I’ve done a lot of speeches and presentations to smaller senior groups in the Philadelphia community as my primary way to attract private lenders.  I would do presentations sometimes where there would only be three or four people and sometimes there would be 30. It all depends.

Massive Action Produces Massive Results
 
If you do enough speeches and presentations, you will get enough people that will come to you after the meeting and want more information about private lending.  If you can, stay afterwards and have a conversation and even sit down again.
 
Let’s say you do a presentation for 30 people and 27 leave at the end, but three stay behind.  You sit down and have almost a second meeting with these three.   Those three become very viable private lending prospects for you.
 
If you can, get to the point where you’re doing presentations, I hooked into senior groups.  If you can do that it’s wonderful.  Talk to the local senior community if you have one in your area. They typically are looking for speakers all the time.
 
In your networking event, BNI or whatever networking you go to, say, “Hey, I provide speaking.  I’d be happy to present for your group if you want somebody to do an interesting half hour presentation.”  You can get a lot of speaking presentations.
 
Avoid Direct Selling
 
The only warning is you do not – do not! – do any direct selling in these presentations. Do not start talking about specific deals.  Do not talk about specific private lending opportunities. You want to talk in an educational presentation style. It’s general information. You do not want to talk about specific deals.
 
As long as you follow that caveat you’ll be fine with presentations and speeches and you’ll do very well. You will get a very high response as opposed to postcards and letters. You’ll get a very high response from speeches and presentations.
 
Do What Works For You
 
Again, with speeches and presentations, it’s ultimately up to you. Some people are very comfortable doing it. I enjoy public speaking, so I don’t have a problem with it. Other people don’t. It has to fit your style and your personality. If you’re willing to do it, that is clearly probably one of the best ways to develop your private lender prospecting list.
 
If you do five or 10 of these presentations, I can almost guarantee you’re going to have a list of 15 to 50 people that have heard you speak, like what you have to say, and who want more information and will continue to want more information from you. This is a very powerful way of developing and getting people to kind of believe in what you’re doing.