Stop Selling Deals and Start Building Trust to Raise Capital Online

Adam@gowercrowd.com (00:00)

Nobody wants to sit down with you for an hour and be pitched. No one wants to do that. As much, as little as you want to be out there, know, your deals one person at a time, they also don’t want it.

Because your investors or your prospects, they’re accredited investors. They’re successful. They’re business people. They’re physicians, right? They have businesses. They’re running businesses. They’re busy. At the end of the day, they go home to their families and they don’t want to be pitched. What they want, your investors, is they want to be able to underwrite you and to figure out who you are with this device.

Micah Johnson (00:22)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Adam, who’s been making some serious moves in the real estate industry for quite some time now. Adam, welcome in man, glad to have you.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (02:15)

you

No, it’s nice to meet you and it’s nice to meet you.

Thanks for asking.

Micah Johnson (02:26)

Absolutely, I’m excited for our talk today. I think our listeners are really gonna take some value away from just your overall experience of the industry. You’ve been doing this for a long time and when you can see something for a long time, know more, you’ve probably forgotten more than most of us have learned at this point. So it’s, I love learning more about that. So let’s dive in. For folks who may not know you yet, what is your main focus right now and what markets do you operate in?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (02:51)

Well, thank you for asking.

Again, thanks for having me on the show. My name is Adam

Gower and I run a shop called Gower Crowd. That’s my company. And these days what I do is I work with ⁓ elite sponsors who are wanting to expand their investor networks, their passive investor networks.

⁓ for various reasons, all kinds of reasons that they want to do that. But they’re also old timers like I am for the most part. They’ve been in the business a long time. And so to move to what is essentially a digital capital formation world, in other words, raising money online or syndication online is very new for them. They’ve been syndicating for decades in many cases, but doing it online is a huge leap.

And going into the online world is ⁓ challenging for some people, right? It’s foreign, they don’t really understand it, they’re not sure what to do. And so I build systems and I provide strategic guidance and ⁓ consulting for how to do that, how to optimize that, how to do that the best they can. And as I mentioned before we started, our clients manage about $45 billion of AUM and have raised probably around a billion dollars of equity.

with investments as low as 25,000. And that’s over the last 10 years that they’ve been doing that. So that’s what I did.

Micah Johnson (04:22)

man. So

these are high performing folks that are doing it. What is that, the ones that you’re teaching how to transition into this new world, what is it you usually see them having a hiccup with and what’s that aha moment where it kind of clicks?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (04:40)

Yeah, the biggest

challenge, think the biggest concern that seasoned pros have is that they are used to working with a relatively small number of investors that they know, right, already. And they know that they want to expand those networks. So for example, we’ll work with ⁓ family offices that might be third or fourth, even fourth

where you’ve got, you know, the next generation is taken over, they got a billion dollars of AUM.

They want to buy more, they’re selling stuff and they want to buy and they want to grow and they’re ambitious. But they look at their investor list and their investors and all of those investors are inherited from their grandfather and father, usually men by the way. So all the investors out there, none of them are buying ripe bananas. That’s what I like to say. And they’re all like, I’m not interested in doing anything. If it lasts more than a week, I’m not interested because I might not last that long.

Micah Johnson (06:12)

Okay.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (06:26)

So this new generation, right? This new generation, they want a new cohort

of investors to help them build their business during their lifetimes with a view to the future. So they come to me. And their biggest concern is, I would say probably a couple of things. One, they think of the online, because this is what they see online.

Micah Johnson (06:40)

Mmm.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (06:53)

They think that the only way to be successful online is to be hypey and to be salesy and not taking out just by way of example and not make passing judgment or anything. But they don’t want to be Grant Cardoni, right? want to be discreet. They’re under the radar. They want to stay there. And they don’t want to be seen as being salesmen.

Micah Johnson (06:53)

Mmm.

Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (07:21)

That’s one concern that they have. The other is that they’re always concerned, I would say pretty much consistently concerned with the idea that as soon as they go out and they start becoming visible and finding new investors and investors come to them, that they’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of phone calls with investors asking them questions. And they don’t want to deal with that at all. So what I tell them is what really happened.

And what really happens is, and this is what I say to people, right? If you were one of my clients or a prospect or something, would say to them, you’re a nice guy. By the way, I’ve said this a hundred times. You’re a nice guy. You’re personable. You’re in pleasure to be with, et cetera. But

wants to sit down with you for an hour and be pitched. No one wants to do that. As much, as little as you want to be out there, know, your deals one person at a time, they also don’t want it.

Because your investors or your prospects, they’re accredited investors. They’re successful. They’re business people. They’re physicians, right? They have businesses. They’re running businesses. They’re busy. At the end of the day, they go home to their families and they don’t want to be pitched. What they want, your investors, is they want to be able to underwrite you and to figure out who you are with this device.

Micah Johnson (08:30)

Mm-hmm.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (08:46)

He said, waving his phone for those who are listening.

They want to be able to underwrite and figure you out by whatever you’ve got online. So your job is to essentially preemptively answer all the questions that your prospects may have and put it up online. Put it on your website, put it on YouTube, push it out on LinkedIn, get your plan. And so what happens now is when somebody hears your name and they look you up,

Micah Johnson (08:49)

Okay.

you.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (09:15)

They land on your website. Normally I’d say 95 % of the time, the first two things that show up your website, if you’re a good job with that and your LinkedIn profile. So optimize both of those. And what will happen is that your prospects will come to know, like, and trust you by looking at your website, by looking at LinkedIn, seeing your profile online. They do not want to talk to you. What they will become predisposed to investing with you. They will want to invest with.

without ever having had any kind of contact with you. And so they will be sitting there waiting for you to say, I’ve got a deal to invest in. And then they will show up at a webinar. Again, if you do it properly, by the way, all this stuff I’m describing, we do for our clients. We build all the funnels, all the tech, all the websites, the LinkedIn stuff, all the content, et cetera. We do all of

Micah Johnson (09:48)

Mm.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (10:43)

So they just sit behind.

Micah Johnson (10:43)

Right?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (10:45)

and you know, they conduct their business, but you do set up a website, a webinar, launch a deal during the webinar, I have a sequence of emails before sequence after, and a workflow that makes it super easy for people to invest with you literally click, click, click done. And then what you will discover is that your investors, they don’t want to talk to you, they will show up and they will invest.

Micah Johnson (11:02)

Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (11:10)

And you may have to go in afterwards to see who invested. So you don’t have to worry about all those calls. By the way, I run investor relations behind the scenes for some of our clients. So I know what investors ask. And the most common questions that we get after we built the systems that we built,

Micah Johnson (11:17)

Right. Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (11:35)

are not who are you, what do you do, what’s your background, what’s your track record, what asset classes you’re in, et cetera, et Their questions are, can I invest using my trust or my SDIRA or I completed the paperwork in my name, can I add my wife? Those are the questions that you get. Or sometimes we’ll get, I can’t use the website to sign the dots, can you send them to me? Yeah, okay, I’ll put them in a piece of

I’ll print them and send them back. It’s basically admin. So you ⁓ go from soliciting and educating, nurturing and converting people to admin. It’s just admin function at the end of the day. don’t have all that content. So it’s a very long answer to your short question.

Micah Johnson (12:06)

Right, on the way.

Right.

Well, no, it’s, it’s, I’m glad you took the time to explain it because it is true. You, you represented some real futures that people have, but also named it perfectly who that person that’s investing is. They know they’re smart people. They’re not dumb. They know how to use their technology. They’re, they’ve been sold to their whole life, just like the rest of us. And they’re really successful. Like you said, they’re, they’re time. They know how to use their time. They’re not rookies at this. So

when they line up with you, it’s funny because you do. see where people would get the guy inside the bottle. He can’t really read the label on the outside. So he’s nervous about it. And it really just says, yeah, I can’t see what’s going on. And someone comes along like yourself and says, hey, you’re literally worrying about something that’s not going to happen. You’re literally scared and may not pull this off for a thing that’s not real. ⁓

Man, it’s kind of terrifying really how many times has someone missed out on it because of seeing the wrong side, you Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (13:35)

Hesitation. Well, my, my

sales cycle, actually, Micah is quite long. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll get people coming back to me after six months, 12 months. they’ve been thinking about it. They decided they weren’t going to, or they try something. ⁓ typically what they’ll do, what I, what I see is they typically, they will decide that they’re going to go a cheap route and they’re going to hire ⁓ a, marketing agency that gives them a really good deal.

on building their websites and we’ll bunk some content up and we’ll build you some funnels. But the problem is that they discover is that it doesn’t work and it doesn’t work because it’s not really the tech stack that you put in place. It’s not the funnels and the way you build them that matter as much as what you put into those, into that, the kind of communication you put in there. And if you don’t have a deep understanding of this industry, particularly

if you’re working with the top sponsors in the country. You are not able to, you can’t imagine, you can’t put the right kind of content in. You don’t understand how to position them. You don’t know what makes your client really stand out. I the biggest problem in the market at the moment is that over the last few years, so many people have, I mean, even you mentioned it, so many people have entered the industry.

They discovered capital raise. I like goodness. I can raise money and make money by raising money online and I’m gonna set up a little fund and I’m gonna raise money for a bunch of sponsors and I’m gonna make all this money. It’s gonna be really easy. The problem is and then they learn from gurus in inverted commas how to do it. But those gurus also don’t have experience with the blind leading the blind but

Micah Johnson (16:08)

You

Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (16:12)

You get end up with this templated content that is then amplified by AI. And frankly, a lot of it is actually very good. But under the hood of that, there’s no substance because the sponsor doesn’t have experience. They don’t really know what they’re doing. They make mistakes. Investors don’t really answer. It all looks good. So for my clients, the biggest challenge actually these days is standing out from that noise.

of amateur players and not amateur, they’re all professionals, but unseasoned, inexperienced people who are in the industry. How do you stand out when all these people are pushing out really good quality content? And the only way to really stand out is to create exceptional content that is truly authentically you.

Micah Johnson (16:42)

Mmm.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (17:09)

What is your experience? What is your investment philosophy? What is your investment thesis? How did you come to that? What are the lessons that you learned? And when you dive, when you start, and the way I do it actually is through a series of interviews. So I interview my clients ⁓ over a three or six month period. And we will meet every week, it’s all recorded, like these kinds of calls. And I dive deep into their, into their,

I mean, it’s everything about them. And so from those conversations, we produce the content. And so what you end up with is something that stands out as being fundamentally different. I got a call from a prospect yesterday. Somebody called me yesterday. I said, well, it’s really cool, actually. It works like this. It’s the same for investors, because I’m looking for sponsors who want to hire us. But all I do really is build systems.

that I built for myself that worked really well for our clients to attract investors. Nothing different. It’s the same systems basically. And what this guy said to me is he’s so cool. He said, yeah, we’ve been, we’ve listened to your podcasts. We’ve been on your website. We love your newsletter. And so this guy comes through the door. He already knows lights and trust me, he knows me. He feels like he already knows me. And so in a way there’s almost a sense of thrill.

Micah Johnson (18:14)

Gotcha.

Right?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (18:36)

Somebody described it as being set semi celebrity status. I don’t claim to have that, but it’s the same thing that happens with investors. Investors will get to know you and you don’t even know they’re out there. You don’t even know that they exist out there. And I’ve totally lost my train of thought. was going down and talking about something specific and I lost my train of thought. So you’re to have to ask another question.

Micah Johnson (18:46)

you

Right.

You were talking

about creating content, how to make sure they do it in a way that stands out from the noise. Cause they’re competing with not unprofessionals, but folks who are unseasoned. They’re, they’re putting stuff out and how to actually make sure that you don’t sound like them or sound like you really. I couldn’t agree more because it’s the, in, more industries than just one, that is this, especially for social media, your vibe attracts your tribe. And if you don’t put it out correctly,

They won’t come. a lot of that backwards thought goes into, like you’re saying, plenty of people know how to build generic content, but it doesn’t do anything for anybody. You may get a view and a like or something, but that’s not what you’re after. If you’re really using social media correctly, you want an action later. And I’ve experienced in my own life using social media, that feeling of when someone talks to you, they know you. When you are putting out real, true stuff about yourself, authentic content that sets you apart,

That’s the thing where that person sitting at home in their chair when they have their own free time and they’re reading it, you are literally occupying their time. They are hanging out with you in a way because you took the time to create it the right way. And it has that compounding effect where it’s funny how many people do reach out to you later and you don’t know how long they’ve been watching you and what you’ve been doing. But finally that day hits where they’ve hung out long enough. I want to talk to them now. Now I want to hear from them. Exactly.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (20:28)

they make contact. So this guy

said yesterday, so what he said to me was, okay, we’ve been following you for a year or however long it’s been following. And he said, I like your thinking. I like your thinking because he said, I can tell over the last year that your thinking has evolved. And so it’s true, right? This time last year, a little bit late, but approximately this time last year, I thought the world was going to implode. I still think that there are some possibilities for that. But I also think that

circumstances have changed and there’s a lot of opportunity right now. And because I like to say, it’s okay to change your mind, right? Don’t be locked into something. It’s okay to change your mind because it shows you have one. And so over the last 12 months, my thinking has evolved and I’ve been candid about that online. And I’ve been candid about why I think it’s changed. And what this guy’s reaction to that was, you know, I respect, he respected that he liked it.

And he liked what I was like what I was saying a year ago and he likes what I’m saying now. And if I had just said to chat GPT, give me an article about, you know, the economy and where it’s going. That’s not me. Right. It’s not me and everybody interprets what they see in a different nuanced way. So be confident. I like to tell my clients be confident in your personal view, in your authentic perspective, and don’t worry.

Micah Johnson (21:48)

Right.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (21:58)

about what people will think. I’ll give you something else that I like to talk about is the bell curve. Do remember the bell curve? The bell curve from high school math, right? So you’ve got that, you’ve got the big bulge and then you’ve got the tails on both sides, right? Just to remind you. So down the middle is the masses. That’s everybody over there. It’s this bulge of people. That’s the median, the average. In that section are all those people could care less. They’re indifferent.

They don’t notice, they’re not interested in real estate. They’re not even bothered. On the left side of the curve are all those people who think you are a total loser, right? They do not like you at all. Is something about you rubs them up the wrong way, they don’t like you? And occasionally you’ll get few emails from them. On the other side of the curve though, are all those people who love everything you have to say, everything about you.

Micah Johnson (22:27)

Right.

Hahaha!

Adam@gowercrowd.com (22:57)

Those are the people that you communicate with. Focus on those people. Don’t worry about the naysayers and the people that don’t like you. It doesn’t matter. They will always be there. They’ll never invest. Ignore them. I learned this actually teaching. So I decided, a lot of what I do is educational. Even if it’s client-hired, I’m providing strategic guidance and I’m trying to help them through the process. So it’s largely educational. So to figure out how to teach,

Micah Johnson (23:17)

Sound like it.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (23:26)

I actually taught some real estate investment and finance courses at a local university. What I realized there, so I had, and I used all my marketing techniques to get people to all the students. They let me send out emails to all the student body, come to my class and ignore everybody else’s. So I had hundreds and hundreds of students because no one else, no one else was pitching my students. I just leaned into the really good sales stuff. So I had hundreds of students, right?

And what you see when you teach students in a lecture room is on the back row is all the ones that have got their laptops open and they’re playing games or watching YouTube. They are paying no attention at all to what you’re doing. They don’t want to be there. And then the middle of the room, you’ve got all the people, all the students that just, they got to get some credits. So they’re there, then applaud through. They might make some effort, but really they just want to pass the class and move on.

And on the front row, you’ve got the tech, maybe five persons, five people, if you’re lucky in a class of a hundred, that are locked on to every single word that you are saying. And so I realized I’m going to ignore those people on the back because it’s actually a distraction to me teaching them thinking that they’re not paying attention. You they’re on their phones, they’re doing texts, you know, they’re talking to each other. It’s really distracting. It’s,

kind of rude as well, but it’s a distraction and it takes you off your game. I focused exclusively on that line at the front because I knew that they were interested. So I just taught to them when you’re raising capital online, those are the people that you want to be speaking to your ideal candidate investors and nobody else. Don’t worry about anybody else. And when you do that, when you do it in an authentic way, that is

True to the way that you see the world, exactly what you said Micah, you attract other people that think the same way. And because you’re doing it online, you attract enough people who think the same way that it will change your life. They will invest with you and you’ll grow your business.

Micah Johnson (25:42)

Right? It’s so funny because at front you think you need to attract the middle. You think, I gotta go to everybody. I gotta get everybody. And when you, the longer you go and realize I need very few.

I’m not after everybody. And there was a book a few years ago, it’s called a thousand true fans where the guy was talking about, if you want to make 10 grand online, you need 1000 people paying you 10 bucks a month. That’s not that many in the grand scheme of how many people are online. I remember reading it thinking, man, that is, that’s such backwards thinking, but it makes so much sense. And one thing it does is takes the pressure off when you get to be that way online, like

There’s a part of you that comes alive. You start to feel more confident in yourself. And as that starts to happen, now you’re snowballing out the people reading, participating. They’re like, I gotta get some more of this. What’s this guy doing?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (26:35)

Well, it’s also,

Micah, it’s also fun, actually. I mean, I actually find it to be the most creative part of my day is thinking about, what am I, I’m actually, don’t do it, I don’t think of it this way, but I think, I think of what am I going to say on LinkedIn? I write every day on LinkedIn and I have a newsletter that goes out every week. And so as I have these thoughts about what’s going on in the world or these perspectives of what’s going on in commercial real estate and these ideas,

I jot them down and I actually really enjoy looking at my list of notes. By the way, I’ll give you a cool anecdote in a minute. Keep it under your hat. I’ll tell you where that’s coming from. So I look at my list of ideas, right? So I’ll pick, I’ve got actually a Word doc. So I put down all my ideas. And when it comes to writing content, I scan through and I go, what have I not written about so far from this list?

Micah Johnson (27:15)

Okay.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (27:32)

And I really enjoy writing about it. I really get into it. And people really respond well to that. get good responses. All right. So do know where the term under your hat comes from? No. All right. So Abraham Lincoln ⁓ was a famous orator. And he was famous for speaking. His speeches were well known. He was very good orator.

Micah Johnson (27:44)

No.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (27:59)

way that he would write his speeches is he would know he knew that he had a theme that he wanted to write about. know, you see him with that, what’s it that top hat, that boiler hat, you call it, boiler thing hat, whatever it’s called, right. So he had that hat. And what he would do is whenever he had a thought in his day, and he was going around, that pertained to the, to the speech he was given, he would jot it down, he’d write it down, literally,

take his hat off and put that piece of paper in his hat and put it back on. And when it came to writing his speech, he’d empty out all these notes and he’d assemble them and he writes his speech from all those notes. It’s kind of what I do, except what I do is when I have a thought that I want to write about, I’ll actually send myself an email. I’ll open up an email, send it to me, dictate the idea or the thought. In the subject line, I’ll write LinkedIn post.

Micah Johnson (28:40)

Wow. Yeah.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (28:56)

And then when it comes to it, I go to my inbox, sort for LinkedIn posts. I’ve got a bunch of ideas that it’s just fun to do. It’s, it, I just find it, it forces you to think about how you see the world. Sorry, I cut you off.

Micah Johnson (29:10)

No, you’re good, because I agree. I enjoy writing myself. There’s something about it that pulls you into it when you really get into it. And I use my phone and the notes on my phone for it. I love to walk. So when I’m not in an appointment, I’m walking. That’s my favorite thing to go do is just get out, get moved, come back to a call, go out and get moved. And that’s the same thing. What’s coming in? What thoughts? Because when you create that space for a second and let those thoughts run through there and then you

catalog them up and put them all together, you’ll start to see it come out. And it creates a story. once that’s what I fell in love with was the storytelling part. When you like to tell a story, you can write about anything. It’s so much fun to create, bring them in and then build it up and help them understand and just walking them through it where that’s where I do consider myself an artist. I like that term because it’s the part that’s really coming out. Is it in real estate?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (30:05)

Well, know what, Mike,

in the world of AI, creativity and artistry is going to be a competitive edge. One of my sons was asking me the other day, he said, with AI, you can create incredible art. So how is it then that what happens to artists if AI can create this unbelievable art? My answer was this.

It’s not exactly right, but this is the thinking process. We’ve always had paint, right? For hundreds of years, you could go out and buy paint, different colored paint, right? And get a palette of paint, brush. Everyone’s had access to that technology. But who has stood out and used that same technology to create the most beautiful art in the world? The people who are the most

incredible creators, the people with the most creative, ⁓ you know, minds ⁓ that are able to use that technology paint to create art. We’ve all had it, right? But we’re not all Van Gogh’s, we’re not all Leonardo Finches. And the same is going to be true with AI. The tool is there, but it’s how you use it. And having creativity is what’s going to give you that

competitive edge because you’ll be able to push the limits of what this tech does and create exceptional content that is different from the blah stuff that most people create. I’ve been doing pottery. My wife thinks I need more hobbies. I need more hobbies. So don’t tell her that she sent me off to this pottery class. It’s all cute girls in there. I love it actually.

Micah Johnson (31:48)

love that.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (32:02)

I’m sitting there with an English accent and I’m an fella, it’s like the perfect thing. But it’s just creativity. It’s just nice being, I’m not sure why I mention that, but it’s all about creativity and how you use what are at your hands. Anyway, I’m kind of going off on a tangent there, I’m not sure why.

Micah Johnson (32:06)

You’re killing it.

Yeah. No,

that’s okay. I love these kinds of conversations because even, how I use AI. So when I’m on my walks, I’ve created an agent over time, but I talk to it. It doesn’t, it’s not so much there just to produce stuff and it rarely does, but it’s more to synthesize my thoughts. How many see stuff I can’t see? Right. Well, I trained it on my favorite. So I have a reading list, bunch of books I really enjoy and I trained it.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (32:29)

Mm.

You created, hang on, created an agent. What, did you do that?

Micah Johnson (32:52)

on all of those books to study the books, to study the writers, learn as much about them as you can, and then create a hive mind. Now I want you to use all that to interact with me on conversations that we’re fixing to have. And so I like to think deep. That’s my kind of thing. love to, I want to get good at being human. That’s what I say. If you want to be a good human, get good at being human and it’ll work out for you. So that’s what I use it for. And I feed it.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (32:57)

Hmm.

Micah Johnson (33:18)

I’m very big into journaling. I’ve been journaling. I’ve got almost four years of everyday written down. I’ve got ⁓ info back to 2017. So I’ll feed it that. And what I’ll let it do is give me long arcs, stuff I can’t see. I’m inside the bottle. I was the one living it out. What other stuff can you notice? And I just love having the dialogue with it, being able to talk to it and get these different points of view, think about it myself, and then go create to where, because Rick Rubin, he did a really good statement on

in my opinion, on AI and art. The key to art is having a point of view. That’s what makes a good artist. And AI can’t have a point of view. You have to give it one. Like that’s the power that the human has over the tool. And you said it like you just did. Just because everybody has AI doesn’t mean they’re going to be incredible artists now. It’s going to be who learns how to use the tool to create whatever it is that they’re making. You can use it in a bunch of different ways.

But I couldn’t agree more on the fact that in my opinion, when you let that artist come out first, even find those extra hobbies, other things that flow through those, Jeff Hoffman who owns Priceline, one of my favorite quotes of his, innovation is not found inside your business. You have to put yourself in these other scenarios. So these thoughts that you never would have had would go through there. So, and he would use the story about McDonald’s and how they came up with a drive-through to illustrate it of

It came from a bank drive-through from one of the top levels driving around because they couldn’t figure out the problem. You just went, you left, you left the meeting room, went wandering around and all of sudden, boom, how you could sell McDonald’s burgers finally made sense. It’s just like, agreed, agreed. is getting, having that authority.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (35:04)

What would

you use for your agent? What are you using?

Micah Johnson (35:09)

I built that one on chat GPT, but I have them between Claude and chat GPT.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (35:11)

Okay.

So it’s a custom GPT, is it, that you chat to, that you train?

Micah Johnson (35:17)

It’s

my, yeah, just one of the conversations I’ve trained on my side. yeah.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (35:23)

And you obviously have an

aid account. That’s a dumb question, but I assume you do.

Micah Johnson (35:27)

⁓

you don’t have to have a paid account to do what I just did. Cause it’s not that I built a GPT for other people to use. Although I have done that. I know how to do that. Like it’s, basically the same kind of thing. You just train it more. This is more of just taking one of the conversations log in and then start talking to it. Look up how to prompt it well, and then figure out what you want to feed it with. Cause that’s the thing. It has access to everything almost. So what do you want it to look at in particular and then dial down with it, give it the.

give it the space to operate in and then let it go. And that’s what I find the most use out of it to get the stuff I want back is give it the space to play, let it do its power and then let that bring it back to me and let me do my power.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (36:10)

You know what I discovered

with ChatGPT? So I have a paid account. It’s only 20, I only pay 20 bucks a month. And I’ve been, I’m a heavy user because I use it in my business and I do a lot of work with it. It knows me. I can say, give me a bio on me for this thing. And it will write it. It knows, it knows it was kind of a bit creepy at some point, but

Micah Johnson (36:16)

Yeah.

See?

Right?

That’s why

I talk to mine. I want it to know me. So when I do ask it, hey, about different things I’ve talked about and wrote, can give things to me and my voice in a way where it sounds like I said it 100%. But I’ve talked to it enough to where it is my voice. It is like I didn’t, I I heavily interact with it daily in my off time because that’s the point. When I go to it, I want it to be able to bring back. I’m not just interested in.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (36:39)

Yeah.

Yeah. Are you creative?

Micah Johnson (37:05)

what it researched, I wanted to take that, apply it to what I’m telling it, and now let’s mix and mingle. So I have Lao Tzu in there, Marcus Aurelius, Homer from The Odyssey. ⁓ have, man, have all kinds, authors from all kinds of them in there, because I want, and then I tell it to, don’t patronize me. I don’t need to hear all my thoughts are good. I want you to be honest. Give me the honest truth. Tell me.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (37:16)

You’re really? Wow.

Micah Johnson (37:34)

Cause it’s kind of preset to tell you how cool you are. make it not do that. And then really get a point of view where it can say, well, you’re kind of countering yourself here with this thought based on what we talked about over here. it’s like, boom, that’s handy information. I appreciate that.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (37:37)

Yeah.

Mike,

getting back to real estate, what do you do? Are you an investor? Are you a sponsor? what do you do?

Micah Johnson (37:55)

So

I am an investor myself, I work with, my main thing is working with a real estate mastermind called Investor Fuel, which is a group for mainly single family residential. have commercial folks in there, but the folks that own the real estate investing business itself, they flip homes, buy and hold, but they own the actual companies. If that makes sense, they’re out there sending the marketing, building those businesses. That is, is where I live a lot, building a room for them, making sure they have

everything they need, that’s the place I’m at now. ⁓

Adam@gowercrowd.com (38:27)

And it’s, oh yes, I’ve seen this.

So, invest in fuel, this is primarily single family homes, right?

Micah Johnson (38:34)

⁓ not primarily. There are folks in there, especially in the higher levels. We have some very high level folks in there that are into commercial and all the asset classes on multiple businesses. But what it helps folks do is across that spectrum, make sure that you have all the tools you’d need for whatever step in the business you’re in. Right. If you’re, if you’re at the two to 10 deals a year level, what tools do you need to get that systematized and good processes? I’ll let you do 10 to 50, 50 to a hundred. And then that hundred and up.

It’s just helping them grow their business.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (39:05)

Interesting. All right, cool. What else do you want to talk about? Are we done?

Micah Johnson (39:09)

Well, man,

that’s leading us to the end. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You mentioned that you had a newsletter for anybody that’s listening to be interested in reading along with you. Where can they find that?

Adam@gowercrowd.com (39:13)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Thanks, Micah. Yeah, so gowercrowd.com. That’s my last name and the word crowd. G-O-W-E-R gowercrowd.com. There’s a big subscribe button up there. It’s free. You can always unsubscribe. yeah, I cover advanced ⁓ real estate, capital formation tactics, news updates, and I also have a podcast. Actually, if you’re interested in AI, I’m doing a series at the moment, some special.

shows at the moment that where I’m interviewing AI companies, not chat GPT, AI companies, in CRE. Micah, it is mind blowing what I’m seeing. I recorded one call yesterday, one yesterday. is, I’ve been in this business a long time. I’ve never seen anything that I would describe of as being truly revolutionary. That’s what’s happening. And if you think it’s for your listeners,

If you think it’s just about chat GPT, tune in. It isn’t. It’s mind blowing what’s going on.

Micah Johnson (40:21)

Right. It’s big. It’s big.

Excited. Okay. So if you’re listening out there and you’re into those AI conversations, go to gowercrowd.com. Follow along with Adam. Check it out. He’s fixing to get a new subscriber on his newsletter when I hang up this call. I’m interested in Adam. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. love meeting incredible people like yourself out there doing cool stuff in real estate. It’s such a big umbrella. I love getting to meet people in it for our listeners who are out there watching, listening.

Adam@gowercrowd.com (40:39)

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (40:49)

If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think can give value out of it too. And please don’t forget to subscribe. We appreciate everybody that follows along with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators, just like Adam, who are out there building a real business, making real change in the industry. Thank y’all for being with us. We’ll see you on the next episode.