We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Coty Dolan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Coty below.
Coty, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Our Philosophy at Dolan Capital is simple, Our Investors come first. Our thought is, If you are trusting us to grow your hard-earned money, that is what you deserve.
*Now I know that is what all private equity firms claim right? but is it ever actually the case? High & hidden fees, low equity splits, no or low preferred returns, AND! they keep you locked in their deals no matter what…If you have invested as an LP before this may sound all too familiar.*
At Dolan Capital, we let our deal structuring speaks for itself.
We guarantee Our Investor’s satisfaction.
Here’s how;
Our minimum General Partner split is 90%: (GP/LP split of 90/10)
We offer a preferred return on ALL deals: 14% on Value-Add deals, and 10% on Core Deals.
Investor Liquidity: We work with multiple institutional lenders and liquidity companies to ensure that if one of our Investors ever has an emergency and needs their invested capital right away, they will be able to get it.
Transparent Fees: Acquisition Fee is 2% of Trade Price (1% as cash to sponsor, 1% as converted to LP Equity).
Asset Management Fee is 1% of Gross Property Revenue.
That’s it…No, really that’s it!
We 100% guarantee investors will be happy they chose to invest at Dolan Capital: We are so confident you will love investing with us, that, if after 1 year you are dissatisfied with your decision to invest with us we will return your capital invested no questions asked.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Absolutely, thank you, I will try and be as brief as possible;
Hello! My name is Coty Dolan, I live in the Houston, TX area, and I am the Founder & Managing Partner of Dolan Capital.
I got out of the Navy in 2017, and I was working in hospitality management. I was absolutely miserable working that w2 job where I just felt stuck.
I guess my Aha! the moment was when;
I saw a social media post, by someone I had gone to high school with, it was the headline of chapter 2, section 1 of Rich Dad Poor Dad: The Rich Don’t Work For Money.
Now up to this point in my life, I had never read any book that wasn’t required in school, and I only read about 25% of those But seeing this post resonated with me, why well great marketing; WORKing at my dead-end job was something I hated ( a pain I had) and being RICH was something I greatly desired ( a pleasure I desired).
Anyways the marketing worked; I downloaded Rich Dad Poor Dad on Audible ( I have found I retain much more information when I listen to a book rather than reading ) and proceeded to listen to every Rich Dad series book over the next month and a half.
Shortly after reading the 1st book, I thought “hey, I can do this real estate thing I think.” So I signed up for my classes to get my Real Estate License. I decided I was going to burn my boat, and after consulting with my wife (then girlfriend) I quit my job as a Food & Beverage Manager at a Golf Resort and got a part-time job as an assistant at a property management company.
Although property management was not my favorite, I was quickly promoted to a full-time portfolio manager where I oversaw the acquisition, stabilization, and exit of real estate assets. I was able to be fully immersed in the world of real estate, and I know the skills and lessons I was learning there would make me a great Investor someday, and I now had a target I was going to buy apartment buildings someday.
I became obsessed with learning everything I could about multifamily investing; I ate, slept, and breathed multifamily. I listened to every book and podcast I could find. I stopped watching sports, tv, and movies so I could dedicate every spare minute to gaining real estate investing knowledge and experience.
During my time as a portfolio manager, I became a licensed realtor and started selling residential real estate. The paychecks were much large and allowed me to start buying rental properties of my own, so I stepped away from my last w2 job at the property management company.
As a Realtor, if you do it right, you can get some amazing sales & marketing training, which I think we can all agree, help out a just bit in business. Again, if done right, being a full-time Realtor, will teach you to be an Entrepreneur.
After many failures along with the way, the reps start paying off and I was able to start offering some value to others by sharing the real estate lessons I had learned along the way. Giving value to others does something amazing for your self-esteem, You start to believe in yourself more and more and gain the necessary confidence to chase your dreams, and that is what Dolan Capital is, my dream of providing the most value possible to others.
So fast forward to Dolan Capital, from the time I started in real estate I knew that buying apartment buildings for investors is what I was going to do with my life. The highest level of view of what I do is this, I source deals, and raise capital. In order to excel at these two essential elements of apartment investing I had to become a networking machine, and that is exactly what I did.
Through networking events, conferences, LinkedIn, and friend-to-friend connections, I was able to establish a network of investors, deal finders, 3rd party contractors, and my partners at Dolan Capital. Leveraging all these relationships allowed us to build Dolan Capital into the firm we are now, we still have a long way to go but the future is bright.
Dolan|Capital
“Our mission is to provide an exclusive group of accredited investors, with the highest quality multifamily investment opportunities.”
Overview:
Dolan Capital is a privately held real estate investment firm that acquires, manages, and sponsors multifamily investment deals in the major metropolitan areas of Texas and Florida.
We handle the entire process from sourcing to exit in order to ensure maximum profitability for our Investors.
Sourcing: Underwriting, due diligence, negotiation, and closing.
Asset Management: Post closing We are boots on the ground, throughout the hold period we meticulously oversee and assist our Property Managers in the implementation of our business plan in order to that maximize investor returns.
Exit: As soon as we close, we are preparing the property for the most profitable exit possible. Through capital expenditures, unit upgrades, and proper management we increase NOI and the value of the asset. During our due diligence, we run multiple exit scenarios to make sure we have a plan that maximizes the profitability of the deal.
Locations:
Texas: Austin, Dallas, Houston, & San Antonio.
Florida: Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, St. Petersburg, & Tampa.
Risk / Return Profiles
Value-Add (growth): 120+ units. Class B & C properties. 16% IRR minimum. 20% Targeted IRR. Hold Time 3 to 7 Years. Vintage, 1970+
Core (stable): 250+ units. Class A properties. 8% IRR minimum. 12% Targeted IRR. Hold Time 7 to 12 Years. Vintage, < 20 years old.
…Our Investors get paid first, every deal.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I am an all-or-nothing kind of guy, which can be good and bad, that being said when I got a nugget from someone I tend to devour everything they have ever put out, i.e. all books, podcast episodes, and youtube videos.
Because of this rather than just mentioning books or videos I am going to mention the people that I consider mentors, whose content I have devoured, and has changed me for the better.
#1: Alex Hormozi
#2: Grant Cardone
#3: Robert Kyosaki
#4: Ed Mylett
#5: Michael Blank
#6: Brian Burke
#7: Ray Dalio
#8: Dan Kennedy
#9: Dale Carnegie
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
On my very first apartment syndication deal, I thought I was hot shit. I paid for mentorship and had an apartment complex under contract in 1 month, I had brought on partners for the deal, found a key principal (balance sheet guarantor) and secured lending, and lined up the Investors for the deal.
**I am The Man! This is easy I thought!**
Well, here is a summary of the not-so-fortunate events that followed;
– We had a partner freak out, back out, and attempted to sue us.
– We 2 large investors give money and then back out.
– The week we dropped out contingencies and went hard with our EMD; interest rates went up 2 points in 4 weeks.
– We had to request a retrade or lowering of the price with had made a commitment to pay.
– We could not come eye to eye with the seller on a lower price.
– Because our investors will always come first; instead of forcing the acquisition through, at a price that wouldn’t have delivered what was promised to our investors. we chose to walk away from the deal.
– We lost our Earnest Money Deposit and all risk capital put into the deal, around $100k.
This is one of the greatest lessons I have learned in life; I am never as good as I may think I am, and I can always learn more.
Failing my first syndication deal sucked, and I mean really sucked;
I had borrowed the money for the deal from my wife, who is a successful Chef and owner of her own business, and telling her I lost everything was one of the worst things I have ever had to do. We were 2 weeks from moving across the country and I had, instead of making a shit ton of money on this deal that I was “100% sure I would get done” I had lost most of what we had saved.
But as my wife took my hand and looked into my tear-filled eyes, she said “we are going to be okay.” My wife is my rock, and my everything I would certainly not be the man I am today without her. But I must say, I felt a feeling of gratitude hearing her say this.
Perspective changes everything; After failing this hard I could have felt sorry for myself and quit apartment investing, but I didn’t. I felt gracious, what an amazing life I have and how lucky I am to have been able to lose $100k and not be ruined forever.
Yes, I was broke, very broke, but only in liquid capital. I thought to myself “when I think back on this in 10 years, I would probably pay $200k for the lessons I learned from that failure”.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dolancap.com
- Instagram: @cotyjdolan
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cotydolan/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DolanCap
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF-c07tBWEHRDlYrdeaTnyg
Image Credits
Austin Hervias Alisa Matthews Vlad Busuioc Gower Brown