There’s a belief in syndication that if you just find the right marketing agency (or done-for-you leads service), they’ll handle everything and the investors will come.
It’s seductive. It’s convenient. And it sounds like the smart business decision.
It’s also costing syndicators tens of thousands of dollars in a cycle they can’t escape.
The Cycle of Failure
Here’s how it goes:
You know you need to attract investors, but you don’t know how to market effectively. So you hire an agency or done-for-you service. They promise results. They seem reputable. They have a process.
You pay them. You wait. You hope.
The results are… mediocre. Or they start strong but decline fast. Or they just don’t come at all.
But you think, “Maybe I just hired the wrong one. Maybe the NEXT one will be different.”
So you hire another one. Different name, similar promises. More money out the door.
Same story. Different invoice.
You repeat this until you’re either broke or you give up entirely.
I lived this exact cycle.
Multiple agencies and services. Thousands of dollars in fees, then many thousands more on ads. Each one seemed reputable with a process that should have worked.
But we didn’t get great results – never broke even. Just large bills.
Why The Myth Is So Appealing
I understand why this belief exists. The logic makes perfect sense:
You’re an expert at finding and managing deals, not at marketing. So why wouldn’t you hire marketing experts to handle it?
They’re the professionals. They do this for a living. They should know what works, right?
The promise sounds perfect: “We’ll handle everything. You focus on deals, we’ll bring you the investors.”
It seems like the smart delegation that every successful business owner should do.
You want to focus on what you’re good at and let specialists handle the rest.
On paper, it makes complete sense.
Why It Doesn’t Work: The Reality
Here’s the problem with that myth, and why the cycle keeps repeating:
Remember those late-night infomercials selling some green goo you can drink that’s supposed to make you lose weight and get six-pack abs?
You can buy that expensive supplement. You can drink it every day. You can spend hundreds of dollars on it.
But if you’re not putting in the work—the actual exercise, the nutrition knowledge, the consistent effort—you’re not getting abs. It doesn’t matter how much you spend or what the bottle promises.
And even if the goo managed to help a little, do you really want to be dependent on drinking it for the rest of your life to maintain whatever mediocre results you got?
That’s what happens when you hire a marketing agency or done-for-you service before you understand how to attract investors.
You’re buying a promise of results without doing the foundational work. And just like the supplement can’t give you abs without exercise, an agency can’t build authentic investor trust without your strategic foundation.
They can’t deliver results because they don’t understand what makes YOU credible to YOUR investors.
I recently talked to a syndicator who paid $15,000 for a done-for-you marketing service specifically designed for syndicators.
Not a generic agency that knows nothing about real estate. A specialized service that supposedly understood the syndication business.
Initially, it seemed to work. He was getting some responses on LinkedIn.
Then the results started declining. Fast.
But the real problem showed up in the messages he was getting back:
“Is this you? It doesn’t sound like you.”
People could tell the messages weren’t authentic. They didn’t sound like him. They sounded like a pushy salesman.
And when you’re asking people to trust you with six or seven figures of their money, sounding like a pushy salesman is the kiss of death.
Here’s the truth: No one understands your business like you do. And no one cares about your success like you do.
An agency might understand marketing tactics. They might even understand syndication in general.
But they don’t understand YOUR investors, YOUR approach, YOUR voice, YOUR values.
They deliver generic tactics, not YOUR strategy.
And generic doesn’t build the trust you need to raise capital.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” — Sun Tzu
Learn Before You Delegate
Here’s a principle that applies to every business function: you shouldn’t delegate something you don’t understand.
Think about property management. You hire a property manager for your apartment complex. They send you monthly reports with occupancy rates, maintenance costs, tenant turnover numbers.
But if you don’t understand the basics—what’s a healthy occupancy rate? What’s normal for maintenance costs? When is turnover a red flag?—those reports might as well be written in another language. You’re looking at numbers that mean nothing to you.
You wouldn’t know if they’re doing a good job until something goes seriously wrong (in other words: it’s too late)—a lawsuit, a maintenance crisis, or mass tenant exodus.
Most syndicators wouldn’t hire a property manager without learning those basics first. You’d learn enough to read the reports, ask the right questions, and spot problems early.
But here’s the thing: you probably already have a foundation in property management. You’ve been a tenant. You own property. You’ve dealt with maintenance issues. You have context.
Most syndicators don’t have that foundation with marketing. They’ve never been directly exposed to it. It seems confusing, complicated, maybe even mysterious. So they turn off their brains and think, “I’ll just hire someone who knows this stuff.”
When you outsource your marketing without understanding the basics, they send you reports about impressions, click-through rates, and engagement metrics—and it might as well be written in another language. You’re hoping what they’re telling you is good, but you have no way to know.
That’s why you need to learn the basics first.
Yes, you hire plumbers without being a plumber. You hire mechanics without being a mechanic.
But you know enough to tell if they’re doing good work. You know what a functioning toilet looks like. You know when your car is running properly.
Marketing is the same. You don’t need to become an expert. But you need to understand enough to evaluate if someone is doing good work for you.
The Dependency Problem
Even if an agency could somehow deliver results (most can’t), you’d still have a massive problem:
The moment you stop paying them, your leads stop coming in (and you have no idea how to restart them).
What if they decide to double their fees next year? You have no choice but to pay it—or your lead flow stops.
What if they go out of business? You’re starting from scratch with no knowledge.
What if their results decline? You can’t tell if it’s them, the market, or your message—because you don’t understand the fundamentals.
When you outsource before you understand, you’re not delegating. You’re buying a crippling dependency.
The Truth: Don’t Be Upset by the Results You Didn’t Get From the Work You Didn’t Do
I’ve been there!
I kept hiring agencies and services, kept hoping the next one would be different, until I finally realized something that changed everything:
If I don’t know how to attract leads to my business, I don’t have a business.
Here’s what happened when I hired those agencies: I really didn’t know whether their ideas were good or not. Some of it didn’t sound like me. But I assumed they were the experts and knew better than I did.
Looking back, that wasn’t true. They didn’t understand my business, my voice, or my clients well enough.
And to be fair, neither did I in the beginning. It was too soon to expect results from any agency.
Now that I have that clarity—now that I understand who we serve, what they need, exactly how we help them—everything else lines up. Our message is clearer. Our marketing is more effective. We can spot immediately when something doesn’t fit.
Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management, says that marketing is the responsibility of the managing leadership within a business—not a separate function you can hand off to someone else.
He put it this way: “Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function… It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.”
For syndicators, that “customer” is your investor. Marketing is how potential investors find you, understand your approach, and decide you’re someone they want to work with—all before you ever speak to them.
If you outsource that without understanding it, you’re outsourcing how investors perceive you, trust you, and ultimately decide to work with you.
The only path to real success as a business owner is to learn this skill ourselves—maybe not doing it all yourself forever, but well enough that you’re never at someone else’s mercy.
The Path That Actually Works
Here’s what IS reality:
You absolutely CAN learn how to attract the investors you want. You CAN avoid the costly mistakes others made. You CAN build a system that actually works without spending years floundering in the dark.
Whether you learn from us or someone else or figure it out yourself—you can master this.
We built a program to speed up this process considerably. Instead of the years it took me to figure this out through trial and error, we guide you through finding your clarity, defining your message, and building your system in a fraction of the time.
You can learn how to attract investors consistently and predictably.
Not by becoming a marketing guru. But by understanding enough that you’re in control of your business growth.
Breaking The Cycle: The Right Sequence
Here’s what I’ve learned: agencies and done-for-you services aren’t inherently bad. The problem is the timing.
They can be valuable—but only AFTER you’ve done the foundational work.
K.M. Robinson, a social media marketing educator, puts it perfectly: “It’s essential the entrepreneur learn the basics first so they can have an intelligent and informed conversation about what their specialist is doing for their business.”
Here’s the right sequence:
Phase 1: Learn what works
- Understand your ideal investor
- Find your authentic voice
- Test different messages and approaches
- Build a system that consistently attracts investors
Phase 2: Prove it works
- Run it yourself until it’s predictable
- You understand WHY it works, not just that it does
- Your business should be generating at least $10K/month consistently (the minimum your business should be making before hiring an agency)
Phase 3: Consider delegation (maybe)
- Now you can hand off execution to an agency or hire someone for your team
- But you keep the strategy
- You can evaluate their work because you understand the fundamentals
- You could take it back and run it yourself if needed
The key difference: you’re delegating execution of a proven system, not outsourcing the strategy & thinking.
You know what good performance looks like. You can tell if they’re creating content that will resonate with your audience. You’re not dependent—you’re leveraging.
That’s completely different from hiring an agency before you have any idea what works.
Most syndicators try to skip straight to Phase 3. That’s why they end up in the cycle of failure.
The Timing Test
If you’re currently working with a marketing agency/service—or considering it—ask yourself these questions:
“If I stopped paying them today, what happens to my business?”
If the honest answer is “my few leads would disappear,” you’re not working with a partner. You’re dependent on them.
“Do I understand why my marketing works or doesn’t work?”
If you can’t explain it, you don’t control it.
“Could I continue this if they disappeared tomorrow?”
If the answer is no, you’re not in control of your own business growth.
“Is my business consistently generating $10K+ per month and I have a proven system that works?”
If your business isn’t generating at least $10K/mo, it’s way too soon to consider leveraging an agency.
Which Path Are You Choosing?
You have three options for moving forward:
Option 1: Hire an agency now (before you’re ready)
This is the path most syndicators take—and the one that leads to the expensive cycle of failure.
You can keep believing the myth that the right agency will solve everything. Keep cycling through expensive services that deliver mediocre results. Keep hoping the next one will be different.
But now you know why this doesn’t work: Without understanding the basics yourself, you can’t tell if they’re doing good work. You’re flying blind with your investor pipeline in someone else’s hands.
When this path makes sense: After you’ve learned the fundamentals, proven your system works, and your business is consistently generating $10K+ per month. Then you can delegate execution while keeping strategic control.
Option 2: Learn it yourself
You can learn how to attract investors on your own.
If you want to go this route, here are some excellent books to start with:
- Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
- This Is Marketing by Seth Godin
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
- Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham
- Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller
These will give you a solid foundation in the fundamentals and will point you in the right direction for developing your strategy.
Option 3: Learn with guidance
We guide you through finding your clarity, defining your message, and building your system—but you own it. You understand it. You control it.
We built our program to speed up the process considerably. Instead of years of trial and error, we show you what works.
Whether you work with us for a few months or longer, the capability you build is yours to keep.
If you’ve already gone the agency route and spent $20K for little-to-no results (or if you’re thinking, “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to learn this stuff. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about and I’m just gonna hire someone!”), that’s OK – you can always come back later and we’ll still show you how to actually get results.
The work is required either way. You can drink the green goo and keep hoping you’ll wake up with abs one day, but until you do the work the abs will never show.
So the question is whether you’re doing the work that gets results and builds your business, or just spending money hoping someone else figures it out for you while you stay in the dark.
One path leads to results and independence.
The other leads to wasted money and that expensive cycle of failure.
Which path are you choosing?