Latest / REL Freedom Podcast / Doug Smith - Secrets of Private Lending

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Doug Smith - Secrets of Private Lending · REL Freedom Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's a saying that uh Einstein, it was it was attributed to Einstein.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out he'd never said it.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was something to the effect of you can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to understand what you're good at, what you know, and what you don't know.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then what you don't know, you need to bring in the professionals to help you.
• 0:21
  Mike Swenson: Welcome to the Real Freedom Show.
• 0:23
  Mike Swenson: We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate.
• 0:28
  Mike Swenson: I'm your host, Mike Swenson.
• 0:30
  Mike Swenson: Let's get some real freedom together.
• 0:40
  Mike Swenson: Hello, everybody.
• 0:41
  Mike Swenson: Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom where we talk about different ways that uh people are building time and financial freedom in real estate.
• 0:48
  Mike Swenson: I'm your host, Mike Swenson.
• 0:50
  Mike Swenson: If you want to get started, check out our website, freedom throughrealestate.com.
• 0:55
  Mike Swenson: It's where we put all of our content, all of our educational materials for you to really hit what the goal is to help inspire you, find a path, find something that resonates with you inside of real estate.
• 1:06
  Mike Swenson: There's a ton of cool things you can do, and we like highlighting them.
• 1:09
  Mike Swenson: So today I've got a super exciting episode.
• 1:11
  Mike Swenson: So we've got Doug Smith here.
• 1:13
  Mike Swenson: Doug is with Castle Rock Capital Funding, also known as the Mad Lender.
• 1:17
  Mike Swenson: And you've got to book out the Mad Lender's Guide to Private Lending and Node Investing.
• 1:21
  Mike Swenson: So we're gonna talk about that.
• 1:23
  Mike Swenson: 35 years in the business and lending, commercial, and residential.
• 1:26
  Mike Swenson: So a wealth of information, a lot of great stories to share.
• 1:29
  Mike Swenson: Doug, we're so excited to have you on the show.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm excited.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was introduced to you by uh someone else in the industry, and uh we had not been able to meet before.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really excited.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I caught some of your podcasts, fantastic podcasts, by the way.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:44
  Mike Swenson: Great.
• 1:45
  Mike Swenson: Well, take us back, Doug.
• 1:46
  Mike Swenson: Start us on kind of the the background, getting into the real estate space, what attracted you to it, or what what drew you to it, and we'll take the conversation from there.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I used to ride my dinosaur to my first job that I had, you know, get out the stone tablets like Flintstone style.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I've been doing this 35 years.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh started in banking uh and lending, and then just uh started out collecting, uh making collection calls on on uh 15 days past due clients, and it just elevated from there.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, they wouldn't let us actually lend until you had collected, which was kind of novel.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I've not seen that done in any other bank when uh when I first started.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: But but yeah, 35 years ago, during the last crash, I I left banking with a couple of other people and we started what became Castle Rock with the idea that we were going to provide commercial bridge loans to banking clients that weren't going to be renewed during the crash.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: As you remember, a lot of these commercial loans they wouldn't be renewed.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they had to go somewhere.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we put a little bit of capital together and started doing that.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now the other two guys that I was in it with early on are now retired, rode off into the sunset.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have the gray beard.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, we went into residential lending, I guess, probably six or seven years ago as well.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: But we started out commercial, we kind of went backwards a little bit.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, 35 years of lending, and uh uh mainly what we do now is is really we have two companies.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have Castle Rock Capital Management, uh, which is really uh the spin-off of the book, The Mad Lender, where we do you know private lending, we work with uh companies, uh hedge funds and small lenders uh to provide the credit sense uh to you know the underwriting experience and whatnot.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of these people that go into it don't have the background.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we do, and so we work with them and kind of the man behind the curtain.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course Castle Rock Capital Funding, which is the NMLS licensed mortgage company as well.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we do.
• 3:43
  Mike Swenson: Well, and it's interesting to hear what I what I love to highlight with people is that you know your journey can take little turns, big turns, and yet getting inside of real estate is really where it's at.
• 3:53
  Mike Swenson: There's so many things that you can do.
• 3:55
  Mike Swenson: Once you do something, you either like it or don't like it, you either grow or or go do something else.
• 4:01
  Mike Swenson: And so as the market changes, as the needs change, you're able to kind of adapt and tweak and shift your focus into other areas as you get more excited and more experienced about other things.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was accidental, a lot of it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for instance, when we started uh uh working with banks, we slid into uh helping them out of uh residential loans that maybe if somebody had left and abandoned a property, they didn't know what to do with it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we stepped in and and and worked with them solving the problems.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I uh I got into note investing.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh didn't even realize that it was a cottage industry.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew how the banks worked.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: We would sell the loans off to other banks.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that you could sell them off to individuals.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, and then when we started taking properties back, I had never renovated a property before.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So now we've probably personally done over 200 between the renovations and the and the ground-up construction.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's amazing how you're uh if you're open to it and you keep your mind open to things, how uh you can spin off in different directions.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I always try to bring it back home.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I've really stepped out of my comfort zone and uh try to do some things DIY uh that maybe I didn't fully understand without the experts involved, sometimes it's gone off the rails.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I always kind of come back to the lending piece, and that's where we're at today.
• 5:16
  Mike Swenson: So obviously you've been in real estate for or lending for a long time.
• 5:20
  Mike Swenson: You know, we've had the cycles ups, we've had the cycles down.
• 5:22
  Mike Swenson: Talk a little bit about how you're shifting and assessing risk, opportunities in the market, and kind of where we're at today in the market, in terms of you know, where you're seeing maybe some opportunities or maybe some areas to stay away from your vast experience.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm based in Tampa, Florida.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think every every area is kind of a microcosm.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: They may act a little bit differently, uh, at least in the Florida market right now and in a lot of areas in the country, uh, the real estate market has really slowed down dramatically.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there seems to be uh, and it's closing a little bit, but there was a big gap between what sellers felt their properties were worth and what the buyers felt they were worth as well.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um low interest rates uh back uh in the first Trump administration got down into sub 3%.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're somebody that's sitting on a property uh with a 3% interest rate, and now rates are in the upper sixes, you're probably gonna stay put, uh, particularly if you've got a low tax like Florida, your taxes can only go up 3% a year.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got the low interest rate and you're sitting on low taxes, you can't move.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can't afford to.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really slowed things down dramatically.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: But uh one of the concerns I have, particularly in private lending, is uh I've seen three major crashes in my career.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the last one, of course, the the 0708 explosion.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right before each one of those, you start to see the lenders get more and more and more aggressive.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you I'm seeing a lot of gurus come out and pitch um 100% loan to value.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to borrow or I want to lend 100% of the property value, or I want to fund, do gap funding for the the uh earnest money deposit.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds great, but right before every single crash that I've seen, the major crashes, that's what I've seen.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: People get overextended and they just can't make the payments when the poo hits the fan, so to speak.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a big concern that I'm seeing right now.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of almost overly aggressive people overpaying for properties and and and uh it's it's gonna bite them in the butt, I'm afraid.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I hope not, but I think it will.
• 7:31
  Mike Swenson: Yeah, I remember uh when when we bought our first house uh right after I graduated and we got my wife and I got married.
• 7:37
  Mike Swenson: Um, I remember our lender, you know, relative of mine, and and uh, you know, we're looking for a loan.
• 7:42
  Mike Swenson: So what do I want to do?
• 7:43
  Mike Swenson: As low a down payment as possible.
• 7:45
  Mike Swenson: I don't want to put it, put much money into it.
• 7:47
  Mike Swenson: And we got one of those nice uh adjustable rate mortgages because he's like, hey, purchasing a townhouse, do you guys plan on being here long?
• 7:56
  Mike Swenson: Nope, we're gonna move because we're gonna sell, take that profit and go somewhere else.
• 7:59
  Mike Swenson: Well, little did we know that the value is gonna get cut in half over the course of the next two or three years, and we couldn't sell for what we wanted.
• 8:06
  Mike Swenson: And fortunately, we were able to kind of work our way out of it.
• 8:09
  Mike Swenson: But for somebody like myself, naive, you know, new, new coming out of college, recently married, and it's like I didn't know better and I didn't take the time to do due diligence, and it's just what everybody else was doing, right?
• 8:20
  Mike Swenson: And so you're kind of following the herd, everybody's buying their homes.
• 8:22
  Mike Swenson: I want to do that too, and and don't necessarily see those warning signs.
• 8:27
  Mike Swenson: And that's how, you know, like I said, fortunately for me, we didn't have to go through to foreclosure or bankruptcy, but a lot of people in our our townhouse complex did, and and so that's a a tough deal.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Condos in Florida are impossible right now, in particular.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: The rules in Florida have really, you know, they had that condo complex uh crack uh collapse down in Miami Beach some time ago, and they rewrote a lot of the rules.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh condos are really, really rough on people right now.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: They can't sell them.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but you don't have to, it's funny.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I worked for Wakovia at the time uh when the crash was coming and when I left and to start this, and uh they bought World Savings, which was that Picapay negatively amortizing product that you actually paid less than the interest uh and your balance went up, but you don't have to worry because real estate always goes up.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that sunk the bank.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Wokovia is now uh part of Wells Fargo or Wells Fargo bottom, because they just they bought this$122 billion company in those negatively amortizing loans that you're describing, the the the variable rates, and they just imploded.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I am very concerned.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm starting to see more of those come back now.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're the mortgage company that that I own is getting we get that pitched all the time.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Variable rates, variable rates.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and some of the borrowers are really having to stretch to be able to afford it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things that no most of the time when I'm a guest speaker or on a podcast, they want to know about hard money loans.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I'm not a big hard money fan.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say hard money, uh just shot actually a video that we're gonna post at some point about hard money, private money, and bridge finance.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hard money meaning I'm only worried about the value of the collateral.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, very, very little else.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm worried about the value of the collateral.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: But we look more at the ability to pay, the capacity, meaning, does the individual have the way out of the deal?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And less and less people are concerned about that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, don't worry, real estate's always gonna go up.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of these gurus that are teaching the courses now were not in business as of 2007, 2008.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: They came in much after 2010 and they have not seen a heavy crash yet.
• 10:43
  Mike Swenson: So you've certainly earned your experience um and earned your wisdom, having been been in the business for so long.
• 10:50
  Mike Swenson: I've got the scars.
• 10:51
  Mike Swenson: Yeah.
• 10:52
  Mike Swenson: Well, yeah, I I'd love to kind of hear, you know, yeah, for for somebody that's newer in the space today, um, you know, some some things that you would advise people on, or kind of, you know, what to watch out for, what to think about that um, you know, maybe you overlooked in your early years, that now, yeah, you you want to make sure that those people newer in the space don't do the same thing as what you did.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I've already talked about not just focusing on collateral, focusing on the ability, focusing on character, you know, credit and character.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason that lenders look at credit reports.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we want to see past predicts future.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes bad things happen to good people, and we understand that, but we're looking for patterns.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if the pattern's doing this up and down, up and down, then that's usually indicative of somebody that that is going to have that problem again.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: If they were going along fine, Timmy fell off the bicycle and then they had a little dip and came back, you know, it's not so bad.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: But um I think one of the biggest things I'm seeing are that people try to DIY it too much.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna give you an example.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of our good clients, a real estate investor, very smart guy, uh, he bought a flip and he thought, you know what, I'm not gonna pay my attorney.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can just use AI to be able to analyze this contract with my with my builder.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh lo and behold, the builder put didn't put the kitchen or any cabinetry in the entire house in the bid at all.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't know to look for that, and he was just doing it on his own.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, he's in a totally different field.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful man.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love the guy to death, but he's in a totally different field.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: He did not know to look for that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which uh it kind of reminds me of the book.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you've ever read Good to Great by Jim Collins, uh, and if you haven't read it, I love it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a concept in there called the hedgehog concept, and it talks about the hedgehog and its defense where it just balls up into a little ball and to protect itself.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the one thing that it does better than anybody else in the world.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It just the one defense, but it's perfect at it, and it it protects it from character uh you know, from predators.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, you have to kind of decide what you know.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're going into real estate investment and you have a really strong track record in remodeling or plumbing or whatever, or you're bringing capital to the table, or you're a great door knocker.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't try to do it all.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure that you're bringing in partners.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we I when I did a self-assessment of myself, I'm like, what do I do better than anybody else?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have a formal credit background from three of the largest banks in the world, but I also have private equity experience and practical real estate experience.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So bringing those together, I don't know many people that have that combination.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we kind of hedgehog concept into.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: But uh you can't be embarrassed just because you don't know something.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to go out and ask for help.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the attorney, ask your a good trusted contractor, ask someone like us if you're trying to be a private lender and you don't know anything about lending.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, have us help you with that.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think that's what people have to do.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can't I know there's a saying that uh Einstein, it was it was attributed to Einstein, it turns out he'd never said it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was something to the effect of you can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to understand what you're good at, what you know, and what you don't know, and then what you don't know, you need to bring in the professionals to help you.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a big problem in this industry.
• 14:21
  Mike Swenson: Well, you brought up one other one other point too when you're talking about your example of uh, you know, not including the cabinets and all that in the bid is using AI tools, right?
• 14:29
  Mike Swenson: There's a lot of people out there on the front end trying to use AI tools to analyze deals.
• 14:35
  Mike Swenson: Um, on the back end, lenders trying to use AI tools to, you know, automate some of that process.
• 14:41
  Mike Swenson: And yeah, what you what you forget to have happen is you might be able to push a lot more stuff through the funnel here, but you still got to go back and do the due diligence and check and make sure your I's are dotted and your T's are crossed on what you're moving forward with.
• 14:56
  Mike Swenson: Because while AI can help with a lot of stuff, there's those types of blind spots that AI is not gonna tell you, here's what I missed, make sure you check that.
• 15:05
  Mike Swenson: That's up to you.
• 15:06
  Mike Swenson: And so you've got to figure out what's being missed.
• 15:09
  Mike Swenson: And and AI can do a lot of great things, and yet it's still not at a spot where uh it can find those errors or it will overlook things that you may gotta make sure you're you're checking out.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, there was a I saw a consultant say this one time, and he was uh saying something in the effect of uh pretending to be a client, saying, I'll just use AI to do it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And his response was, Well, that's great.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can use AI too.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And AI in my hands, with all of my experience in telling it what to do, or AI in your hands with no experience, are gonna get two totally different results.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We use AI pretty heavily.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we have uh one of my buddies is uh master's degree in management information systems, and you know, he gave he's given me a lot of advice on being able to secure documents so that the internet can't pick it up when we run AI on these things.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: But but uh it's amazing how we've written some tools because of our experience in the industry, being able to say, tell AI what to do.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can go into Claude and do Claude co-work and write a skill, and it might go out on the internet and pull really bad information.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could go into a lot of these gurus that go to the holodome this weekend and do a you know pay ten thousand dollars for a course.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: They may or may not be somebody that knows what they're talking about.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: They might just really be.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: I will tell you this, I'm not gonna mention a name because he's pretty famous.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: He is a really good marketer, phenomenal marketer, doesn't know squat about real estate, but he's got minions following this guy and just pays him, you know, pays him so much money for it, no experience whatsoever, but he's preaching some very dangerous things.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: AI is gonna go pick that up and it's gonna listen to what that guy says and put it into its models if you don't know different when you're designing your Claude Cowork or Chad or Jim and I or whatever.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I totally agree with you 100%.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: AI is a great tool, but you can't just fire it out there and expect it to give you a right answer.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to make sure that either you or somebody you know is looking at that data to make sure it's correct.
• 17:20
  Mike Swenson: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Mike Swenson: I was gonna say, just because you know people are so focused on certain prompts and things like that, just because I I put in a prompt, you are a uh a private lender with 35 years experience does not also automatically mean I'm Doug Smith, right?
• 17:33
  Mike Swenson: No.
• 17:34
  Mike Swenson: Just because I put that in the prompt doesn't mean that I have your your wisdom and expertise.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, there's times where I I I don't have I need an idea, you know, I need to spark an idea.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I got to shoot a video, I want an idea.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll put it in there and the stuff that comes back, I'm like, that makes no sense.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and you have to really uh you have to really understand uh what you're looking at or have the team on your side to be able to understand what they're looking at.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we work with a lot of smaller funds that really know how to raise capital, but have no clue about lending, and that's fine.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be their underwriter for them.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or we have some people that just want to raise capital and they we'll go in and run the fund for them.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we'll be the man behind the curtain, so to speak.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we're fine with that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: But we also I know where to stay in my lane.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta be honest, I can't raise capital to save my life.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm bad at it.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I'm not the guy.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: When I was in high school, I would never cross the dance floor and ask the pretty girl to dance.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was too, you know, shy to do that.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: On the disc profile, I'm certainly not the I, the interpersonal that that goes into a bar and high fives everybody.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the I'm the little nerd that sits in the corner with my, you know, waiting for somebody to come talk to me.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just my personality type.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think understanding your strengths and weaknesses are huge in this industry and and don't be too proud to ask for help.
• 18:51
  Mike Swenson: Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step?
• 18:56
  Mike Swenson: Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence, and managing properties on top of it?
• 19:02
  Mike Swenson: Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us.
• 19:06
  Mike Swenson: Real estate investing is what we do full time.
• 19:08
  Mike Swenson: We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors.
• 19:10
  Mike Swenson: We have the knowledge and experience to handpick the best deals that most investors can't find.
• 19:15
  Mike Swenson: We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own.
• 19:22
  Mike Swenson: The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own.
• 19:29
  Mike Swenson: Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio, or you just sit in analysis by paralysis.
• 19:36
  Mike Swenson: To find out more, visit freedom throughrealestate.com and click on invest.
• 19:41
  Mike Swenson: You can book a call and learn more there.
• 19:43
  Mike Swenson: So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side.
• 19:46
  Mike Swenson: That's freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest.
• 19:50
  Mike Swenson: Now uh we mentioned you you've got your your book, The Mad Lender's Guide to Private Lending and Note Investing.
• 19:55
  Mike Swenson: What prompted that?
• 19:56
  Mike Swenson: And obviously it's your your years' background experience knowing what to put in the book.
• 20:00
  Mike Swenson: Who who is that for and what's the foc focus there for you?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it started out innocently as uh a guy that I know uh is over a um IRA uh custodian.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the IRA custodian is probably a lot of your people that have uh IRAs that are self-directed, that they can invest in real estate or whatever.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: They know that those custodians can't really give you investment advice.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: They just tell you whether the investment is legal or not, not the advice on it.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So he was concerned about a lot of the private lending that was happening within his company, and he couldn't say a word about it, just dumb loans.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Would you come on and do an educational component and for lack of a better term, scare the bejeezes out of these people?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, tell them all the things that could go wrong.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I put together a uh, you know, a thing around the three C's, which really is the spine of this book capacity, character, and collateral.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now it goes a lot deeper than that, and it's 173, 273 pages of of meat.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's no fluff in here.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about how to be a lender, how to be a note investor, what do you look for.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh after we hung up with that call, my phone exploded with people asking me information about it.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it occurred to me that this data is just really not out there.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these books out there about um how to raise capital, and then all of a sudden you lend it out.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: But there's not really how to analyze a deal, how to really get into it from an experienced credit person standpoint.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what really it is.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you if you look at it, and there's a if you go onto Amazon, there's an excerpt, I think there's a couple chapters out there that you can actually read before buying it, but but it covers the three C's, it covers documentation, it covers special circumstances like self directed IRAs, tax implications, you know, um all those things that documentation uh you know that that that uh that somebody needs to know.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's not a sales manual.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not how do you get rich quick.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, at the end of each chapter, and uh the guy that introduced the Scott uh brought this up on uh our interview, uh he talked about Dougie Downer.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of each chapter, there's Dougie Downer, uh, where I talk about how you're gonna lose your money on this concept.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the things you need to watch, otherwise you're gonna take a bath.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all Pollyanna.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Mike Swenson: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Mike Swenson: And in real estate, we're so focused on the upside and the opportunity and the returns.
• 22:28
  Mike Swenson: And you do a good job of probably bringing real life wisdom and uh kind of the the other bird on your shoulder here saying, well, just pause for a second.
• 22:36
  Mike Swenson: I know you can make millions and millions of dollars, but you can also lose millions and millions of dollars.
• 22:41
  Mike Swenson: And uh it sounds like that's kind of your your job is to be able to be the voice of reason to talk people off the ledge here of uh what can go wrong and how it how it can go wrong to try to protect them.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm totally gonna steal that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna put a little graphic of a little devil of me on the shoulder with the angels be oh, you're gonna make all this money.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, here's what could possibly go wrong.
• 23:00
  Mike Swenson: Guru guru marketer over here on this side telling you how all the money you're gonna make, and then there's Doug on the other shoulder.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a good balance because uh if if anything, maybe I am a little pessimistic sometimes, but I've also uh gotten the scars to prove it as we talked about earlier.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've seen all these crashes, I've seen people lose their entire fortune for every one person that hits it big.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's one thing.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I was the original uh relationship manager for Wokovia's private client group in the West Coast of Florida, so I had a lot of very affluent clientele.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And what I noticed you always see the the boats and the cars, and you think they have all this money, which you don't see are the late night hours, the divorces, the missing kids' games, the um there's a lot more to it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And for every person that hits, I can name tons more that uh what do they say?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Mount Everest is littered with the the bodies of those that think they they're gonna achieve the summit.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of bodies still buried on Mount Everest right now.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to be able to think, how do you protect yourself?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have a dream, but you also have to make sure that you're protecting yourself while you pursue that dream.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what the book's all about.
• 24:11
  Mike Swenson: Talk to us about, you know, you maybe maybe a situation you've had where you you've lent, you know, lent some money out or something like that, and you get a sense that stuff's just starting to go sideways, right?
• 24:21
  Mike Swenson: And and obviously your your job is you don't want to have to take the property back, you don't have to wanna, you know, do that.
• 24:28
  Mike Swenson: But I'm kind of I've already got a loan in place.
• 24:30
  Mike Swenson: There's already already something there, and it's starting to go sideways.
• 24:34
  Mike Swenson: What are some things maybe you've done or how you've stepped in to kind of help push things along in the right direction versus watching things go south?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's I'm gonna go away from lending for a second and go back to banking days.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh check kiting.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Check kiting is a crime.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what check kiting is is that uh, and they can't really do it now with everything being so fast and electronic, but back in the day when the when the checks would manually clear, a criminal would go in and open five or six bank accounts at different banks and write checks back and forth to artificially pump the balances and there was no money to back it, and then they would take the money out and disappear, and all the banks would be holding the the bag.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was always the first bank to catch it that got their money back.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: The first bank that would catch it could shut the account down and they wouldn't lose money.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really the same thing with lending.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you have listen, if they're behind with you, guess what?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're probably behind with a lot of other people.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you have to be able to identify when things are going sideways quickly.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So don't wait.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you start to sniff that you know, payments a little bit late, there's you know, maybe maybe they mentioned something about a job loss.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have to identify is this a temporary problem or is it a permanent problem?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Timmy fell off the bicycle, might be a temporary problem, but I just lost my job.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, uh things are the crops are brown, whatever, might be a permanent problem, and you have to start deciding how to extricate.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be the first group that works with that client to get out of it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Something reasonable.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: One of the big things that I see with collectors that they completely do wrong, and I learned this early in my career, is the solution has to be realistic.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for node investors, for instance, which Scott, you know, is heavily into node investing, one of the problems that these servicers have is that they get paid a la carte.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're able to negotiate a settlement of some sort, you know, a repayment plan, they get paid a lot of money just to negotiate that.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: So they're incented to negotiate that payment plan, whether the client can pay it or not.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you as a noteholder have to decide not only do we have to act on this, but what's a reasonable way that this customer can get out of it.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, can can maybe I lower the payments for a little while?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Can we skip a payment?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or do we may just do we move right to a deed in lieu of foreclosure and save them the foreclosure process?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So identifying what the true problem is, not just that they missed a payment, but what the underlying cause is and is it temporary or permanent is key to solving that problem.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: You got to do it faster than everybody else, you know, the credit cards, the car payments, everything else.
• 27:09
  Mike Swenson: Great.
• 27:10
  Mike Swenson: And and too, what I hear is I I think people are willing to work with you, right?
• 27:14
  Mike Swenson: If if you're willing to kind of raise your hand and say, hey, what what can we do here?
• 27:18
  Mike Swenson: Um, I need some help, or you know, how can we work through that?
• 27:21
  Mike Swenson: I find that lenders, whatever that might look like, have have some flexibility there to be able to try to find it, find a solution to help you.
• 27:28
  Mike Swenson: Like you said, kind of to your point, is it is it something that's going to be ongoing or is it just kind of you know falling off the bike, more of a one-time thing?
• 27:35
  Mike Swenson: But I think people are willing to work if if you're willing to ask for that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think you have to.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think that that as a lender, um, I I do see a lot of lenders and collectors that give me my money now.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they'd probably be paying you if they had it.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can't get blood from a stone.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to we we always try to get a uh financial statement from the client to understand, hey, what debts do you have?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: We might pull a credit report on the client, which most private people can't do.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: We can, of course.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll pull a credit report, kind of see where they're at, uh, try to understand what their income looks like, uh, how far behind are they with the budget, and how can we maybe restructure this.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And here again, if it's a temporary problem, it's a primary problem.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: We we need to move directly to solving it quickly.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but if it's a temporary problem, how can we you can't get blood from a stone again.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta figure out how we can do this and and uh can this client handle it.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh good story from gosh, 30 some odd years ago.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was in Missouri and we had bought after the savings loan crisis, the bank I was working for bought uh a savings loan that was in deep trouble.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy, I mean, he he never lied to me, but we were really deep unsecured lending uh loans with this guy, and but he would always call me back, he always kept his promises, he was always honest, and I always worked with him.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I got yelled at for why are you carrying this guy?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: You sue him.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Well, he can't pay.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna sue him for?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one day I get a call that says, Hey, I need a payoff on all three of my loans.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: And jokingly, I said, What?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did you hit the lottery?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah, I hit Missouri Lotto last night.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the first person he paid because I worked with him.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you just have to identify what the price, you know, is it permanent or is it temporary?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it's temporary, what is a reasonable solution?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't squash a customer.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're just gonna kill the any ability.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: You've got you're gonna make it worse if you do that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta work with them.
• 29:29
  Mike Swenson: Well, awesome, Doug.
• 29:30
  Mike Swenson: Lots of great stories, a lot of great axioms uh that you that you shared with us.
• 29:34
  Mike Swenson: So appreciate what we were able to touch on here during our short time together.
• 29:38
  Mike Swenson: For people that do want to reach out to you, want to learn more, want to dig deeper with you, how can they do that?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's probably easier just to go to the website, themadlender.com.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, of course, if you want to read, you want to some light reading.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this actually is not a super light read if you're a super novice, but if you are into lending, uh, you got to get it because it's totally it's totally different than anything you've probably read that's a sales manual.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if you just go to themadlender.com, um, you'll be able to get my contact information.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And please do reach out.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to answer questions.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed this stuff.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I I enjoyed meeting you.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: You got a great podcast.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I enjoyed going back and looking at some some older stuff that you did, and and uh I'm so glad to meet you.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh I look forward to the friendship we develop over the years.
• 30:26
  Mike Swenson: Thanks so much, Doug.
• 30:26
  Mike Swenson: I appreciate the time.
• 30:27
  Mike Swenson: And uh yeah, if you're listening, check out Doug's website, themadlander.com.
• 30:32
  Mike Swenson: Appreciate the time and best of luck to you in the future.
• 30:35
  Mike Swenson: I enjoyed it.
• 30:36
  Mike Swenson: Thanks so much.