#59: How to Become Investor-Ready: Fundraising & Investor Relations Strategies for Alternative Investments

Sarah (00:07.95)

Welcome everyone to Alt Investing Made Easy. Today we're delighted to bring to you a conversation with our new friend Laura Oslick and she'll be talking about her business which is Stella Polari Advisors and the services that she provides. So Laura, welcome.

Laura Oslick (00:26.503)

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:30.037)

Yeah, thanks for being here, Laura. So tell us a little about Stella Polare. Whoa, I'm going to have to say that again. Laura, tell us about Stella Polare advisors.

Laura Oslick (00:45.071)

Certainly. Well, Stella Polari in short, it is, well, it translates to North Star in Italian. So taking that ethos of helping to be a guide, keep that in mind. But in short, I help fund managers go from overlooked to investor ready, helping to make sure that they are confident and capable as they go out there and try to compete with the best of the best for both capital.

and investments. But the long version is that we're a strategic consultancy that helps alternative managers across fund management, fundraising, investor relations, and operational readiness.

Roland Wiederaenders (01:27.969)

Those investor relations functions are so important and I think what a lot of fund managers don't appreciate maybe is, you know, that they've got these different silos of their business and that one is really a separate one, it's its own skill set and somebody like you could really add value, I think, to helping people professionalize that function.

Laura Oslick (01:52.591)

Absolutely, mean, honestly, the best time to be fundraising is when you're not fundraising. And so if you are able with your existing investor base to show them that you are a professional, you're doing what you're saying you said you're going to do, and you report and I really, you know.

clear, concise way, and you're also communicative not just when it comes to the good things, but also when things go wrong. That really shines to investors so that they're more ready to re-up with you when it is time to go around and do another fundraising round or help refer you to some of their contacts within the investor community.

Sarah (02:35.116)

I think that it's so important actually what you're talking about here, Laura. And I do want to just say maybe give us a little bit of your background because you just named these services, investor relations being one. And these are, it's a combination of soft skills, people skills, and actually some technical things that are required in this area. And I think we had talked about it before at length when we met earlier about

how you've really cultivated these skills over time in your career and you have some pretty significant experience that contributes to why you're able to really provide investors with excellent services.

Laura Oslick (03:13.063)

Yeah, so I actually, cut my teeth in Big Four accounting. When I got out of undergrad, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. And so I spent collectively five years at PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG. I worked on both the audit side and mostly on the advisory side of the business, but my clients were...

primarily real estate and private equity clients. I worked with groups doing operational readiness, operational improvement enhancements. I did three years of mergers and acquisitions advisory work for private equity clients, both on the buy side as well as doing post-merger integration. So I really got my hands dirty with the operational side of the business and what it means to go through an M &A process.

Sarah (03:59.469)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (04:05.205)

throughout private equity. Then I went back to school and got my MBA and since that time have primarily been on the real estate side of the alternative space. I did a year of investment sales brokerage at HFF, which is now JLL, know, massive organization across the globe. And then I moved into the capital raising and investor relations side of the business in 2013.

So I've been doing this type of work, you know, 100 % of the time ever since then. I've worked at large families that had a real estate arm of the business that did op co investing alongside deal investing. I've worked at an emerging manager doing really opportunistic investing across the globe, taking institutional investors from the U S and Europe and investing their

capital. And then I most recently was at Goldman Sachs, so a really large global organization with tons of infrastructure, yet still was able to work on an entrepreneurial endeavor, launching a brand new product to the firm, essentially creating a new business line inside the firm.

Sarah (05:05.89)

Hmm.

Sarah (05:23.406)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (05:25.267)

and then taking that new product all the way through the sales process and being in market, actually selling it to the investing community. So I inadvertently became a jack of all trades with a really diverse background. And I thought, you know, why not bring this to the forefront and help other managers out there go out and try to execute their strategies in the best way they possibly can.

Sarah (05:32.897)

Hmm.

Sarah (05:51.586)

Mm-hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (05:54.252)

Your knowledge of the scale, know, Sarah and I have talked about that. We've worked on really big deals and smaller deals as well, and really talking to managers and telling them where they're at, you know, where they should expect to get money from and how they can scale up to grow bigger. And then, you know, what the expectations are then and what they have to show just sounds like you could definitely speak to the...

that question for managers going from very small up to very large.

Laura Oslick (06:27.251)

Absolutely, I think that's something that often gets overlooked is hey, we want to grow our business, know, maybe we had a 400 million dollar fund You know this last round and we want to get up to 750 this round Fantastic. I love that for you But when in doing that you're going to have to make sure that you're shifting some of your manual processes to something that's a bit more up, you know Automated and your reporting becomes a bit more streamlined because

Sarah (06:51.736)

Mm.

Laura Oslick (06:57.205)

That's a big jump from 400 to 750 and then you keep growing from there and you've just got to have the people and the processes in place to be able to manage that properly.

Sarah (07:01.005)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (07:08.204)

Well, it's, you know, if you're dealing also with seeking institutional money from investors, I think you have to actually have evidence, right, that you've got all these internal processes. It's not just that you have some cool software, maybe an AI tool or something like that. You have to have documentation. You have to have governance. You have to have a lot of formalized processes. And it's to your own benefit, I would think, too, to have your ducks in a row, really.

Laura Oslick (07:24.136)

Yeah.

Laura Oslick (07:36.851)

Absolutely. I mean, you might have the best strategy in the world, but if you can't pass operational due diligence, you're not going to get the investor dollars. I will tell you that's not just on the institutional side. My last two years at Goldman, I was fundraising across our entire alternatives platform. So not just real estate, but P.E., private credit, secondaries, GP stakes. But we were selling to the wealth community. We were out chatting with a financial advisor

Sarah (07:59.022)

Mmm.

Sarah (08:03.267)

Right.

Laura Oslick (08:06.835)

at all the wirehouses, independent RIAs throughout the country. you go into those groups and you try to get a product for sale on their platform or even just in their one specific office and they care about that stuff too. It's not just the institutions.

Sarah (08:24.907)

Of course.

Of course. Well, they're very close to their clients. And when you're closer to your clients, I think you feel the fiduciary obligations more poignantly.

Laura Oslick (08:37.9)

Yeah, they're taking the angry phone calls and then...

Sarah (08:40.556)

Yeah

Laura Oslick (08:41.863)

From an IR perspective, if your financial advisor client is getting an angry phone call, you're the next phone call and it's going to be angry. And you've got to be able to support that in a professional way. And, you know, a lot of groups might think that the retail channels, it's easy, but it has its own set of needs and obligations and nuances.

Sarah (08:51.736)

Yeah.

Sarah (09:00.695)

Yeah.

Sarah (09:07.406)

Of course, of course. Roland, did you have it? You looked like you were going to say something.

Roland Wiederaenders (09:12.513)

Yeah, I guess, you know, what would be interesting maybe is some concrete examples of things, you know, without betraying any confidences, Laura, you know, a client that you've worked, helped recently, you know, in the maybe describing the area they're in generally. But I always think about that, you know, some good concrete examples for our audience to grab hold of and to understand, you know, what you really, you know, what you might do for a client.

Laura Oslick (09:42.993)

Sure, well I'll actually start out and say that there are a few different ways groups can work with me and then I'll dive into an example. So, at the most simplest form, one can engage me just on a kind strategic advisory basis where you get access to me throughout the month for a low fee. It's just, hey Laura, we're seeing this issue or you know we're working through this thing, here's where we are.

What are your thoughts? What can we do next? That's one way. Another way that's actually really easy to engage with me is doing a pitch book, review and uplift. Oftentimes managers have a great strategy and they're really passionate about what they're doing, but they don't know how to concisely communicate that in a way that's compelling to investors. And so I can come in and review decks and other marketing materials and do an uplift on those. And then the third way is

Sarah (10:28.046)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (10:39.199)

is a big strategic project. I've had a couple groups reach out to me recently, and this is just for an example of wanting to start non-traded REITs. That's massive process. They might think it can take six months, but I'm like, it's probably more like a year, year, year and a half. And so that would be a much larger, much more involved engagement. But I'm working with a client right now on just one of those pitch book uplifts.

Sarah (10:48.898)

Huh. Yeah.

Sarah (10:57.378)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (11:08.827)

And I spent a lot of time with her a couple months ago. went around, she's actually in the real estate business. I went around and toured all of her sites because I wanted to fully understand where she's investing, what these assets look like, what's the sub market around there. And that way I fully understand when she's telling me her investment thesis. I know what that is. I can say, yeah, I remember when I drove by that deal, it was really close to, you know,

Sarah (11:17.97)

wow.

Laura Oslick (11:38.533)

the highway and a train line and a grocery store, things like that that are beneficial for the residents of her buildings.

Sarah (11:47.008)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (11:49.521)

And then tie that into her story. And so I spent a lot of time getting to know her, her investment thesis and her investments. And the very first time I sent her, call it an 80 % of the way done version of the deck. I was a little bit nervous. I won't lie. I sent it to her and I hope she likes it. Right.

Sarah (12:05.678)

Mm.

Laura Oslick (12:09.389)

I then I go out and I'm walking my dog, because it's at the end of the day. I turn the corner and I get a text from her that says, my gosh, this is amazing. I would invest in this. This is phenomenal. Thank you.

Roland Wiederaenders (12:20.914)

Hahaha

Sarah (12:22.423)

Hahaha!

Laura Oslick (12:24.709)

And so that, you know, just those little anecdotes of, you know, that initial reaction where it's like, thank you. I could not have done this on my own. Such a blessing. That makes not only me feel really good, but I know that she's going to have the tools to go out when she's chatting with investors and trying to get new, new dollars for her deals. She can do that and put a better foot forward than she had been.

Roland Wiederaenders (12:50.219)

Yeah, I can relate to that. You when you have your ideas, but then you see them represented in the best possible light, and then you have this renewed belief in yourself. I really appreciate that transparency.

Sarah (13:01.39)

Ha ha ha ha.

Laura Oslick (13:01.683)

As an entrepreneur, you've got days where you're really gung-ho and then you've got days that are, gosh, what am I doing? And so maybe I caught her on one of those, gosh, what am I doing days?

Roland Wiederaenders (13:10.293)

Yeah.

Sarah (13:10.399)

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah (13:14.594)

Well, I also just want to emphasize, just since we're on the pitch book topic, and Roland and I see a number of pitch books just in the legal work that we do, and we don't, we may review them for legal content, make sure the disclaimer is there, etc., but we won't necessarily dive into the overall pitch book, because that's not our area of expertise. But I do think that oftentimes pitch books...

Laura Oslick (13:18.365)

Sure.

Sarah (13:41.186)

They need a third perspective. need somebody from the outside to look at them a little better, bring them into what might be a market standard. It's kind of like when you try and design your own house, you think you get pretty far on how you like the interior to look, but then you spend an hour talking to a professional and you're like, wow, I really didn't know what I was doing. So it's that same kind of a thing. And I do think when you're seeking money, whether it's a few million or a few hundred million,

Laura Oslick (14:01.425)

you

Sarah (14:08.942)

The audience that you're speaking to has a lot of other people seeking their attention and you need to do something that communicates from the first moment they glance at your pitch book that this is excellent. This has got depth and it's got brevity probably. It needs to say the right amount of things. I there's all these things that go into it that some people occasionally stumble on by accident or they have a very tight investor network and so it of doesn't matter so much.

Just this particular point, and we can talk about each one of the services in detail if you want to, on the pitch book, this is your chance to get people's attention and leave a good impression. so it's worth investing in support from someone like you on that.

Laura Oslick (14:53.711)

Absolutely. You you might only get 10 minutes with somebody and that's your shot, right? And you either make a good impression in those first 10 minutes to get to a more in-depth follow-up discussion, or you get a thank you very much, let us know when you're back in the market. I will tell you that I have, it's not just let's make it look pretty. Because I have seen decks that have fantastic graphic designer splash on it. It looks...

Sarah (14:56.94)

Hmm, yeah.

Sarah (15:04.578)

Mm.

Sarah (15:15.671)

Of course not.

Laura Oslick (15:22.781)

professional, but then you read it and you spend time and you're like, gosh, this story is really disjointed. Or they're not communicating how they're different from their peers when there are 50 people doing the same exact thing. What's your special sauce? And they're unable to communicate that. Maybe they know it, but it's not coming out in their marketing. And then another thing, it's so simple, but it's so important.

Sarah (15:30.37)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (15:49.107)

Are your page numbers right? Do you have misspellings? Do your numbers try out? I was chatting with somebody who advises family offices on their alternatives investments recently. And he tells me the very first thing he does is load ducks into an AI tool that they have and says, check it.

Check it for, know, proofread it for spelling mistakes, mathematical errors, do the numbers agree? And if they don't, he won't spend time on it. It's just that cool.

Sarah (16:17.175)

Yeah.

Sarah (16:20.45)

I think that's fair, honestly.

Sarah (16:25.698)

Yeah, I've noticed that. I mean, you may know this, but we attorneys, we always find a typo in everything we ever read in the newspaper, anything. It's kind of irritating. but you know what? AI does that better now. So everybody has that available to them.

Laura Oslick (16:42.479)

Yeah, and so why stumble on something so simple, right? And I'll tell you what, the word might be spelled right, but it might not be the right word for the sentence. And often you, because you drafted it, you've seen it 50 times, you read it how it should be read, and you don't see it. And that, to your point, you need another set of eyes just to get a check.

Sarah (16:45.325)

Yeah.

Sarah (16:51.265)

Mmm.

Sarah (16:56.524)

You can't see it.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. we were, or Roland, did you have a question?

Roland Wiederaenders (17:09.75)

Well, I was going to move on. A recurring theme of this show has been commercial real estate. And I was going to ask a question about that. And you had mentioned something about a private REIT before and just your work in that area or trends maybe you see there. But we can talk about something else too, Sarah.

Sarah (17:30.498)

I think that sounds great. We haven't talked much about reets on our channel.

Laura Oslick (17:34.215)

Yeah, happy to chat about it. You know, it's a way for people to access the retail channel in a way that has over the past.

several years made sense, right? There are some groups that have executed on that really well, raised a ton of money. You know, it had a kind of a down moment a few years ago when B-rate and S-rate were having a ton of redemptions out of it and that caused some noise in the market. And so, you know, it's great. It has had its down moments, but it's something that people are curious about. And especially now at

as the institutional market has dried up. And I actually just saw somebody post something yesterday on LinkedIn that this is the first year that institutional forward-looking real estate allocations are down across the board this upcoming year. And so managers are trying to find capital, but if their traditional sources aren't putting out as much for whatever reason, they need to get it elsewhere. And so they're looking into their retail channel

Sarah (18:31.031)

wow. Hmm.

Laura Oslick (18:46.357)

non-traded REITs are a way to go about doing that. I will tell you there are a lot of work and you need to have operational setups in place to support it because historically if you've got a closed-end fund, private closed-end fund, you are doing valuations maybe twice a year, right? Maybe quarterly.

Sarah (18:50.126)

Mm.

Sarah (19:07.47)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (19:12.467)

and reporting on that and generally reporting throughout the year is relatively light.

and then you get into a non-traded REIT format and you have to report monthly. And if you're reporting to the SEC, it's SEC reporting, right? And it's thorough and you have to have valuations because you have to hit monthly marks. So people know what your NAV is. So they know what your share price is. And then if people want to redeem out, they know what the redemption price is.

There is so much that has to happen to get an asset management team, a portfolio manager, their VAL team, either external or internal, to be able to work on a cadence to, by the 15th of the following month, produce quality numbers. It's hard. And then at the same time, continuously raise enough capital to go out and put money into deals.

Sarah (20:04.545)

Anyway.

Laura Oslick (20:11.931)

and make sure there's a market to buy good deals. You don't want to just go buy deals for the sake of buying them and then not be great investments because that'll come back to hurt you, you know, a few years down the road. So it's, it's a ton of moving pieces. If you've got the bandwidth and the operations in place to execute it. Great. Fantastic. But

Sarah (20:17.357)

Yeah.

Sarah (20:32.781)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (20:36.217)

If you're on the fence, I would really, really look into it and do a thorough evaluation as to whether or not it makes sense and there's a better way for you as an organization to go out and access the retail market.

Sarah (20:49.88)

That's really interesting.

Roland Wiederaenders (20:50.435)

The REIT concept specifically of requiring distributions and distinguishing that maybe from a, you know, like an open end real estate investment fund that's maybe not a REIT. That would be, I think, an interesting distinction to talk about.

Laura Oslick (21:12.243)

Yeah, I mean, from the non-traded rate standpoint, it's you have the ability, it's still up to management's discretion to offer up to 5 % of your NAV a quarter.

Right. so when there was a lot of news about, things are being gated, it wasn't necessarily gating. was, hey, that law that's in place that caps it at 5 % a quarter, they were bumping up against it and they were actually doing what they're supposed to do. Things were functioning as they should. So I would say that was a good thing. Now, if you have an Odyssey fund, which typically has institutional investors in it, they also have big, you know,

Sarah (21:26.318)

Hmm.

Laura Oslick (21:56.165)

provide redemptions and people have been in redemption cues now since what 2022. So you know you're not escaped from having to worry about the risk of yes there's a there's a functionality for me to get my money back if I want to but it's not guaranteed either. So from an investor perspective I think

Sarah (22:02.881)

So

Sarah (22:17.731)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (22:22.099)

Not well-informed investors might think that a redemption at any point in time is something that they're guaranteed to get, but it's not necessarily true.

Sarah (22:31.164)

Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (22:32.877)

Yeah, we always talk with people about the offering liquidity terms and deals, make sure that you're going to be able to satisfy it. If you're going to offer it, don't be just silly about that. But then we always tell them you have the ability to suspend and you don't have the obligation to sell assets to satisfy the redemption request. So people do need to be aware of that. it's that the

Sarah (22:39.779)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (22:41.715)

You're not.

Sarah (22:48.674)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (22:53.368)

Right.

Laura Oslick (22:53.469)

Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (22:58.467)

Ideally, the liquidity premium that you're getting for investing in a private deal.

Sarah (23:04.076)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (23:05.937)

Yeah, I mean, ideally the market is healthy enough that you have enough transaction activity that there is the ability to not just do new acquisitions, but also dispositions to keep a regular flow of capital coming in and out. So do you need to, you know, fulfill redemption requests? They do have an up to 20 % liquidity sleeve to help fulfill that redemption obligation. but to your point, if it doesn't make

Sarah (23:22.286)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (23:35.823)

strategic sense to continue doing that and depleting it, or they don't have the ability or the markets not set up in a way that enables dispositions to occur, then you do have the option to just suspend your redemption. But then there are kind of the soft implications of that, Investors might get upset or different negative implications, I would say.

Sarah (23:55.144)

Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (24:03.672)

Yeah, for sure. And again, mean, that's the great value that you can add is helping people really understand that and really helping them understand how investors think about that. you don't want the last thing anybody wants is an angry investor. So I could just see how you just add so much value to people's operations if they just only listen to you.

Sarah (24:23.342)

and

Laura Oslick (24:30.483)

Well, would say it's hard to totally avoid angry investors, but if you can set yourself up in a way to minimize that, you'll go a long way, right? Not only anger from your investors, but frustration on your own part, right? Nobody likes to deal with angry phone calls.

Sarah (24:31.504)

Hahaha!

Sarah (24:42.648)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (24:50.04)

Yeah. I think also, I mean, what you're saying just in general with REITs too and just for our audience, they're complicated and they have promise in terms of cash flow and like you're saying, an ability to exit. But along with that comes a lot of extra complications and just, you know, and the bigger anything gets, the more when it comes to real estate, I think...

It's interesting because you still, like you say, need that deal pipeline and need that off-ramp pipeline to exit deals so that you still have cash flow and cash that's separate from what's cash flowing from the assets themselves. so it's something you have to have guidance through. It's not something, I think in commercial real estate, it's an interesting trajectory. People can often start very small and slowly build up and we...

Laura Oslick (25:37.638)

Absolutely.

Sarah (25:45.578)

speak to that audience on this podcast because the process of wealth building, a lot of people have built generational wealth through commercial real estate investing, starting small and growing into very large, large propositions. REITs have their place on that ladder. But it's a level of sophistication and professionalism that's required that...

some people are ready for and some people may never be ready for and will be happy going along doing whatever they're doing with commercial real estate in the way that they're doing that, which might just be a private fund for commercial real estate investments like we often work on. So I think it's a really important part of the alternative investment landscape, all of this with real estate, because in the end...

We all touch real estate. We work in it. We live on it. It's everywhere around us and it's very concrete and a great asset class, really.

Laura Oslick (26:41.285)

Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you, managers can still access the retail channel in a traditional closed-end fund manner.

Sarah (26:50.072)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (26:51.035)

it's just, you have to know the advisor and their client types really well because it varies. You can have an advisor that's like, Hey, listen, my, clients, all they care about is income. So if you've got a development fund that you might not get returned out of our private equity fund that you might not see exits out of for years, that's not a good fit for them. But a non-traded read or non-traded BDC.

Sarah (26:59.118)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (27:20.789)

is because those are kicking off regular, you know, distribution checks. That's a good fit for that client type. But if you have a financial advisor who their clients are in their forties, they don't plan on retiring anytime soon, but they want to be able to take advantage of, know, that that return premium for being in private investments. And they're fine if they're if they don't see exits for seven years on things. Great. Put them in a closed end fund.

Sarah (27:25.763)

Mmm.

Laura Oslick (27:50.661)

and they can do development. That doesn't matter, right? But you have to be able to, it takes a lot of legwork to build up the relationships in the financial advisor community to understand who has what type of client, and then partnerships and relationships that way.

Sarah (28:03.32)

Mm-hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (28:09.188)

Well, you know, know the other thing we were talking about is your upcoming trip to Italy, which sounds really fun, but tell us about the travel component of your business too.

Laura Oslick (28:15.634)

Yep.

Laura Oslick (28:19.633)

Yeah, so just on a personal level, have always been really passionate about...

travel, learning about other cultures and countries, and spending time in them because I firmly believe that travel helps make people better. And so I also have a travel advisory business that enables me to plan trips for individuals. Now, it's not all fun, it's not all trips to the Amalfi Coast, but it also enables me to help managers as they're going about and they're doing their fundraising and investor

work. I, know, two week roadshow throughout Europe, it's complicated in and of itself. You have to prep for the meetings. You have to know your investors that you're going to meet with all of that. The last thing you need to worry about is, oh gosh, what are the flights like? Where do I stay? How do I get from A to B? That component of it, it's still something you have to suss out. And so I'm offering the ability to do travel management for roadshows.

Sarah (28:56.376)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (29:26.065)

You know, also when you're on the road for that long, you want to stay someplace that's a little bit more comfortable because you're just exhausted at the end of the day and you want to be able to put your best foot forward the next day. So I am able to do travel management for road shows and you know, I've also souped and I've done a ton of AGMs on my own. So I can also help out with your annual investor meeting, you know, not just helping create the slides and the strategy for it, but also the travel.

Sarah (29:33.005)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (29:55.526)

component.

Sarah (29:57.166)

That's one of those hidden things that happens that people who are trying to make those meetings happen or those road shows happen know about, but you're not going to know about in advance. And so I think that's actually a really great, well thought out service to offer people.

Laura Oslick (30:15.355)

It's really turnkey if you want to put it mildly. It's, know, hey, I've got to go do this road show help. Great. Make sure your marketing materials are in order. Let's do some pitch coaching, making sure you're able to verbally communicate it well. But you might have an assistant who's

Sarah (30:23.47)

you

Sarah (30:28.578)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (30:32.224)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (30:35.859)

historically done that stuff for you and I'm happy to work with them on it, but having a professional who knows how to navigate that space really well and to make it seamless and low stress when you're on the ground, when you land in Beijing at 4 a.m. and you're like, gosh, how am going to get to my hotel or is my driver even here and where am I staying and how long is it going to take to get there? You don't need that when you have to wake up and go meet with an investor first thing in the morning.

Sarah (30:42.915)

Yeah.

Sarah (30:52.19)

Right, exactly.

Sarah (31:03.222)

Yeah, exactly. I've traveled a lot and I've been to lot of meetings abroad and I think this is really something that you don't know you need it until you're in the hot water. So if you can strategize a little and prepare for it, it really does save a lot of energy and like you say, contributes to your overall professionalism and ready to be prepared for what you're doing.

Laura Oslick (31:26.621)

Absolutely.

Sarah (31:29.27)

We want to ask you, Laura, you told us a little bit about your motivation for your trip to Italy, but what's your motivation for setting up Stella Pallare and also just in general for getting into this type of advisory work?

Laura Oslick (31:45.413)

Yeah, I'm a person who has always loved to solve puzzles and make things better, right? That's just inherently what I love to do. Like COVID, you don't even know how many puzzles I put together. was numerous. Didn't we all? Didn't we all? So that just inherently is what drives me. And so being in this alternative space for so long,

Sarah (31:49.751)

Hmm.

Sarah (31:58.926)

I did my fair share, including Legos.

Laura Oslick (32:13.171)

It became apparent to me that there are a ton of groups, especially now, that they've done their investing at a larger shop or they've cut their teeth elsewhere and they really want to give it a go and go out on their own.

So they hang their shingle, they go out, they do some deals, they maybe have some exits, start building up that track record. And then they're ready to go out and really formalize themselves, make a name, go out, speak to institutions, speak to the private wealth community and family office community. But they kind of fall flat because they don't know how to communicate with the investor community. And so I saw this time and time again, both

Sarah (32:34.21)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (32:53.794)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (32:57.969)

in my own career and then meeting with other people in the industry and I was like, you know what? That could actually be really fun for me to go out there and help make the world a better place. Help everyone achieve their strategic goals in growing their investment business and I would just have a great time doing it. I love to make connections as well so just continue doing what I love in a way that

Sarah (33:18.413)

Mm-hmm.

Laura Oslick (33:27.312)

fulfills me and helps others.

Sarah (33:30.766)

That's really cool.

Roland Wiederaenders (33:32.004)

Yeah, that value creation is something that I really connect with personally and I can hear that in what you're describing and more really solving the same problem for our clients, you know, just in different, from different perspectives. But I really like that a lot, War. And I can for sure tell from your background and from what you've described that you do a terrific job for everybody that you work with.

Sarah (33:42.413)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (33:56.814)

Yeah, I think it's actually really, sorry, I just want to re-emphasize that and say that with someone of your experience, your depth and brought your breadth of experience and the fact your global experience, just, I think you're a real treasure for people to have available.

Laura Oslick (33:57.031)

Thanks.

Laura Oslick (34:13.841)

Wonderful, thank you. It's kind of here. Yeah, I will say it's fun to be able to do this work and I love everybody I've been meeting along the way as I've been trying to grow the business. And I think there's just, there's so much room for overlap and to be able to help each other out. you know, when it comes to the legal, I am by no means a lawyer and I was once a CPA, but I am no longer and I am not an accountant, but it's like, I know enough.

Sarah (34:37.135)

Hahaha.

Laura Oslick (34:44.089)

about all of these different areas to say, hey, this can be done better, or I absolutely know that that's probably some sort of SEC marketing role violation, please talk to your lawyer. I'm an ally, so I think there's a ton of overlap in what we do. And it's really just helping these managers, as I said before.

Sarah (34:55.886)

Hahaha.

You're an ally.

Laura Oslick (35:09.511)

become investor ready and to feel confident and capable out there in the marketplace.

Sarah (35:14.766)

Me too. Well, what do you think, Roland, about... Shall we wrap up?

Roland Wiederaenders (35:15.223)

I think that's great.

Roland Wiederaenders (35:19.685)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think we're at 35 minutes, so I think so.

Sarah (35:24.874)

Okay, well Laura, thank you so much for being here and to everyone watching, thank you so much for joining us today on Alt Investing Made Easy. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe.

Roland Wiederaenders (35:37.113)

And remember, take aim with your alternative investing strategies.

Sarah (35:43.534)

See you next time. Thank you so much, Laura.

Laura Oslick (35:43.751)

Thank you.