MB523: You Don’t Have a Knowledge Problem. You Have a Deal Flow Problem (How to Finally Close Your First Deal) - With Lee Fjord
Financial Freedom with Real Estate Investing
Michael Blank
4.7 • 577 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Michael Blank sits down with Lee Fjord, a real estate investor who has built an $80M+ portfolio and owns over 1,200 units—all starting from a single duplex. But the real focus of this conversation is capital raising in today’s shifting environment. As online funnels and paid ads become increasingly ineffective, Lee shares how he’s built a powerful, scalable system for raising capital locally through in-person events, curated meetups, and relationship-driven strategies. From hosting monthly property tours to creating a repeatable investor “flywheel,” Lee breaks down exactly how he’s raised nearly $2M from his network—and how you can do the same by prioritizing trust, consistency, and community.
Key Takeaways
- Local Capital Raising Is Back—and It Works
- As online ads and webinars lose effectiveness, in-person events and local networking are proving to be far more reliable for building investor trust and raising capital.
- Consistency Creates a Compounding “Flywheel” Effect
- Hosting recurring monthly events builds familiarity, credibility, and momentum—turning casual attendees into long-term investors over time.
- Start Small, Then Scale Strategically
- Lee began with simple meetups and evolved them into curated experiences, proving you don’t need perfection—just consistency and iteration.
- Curated Experiences Attract Higher-Quality Investors
- Targeting accredited investors, asking the right questions, and filtering attendees helps ensure you’re building relationships with serious capital partners.
- In-Person Connection Builds Trust Faster Than Funnels
- Face-to-face interactions dramatically shorten the trust cycle compared to cold online leads, making it easier to convert relationships into investments.
- Layered Engagement (Events + Webinars) Maximizes Reach
- Combining live events with ongoing touchpoints like webinars and follow-ups creates a powerful ecosystem for nurturing investor relationships.
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Resources
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Get the Book, Financial Freedom with Real Estate Investing by Michael Blank
For full episode show notes visit: https://themichaelblank.com/podcasts/session523/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, deal makers, welcome to the show where it's all about financial freedom. Let's do this. |
| 0:11.9 | Today the show, we have Lee Fjord, and he's built an $80 million real estate portfolio. |
| 0:16.3 | And I ran him in the best ever. He's been following us for a number of years. And what we really talked |
| 0:21.6 | about is the idea of raising capital locally. And I'm observing that a lot of us who've raised a lot |
| 0:28.4 | of money online, that really has not worked very well over the last year or so. It's just been |
| 0:32.7 | very difficult to use Facebook traffic, to convert that into investors. We've used it on the last two deals. |
| 0:38.5 | It went okay with kind of declining success. And then one of my peers did a recent one, spent |
| 0:43.9 | $25,000 on Facebook and raised exactly $0.00. And perhaps out of desperation in trying to find |
| 0:50.0 | other ways to raise money, some of my peers have started organizing local events. Imagine paid |
| 0:55.5 | dinners to accredited investors only with actually staggering success. So I actually spoke |
| 1:01.6 | about this best ever right now is what, you know, what's really working right now and what is not. |
| 1:07.2 | And what's not really working right now is the old paid Facebook driving to a funnel webinar and then raise capital. |
| 1:13.8 | It's just very, it's too expensive to do that. |
| 1:16.5 | But what is working is a lot of my peers are doing these in-person things. |
| 1:19.7 | And Lee Fjore has been doing us for a number of years. |
| 1:22.2 | And we actually talked about using it more intentionally to raise capital because initially he didn't really create it. |
| 1:28.3 | He just created a meetup. And it kind of evolved from there. And we brainstorm some ideas. |
| 1:33.5 | And I said, Lee, why don't we talk about this on the show here today? Because you've been doing |
| 1:36.9 | this for a long, a long period of time. He's involved it recently or about a year ago into a little |
| 1:41.3 | bit more of a curated way to raise capital. |
| 1:45.8 | And so I really love the flywheel that he has created to when he meets somebody to put |
| 1:51.1 | some, hey, we have a live event every single month, we have, we have this, and he has a system |
... |
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