YouSaid · the spoken record

John Kim

lines on the record: 89
first: 2026-05-25
most recent: 2026-05-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The next chapter of my life is trying to fulfill my potential. At some level, I think I have underperformed my true potential. I got so attached to the sales persona and being this super fundraiser. I raised a lot of money in my career. I'm proud of it, but I got really attached to that persona, that identity. When there are a lot of other things I discovered that I can do pretty well, and I might have done exceptionally well had I practiced it much earlier in my life, leadership, strategic thinking. I've got a lot of catching up to do, but there are some areas of leadership and strategic thinking that I think I've got some potential. The next five years, I'm going to see if I can't hit that and grow those areas of my being, my soul, my ethos, my pathos, and grow those in a much more beautiful way.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish I'd learned that lesson a lot earlier. I thought I was doing good by treating other people the way I want to be treated. I thought I was a good parent by actually parenting the way I wanted to be parented. Turns out it's the Copernican rule. You really want to be empathetic, treat them the way they want to be treated. And that will get you really far”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not the way you want to be treated. We want our freedom, we want our respect, but how we deliver freedom, how we deliver respect. There's plenty of freedoms I do not need. There's plenty of gifts that I do not care for. You could gift me with so many wonderful things psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, that I don't care for it. Then there are things that you could give me that I really do care for. Last night, my wife did a wonderful thing. She had this surprise book signing party for me and she rented out a pizza place, which I happen to love pizza. She brought in all this Budweiser beer because the restaurant didn't sell Budweiser. She knew that's what I like to drink. She's doing unto me how I want to be received. If it was up to her, we would have something different.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way empathetic people move through the world in their most beautiful form tends to be due unto others as they would do unto you because they put the other person first. By the way, it's a wonderful way to live. The golden rule, as a matter of fact, is the one rule that exists in all religions. That's because it's reciprocity. Reciprocity tends to underpin all ethics. Turns out that's not right. Turns out you want to do under others as they want to be done unto them. The way I want to be treated is that”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Head, I never expected I'd be an entrepreneur. I had such an identity of being a salesperson, but I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur. Because I knew how hard it was, I knew how risky it was, but I'm really lucky my life allowed me to find my way into the neat entrepreneur experience where no matter how it works out, it was one of the best decisions of my life.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best advice I've ever received is knowing when to release the tension. My personality types, I hate tension, which is why I'm so empathetic. To learn to sit in tension was one of the most important lessons of my life because it's the tension that the real truth will emerge. But you have to know when to release it.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Charming people who couldn't cut it as salespeople. And that is a really important lesson. It's a learned skill. It can be a learned skill. There are a lot of people who are naturally good at it. Usually they're doing the same things naturally. Somehow they learned it because a lot of these things are about life. How do people get along with other people? You can learn it very quickly. That was a lesson that I've taken with me my entire life, that it's a trainable skill. Anybody's ever worked with me will smile and go, yep, I've heard of all these things from Kimmer before. Every single thing.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The two things that I learned the custom tailored sales calls for any IBM in the late eighties, they would know the custom tailored sales call. This brings us back to not a surprise, the custom tailored sales call is establish rapport, establish credibility, generate interest gain attention, discuss needs and qualify, present solution and qualify, handle objections and close. For thirty plus years, almost every conversation I have fits that structure. It's a habit. Anybody I ever meet, that is how I will structure a conversation. It's habit for me now. The other thing that I took with me is that sales can be a trained skill. I sat next to very introverted people who were exquisite salespeople. I sat next to people who I considered to be pretty average horsepower. Very strong salespeople. I sat next to a very good looking, very”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lilyk nods their head goes, Yeah, that's right. We're the largest firm in the world that actually trans laboratories. And we've got a head start. Everybody goes, well, that makes sense. That is repeatable to somebody else's investment committee. Well, whyla? Well, to get rid of laboratories, you need to train on them. There's a whole discussion of why training on laboratories creates a better system that can move thirty seven. All that's true. It's quite complicated. I need to tell that story, but in the end, I give him that little thing. So that's something I bring into the experience.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's going on? Well, last AI, I got it. I got it. Or I get your sales pitch, but this is not differentiated enough. I get it. Or it's just too complicated. One of the things about Lila Science is it's very complicated what we're doing. We're using artificial intelligence to combine it with laboratories to create a better scientific system. Well, that explanation takes forever. Instead, there are lots of different quick phrases I use. I say, hey, look, realistically, the entire world is trying to use AI to not need laboratories. You do realize that the Lila paradox is that in order to actually not need laboratories, you need to train on laboratories.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not different than anybody else's. I happen to be doing something different. And that's really different. There are scientists that are doing things that are amazing. There are software and AI programmers. There are financial people. There are laboratory people. There are development people. Their jobs aren't different. We're all trying to make ELILA successful. They do different things. That's a real difference. I got to leave that behind. And I really enjoy that. The thing that I got to keep first is the relationships. That's been great. I've really enjoyed the ability to keep many of the relationships who still are investing directly into technology companies. That's very satisfying. The second thing you get to keep is the outward centricity. When I'm talking to clients or customers, I use the same techniques of I see you're cynical.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“leaving behind part is probably the easiest. I left behind the notion that my job was different than everybody else's. When I was working at a venture capital firm or working at a leverage buyer firm, my job was different than everybody else's. Now that I work at Lawside, I am responsible for the fundraising for our Series A, Series B, but my job's not different than everybody else's. I am the chairman and co president, and that's my role. But my job is to make Lila successful.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As much as the other partner, other people can pick them off. Happens all the time. When that happens, for that person who's good, it's a very expensive mistake. It also creates more of a harmony culturally. The whole idea of ego deprivation, of walking around being a second class citizen in a job, that creates a dystopia. That creates a victimhood for a lot of people in the industry. If I actually think about the thing that people complain about most in the job of industrial relations is that they don't feel like they are equal to. And by the way, the general partner often says that's true. Until they can't raise money”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Better way to go about it is to match the level with the class of investor. If you're an associate and you get to do other things great, but you should be paid like an associate. If you're a vice president, you should get paid like a vice president. When I'm looking at the vice president, we're equal. If I'm in the navy and you're in the army and we're the same rank, we should be paid the same. You're doing something very different than what I'm doing. I'm on the water, you're on the land, but we're equally important. Same thing with a partner. If the partner is doing all this other stuff, that's great. You're a partner. Pay them like a partner. Pay them like a deal partner. The whole idea is that even though the incentive structures are that you can actually vary them some, anybody who opts into an alternatives business knows what exactly the compensation structures look like. You're just opting into these classes. There are people who do that very well. And the reason why it's important is basically retention. Here's the problem. And this happens a lot. The person who sits at the top, when they get really good and if you're not paying them,”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it tends to be what happens. Back to your incentive structures. The incentive structures are awesome. No one ever uses them. There's also reasons why you can't actually make a person a pure commission salesperson because there's a broker dealer issue. You can still vary the compensation. That's perfectly kosher. How do you do it? There's a way to do it. What do people do? They don't do that. They do the buckets.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, the more money you make relative to your peers, because the younger professional gets to do some of the selling. Occasionally gets to advise the GP because you're traveling with them all the time. So that's generally get paid a little more. Then they move into the vice president's role and they get paid the same. Then they move to the partner's role and they actually get paid less on the partners because you're doing this other thing. I've described 90%, if not 99%, of the investor relations industry. People find that objectionable because it devalues the partner when you make a partner and it actually makes the analyst more expensive when they're analyst.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then there's the strategic piece or the partner's job to say, how do we position the firm? What's our differentiation? How do we want to go to the market? How much money do we want to raise? What kind of terms do we want? Very strategic. What happens is they look at the professional and they say, what percent of your job is in the associates bucket? What percent of your job is in the vice president's bucket? What percent of your jobs in the senior bucket? They multiply by those percentages, what does an associate get paid? What does a vice president get paid? Well, as a partner get paid, what is the cared interest multiplied by those ratios? It almost always perfectly describes the person's compensation. Anybody can do that calculation. How much time do they spend doing pitch books? I'm 59 years old this year. I still write pitch books. That's just the way it is. That's not every head of IR, every salesman, but a lot still do. You're always doing the selling piece. And then you get to do the partner piece. So what's kind of interesting is that the younger you are in their career.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But pay people on a group. But somehow someway the alternatives industry doesn't actually figure that out. What they do is they break up the investor relations job into three different buckets. There's the service providing analyst job. They have to do the DDQs, do the reports, do the presentations. It's a real analyst job. Then there's the vice president or director's job, which is the transactor. They're the person who has to help the GP find the deals or get in front of the LP, sometimes represent the GP without them, but the sales component, the actual selling, the getting on the road and doing this with the GP. But they're still a service provider. They're transacting. That's what an investment bankers do.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True that a service provider is going to be motivated differently than somebody who is a salesperson. A salesperson is going to say, hey, I have attribution for bringing this money in. A service provider says, look, I'm actually here to make sure everybody is happy. Therefore, you need to create an alignment that investor relationship providers are fairly easy. You just pay them the same way you pay everybody else with the salesperson in that job, you should vary their compensation. That will make them feel better. Most people, and this is not terrible, in fact, it's awesome in some cases, give that person carried interest. So here's what happens, Ted. You literally will not find a sales organization that's a high performing sales organization that doesn't have some sort of volume incentive. You never find a service organization that does anything.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First Secretary Call and Powell, war hero. That's what he wanted. The war didn't work out so well. People criticize intelligence, then replaces him with one of the most intelligent people to ever sit in that job, Condoleezza Rice. Okay, then you get to Obama. He wants to be that person who is a peacemaker. He recruits his nemesis, his opponent, who is actually one of the most experienced international politicians ever, Hillary Clinton. Then you get Donald Trump, first term. He gets Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon. He wants to be the corporate. That doesn't work. He gets Mike Pompeo, the head of the spy agencies. It's always that way. If you want the job, then what you want to do is say, what is the persona that they're looking for? Pretend to be that persona. You'll get the job. If you're a GP, be careful. You're not hiring the persona. You actually want to hire the skill. That's the dichotomy of the industry. The whole industry is upside down. People aren't looking for skills. They're looking for personas.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good enough? The amount of people say, Oh, you've been an investment banker before. Oh, well, you know how to sell. Why would you put you in this job? Never fundraise before. Oh, you're a deal guy before. I've met LPs. Never done it before. It's a skill you have to learn. Yet people put it in. And why do they do that? Because GPs tend to put in that position. The person they want other people to think they are before they meet them. So an investment banker like, oh, smart, good looking, went to good business school, wealthy. That's what I want. That's a powerful person, somebody who's very attractive, very nice. That's what I want. I want them to know that I'm a very friendly firm, somebody who is aggressive, somebody who's charming, somebody who is Midwest, somebody who is very New York. And if you don't believe me, just take a look at the presidents of the United States. Bill Clinton chooses Madeline Albright. Madeline Albright, super nerdy policy wonk. That was Bill Clinton. That's what he wanted the outside world to see. He take a look at George W. Bush.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Says, I agreed to this, and generally a good Secretary of State knows what they can get away with. People ask me, if you're a general partner, or if you're somebody at IR, they all want that job. I don't think it's the best job necessarily, but they want that job. How do you get that job? Or if you're a GP, what are you looking for? It's the most incredible thing. One of the reasons I wrote my book is because I really wanted to show people that this is a skill that you can learn. Yet people hire people who have never done this before. It's incredible. cracks me up. You would never go to a doctor and say, have you ever performed surgery before? No. But I'm a veterinarian. Close enough. Go ahead, operate on me. So have you flown a jet before? No, I've flown propeller planes before.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then there are the occasional few who make it to the upper right-hand corner. Most investor relations professionals want this, and most general partners want to find this person, which is the Secretary of State. You have high GP information and high LP information. You know a lot about the LP. You know a lot about the GP, but you're not the CEO of the firm. That looks like a Secretary of State. Secretary of State of the United States, the third most powerful position. The Secretary of State, when they go to another country, generally understands politics, understands diplomacy, understands different cultures. The other amazing thing is that that Secretary of State can speak for the president. That's an ambassador. The salesman says, okay, I heard you said I can't make policy. I can't tell you, but I'll tell the Secretary of State. Secretary of State walks and says that you need what done, but then I need you to get your president to say X. My president will say this. They shake on it. Secretary Say goes back.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a relationship manager or a territory coverage person of the mega funds have some exquisite relationship managers. Placement agents have wonderful relationship managers. These are salespeople. And that's what you call distribution or whatever you call it. Those are really helpful because the other people who actually build trust with the LP and the firm is monetizing that trust. So it's a very important job.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way to think about it is you have a two by two graph, GP information is on the x-axis and LP information is on the y-axis. So you want to cover all four boxes. You have low GP information and low LP information. You're a data service. You're preQuin or your Salesforce. That's important to have. You've got to have those tools. If you've got high GP information and low LP information, in other words, you know a lot about what's going on in the firm, you know everybody in the firm, you know capital accounts and valuations, but you don't really know the LP that well. You don't know the decision making. You don't have a relationship with them. That's investor relations. Somebody calls in, you're a service provider. I don't really know you very well, but I can get you service. If you know the LP really well, but you don't know that much about the GP, you're not sitting in all the meetings. You know some, but you're not running the fern. You don't speak for the firm.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than catapult forward. Who are those groups? Those are the mega funds. When 2009 came around, there was a set of very large funds. The market went into a nuclear winter, but those megafunds already had great fundraisers, and they were going out and servicing clients and making sure that they knew what was going on and the global financial crisis and doing this. The other folks are just heading the ground like, okay, I don't know what to do. The big mega funds had people holding people's hands. Every week they'd have some update of what the crisis was. What happened? What little money they had they put to work did incredibly well. And that's when they actually went mega. That's when $6 billion became $20 billion funds.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that is frustrating is that so many people fight the tape, they fight the wave. When the wave comes in and what you're hoping for is to catch a good wave in and get balanced and surf it in. So you have knowing to turn the surf port into the wave. If your strategy is out of favor, if it's not in vogue, then what do you do? You raise less money. That's a little bit of the serenity prayer. God give me the serenity to accept I cannot change and give me the courage to change what I can. The fundraiser needs to have the courage to change what they can to maximize what the outcome is. The cosmic joke of it is that that's when firms usually make the best investments because it's the hardest to get money. But if they got good fundraising, they'll raise materially more money than someone who doesn't have a good fundraiser. So when the market moves and the tide comes out, those who are the strongest swimmers end up making the most advancement. And when the tide comes back in,”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now the whole circle completes. The idea of persuasion comes into the idea of your potential, which adds on top of it the ability to actually leverage your potential. And the big firms have figured this out. Let's not distribution. It is about saying, hey, here's my almost entitlement. How much money I should be able to raise? Let me get some excellent fundraising on top of it, and I'll be able to raise a lot more money.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's always a combination of these things. The law of leverage is something important too, that great fundraisers do not just create great demand. It is true. You have to start with something that actually has great potential energy. You can't just make something up. If the product is not worth raising money for, no matter how good you are, you can't raise money. In other words, if you have no differentiation, your track record's bad and it's a really complicated story. You're out of business. The general partners in that situation, there's no fundraiser you can hire that's going to change that outcome. What will happen is that when you get a really good fundraising team, a really good fundraising capability, then you'll greatly amplify your potential energy. What is your potential energy? Your track record plus your differentiation divided by your complexity of story that will allow you to raise a certain amount of money. If you get a fundraiser, they will use logos, ethosopathos to effect and improve each category.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me. And partner says, Well, look, I want to get better terms. All right, well, are you willing to take less money? Well, no. All right, and I don't know what to do for you because that's in contradiction with each other. Well, that's what you think. No, it's always what happens. It is F equals MA. That's just the nature of trade-offs. Now, you can maximize these things. There are ways to maximize them, and that's the whole art of negotiation. How can I get better terms and how can I do this? That works. And I love people who will challenge you because then you want to be able to challenge, am I getting the best terms for the right size, et cetera? That one is a really beautiful one because so many people in isolation say, I want this. And it literally is the same way as like, I want to lose weight. All right, great. Well, I'm just going to have one cookie. Well, yeah, but I had that same cookie every day. Well, that can't be the reason why I'm gaining weight. Well, that plus the beer, plus, in fact, you're not exercising.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe I'll take the conversation into a few more laws that actually are useful the law of differentiation I mentioned track record plus differentiation divided by complexity of story the law of pipeline which is pipeline times conversion ratio times bite size is how much money you're going to raise then the law of trade-offs it's one of the easiest and best laws to understand that you're always trading off size and terms and speed it's size times terms times speed I'm in a situation right now where a customer is giving me terms that are not so great for me I can either choose to tighten those up and then slow down the process of getting to yes we're gonna get to yes but I can tighten up those terms and make them more beneficial to me and I'm gonna have to assume that I'm gonna slow down the process and I have to look and I say do I want to slow down the process if I tighten up the terms it'll make it harder to get a larger commitment and there's probably more money on the table”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take a step back from the one-on-one meeting where you're trying to persuade a single prospect to invest in a fund and broaden that out to the process of raising capital for a fund. You mentioned a couple of these laws. I know there are a few others you put in the book and would love to walk through some of what goes into a successful fundrais.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About it. It is just saying all I care about is the end. I don't care about you. People will see through that. Not always. That's what a fraudster is. These tools, the Dow fundraising. The idea of presenting these ideas to people to use them to hopefully acquire resources that allowed them to do what they can do can be used very authentically. And it can be used very manipulatively. There's a duality of this. That's almost the contradiction. Persuasion is not bad. It's not inauthentic. It can be inauthentic. It can be authentic.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is probably the most important lesson that I had to learn. It's completely okay if you make them the center of your attention. The idea that I can meet you where you are, see you where you And I have tools and ways to actually make you feel okay. And it's not inauthentic. We do it all the time. When you're the boss, your jokes are a little bit funnier. People laugh a little harder. When you're the LP, the GP tends to be a little less aggressive with you. That's approval. That's also a submission of control. You can be authentic about it. Authenticity starts with, I'm here to serve you and your needs. I'm meeting you where you are. Parenting is a little bit this way too. One of the best things I've ever heard about parenting is that we parent our children the way we wish we were parented. Nine times out of ten is the wrong way to parent. Fortunately, sometimes it is. One of the things you say about selling and persuading is that people tend to talk to people the way they want to be talked to. That's pretty self-centered. If I'm talking, I should talk to you the way you want to be talked to. I don't think that there's anything authentic about that. If I'm just being utilitarian.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The two things I described first is the idea of persona play, the second is if you see somebody you want to actually get close to them, figure out how they manage their insecurities. I can't accept what's going to happen, so I want to control it. I want to feel safe. I don't want to engage in it. I'm afraid that my self-worth and self-esteem isn't up to parse. I need your approval. Those are powerful things to use.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, and come in aggressively like, look, let me just tell you, either we get in front of AI and we win the race or we get behind it and just capitulate and it doesn't matter everybody rolls over us. That's one way to look at it. That's a very persuasive argument. Or there's another argument that goes, you're right. Yeah, there's a lot scary about it. We're doing our part. It's a really good question. I'm glad you feel that way. I feel that way too. Completely different answer. So that one person wants approval and wants to feel safe. The other person wants control, wants to say, hey, look, I don't like this. Right, you don't. We're going to control this. It's this way. And oneness is another one. There are a lot of people who actually care about go along to get along. So you'll see this in a lot of meetings too, that what people will agree with people a lot. Not because they're afraid of being criticized, but they really want everybody to be a one group. It's more common than you think, this idea of oneness. People just really love groups and love culture.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm going to try to back off this persona. And I back off. It's too late. It's just too late. I just came in the wrong way, or I come in all goofy and like, oh, you're not serious. That's one. The other is their insecurities. There are a lot of people. It's called the Sedona method. Do they care about control? Do they care about approval? Do they care about feeling special? Do they care about being safe? I think that AI is a really dangerous thing. And I think that AI has equal potential of destroying the world and saving it. Okay, there are two ways to answer that.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some people go, Oh, you're the one I trust. Everybody else is really slick. You have to gauge your audience of what kind of persona do you think? Now that's tough, but if you know somebody in advance or if you had one meeting with them before, and that's what I always ask somebody, they say, I'm about to meet this person, what kind of person do they really like? I think they like this kind of person. All right, let me try it out. I promise you, if you get it wrong, sometimes you blow it. I've had plenty of big meetings where I come in.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now we were talking about persona play. There are two basic ideas that I talk about, developing relationship. And this is a relationship. How do you get past a guarded relationship? One is you put on a persona that you think that they want. Somebody's intellectual, you put on an intellectual persona. They trust you more. That's what they're looking for. Remember, I like you, I am like you. That doesn't necessarily mean that's true. There are other people who are boisterous, but they're looking for a patent fund and they want the person to be intellectual, even though they're boisterous. You need to know what you're auditioning for. Because it's not a sales pitch. It's not an interview. It's an audition. The idea that you're walking in, they know what they think they're looking for. So try to be it. That's the persona. Some personas, they just awshucks Midwestern kind of thing. Well, there are plenty of hedge funds. You walk in, aweshucks, people like, okay, this guy doesn't have the eye of the tiger.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Morgan Stanley, all rights reserved. And now, back to the show. Of what you're describing gets to this dynamic that inevitably you're trying to put yourself on the same side of the table to form a partnership. But there's always this different tribe GPLP dynamic. How have you gone about trying to broach that and meet people where they are?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to try. But if I know that this is something that you're gutting after, I know I've got to reduce my expectations.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can hit every time I hit them, I get on base. But within the strike zone, there are plenty of balls that if I swing at them, there is a high probability that I'm going to get thrown out. But it's in the strike zone. So he would sit there and a ball come and strike and he would just let it go. And people are like, whoa, why don't you swing at the strike? Because it's a guaranteed out. Then when the ball came exactly where he wanted, he crushed it. That, to a certain degree, is in the room of fundraising. When you get the objection, you know you can handle. Maybe it's fees or maybe it's performance or maybe it's the complication. Maybe it's differentiation. And you know, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not differentiated enough. Knuckles go on the table. You lean over, and you just rip it. Because you know that's your strength. A track record's not good enough? Whoa. Let me just get into that. If somebody hits something that you got to get to this, you're like, oh.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are willing to do that, then you just close them right there. But if they're not, they say, well, I've got other, okay, what else is there then? Now it's discovery. This is the part that's really fun. A lot of times you're going to find that there are certain rules and regulations that they have to stand up to. There are certain things that the institution is putting on top of them that they have to abide by. And you can find those rules. The trick of them is you want to be able to make sure that whatever you're selling can fit within those rules. Sometimes they can't. Sometimes they can't is the important part. I talked about conversion ratio. Ted Williams, 400 batter, one of the best hitters, maybe the best hitter in the history of baseball. Won so many awards despite the fact that he actually went then served in the military. He had five years off. He would have broken every single record. Famously, this guy was the first guy to deal with statistics and say, I know that these are the five pitches that”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, well, I have to maintain a firm, et cetera. This is market. I've got 50% of my fundraisers standing up to it. There's nothing you've done. If you said, so ask the question and clarify. Now, sometimes they just say, no, look, yeah, you've got great performance. We just don't invest with funds for those fees. Sometimes you look and go, all right, is that really true? So then you have to actually get to truth. Thank you. You'd think that fees are generally too high, but I see you're investing a lot of funds. Are all the funds then at a discount? to what I perceive as market? I got to know that. If that's the case, that's good signal value to me. And you can just say it that way. Somebody say, all right, you almost always find that's not the case. No, not every single one. Now, if they say every single one, then you'll smile and go, great. I know how to solve the objection. If you really want to sell it, it's like, okay, we're done here on this objection. Do you like my fund enough that I actually drop my terms to that? Will you invest?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Objection handling that's selling. Everybody can sit around a room and talk about what's interesting and how you want to sell something and put something together. It's when somebody's saying no. And you have to get them say yes. That's the good stuff. That's the selling. The traditional way it works all the time. Repeat back what they said. You want to make sure they say an objection. I think your fees are too high. Okay, that's an objection. Then you literally just have to repeat back, okay, so, hey, you just said our fees are too high. Can you give me some more color on that? Why do you have that perspective? So you answer it with a question. Make sure you repeat back what they said. A lot of times I say, well, not the fees are too high. What I'm saying is your track record doesn't justify the fees you have. Ah, I see. It's not that the fees are too high and I'm not good enough. That is a very big thing to find out in an objection. You can easily turn around while fees are too high and then you start talking.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you better say something strategic. If you're talking to a fund of funds, an asset manager, you better say something really differentiated because they're selling differentiation. Their differentiation is oftentimes performance, but they want to be able to say, hey, we're differentiated. So give them a reason to say we're differentiated. Sometimes scarcity is a great differentiator. You can't get into this fund. We did. With family offices, you have to be careful because you have to find out whether or not you are talking to the decision maker. I always say if you talk to five family offices, you're talking to seven different types of decision makers. But they tend to be more aligned. If they make money, then you make money. Insurance companies tend to be very risk-adverse. So you better talk about risk mitigation, be intelligent about it, and endowments, as I mentioned before, feel special. So that's the taxonomy.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culture If you don't respect it, you're not respecting what they do. What they're doing, pension plans are there to serve their constituents, which tend to be people who serve the public. This corrections officers and policemen and firemen and garbagemen. So that's respect. If you're talking to sovereigns, you better have something strategic. You better have some reason why it benefits the country. Better look through and say, hey, this is why your nation benefits sovereign. By definition, sovereign wealth money is money that they did not need. It's surplus money. They want to make money on it, of course, but if they don't need it, they can put it in treasuries. That's what the Japanese do. If you've got a surplus, use it, and the government says they want to use it for productive reasons, so the productive reasons is what?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give a taxonomy of the general investors. The problem with all frameworks is that they're all wrong, but sometimes they're useful. Obviously, there's only a certain percentage of the time this is right, but the percentage is higher than zero. I've found that pension plan investors, people who don't have a lot of upside, if I make 10 times money for you, you don't get paid anymore. Your job is hard because you work in an environment that can be bureaucratic, political, disrespectful. Can be. Not all pension plans are this way. Generally, respect is what they're looking for. Respect who they are, respect their opinion, respect their needs, respect their requirements. When somebody says, here's the forms you have to fill out for reporting, don't roll your eyes, smile and say, I respect you need this. I got it, and I'll take care of it. I'm sorry, our investment committee can't meet this week after all. Just respect it. At the core of the...”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the context of this logosethos pathos, you mention at the onset that Alec cares might be cynical coming in. There's a lot of no's that they're going to say before they say yes. Also, that it's a endowments. They want to feel special. Everyone who's across from you has a different bias or a different way of approaching this. How do you take that framework in the meeting and then try to figure out how to best present what you're doing?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the value system, I need to be right. The more you fight against that, the more you're going to feel like you've done them wrong You see this with issues of wokeness. You see issues of conservatism. The more you fight it, the more they are offended that you are actually going after their belief system.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source