The Art of Storytelling

Pitching an investment isn’t all about presenting numbers—it’s about storytelling.

Having a deal where the numbers make sense is the bare minimum to get investors involved. Table stakes. There wouldn’t be a deal without them. But as much as investing is (at least should be) mathematical, an investor’s “buy-in” is also emotional. Even at the institutional level. As an operator, it’s our job to tap into these emotions with context to “why here, why now”. You do this by crafting the story of your deal.

The essence of a great story answers the following questions: why here? why now? and what change? Ex: “We are buying a well-located, distressed operations property from a motivated seller at 80% market value with a plan to stabilize and renovate units proven out by nearby comparables”. We are here because the location, purchase price, and asset quality are strong. We do this now because the seller is motivated (perhaps a near-term loan maturity) and market fundamentals line up. The change is our improvement of operations and physical qualities (such as renovating to compete with higher quality assets). This is just the essence; we are missing some of the sauce like FOMO (fear of missing out) and exclusivity -so let’s dive into greater detail on how to tell our deal story.