Capital Raising Cook Book: The Ultimate Networking Strategy

"RAISE CAPITAL LIKE A LEGEND: https://offer.fundraisecapital.co/free-ebook/"

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today, I have my dear friend Callum Laing.

Callum is the founder at Veblen, a company that specializes in helping people to get prestigious boards or fill their own prestigious boards with other elite members. Not only that, but Callum is an M&A Master who has completed over 100 M&A transactions with nearly all reaching public markets, while also being the author of four business books, such as The Boardroom Blueprint.

So what does this mean? Well, this just means that Callum understands how to massively accelerate your valuations and capital raising efforts by leveraging the power of the boardroom.

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[THE GUEST]: Callum is the founder at Veblen, a company that specializes in helping people to get prestigious boards or fill their own prestigious boards with other elite members. 

[THE HOST]: Ryan is an Angel investor in technology and energy. 

Transcript

Ryan Miller  

My name is Ryan Miller, and for the past 15 years, I've helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business, or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

I can't raise any money, nobody's taking me serious. I keep hearing no's, I can't get the value that I want. Whatever it is, I've heard every single one of those and more. If that sounds like you, I've got a treat for you. In this week's episode, we show you how to do something that anyone can do, but very few do, and it's a way to rent the reputation, relationships and results of high net worth people, ultra successful people, and how to get them interested in lending you their reputation relationships and results. All this and more coming right now. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today, I have my dear friend Callum Laing. Callum is the founder at Veblen, a company that specializes in helping people to get prestigious boards or fill their own prestigious boards with other elite members. Not only that, but Callum is an M&A Master who has completed over 100 M&A transactions with nearly all reaching public markets, while also being the author of four business books, such as The Boardroom Blueprint. So what does this mean? Well, this just means that Callum understands how to massively accelerate your valuations and capital raising efforts by leveraging the power of the boardroom. So Callum, welcome to the show, man. 

Callum Laing  

Thank you, Ryan, I've been looking forward to this for some time. It's big, big props to you for what you've built here, I think both you and I have chosen to go after an audience which is driven and ambitious, and because those are the coolest people to hang out with. The problem is they don't have a lot of patience, so you have to add value all the time, and you're absolutely killing it with this podcast. So I'm thrilled to be on it. 

Ryan Miller  

Thank you, and having you on the show is certainly going to add a lot of value. We've been very fortunate, very fortunate to be in this top 2% it's all because of amazing guests like you just added value and spreading the love. So you're spot on this very ambitious group. Just got a text today from one of my earlier guests who said he raised a lot of money after somebody heard him on the show, institutional investors. So that made my day. Not why we come on the show, we just want to share love. We would just want to add value, and if that results in more value being created in the world, well then I think we went on both fronts in that area. So let's jump right into it. Let's hit in between the eyes. Callum, how did you even get into this sector of helping people get on boards? M&A, why don't you walk me through that? 

Callum Laing  

Yeah. So look, I've been an entrepreneur for 25 years. Got into the public markets about 10 years ago, so I've taken companies public, and as you mentioned, we've taken over 100 companies public, and because of that I kind of ended up sitting on a lot of boards and advising a lot of boards and hiring a lot of board members. And when I was a young entrepreneur, I always wanted to sit on somebody else's board, mainly because I wanted to hang out with more experienced people than me and see how other people ran their business, because I couldn't figure out how to run my own business. So I thought if I could peek into somebody else's business, that would be very useful. But at the time, I didn't know anyone, I didn't know how to get on boards. And then when I did get on boards, three taking companies public, I started getting quite frustrated. I got frustrated that there were a lot of people on boards, they were on there for the wrong reasons. They were kind of on there for their for their own self grand design, and, you know, they weren't looking after all the shareholders. And it just kind of got frustrating and I realized a lot of people were on boards because they knew the right people, they'd gone to the right schools. And it's kind of, you see, there's always talk about diversity on boards, and very little has actually changed, and it's because boards don't want to take risk, and so you end up with the same types of people on board. And this is a global problem all over the world you have this problem. I can live with that. 

Callum Laing  

What was really frustrating to me as an entrepreneur was seeing really good talent being overlooked because they hadn't gone to the right schools, because they didn't know the right people. And that's just, you know, this Ryan, like, It's just frustrating seeing resource being underused. And so, because I was kind of on the inside, and, look, I totally understand why people have kept boards so exclusive for the last 100 years, it's a great, lucrative game. You don't really want people to come in and disrupt that, but because I was on the inside, and because I had this opportunity a couple of years ago, I set up this business called the Veblen Director Program, and it was really to help first timers that don't fit the profile of what a typical board member looks like, but can add value. So to teach them the real practical stuff, not only of how you get your first board seat and how you get onto the board ladder, but also then how you add massive value when you're a board member. And what I realized when I looked around at what was out there, we've all seen those courses for like sort of getting directors certificates and stuff and but they're kind of largely irrelevant. They're what they do is they teach good corporate governance best practice for an S&P 500 company, which may well be fascinating. It's absolutely irrelevant to 99% of businesses out there. In fact, if you try to apply good corporate governance for an S&P 500 company to a small business, which is what the majority of businesses are, you would kill it. So nobody actually and by the way, like boards don't care whether you've got a certificate or not. That's not what they're interested in that. All they care about is, can you add value? So yeah, two years ago, I set up this company. It's been hugely successful. Again, it's not, not my day job. I have teams running it, but we've got well over 200 members that now sit on over 300 boards around the world and just doing incredible stuff. So it's a, it's a fantastic network and, yeah, I'm very, very privileged to be a part of it and be able to tap into that network. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, and you're calling all the way from Singapore to tell us all about it. I love it. So, you know, one of the things, and often, and you keep me honest, if you think this, this is not the perspective you have. I'm okay with that but, you know, a lot of people ask me my advice on raising capital, and we teach a lot of strategies on that, and one of them is getting on boards is one strategy to raise capital. That is not the only reason why you go on capital and please don't please don't join a board just to get something. In fact, the reason why I recommend it is because that's a place where you go to give. Often, getting into a room is kind of a waste of time, you can spend a lot of money on I'm not talking about boards. I'm talking about networking events and these other rooms that you get in, they charge people insane, 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars to get in a room with the chance that a rich person might be there, and you might raise all this money. But we know better than that, often, not all events, but most are just they're a cash grab by the organizer and I'm telling you how I really feel. But boards are very different, and it's a great strategy, not only to get on boards for the place of just not a self aggrandizement, but if you can add value, then you're starting to emphasize the three R's, which is reputation, relationships and results. And if you can get on boards and demonstrate that and build relationships with these people by adding value, that's a great place to continue to grow R3. However, if you're a fund or an investment vehicle, or really any business, building your board also matters. So building a board or sitting on someone else's board, this is a very important thing. This is exactly why I loved having you come on the show and all the things we're going to talk about. So that being said, as I'm going on about boards, in your opinion. So you spent some time, you got on boards, you observed a lot of things, from your perspective, of placing 200 people on over 300 boards. Why do people do this? Why do they try to get on boards? What have you seen?

Callum Laing  

It's because they listen to you, Ryan, and they, haha

Ryan Miller  

You got me on that one, haha.

Callum Laing  

Look, I think there's, there's a number of reasons. You know, as I mentioned, when I was a young entrepreneur and I wanted to get on a board what I wanted to do was, and this is genuinely why I encourage every entrepreneur to go and sit on somebody else's board. Is because A, you get to hang out with some amazing people. B, you get to see into somebody else's business. And especially as an entrepreneur, you know your own business is held together with chicken wire and masking tape, but everybody else's business looks so perfect from the outside. So when you go and sit on the board, not only do you discover that every business is held together like that, but you realize that they've solved some problems that you haven't solved, and you've solved some problems that they haven't solved. And that's where you start to add value as a board member. 

Callum Laing  

Look, it can be incredibly lucrative as well and I'm not just talking about the salaries that you get paid as a board member, but just the opportunities that you get because you're a board member, the access to deals, the insights into what's going on in the industry, sort of 6-12, months down the line and and then I think there's kind of a a status play, which I'm not really not coming at it from an ego perspective, but the number one thing in business is trust. Like if you're trying to raise money, you can't do it without trust. If you're trying to sell products, if you're trying to convince somebody to come and work on your team, to give up their job and come and work with you, all of it comes down to trust, and people are looking for shortcuts to give them that trust about you. And so if you say, hey, look I'm just a first time fund manager or first time entrepreneur, there's not a lot for them to hang their trust on. Whereas if you can say, hey, I'm doing this, but I've got these people on my board, I also sit on the board to three or four other companies, then there's so much more status and credibility that comes with that. And I kind of joke that, like in the Instagram world, standing next to a Lambo with a nice watch gives you status, but in the world of LinkedIn, which is where our world is, the ultimate status hack is announcing that you've just joined the board of such and such a company. And so, yeah, look, people join for different reasons, but I just think it's such a such a power move to get ahead in your career. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know, one of the things that we found echoing on that so sure, you can get status, but the real thing is validation of trust. And typically, getting on a board is one of those things that anchors the trust that you know you have, and maybe your mom tells you that as well, but for the rest of the world, they're still figuring out what it is that you can do and can they trust you to get it done. And often, like you said, that's one of those great validation moments, is when you say, I'm on a board of Disney or Tesla or SpaceX, just to use crazy terms that most people know around the world, but then also, what if, and then on my board, I have guys who are from Disney and SpaceX and Tesla, and the reason why I want to bring this up, so maybe I'm jumping the gun on this, but I love this topic, and this is one that often gets glossed over to people's detriment. So this is one of those, if you know, you know, type of things is saying, this is probably one of the greatest things you could do to get people to actually take you seriously if you're just starting out. And it's also one of the great things to do, if you're not starting out, is to build your own board and just watch this thing take off to the moon. So that being said, raising capital, since this is a subject, there's many reasons that do it, but raising capital, if you're building your own board, you can, you can work with Veblen, or maybe you know people, or either way, it's important to so one of the lessons that I would take away from this is make sure that if, if you're hiring people to come on your board, make sure that they've raised a lot of capital, and then also getting on boards, this is the place where you show up to give. This is a place where most people show up to give, so if you can get on boards, however you do, or they work through your company, or however you get on boards, like you said, there's certificates out there, no one cares about that I don't think. But getting on a board, and ultimately, the point is getting in a room where everyone shows up to give. That's the room that everybody wants to be in, if you're looking at if you're looking at it just from a quasi virtuous, but self interested thing, getting on a board, being in the room where people are there to give, that is absolute key. Would you agree?

Callum Laing  

Yeah. I mean, we call it aligned self interest, like the more successful I can make the company that whose board I'm sitting on, the more successful I become. Yeah, compensation is typically tied to the market cap of the company, so the bigger I can make it, the better. So, yeah, but look, I mean, it's such a truism, because and everyone talks about it, but yeah, the one people that get ahead are the ones that help others get ahead. And, you know, if you can, we've all got the I think a lot of people look at boards and say, well, you know, well, what could I add? Or am I ready to do this? And I think the thing we talk about companies like Tesla and Disney and those are all great, that's not where anyone starts. And anyone, anyone listening to this podcast, is clearly somebody that takes their own personal development seriously. They're ambitious, they're driven. They want to get ahead. They will have a unique view of the world, they will have unique contacts. Even the location that you're living in can be of value. So we're not quite onto the how yet, but just as an example, if you're living in Toronto and you apply for a board seat in Toronto, you're not offering much value other than everyone else in Toronto that's applied for that board seat. If you apply for a company overseas, you've got a bit of mystique about you. You've got something interesting about you. And if a company is overseas, is looking to expand into North America, then you've got unique on the ground knowledge. Regardless of what your background is, regardless of your current business experience, you've got knowledge that they don't have, and that's valuable. And so I think, you know, we always tend to do this, especially when you're ambitious, as you look at the people that you admire the most. So you kind of look at people that are on boards of Tesla and Disney and go off, you know, how could I ever compete with that? Your job isn't to compete with that. Let's get on the bottom of the border first and work away. Because I absolutely guarantee you, if you're listening to this podcast, there is a small company out there somewhere in the world that would kill to have your viewpoint, your knowledge, your experience, because you can save them years and one introduction you could make could completely transform that business's trajectory. So, yeah, look, it's, it's very, very doable. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I love that. And one of my, one of my favorite times in my career, was when I was fortunate to support the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the board of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, that was so much fun and literally everybody. Just to give you an insight of what to expect for those who have maybe never done it or considered it, or wherever you're at on the spectrum. Honestly, it was so fun and it wasn't a ton of work, but it was highly concentrated amount of when we worked head down focus, and I'm literally shoulder to shoulder, if any of you know, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Big Oil town, everybody was an executive at some oil company. Most publicly traded, and I just finished grad school, and I was like, wow, I would never get into a room with people like this, but I am in this room, and so I'm gonna give it everything I have, and you just add value, and you make a ton of friends. And honestly, I've always become a fan of the symphony as a result, because you got to see what, what really, how the business really works from the board level. Now, my question for you, then is, if there are people who are, let's say, building a fund or a family office, or maybe they want to get on the board of someone like that, how do you know when it's the right time to build your own board?

Callum Laing  

Yeah, so look, I think there's two parts and I kind of have a if you look at our base, it's kind of split 50/50 between executives that just want to develop their career and entrepreneurs that want to grow as entrepreneurs and and one thing that I've been saying to entrepreneurs for as long as I can remember is A, get on somebody else's board, which is kind of what we're covering, but B, build your own board as quickly as possible. And so I think the stat that really stands out there's, globally, there's 330 million full profit businesses. Less than 1% of those businesses have an active, functioning board. So because all the public listed companies do, all the big companies do, every single successful company you can think of has an active functioning board, and yet, if you look at the average small business that you know, none of them have active functioning boards, so there's clearly a disconnect here. And I think what it is is that most people, most entrepreneurs assume that you need a ton of resources. It's going to cost a lot of money, you know, it's going to be constricting. It's, you know, borders there to stop you doing the creative stuff that you want to do. And so there's kind of a an almost a negative perception, or certainly an idea that it's not something I do until I'm bigger. I've always taken the exact opposite approach. If I'm starting a business, I start with an advisory board. So even before I've got my first client, I will go out to people that I want around me, that can stop me making mistakes, that can give me key introductions. And so I'll go to these, these individuals, I say, hey, look, I'm looking at putting this business together. I'm looking for an advisory board. Got no money to pay you or anything like that, but I'm not going to ask a lot. It's basically going to be a virtual coffee once a month. And hey, look, if it takes off, then we can look at giving you some stock options or something like that, if it doesn't, no harm, no foul. And basically, all you really need to do is get your first person to agree to that. And we've all got, we all know someone that will agree to that. And then you go and get a few other people, preferably people from different industries, from different stages in their business, create people that can add value. And oftentimes they will do it, sometimes they'll do it just because they lead slightly dull lives. Maybe they're kind of an exec mid manager in a company somewhere, but like, you're not looking for your Larry Ellisons or your Elon Musks to join your company, right? Because they're not, you're not going to get to them, but you don't need that either. 

Callum Laing  

And one of the examples that I give in in the book is when I was, I had a startup many, many years ago, kind of around the time of Groupon's big growth, and I was doing a similar sort of thing, but in employee fitness and employee ones, and I'd gone out, I was trying to raise money at a million dollar valuation to get my thing up and running. And then I realized that why should, what I needed to do was to build the advisory board first, and so I went and got some people to join me, and I ended up with somebody from Yahoo, somebody from Google, someone from Microsoft. And because I could then leverage off those names, when I then went to talk to investors, it now became easy to raise capital at a ten million dollar valuation when I could barely raise anything at a $1 million valuation. Because what happened for the investors was they went well, if you've got someone from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo on your board, then frankly I mean this, this must be something special. Now, nobody asked who those people were like. It could have been the janitor. It wasn't the chance. It turned out they were quite good people, but I didn't need I didn't need their advice to be great. I just needed to leverage their experience and their brand. And again, it comes back to this idea of trust and your three R's, which is if, especially if you're first timer raising capital, why would people trust you? They've got no reason to so the way to shortcut the process is to leverage off other people's trust. You know, if you can build an advisory board the sort of the gray hairs or the brand recognition that you don't currently have, it's a great way to shortcut trust and at least get in the door in a way that you would never be able to without that.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So then you went from a million to like, 10x to valuation, yeah, all because of that. And often I get asked, So, so why does this matter? Well, there's many reasons, and you and I understand it, but I want to, want to help the world to understand this. Often I get asked, and if there's some of you that are out there to say this question, and maybe Callum's experience is hitting a little closer to home than you'd prefer, as you're saying, I'm struggling to raise, it's a low valuation. I know this thing's worth more, but nobody's giving me the valuation I want, whatever it is, no one's taking me serious. Very often I get asked all the time, I'm just starting out, is anyone seriously going to give me money? I don't I don't have reputation, I don't have relationships. I am a trustworthy person, I'm highly educated. I'm just entering into this new high finance world. Is anyone going to take me serious or entrepreneurship? And the answer is probably not. But what you can do is what I put it, and maybe this is a crude term, but I'm like, you can rent the reputation, relationships and results of other people by building your board of advisors. Because when you pitch an investor, whether it's a startup or a fund or a syndication, whatever it is, if you're asking investors, you know, I want to do the homework, and I always say this is a ridiculous example, but if you're a fund manager or anybody, you can use this on anything. Imagine you got Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett and Ken Griffin on your advisory board. You're going to go to an investor, and they'll say, I've never heard of this Ryan guy, but I know those three other look at the eyeballs that are on my money. This is amazing. I'm feeling really good about this similar experience happened to you and so even though you start out, and too often we think we got to go out and you have this hero complex, which is one of the ways to tank your business, thinking that you got to do it all and you're going to be the one. You're going to be the one that swoops in and saves the day. No, surround yourself where people are like, look, I don't know who this guy is, but his board of advisors, everyone's heard of Microsoft. Everybody knows who Warren Buffett, whatever that is, and really just start building that up. That adds credence to the offering that you're extending into the market. Anything to add to that?

Callum Laing  

The fact that when I go out and I tell the story about my new business, you know, I can talk about the bits and pieces and how it works, but before anyone will listen to that, they need to know why they will listen to why should they listen to my pitch about what the business is, and if I can drop into the conversation super early on, something that shows them that somebody else already has faith in me is that social proof is so incredibly valuable. My, my good friend Daniel Priestley, so I actually post on this yesterday, so he has a quote from one of his books I've subscribed, which is that people don't buy what you want to sell. People buy what other people want to buy. And so I kind of bastardized that quote for investment, because what I see so many people, when they go out looking to raise capital, they start a conversation even before they're, hi Ryan, how are you? They'll go straight into I'm raising $2 million at a 20 million valuation for my start. He's just like, oh, come on.

Ryan Miller  

You must be reading my LinkedIn inbox.

Callum Laing  

It's just so painful, so painful to be on the other side, and it's so lazy, but nobody's telling them to do it differently. And so I posted a framework yesterday, which I call the case framework, but it's about starting a conversation about some cool stuff that you're doing with some interesting people. So if I, if I started talking to you, Ryan, about, hey, I'm trying to raise money for an investor network thing, that's a very dull story. If I start talking to you about how I got the Head of Communications for the World Economic Forum to sit on the board of a company, and then I was able to attract this like, now you're like, well, hang on, why on earth would she want to sit like? Tell me about this company. So you start with the interesting bit. You start with getting people drawn in, and then you can get like, and then if you're interested, I can go into the details of what the growth opportunities are and how many people join, all that kind of stuff. 

Callum Laing  

So I just think it's you and I get frustrated because we are investors, and we get bombarded with really bad pictures. But equally, in defense of those people that are constantly putting out those bad pictures. If you google how to raise money, it's terrible, like it's basically based,

Ryan Miller  

Horrible at best.

Callum Laing  

It's based on this ideology from 40 or 50 years ago when investors didn't have any choice. They had to phone up their broker and place an order and IPO was an exciting thing. 

Ryan Miller  

The internet didn't exist. 

Callum Laing  

The internet didn't exist. Angel Investing didn't exist apart from, like a very small neighborhood in in Silicon Valley, like it just wasn't a thing and and so if you had a good idea, you put a nice debt together, you went and pitched it, and people were so thrilled to have a exciting opportunity that they would respond. That, those days are dead, long dead. And yet, and then we kind of got things like dragons den and those shows which further this idea that us investors are somehow sitting here with a checkbook just going, I'm just waiting for the right idea. It's not how it works. You know, every deal that I get into, and I periodically kind of go through the stuff that I put money into. It's 99 times out of 100 is because somebody I know and trust has referred the deal to me. And so you need to, if you're looking to raise money, you need to be focused on those trusted networks. You need to be focused on those people that can refer you and creating those interesting stories. And again, comes back to your three Rs. But you and I, we definitely get frustrated because we get bombarded with such rubbish, but it's but I also have an empathy, because I used to do that bombarding because I didn't know any better. And and I think that's part of the part of the biggest problem with people looking to raise capital is they're so focused on what they want that they can't get out of their heads long enough to talk to an investor with an open mind and genuinely figure out what the investor wants and how they can solve a problem for that investor. And I think when you can do that, it changes everything. And sometimes, in that conversation with an investor, it will become abundantly clear that your product isn't the right product for them, and that's fine. Don't then pitch it to them and hope that they change their mind. Instead, introduce them to somebody else that might have the right product and maintain the relationship that's so much more valuable than this kind of spray and pray, horrible approach that is currently sort of in favor. 

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I use a hunting analogy with that. Spray and Pray is like, okay, your weapon of choice, so to speak, is more of you want to go hunting for capital with a sniper rifle, not a machine gun. Don't stand on the edge of the forest and start blasting off rounds, hoping you'll hit something. That is a horrible strategy, and it could very much hurt your reputation or relationships. The better one is actually hunt. Learn the patterns. What do they like to eat? When do they like to eat? And one of the things is, this reminds me, you mentioned we kind of arrived at the same conclusion from different angles. I have the three disciplines of capital raisers. I'm happy to share that I haven't talked about this for a while, but, but when it comes to raising capital, it's the same thing is that what you talked about is it comes down to trust. What I say is, if you're just starting out, I adopted three roles when I started never eat alone, always ask about their story and be generous. And the first time that happened, I met a guy who was building 132 megawatt power plant, Alberta, right? Oil and gas, lot of energy and worth, we'll say, nine figure guy. And so I just asked about his story and I just want to understand, is he getting into deals? Is he getting out of deals? Where's the liquidity in his world? And so by asking about his story over a cup of coffee, so it was like two bucks. So guys, you could do this. It's two bucks. Take a guy out for coffee, he'll take a free coffee. I met him right down in the basement of his office, and I learned about the story, and then I made a generous offer. Said, hey, man, I just finished grad school. I can help you out, I'll build you a financial model, and I won't even charge you. I just would love to participate in the deals in any way that I can hang out with you and your friends and I made a very generous offer and honestly that catapulted my career, that mentality. So that being said, going out and making an offer. And I if, if you ever ask my advice, folks, one thing I'll tell you is never lead the potential new relationship by asking for something. It's always better to offer something, even if it's like, don't you don't even ask for their time. So if you've done a job and you've hunted and you understand what they're into, you've read their website. You know what they do, you know what they like to do, what they don't. You know what whatever that is, and you've collected a reasonably good amount of information. And even if that opening email, the thing you offer is just an ego stroke on a deal they just closed, or a show that they've you saw them on CNBC, whatever it is, just lead with generosity. Rather than asking for something, you're going to be way further ahead. So, so with that being said, my question for you, Callum is, how do you convince someone, from your perspective, to sit on your board? What,what would you say?

Callum Laing  

Sure, so let me, let me come around to that question first. But just just address that point, because they kind of do add to each other. And I had a conversation the other day with Ron Diamond, who's like, one of the foremost thinkers in the family office space, 

Ryan Miller  

TIGER 21.

Callum Laing  

Yeah, yeah. And so he had a quote, which, which I love, which is, if he meets a family office for the first time, he won't, under any circumstances, put a deal in front of them, even if they ask, he will only look to add value. And the most effective way that he can add value is to introduce them to another family office and, and it's so easy and it's so right, investors will join your network, not because of you, because of anything that you do, although I'm sure you're lovely, but they will join to meet other investors in that network. Investors like hanging out with other investors. And because we're all trying to get the alpha on, on what the latest investment opportunities are, and what, yeah, what we can learn. And so that, I think is really, really key is understanding that human psychology, if you become and I interviewed a guy called Max Nee, who is based here in Asia. In fact, he was the one that introduced us. 

Ryan Miller  

Friend of mine, mutual friend.

Callum Laing  

Yes, he's done an amazing job of once a quarter, he just brings together family offices. He doesn't pitch them, he doesn't have anyone there trying to sell to them. He doesn't sponsor the like, he doesn't charge sponsors or anything like that. It's just a nice, safe environment for 40 or 50 family offices in Singapore to get together and have drinks. I guarantee you, if he phones any one of those people with a deal, they will take that call and they will hear him out because he's added value to them. And so there's the same kind of premise works in anything in business. And it's the same with, you know, getting people onto your board seat is they might not be interested in you, but they could be interested in the other people on the board. See, I've certainly joined boards, not because of the company, but because of the other people on board seats. Sometimes I joined boards because I am interested in that sector. I want to learn more about that sector, and look again, if you're looking for the person that you have on your board, I think of everything as stepping stones, as a leverage point to the next point. So when we in the Veblen direct program, when we're talking about board seats, we say the next board seat you get isn't your final board seat. It's just a stepping stone to the one after that and the same principle applies when you're getting board members. 

Callum Laing  

I might want and love to have Ray Dalio and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and these guys on my board. It's not going to happen. But it's very, very easy for me to get the first person like, somebody I know, like and trust. And you know, I'm not asking a lot of them. It's a very low commitment. Will you join? I then use them as a leverage point to get the next person in. I use that person as a leverage point to get the next person in. And so, yeah, I mean, it's your point of renting reputation. But it's, it starts with understanding, taking the time to understand what other people are looking for and how you can provide that. And it's very rarely money, like, you know, people think, oh, I'm gonna have to pay these board members. Like, a lot of the time you don't. I mean, one of the things that we teach at Veblen is how you position yourself to get these free board seats, so you offer to come in as a free board member, and then how you leverage that over the next few months. And there's a ton of incredibly lucrative deals that you can put in place, like, hey, if I introduce this investor to you, or if I introduce this client to you, and the other thing that happens is, once you start sitting on two or three boards, then other companies come to you. And when companies come to you like, if I come to a company and say, hey, I'd like to sit on your board, that's what I want. It's not what they want, right? So I'm not solving any problem. And no company actually wants a board member. What we want is the solution that board member can bring. But if I'm sitting on three boards and a fourth company comes to me and says, hey, we see you're sitting on these boards, would you be interested in sitting on our board? Then my question is, well, potentially I'm interested what are the commercial terms? And I'm because at that point, yeah, I've got choices, and now you need to make it attractive to me, but you have to be willing to do the work first, and to do some voluntary positions and get paid and experience and contacts rather than cash. And you'll find any, most people with ambition are willing to do that, sit on your board to get that experience themselves.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome. And do you have any strategies or tactics that you'd be willing to share for people just starting out, as far as convincing them to get on your board. So we've got the principles, we've got the moral frame of why that's important and why you should and why you should not be seeking board positions. How to reach out. Don't ask, but offer something of value to begin with. What have you seen to be effective as far as convincing someone to sit on your board when they've literally never heard of you before. 

Callum Laing  

So I think starting with a complete stranger is a little bit tough. I probably try and go with somebody that knows, somebody you know, get get a bit of a warm intro. What I try and do is make it so easy for them to say, yes. So look, everybody's busy, and anybody that you want on your board is busy, right? So what you don't want to be saying is, look, I really want you to join our board. I'm not going to pay you. I want you to come in and do half a day once a month. And I also want to phone you and pick your brains whenever I've got a question, yeah, that's not a compelling pitch. Whereas, if you start off with, hey, look, I'm putting together an advisory board, advisory board. I've got some cool people in mind, I'd love to have you in it. It's not going to take more than 20 minutes, half an hour a month, just literally, I'll phone you up, maybe ask you on two questions some months, I might not phone you at all, but hey, and look, if this thing goes somewhere, then maybe I can give you some stock options and you can meet the other advisors and that sort of stuff, that's a very compelling proposition. And look, if you're a board middle manager at Microsoft or Oracle now, you've got something to talk about at your dinner parties, like you can live vicariously through this young entrepreneur that's more exciting than anything else that you're doing in your life. So make it easy for people to say yes and it gets progressively easier. The first one to get in is the hardest, which is why I say like, pick someone that you know will say yes, even if it's your mum, and then leverage up from there, because it gets progressively easier, like if you think about again. So I could lean on the Veblen network and that was very deliberate way I kind of built that Veblen network. But once I've got the Head of Communications with a World Economic Forum, I can basically ask anyone to come and join that board, and they'll join because she's one of the most connected people in the world. Like but it doesn't have to be that high level, like you. I didn't start at that level. I started with like. I said, yeah, the janitor at Microsoft, I've still got somebody from Microsoft on my board that's, that's better than somebody that doesn't have someone from Microsoft on their board. So, yeah, leverage what you can.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah. You know, one of the things about it comes back to R3 which I like call the circle of trust, and just developing trust and not leading with an ask, but an offer. So we've established that often. One strategy that you've taught me, which I think is brilliant, is, instead, if let's, let's use raising capital, for example, so you take someone out, and the untrained person would say, I'm gonna take out for coffee, and then I'm gonna pitch you, and then ask for the investment at the end. That doesn't end well for usually the person pitching, typically. But the better one, and you've talked about this, is you don't ask for money, you ask for trust, and they don't actually say, Will you trust me, it's not what we're saying. What you're saying is the thing to get in the beginning is not their capital. It's their trust and respect. And so that you have this three month strategy, I would love for you. It's super quick, but just, could you share with the rest of the world your three month strategy of earning trust that leads to capital instead of asking for capital that leads to distrust? How do you do that on your in 90 days?

Callum Laing  

Yeah, so this, I kind of learned this by accident, but it works incredibly well, and most people won't do it because they're so impatient, but basically, I realized that asking for capital for people that you've just met doesn't work, and so I knew I could leverage this advisory board. So what I did was I started asking people to join the advisory board. If you pitch it right, it's very easy, you can easily get five or six very cool people, and that's great. And then what I did so, so my offer to them was like, this is gonna be super easy, just a coffee once a month. But what I started doing, whether they wanted it or not, was each week, I sent them an email update. These are the actions I've taken, these are the results that I've got this week. That was it just every Friday afternoon, boom, boom, boom. It was a good discipline for me, it held me accountable. And every week they saw that then, sort of getting towards after a couple of months, I said, hey, look, sometime in the next month, what I'd love to do is just to thank you for your time and advice by you and the other advisors lunch. And this is obviously easier to do if they're all in the same place, but by your lunch, you can get to meet the other advisors, and we just have a nice lunch and that's it. Of course, they were very up for that, so take them out for lunch. And at that lunch meeting, I said, Look, you've seen what we've done over the last three months. I think I really need to raise some capital to take this to the next level. But I don't know anything about raising capital. Anyone got any ideas, and what I would discover was that, first of all, you've got people to say, well, I'd be willing to put a check in, because you haven't asked anything of them for the last three months. You basically have shown them every week, you're taking actions, you're taking actions, you're getting results, taking actions, getting results, and and you've been transparent. And even the ones that say, well, look, this isn't really the sort of thing I invest in, but I can definitely put you in touch with certain people. And what I would say is, well, don't, don't put me in touch. What I'd love you to do is actually to pitch them on my behalf, and then if they're interested, and do the introduction, and of course, you've just bought them lunch that they're going to be agreeable to that. The difference between me telling someone that they should invest in your podcast, right, versus you telling them that they should invest in your podcast is like, it's night and day. Like they trust me, because I'm a third party, I'm on your board. Like, yeah, it's, it's just very, very different. And so by taking that approach, again, it's one of those sort of shortcuts that people won't do because they think, yep, I need the money now. I don't want to wait three months, but ultimately you're not going to get the money now by shouting loudly. It's just not works much, much better to build these long term relationships, build trust, and then the money comes.

Ryan Miller  

Brilliant. So start by asking for trust, and the money comes in. Start by asking money, and maybe distrust comes in. I don't know, but saying it louder and talking to more strangers, asking for money is not necessarily the strategy. I think that effective people do.

Callum Laing  

They talk about this in Silicon Valley, there's this, the sort of glib line in Silicon Valley, which is, if you ask money, ask someone for money, they'll give you advice, and if you ask them for advice, they'll give you money. And this is basically an extension of that. It's just sort of an actual tactic that works.

Ryan Miller  

So build those trusting relationships that will lead to a qualified ask. Would you say that's a fair summary of that?

Callum Laing  

Yeah.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome. So as we round third base, is there any piece of advice, maybe, maybe one, let's say one, competitive advantage from your experience that you could leave behind for our listeners around the world. What would you say?

Callum Laing  

So look, I now sound a bit like a one trick pony at this point, but I do think that getting ahead, like if you were seriously ambitious about your career, then every single serious person in business has got a board seat somewhere else. So rather than thinking, oh yeah, that's something I'm going to do when I'm 70, and somebody taps me on the shoulder and offers me a board seat. Do it now, like get on it and I guarantee you, if you take the ideas, and by the way, I'll give all of your listeners a copy of this book, order in blueprint, more than happy to give a free copy to your listeners, but follow the methodology and that, and you can easily get a board seat within 30 to 60 days. And if nothing else, when you update your LinkedIn profile to say, hey, I'm sitting on the board of XYZ company, you will be blown away by what the knock on effects, the ripple effects that that has is incredible. Like, I mean, we've had people that update their LinkedIn profile, and within 24 hours, they've had two more offers of other board seats, just because people had never viewed them through that lens before. So, yeah, look, follow, follow the tactics, and I think it makes the single biggest difference in your career. 

Ryan Miller  

Awesome. Okay, so thank you for that and any closing remarks. So we've given an unfair advantage. You mentioned you wanted to offer that book or other things. How can they get a hold of you to capture that offer? How do they make that happen?

Callum Laing  

Sure. So if you go to boardroom-blueprint.com, is probably the easiest thing to do. I hang out on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest place to get me. Mention Ryan in your when you connect with me and I will take accept your connection. But look, I mean, this is, this is me, and you geeking out. This is, this is just fun stuff to talk about. Like it's, yeah, we're, clearly, there's a lot of alignment on, on values, audiences and and I think we're both, you know, I think we've both realized, the more we can help other people to raise capital, the, it rises, the rises the tides for everyone and everyone benefits from that. So, yeah, it's been a real pleasure chatting and yeah, look forward to hearing from some of your audience.

Ryan Miller  

Awesome. So just to summarize everything that we talked about, start with building trust. If you want to build a network of capital, build your board by just asking for trust or demonstrating that you are worthy of their trust. Then move in and start asking for the capital or any advice that might lead to capital. And then second, if you're reaching out and you're just doing a call, don't do it by asking for something, their money, their time, their interest. Can I send you that? Start with a give not I'm giving you an offer to invest in, that's not what we're talking about, but a true, genuine give and add value to their life. Demonstrate that when you're in somebody's life, things get easier for them, better for them, more profitable for them, whatever it is, just make sure you lead that with a give. You do these things, and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions. 

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode, where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends, stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.