capital or

⁓ addressing tenant complaints, addressing tenant concerns, you know, ⁓ making repairs on your property and and and and and putting this all into a system that works automatically for you. So I you know what I would tell every real estate aid investor out there to do right now is to embrace AI as best as you can, you know, ⁓

And and and try to see where where can you make your life easier with AI. That’s what you should be looking at when it comes to your real estate business in AI.

Joseph Crooms (14:34)
Let’s talk about raising capital. Sure. Tell us some real life how you got started there and what have you learnt right now?

Jillian Sidoti (15:25)
Yeah. So I, you know, I started in real estate back in two thousand five, ⁓ two thousand four, two thousand five, around there. You know, it was a different it was a totally different market, right, back then. And and what I we were doing is we were doing ⁓ condo conversions down in San Diego. And the condos ⁓ the so we’d buy an apartment building, we’d put a new map on the

It’s called putting a map on the property. We put a new map on the property. We change like, you know, the permitting and and changed it from individual apartments into individual condos, put an HOA in, rehab it, et cetera, and then sell off the individual units. And that was an amazing business back then. Made a lot of money. and until we didn’t make a lot of money because the market changed, right? But the big ⁓

The big thing was is that, you know, you you could get a you could get so much of a loan from a bank, but then you had to backfill with ca you know, investor capital because you needed to do these types of projects take massive rehab money. So ⁓ so that’s that’s how I started raising capital was doing these condo conversions, getting the bank loan and then backfilling with investor capital so we could do the rehabs. And I just realized like raising capital.

is oftentimes not about the property itself. As a matter of fact, it’s usually never about the property. It’s about what you do and how you present it and what makes you special. And if you look at the big operators out there, like the really the really ⁓ famous ones, and I’ll use Grant whether you like him or not is irrelevant, but I’ll use Grant Cardone as an example.

Grant Cardone is a certain personality. I did when I was practicing law, I I was his lawyer. I worked for him for a couple of years. He is exactly who he says he is. ⁓ but we never, whenever I wrote him an offering to go out and raise capital, I was never writing him an offering that said, ⁓ we’re buying this one particular building. There might be that one particular building in the offering, but he never.

He never couched it as I’m buying this one amazing building and you must invest in this amazing building. It was always like, I invest in these types of properties in this kind of marketplace that yields this kind of cash flow and these are the reasons I do it. Like it was always it did the property and and you tell your investors, my God, this is the best property ever and you’re so focused on the property and then it falls out of Escrow for whatever reason.

Guess what? You have to start all over again with those investors, right? You have to reconvince them of something. So what we really want to try to do is say, I know the Houston market and I know multifamily. And those are the two things I know. And I know I can identify a property and I know if I can get a property that’s an eight cap or better, or I know like whatever it is. And I know I know twenty units or less is my sweet spot, you know, whatever it is.

Is that and then you become an expert in that field. ⁓ you know, we were talking about one of my business partners, a gentleman by the name of Jeff. He he had a theory. ⁓ I haven’t I haven’t invested in all his deals, but I’ve invested in most of his deals. And he has theories about how he not only purchases properties, where he purchases them, what they look like, and how he refinances them, which is exactly why I invested with him. And I’ve invested in office buildings with him.

industrial buildings and multifamily buildings, but it’s the story of the investment process that is the reason. I I I can’t tell you too much about those. I’ve gone and seen all of them just because we’ve held them for so long and I’ve been in the area before. But it was years that we owned those properties before I ever even went and looked at them. You know what I mean?

So that’s why you have to become you have to become an a force to be reckoned with in your area of real estate, in your area of expertise.

And stop focusing on the properties. If you have good underwriting and you can explain that underwriting to your investors, sell them the underwriting. Don’t sell them the deal.

Joseph Crooms (19:50)
That is great. Then this leads me to this question. What’s been the key to keeping the machine running smooth?

Jillian Sidoti (20:00)
you just get you the key to keeping the machine running, Spooner. If you’re talking about when it’s comes to raising capital, it’s really comes down to never never stopping the machine from running, right? And what I mean by that is are you are you staying in front of your investor base? Are you getting are you constantly giving them reasons to know like and trust you? Or are you just like

Abandoning them and coming back six months later when you have a deal and come, I got a deal, I got a deal, I got a deal. No, you got like those six months preceding that deal should be those times where you’re telling them what you’re up to. I’m scouting deals in the Atlanta market right now. Here’s what I found. Here are deals that I’ve rejected. Here’s why I rejected those deals. You have to stay in constant contact. And it it doesn’t have to be annoying. It doesn’t have to be every day or even even, you know.

once a week, but you have to stay in some level of contact to show that your investors that you you’re you’re still on top of your game and you’re in the game. So if you’re talking about how do you keep it running from a capital raising perspective, that’s that. The other perspective is get a good get a good be bookkeeper. Like the bo your bookkeeper is your best asset in your company.

Joseph Crooms (21:18)
Jillian, let’s talk a little bit more about how would you send a email or text message to what you just said? How would for someone listening say, Hey, you know, I think I need to do that, but I don’t know how. I don’t know. Yeah. What would

Jillian Sidoti (21:33)
know how yeah ⁓

you want to know what’s funny before you even start doing that the you we gotta go in the way back machine for a second like that’s actually the middle part of things that you do oddly enough because imagine imagine if ⁓ imagine if you’re you’re you’re Grant Cardone and we’ll use him as an example because he’s su he’s such a huge personality he only fits

For certain investors, right? But Grant Cardone’s out there and he’s he’s doing his thing and being all him, and he’s talking to an audience of little old ladies. That’s not his investor avatar. Little old ladies are not Grant Cardone’s investor avatar. They’re most likely not going to invest with him. So the message isn’t gonna resonate. So so you have to figure out a couple things. You have to figure out who you are as an entity, as a company, as a brand.

Who you are. And that goes back to you know, before like you’re not, you don’t don’t identify with a property, identify with the brand and who you are and what your underwriting is. Once you figure that out, then you think who does my brand and my personality resonate with? And you’re gonna identify three different what we call investor avatars. Like maybe it’s Joseph, maybe it’s Jillian, you know. Joseph, where do you live?

Joseph Crooms (22:58)
I live in New Jersey. I live in the area now. I have four

Jillian Sidoti (23:00)
Do you have three kids? Kids?

Four kids. Okay. So Joseph has four kids. Are they adults? They’re adults. Okay. So Joe Joseph has four kids. They’re adults. He had a great career. He’s now running a po a real estate podcast. He loves he loves real estate. ⁓ Joseph wants to be very protective of his retirement. He does not

Joseph Crooms (23:10)
yes they are.

Jillian Sidoti (23:29)
Take kindly to him when if you’re if you talk in guru speak, Joseph doesn’t take kindly to it. He doesn’t want to hear about like high risk, high returns, because he doesn’t believe you. Like I I don’t know if I’m describing you at all. And and and then I’d probably look at some of your hobbies and some of those other things. And then and then what if we s also said Jillian might be one of your avatars? Jillian is a mom of three, she’s worried about what her kids are going to do after high school. ⁓

She likes to travel, she has four dogs, you know, like these are all the things we wanna look at. We wanna look at and then we wanna see, okay, j I’ve identified Jillian ⁓ as my potential investor, you know, a woman who’s in her forties with three kids and has these fears and these desires and these wants. And I I see Joseph, who’s a man forgive me, are you in your fifties? Link?

Joseph Crooms (24:23)
I I’m l literally sixty nine.

Jillian Sidoti (24:25)
you look amazing, sir. You look amazing. So So we have Joseph who’s, you know, heading towards seventy and ⁓ looking good, living in New Jersey, getting ready to retire, running his podcast, still looking for opportunities. ⁓ do they have similar fears? Do they have like do they have similar catchphrases that resonate with them? And then that’s when you start marketing to them. So only after we figure out all of that.

is what when you can start getting that messaging out to your investors for it to actually be effective. ‘Cause otherwise it’s like t it’s like just yelling into the wind, right? Like it’s

Joseph Crooms (25:05)
Tell me what your introductory letter was be. How would what would your your opening statement in a email or text message?

Jillian Sidoti (25:18)
To

⁓ to a potential investor. Yeah. you know, you always wanna start with ⁓ I think of the old B and I saying givers gain, right? Like so you always wanna start with something where you’re showing interest and not selling anything. Like, hi, I like so let’s just say I’m selling I’m I’m looking for you, Joseph, to eventually invest with me. ⁓

It’s ⁓ hi Joseph. My name’s Jillian. I’m a I’ve been a real estate investor since tw two thousand five. I’m always looking to network with new ⁓ in ⁓ other other like-minded investors. What have you been investing in lately? And like and like just curious what you’re investing with lately and and and with something like that. And that’s how you start these conversations. And then once you do that, then you can possibly you don’t want to just start offering something for free right away.

People can see right through that. It’s just that’s an old, you know, the oldest trick in the book. ⁓ I still offer things for free, of course, because I want you I you know, and I offer qu high quality things for free so that I make sure that it’s it actually helps you whether or not we get into some kind of business relationship or not. but that’s that’s how you start these conversations. And again, this is where your automation in AI comes gets in gets really handy, is that they answer that, and once they answer that, you go.

that’s great. I’ve also seen blah, blah, blah, blah. As a matter of fact, I built a tool that can help you calculate. Would you like me to send it to you? You know, they send say yes. Then, you know, you could just continue the conversation. You start sending them things, you invite them to a webinar. And what you should be inviting them to is an educational based webinar. You know, whenever I’m working with a somebody who’s trying to raise capital, ⁓ I never I never build them a pitch deck first. I might eventually build them a pitch deck.

But it’s never the first thing I build them. I build them I build them that that rapport, that questioning, that that that conversation, and then I build them the webinar. And the webinar, nine times out of ten, you don’t need to do a pitch deck after the webinar because people already understand who you are and whether or not they’re interested in investing in with you. And so for for you know, my guy in Houston my guy who has the apartment building in Houston.

I would say I would do probably a presentation on why Texas multifamily has to be part of your real estate portfolio. And then I would do a whole thing. Texas is could could be its own country if it wanted to. It has it has a diverse group of people that live in it. It has a diverse it’s becoming a more politically diverse area. ⁓ it has low cost of ⁓ you know gasoline.

⁓ it’s lots of industries have moved into Texas in favor of that their tax structure like SpaceX and I just saw one, I just saw some big company move from New Jersey, and I don’t even remember which one it is now, of course, but move from New Jersey to Texas just the other day. ⁓ but I so you you you highlight all these things about why this market is so amazing, and then you highlight

Why do they need so much multifamily? And highlight what does the housing market look like in multifamily? And then you highlight who you are and why your experience matters and what you can do and why you’re better than anybody else to do this type of work. ⁓ and and that’s and and you bring them on that journey until the end where they’re like, so do you have any questions about how you invest in, you know, Texas real estate? And and and you hope what they say is like, yeah, how do where do I write a check?

What do you have for me to invest in now? Like that’s that’s how you do it. And so you get them to ask you how they can invest as opposed to asking them to invest. No, it’s not always that easy, right? Of course, but that’s w that’s that’s the best outcome.

Joseph Crooms (29:09)
You said it’s not easy, but you know what what what really caught my attention, Julie, ’cause you had me locked in, like I’m taking notes. Because and that’s the whole purpose of our podcast, to talk real life situations. And that’s why I asked that what is that opening sentence? And you took us so much deeper. So I gotta t ask you another question. All right. Every operator I know has a moment when things just get real.

Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that you had to pivot fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments with us at the end?

Jillian Sidoti (29:46)
I’m a passive investor in this one deal in in Kansas right now and it is not going well. And I feel like if like I’ll just take it from an opera even though I’m a passive investor, I can tell you exactly where the operator’s gone wrong in my eyes. They didn’t act fast enough. They didn’t look at all the options. ⁓

And they didn’t ask for enough help. But the fourth thing and the most important thing, they didn’t communicate enough. ⁓ you know, one thing you cannot be doing when things are going badly is is be like an ostrich and put your head in the sand and give up and pretend like it’s not happening or it it’s not even a matter or just saying, well, we lost that deal. you you need to you you constantly need to fight to make your deals work.

⁓ whether you like him or not, whatever the case is, right now, all I’m getting in my feed is like old Elon Musk interviews, right? And every single one of them’s the same. I sleep in my I sleep in my office. Nobody works harder than me. I, you know, I take my own money and invest in all these deals. Like that’s that’s basically it. That’s r where it comes down to. Like you cannot rest.

Especially when it comes to real estate, you cannot rest. if if you’re gonna be in the game of real estate and you’re gonna have investors in that game of real estate, you cannot rest. You either have to put the infrastructure in place where people are going to be constantly working and it then it it it does get to that point, but you you simply cannot rest. It’s that simple.

Joseph Crooms (31:28)
So that’s the kind of stuff that people don’t talk about enough. Yeah. It’s what separates ⁓ folks who just dabble from the ones who stay in the long term. ⁓ what are you most focused on solving or scaling next? What’s your next real goal?

Jillian Sidoti (31:37)
Right.

me? ⁓ I well, I kind of alluded to this. I I’m really into those ex I’m really into travel right now. So all the things I’ve invested in in the last ⁓ couple years, I haven’t invested as much as I I used to because there’s just not as many great deals out there now. But I’ve invested in a boutique hotel in the Dominican Republic, ⁓ where it’s you know it’s in a up and coming area what we call the path of progress in the Dominican Republic.

And it’s literally a path of progress. When we bought the property, there was no paved road there. We’re we’re a year and a half, two years down the road in the property, and now we have a paved road. So that’s that’s literally the path of progress. Yeah. ⁓ so ⁓ so so we basically ⁓ we basically live ⁓ it

And we also live in a place that’s a path of progress in in Rincom, Puerto Rico where where there’s a lot of opportunity. And again, I have I have this house here, but ⁓ it g it goes beyond like the boutique hotels or the higher end, you know, things. we’re also investing in a glamping community between Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. I have a ground up construction vacation home and treehouse community in the Smoky Mountains that I’ve invested in.

Like I think all of these things and ⁓ you know, I mentioned the Dominican Republic Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States, but I mentioned these things, but I I also mention where I think we’re all investing is the United States, because the United States, if we’ve if we’ve learned anything in the last couple of years, is it is the strongest economy in the world. Like no one can comp no one on a global level, maybe the UAE, which has a lot less people and only one real resource, can compete

with the United States of America. China cannot compete with the United States of America. ⁓ and and I think, you know, people are gonna continue to to vacation here and and there is it people and those are places you can drive to, you can fly to, you can you can get to. ⁓ and people are in we’re finding people are really looking for those experiential stays, something unique, something out of the ordinary.

Joseph Crooms (34:07)
I love the name ⁓ that you gave giving it. I I I wanna tell you because ⁓ it sorta tells them what you what you’re trying to do and then you put the meat to it.

So yeah big and and and in place. So the next move can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it. Now I know a lot of people listening are are either early in their journey, yeah, are looking at level of it, and I think they’re benefit they’ve benefited from here in this period. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, and you sort of spoke about one person that’s really been helpful to you. What’s made the biggest difference to you?

Jillian Sidoti (34:51)
in terms of sa so ⁓ my one of my very first mentors was my my first boss that I worked for back in back in twenty two thousand four, two thousand five, all the way up to the beginning of two thousand seven when we did those condo conversions. ⁓ he was, you know, we were I was in my twenties, he was in his thirties, and we you know, I r I remember s I took so many lessons from that job. I took lessons from that job of

Times that were good and times that got really bad really fast, right? Like I I I I if you’re just starting out, you probably don’t remember what it was like back then. But it was a feeding frenzy that led into the 2008, you know, housing crisis, right? So 2004, 2005, we’re living life. Like we are making money, we’re going to the track.

On Fridays. Like betting on the horses. You know, like we are we are living life. ‘Cause we could. I mean, we to every Friday was just a free for all in our office because we were making so much money. It was just like whatever. Let’s go out to fancy lunch. Let’s go out to sushi. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. You know, whatever. and and that was great until it wasn’t, right? And then everything kind of came ⁓ we we fortunately did not lose one single property. But ⁓

But we did it was very stressful at the end towards, you know, getting rid of everything because we saw the writing on the wall. We got rid of everything by the time mid 2007 kind of rolled around. We were done with all of our properties. Unfortunately, we like avoided the big part of the crash, but we did not we did not get out unscathed. However, here’s what he taught me in that time. There was this project.

we had put an earnest money deposit down for like it was a hundred thousand dollar earnest money deposit back in two thousand five. So this was a lot of money back then I mean it’s still a lot of money, but it was a lot of money, it was even more money back then. And we it was three properties ⁓ that were two of them were cl close next to each other and then one was like across the way. And ⁓ they were three apartment buildings that we were gonna convert into ⁓ a ⁓ condos.

And so we decided to we did all this work. I did all the all I we got all these renderings, we got all these approvals, we did all this stuff. And all of this was ⁓ contingent for closing, right? To get all this stuff done. And

Sometime in 2006, my boss came into me and said, We’re not gonna close on those properties. And I was like, What? He’s like, We’re not gonna close on those properties. We’re gonna let them go. We’re gonna let the Ernest Bunny deposit go. And I was like, No, no, no, we gotta close. Like, I mean, my God, we’re gonna lose $100,000. We’re gonna lose $100,000 in all this time we spent, we did all this, we did all that, we did that, we paid for this, we paid for that. He’s like, Jillian.

It’s better to lose a hundred thousand than four hundred thousand. And we’ll lose four hundred thousand dollars if we close on those properties. And I I just I’ll just never forget that. Like just about cutting your losses, about recognizing sunk costs, about understanding these things and and walking away when walking away is the most appropriate thing to do and not trying to force situations to happen. And thank God we didn’t do that. Thank God we didn’t do those properties because

Had we done those properties, we would have been right in the thick of the two thousand eight crisis. We would we would have lost everything. So ⁓ it’s it’s having that clear mind, ⁓ looking at numbers, understanding how things work, ⁓ that that will save you, ⁓ and and not leading by emotion, right? Which is really hard because it is your business, you know. ⁓

I know you d like I’m I’m rambling right now, but one of my one of my least favorite savings, actually I would even say my least favorite saying is ⁓ it’s just business. I hate that saying. I hate it so much because it’s not just business, it’s what puts food on the table, it’s what pays for the vacation, it’s what sends your kids to college, it’s what pays for your daughter’s wedding. It’s it’s not just business. So ⁓ I know, you know, for me to say like take the emotion out of it is like

And then in the second sentence, it’s just business is like kind of counterintuitive, but you wanna be able to pay for the vacation and pay for the pay for the wedding and pay for pay for food on the table, pay the mortgage, then you do have to take the emotion out of it and and think, you know, do I have to do this deal because I just have to do this deal or do I do should I be doing this deal because the numbers work and it makes sense?

Joseph Crooms (39:53)
That makes a lot of sense. So I I can stay here all day with you. So but ⁓ this has been really good. So I want to things first say thank you, Jillian, for being transparent. Now I know a lot of people listening either in the d they cover that yet. But you can’t fake relationships. So we’re about to wrap this up. Tell people how they can get in touch with you.

Jillian Sidoti (39:59)
Ha ha ha ha.

I’m gonna give you guys two things. You can go to my website, which is findmoreinvestors.com. That’s findmoreinvestors.com and you can there’s all kinds of free stuff on there you can get. ⁓ there’s a quiz on raising capital that will be very helpful. But if you wanna just reach out to me cut and connect with me, the first thing I’ll tell you to do is go to Facebook. I am a Facebook aficionado. I love Facebook. I

I know I know it’s like s supposedly a boomer thing now is Facebook, but I don’t care. I love it. It’s how I connect with so many different people. And you’re welcome to connect with me on there and also my email address is Jillian, my first name at jilliansidoti.com. So just [email protected].

Joseph Crooms (41:07)
I I always do this for four months. Do it one more time. Tell one more time. Jillian. Somebody put some put some paper or or you’re not even just tell one more time.

Jillian Sidoti (41:18)
Absolutely. It’s Jillian J I L L I A N at Jillian J I L L I A N. Sidotti S S and Sam I D S and Dog O T S and Tom I Dot Com.

Joseph Crooms (41:32)
Beautiful, beautiful. Perfect. Well listen, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. We need more people in spaces that are doing the right thing. Thanks again for being here. Absolutely. If you got value out of this, make sure you subscribe. We got more conversations coming with operators just like Jillian who are out ⁓ they’re building real business and we’ll see you on the next episode.

at Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros podcast. Today our guest was Jillian Sidoti What a present. Thank you so very much.