Ep 474: Becoming A Hard Money Banker With Jason Balin

Transcript

special guest Mr Josh

Balin feel like whenever I say mister it feels like I'm a kid again like Oh Mr mes

like yeah hey I'm only 43 years old so like I don't really go by Mister yet mister I don't know I don't even know

why I said mister this is this is fun this is why I do this you never know what's gonna happen but uh Josh where

you from um what part of the country you from let's start off there so yeah my name is Jason Balon from hard money

Bankers I'm in uh the Washington DC Baltimore area born and raised here

moved out a little bit for college and to see Colorado and some other places of the country you know in my early 20s and

then ventured back here because I had an entrepreneurial spirit and you know had you know boots on the ground and knew

people here locally that I didn't have connections and relationships with in other parts of the the country and you

know dabbled around in lots of different areas of real estate early on real estate agent mortgage broker uh flipping

houses buying rental properties things like that and you know eventually uh settled and I used the word settled

which isn't probably the right word because that seems like hey you're just going to settle for something but I was ambitious to uh start and grow hard

money Bankers which is a private lending company uh focusing on doing loans for Real Estate Investors and commercial

property owners in 2007 and yeah you know fast forward 17

16 17 years uh we're still thriving and growing and you know kind of doing good business and met a lot of great uh Real

Estate Investors and business owners along the way so what um my my brother lives in dumre so I've been over there a

few times in that area it is crazy the traffic there yeah I mean I'm North so

you know dumre is a suburb of Washington DC uh in v in Virginia and it's just it's south of Washington DC I'm north of

Washington DC between uh DC and Baltimore kind of smack into the middle

so I actually you know both both of those are pretty major markets and they somewhat blend together but I'm in a h a

county called Howard County which my office is in which I try not to leave if I don't need to and I don't have you

know there's not a lot of traffic there's not as much congestion and makes my life a little bit easier there you go

um one things I I love about this is you've been doing this for a very very long time absolutely time um so you

started in 2007 that you said yep we closed our first loan to our uh private

lending company in 07 wow right at the bottom right at the bottom of the market kind of right where it was like all

going down and you weren't really sure I mean the bottom was probably 08 but you never know when the top and the bottom

you never know where you are in the market so that's in hindsight you kind of I kind of saw that so I have some I

have some early on questions because I i t i just interviewed a guy last week and he killed it literally killed it during

08 to 12 time period um was that like a huge acceleration point for yourself

during that time as start of business goes so it's a good question and not really and the reason why is you you

know you don't know what you don't know in real time um and we didn't really have any of our own Capital when when we

started our lending company and you know we all we start with nothing yeah and and it's kind of funny to say that it's

like how do you start a lending company we don't have any of your own Capital so we were you know out there raising Capital we were out there looking for

deals to lend on on a regular basis and we talk about this all the time like if

there's a time in the market and we're able to see it and it's similar to those times I believe we could absolutely kill

it and accelerate you know with our own capital capital that we control just resources that we have today I didn't

have those back then and we were very very cautious you know if anyone's you

know watching or listening who's ever rais Capital like you're especially early on like you're terrified to

potentially mismanage or lose that capital and that's kind of how we were early on so you know we look back at

deals that we potentially passed on that you know 10x in value in the last 15 years and you know that might sound

extreme but there's some areas of the country that that's happened to especially in some areas around here um

and that is you know that just is what it is like we were very very cautious and you know we didn't even have like a late payment for the first four or five

years because we were just we you know we didn't know we try to write the best of the best deal deals but

I think it gave us a really good basis to uh to to start with but yes it was it

it the good part about starting back then was you know the stock market had

just crashed so when we were raising capital from you know High net worth individuals and things like that you know they wanted an alternative uh than

to put their their money in the market and you know there was no really private

Capital out there besides just kind of Mom and Pop there's no institutional Capital out there Banks weren't really lending so we did really have the upper

hand to do so so it did make it a little bit easier that like this is what our terms are I mean back then pricing 15%

Five Points you know which is a lot you know who you know who knows maybe it goes back to that in the future as rates

if rates continue to go up but they're you know they it's gone down since that with with pricing um so there was

definitely some pros from doing that but I think just like any anytime there's always it's always a good time to start

and there's always advantages and disadvantages of every market so and I I I really want to dig in on that um a lot

of people are like I think some people there's like you have like the opposite side like you have people that are too scared to jump in and you have the

people are like who I'll figure it out like run running through the front lines type person um and I I think when you

first start I think it's it's one of those things where like you have to be cautious and I I I can understand being protected of of your little investment

Capital that you had at the time you got to be a a steward of that a fiduciary of that um I think it's a I think it's as

you grow you've you let you kind of let go of that not that you're not as cautious

but you kind of let go of like hey I'm doing good things I know what I'm doing let me kind of release some pressure

because the pressure is me no doubt um so let's talk about um

raising private Capital um let's talk about I think you you have the advantage because you've done this through

multiple different swings so let's talk about raising capital in terrible markets versus good markets and what the

difference like and what terms are they requiring because I think you've done both so absolutely so go going back real

quick to what you said earlier like we just call that internally the uh education versus execution phase like

the Seesaw like and I think I know you know where I'm getting at with that but like some people are just so educated but they'll never get off the they'll

never do a deal and other people just want to go out and Ed and execute but then they're really dangerous because

they don't know what the hell they're doing and they can you know lose houses lose people's money stuff like that but anyways related to raising Capital so

you know here's the interesting part about raising capital is usually usually everyone thinks they

just have to go out and they're scared to go find a deal until they have the capital lined up like and I get it it

makes and it make it makes sense and we were like that as well you know we came

from my business partner Chris ad and I came from like a mortgage background and we we had some real estate or we were

investing in some real estate we weren't all that good at it but like we knew Real Estate Investors and things so like we're like we have deals like we know

people that want Capital everyone needs Capital we just don't have any we don't even have any of the capital so you know

surprising to surprisingly when we went out and we chatted with and and none of the money early on came from really

family or or direct friends they came from like a friend of a friend or a friend of a colleague or something like

that that's usually where it would it would start with and you know again we were in like our mid to late 20s at at this time you know didn't exactly know

how to how to raise capital but what ended up happening is everyone we talked to in essence was like yeah I mean that

made sense makes sense you're willing to give me a high rate of return you know double- digigit interest rate of return I'm potentially collateralized by by a

first uh position uh and a first mortgage on investment real estate like

it was I don't want to say it was like a 100% closing ratio but it was but like verbally it was pretty high because

everyone's like yeah like that's a no- brander like who wouldn't do that type of deal right go find me the deal and

we're like okay okay and then when we actually went to go look out look for deals that we thought were going to be

easy to find they they really weren't right I mean that doesn't mean that there wasn't like you know potential

borrowers out there that were looking for you know High leverage and cheap terms and didn't have good credit like

just because somebody wants Capital doesn't mean you're G to give it to them right just because a seller wants to sell you a a property doesn't mean that

you're going to want to buy it right so like we had we learned that we had to we through tons and tons and tons of deals

and opportunities before we can find the good ones but then as we found the good ones we realized that the capital was

very very easy to to use because like we you know a month later we go back to

that Capital investor and say hey so I found this deal the borrower is buying it for $100,000 it needs $50,000 in

renovations it's going to be worth you know whatever $200,000 call it and we're going to lend this amount of money and

they're gonna you know we were really cautious like I was saying early on we were really cautious on stuff we're going to lend you know $100,000 with

50,000 held backs the bar is going to need to bring $50,000 to the table plus closing cost which sounds crazy right

but like you know again you want to do the best of the best deals especially early on to get to get some traction and

they were like yeah this is a no-brainer like why don't they just go to the bank and our answers were like well Banks

aren't really lending to Real Estate Investors currently like they're they're just not and that's what was going on at

that time so we created a track record of finding really really good opportunities and I'm like a big

advocate of anyone who has a good deal like a really really good deal like you should never have the pro you should

never have a hard time getting the capital for that deal it might not be at the terms that you necessarily want like

the capital is available between private money and hard money and Banks and helocs and JV Partnerships and things

like that and I mean I look at deals all day long and you know someone might not want to pay us 13% interest rate in

three points and I get it like that might not work but like that is an option right there's so there's always

different Capital out there so we you know again what we ended up building and

it stays like this today is just in essence like a front-end marketing machine to just try to get as many opportunities as we can and you know

find the best out of the best out of the best of the best deals knowing that like if you do a bad deal there's so much

stuff that can go wrong right the deal you know the deal goes the deal goes bad potentially it's a headache you gotta

you know it doesn't matter if it's a loan or a purchase and you're buying it yourself it doesn't really matter if you if you do it and it goes headache and you go you know goes over budget then

you got to put some more money in then you gotta do this then you you know and that's all just like on the front end

that doesn't include your Capital investors you know if you're raising Capital behind that then all of a sudden

like on a lender so let's say I'm acting as as a lender I gotta go for close on the property but then I got a a capital

investor on the back end who's pissed off because they're not getting monthly payments and then potentially they might even want to try to sue me because they

might not get their money back so like it's hard enough to default you know a deal on the front end then you got to

deal with a capital investor and then they tell their friends and then it's a small niche community and then you're out of business so so like it all stems

from having a good deal on the front end to be able to put different Capital sources and your Capital stack on the

back end and I don't think it's just for a lending company I think that's for an operator as well right like you buy your first Fix and Flip and you lose money

and potentially like you have a capital investor who's like hey what's going on with this why haven't you given me my return you know and then you then they

realize a loss you'll probably just be out of the business you probably just give up be like this sucked like this was a lot of pressure I couldn't sleep

at night so all of it stems from a good opportunity on the front end so I want

to break down a couple things so I like I like this conversation I like this direction because a lot of wholesalers

and a lot of buyers don't understand the lenders responsibility and the lenders role in the transaction and we have and

carry our own liability whenever we're bringing private Capital into a transaction so it has to and I tell I

tell students all the time like you have to find and negotiate better deals because we have to we we if we're

bringing the capital have to protect our lenders we have to we have to that's the bottom line like I don't care what your

assignment fee is we have to protect the lender's Capital as Paramount on every

transaction absolutely um so it's one of those things where um a lot of

wholesalers don't understand that especially if they're new they don't understand the capital stack and buying a margins and and what what is what is

mar what is real margin of safety and I think it's great that you early on you were asking for a large down payment I

mean people 50 Cent if you're 50 cents in the dollar loan to value I mean you're you're doing all right in a great

position if you ever have to default and clean up that mess yeah and and it might not listen and it might not work for

people and I get it but like you know you got to start kind of some you kind of got to start somewhere I mean

everyone will do the best deals that they have in front of them in any given time right if I show you 10 deals you're going to pick the the number one deal

out of all of them to do and but if I show you 100 deals or a thousand deals chances are you're probably going to

have a better deal that you can choose from and that's why it's all about the front-end marketing machine like I look at thousands you know between myself and

I partners that run some other local offices for us like we're looking at thousands of deals a month to close 25 of them collectively you know I know

lenders across the country and I know Real Estate Investors across the country that like look at a few deals and

they're picking one of them to do so again that's not to mean that like and

and let's be honest if you do if you do a bad deal that doesn't necessarily mean

it's not going to work out like looking back I've done deals that we've scraped by that we've been able to you know the

Market's helped over the last 10 years that's one thing you know as an operator you know we've got lucky on some stuff

you know we've purchased properties and we ended up making more money than we expected or you know we're like oh my

God this was this thing's crappy and we just scraped out so like just because you don't do a good deal doesn't

mean like the point is to do good deals but also as you grow as a business owner and real estate investor and entreprene

is you got to get better at it right I think the worst thing that every person that made money in real estate over the

last five eight 10 years have done is doing skinny margin marginal deals and

the markets continuing to grow up and they've been making money that way and they actually don't even have a business and they don't even know really what they're doing because it's like oh I

just went on MLS and I found a deal and I flipped it I made money it's like you're all out of business now because like that stuff is hard the stuff not

that it doesn't exist but it's hard to to do as things change so you know I

look at it as hey if if if a good thing's going learn from it and make it

better and better and better and better um and again like I got lucky on early

on deals because even if I was super conservative the market still helped right like if a if a property's worth

100 today and worth $200,000 tomorrow you could completely the bed you can completely you know Screw Up on

construction your contractors can steal from you and you'll still make money on the deal but you got to use that as a learning tool

yeah yeah um are you more of a underwrite the deal versus the person or

you kind of weigh them equally so everything we do internally we follow this to a te foresees collateral being

top priority collateral being most important and then character being the second most important um and then

capacity you know they have the ability to do the deal and then credit you know so they all are an intricate part but

it's it's you know it's definitely a piece of collateral that we're that we're comfortable lending on and again

like credit is in there but it's not the most important thing I want to make sure the borrower has good character and has

the ability to do that because I'll tell you from from experience over and over and over a crappy character borrower

will bring down a good deal at any time and I could give a you know and someone

could do a real marginal not great deal but they have great character and they'll figure out a way to make it work

and they'll figure out a way to pay us back so on the lending side that's super important so collateral character and

capacity capacity yeah capacity than credit so like do they have down payment

money do they have the ability to do a construction project if it's your first project it's kind of hard to do $165,000 construction project in like a

major city where the buildings were built in the 40s or the 50s because there's so many unknowns you don't have the resources you don't have the permits

and Washington DC it could take you 12 months to get a permit right so if there's a newbie real estate investor

that you know is has a good deal they have good character they have a lot of

cash they're willing to put into the deal they still that still might not be the best fit for them at this time just

because they don't have the resources they they don't have an expeditor that can help push permits through the city they you just don't know what you don't

know you know a deal that that might be in the suburbs where it's like a lipstick on a pig project or you know

something that's a little bit more manageable uh you know might might be right be right for them and you know on

that topic I know there a time and I this still might happen that a lot of like the institutional capital of the

world the institutional hard money lenders they would never they wouldn't lend to first-time Real Estate Investors where they had to do like a certain

amount of fix and flips and I kind of thought that was ridiculous and the reason why is like some of our best

borrowers ever have always been firsttime Real Estate Investors because they're so vested on succeeding now

again it's got to be the right person right it can't just be like oh hey I'm looking for 100% financing I don't want to put any money into the deal and I got

crappy credit but I found this deal on MLS but not that I'm talking about you know they have a corporate job or if

they live in the DC area they have a government job you know yeah and uh they

you know which which which is common exactly they're hungry they went through you know an expensive training program

that they paid for you know bus tours training programs coaching Consulting they've done that they've already done

all their due diligence it's just a matter of finding a good deal a lot of the times their deals aren't great right

because they're new and they're not and they're not great like they don't you know they they haven't put in like 10,000 hours of door knocking and and

cold calling and and bandit signs but that's okay they they have a deal that they can still make margins on and I get

it their construction budget's going to be a little bit light because they don't realize their contractors gonna steal from them at some point and then they

got to find a new contractor so like but like and and these are things that like all have a conversation with them and

I'm like this is what's going to happen in reality but that's okay there's still enough margin for you but they're

they're they're willing to put in money they're willing to put in time and like the way I look at it is if you're a

killer in your current in like your W2 job or if you're a killer in something else you're G be a killer in real estate

investing it's the same mindset it's the same setup um and if you're a schlep in

something else you probably be a schle in this so like I love working with borrowers like that mostly because like they're easy for us to capture because

the institutional Capital won't touch them which is crazy and you you can buy their loyalty because you're the person

that absolutely 100 % accurate yeah 100% but it's funny because that's like the

first thing be like oh hey I'm calling around and you know so and so won't give me money because I haven't done three

flips and I'm like tell me a little bit about yourself and like that's character right like like forget collateral at

that point let's just talk about your character and it's like oh well you know I've had this job for 10 years make $160,000 I'm whatever I'm a professional

title you know I went through this program it's like great let's do it like I can almost promise that they're going

to succeed and if and and if they don't succeed Ed and the lender side they're going to make us

whole no I think I think that's a it's it's very uh I I I I commend you for

doing that because a lot of people they just need to leg up and they need somebody to take a chance on them and I think if if they're a good judge of

character with I think there's a lot of good people out there you can they can really do some damage in the future and

create no doubt create the life they want because I think I think the and I see I see what I see is that we we see

ourselves in them yeah you see yourself in them because you you knew what it take to get started so when you see

somebody come around that has good character they they have a will to and gumption to succeed then they just need

a little bit of help yeah and and they're not expecting you to like hold their like they're not expecting like a

lot of people just have like uh what's the word like they're just having expectations like oh you should just do

all this stuff and it's like no you should do all this stuff and you should want to learn to do this stuff and you can do it and you you can usually tell

pretty quickly by the way that they communicate via email or phone call like very quickly you know you know how you

know how they you know how they are and how they're going to perform I mean we've done 3,500 Plus Loans in the last

16 17 years and you know serviced them all and lot of have construction components and I've talked to tens of

thousands maybe even a hundred thousand prospects so like you know firsthand so like we always joke about it internally

like we almost know to a te the path that every one of our loans is going to go pretty much

exactly how it's going to go and some of them have speed bumps you know we'll do loans you know for real estate in you

know for Real Estate Investors that you know are not A+ like you know they

they've got bumps and bruises and you know may maybe low maybe lower credit maybe this maybe that um maybe they

failed on a construction project and you know we'll be more cautious but like you

know we you know we're we don't you know it's funny because someone will be like hey if uh uh you know can I pay more to

get higher leverage you know instead of three points can I pay Four Points to get higher leverage or and I'm like our

risk isn't we're not a bank like your risk isn't based on hey if I make an

extra few thousand bucks our risk is based on exposure um and and Loan LT you know loan to value so if a if a bar is

riskier let's just call it we're just going to lend them less money yeah they have to put more down yeah and we'll

make it up that way yeah that one thing I love about like the The Lending game and the paper game is you can make the

numbers work that's right for anybody any pretty much anybody as long as they

fit their I think your four points you you kind of dive in like make it work for anybody yeah I mean we we we kind of

had this thing internally that we don't turn down anybody like we just adjust based on where we're comfortable with and hey you might buy a property for a

million bucks we might only give you 10 grand on it but but you know like it might not be that extreme but most of

the time that's kind of where it's at is we're just going to adjust based on risk but over the last you know you know few

years we've also realized that character is such a big play and if there just going to be a pain in the neck like it's

just I like it's a partnership right like I don't I I don't want to I can't deal with it like our time is better

used else elsewhere like I don't like I don't like some people just make the wrong decisions like some people have

bad luck in life and they make the wrong decisions and I don't know why but like

it's like that I mean we've we've had a friend and and um you know real estate

colleague before that just everything touched just made the bad decisions about it I don't know why that was and

like he just like it wasn't like he was a bad person or his intent was that but

like you know he'd reach out to us and like pick our brain about something he's like yeah I was thinking about doing this I was like why like that doesn't

make sense well I could do this I'm like just sell the property you know you're gonna make $30,000 today or you're gonna

do all this work in heavy lifting to hopefully make $40,000 you know in six months from now hopefully and that's if

everything works out perfectly so like I don't know some people see it I guess some people might might not or you learn

that as well like over time I think and this is my point of view based off of

that that type of person I think they people they they're on that path and

some people are shortcutted based off of what they know and experience and their their individuality but some people they

need to trip and fall for a long time and event they they see it down the road

like and I don't know how long that road is it's different for every person that that road can go for years

in Timeline wise but I think I I think I have hope that everybody eventually hits

their goal down the down the line I can't protect that one one of our

offices early on like this is an office we opened 10 years ago with our with one of our partners and early on we had a

default that was somewhat of a bad default and in essence we could have continued to put throw good money at bad

money or we were just like let's just take this loss and just roll roll out like there's too much stuff but like

that hit him hard and he was like I'm he was like I did a deal and I'm like losing personal money on this it was a small amount of money but it was still

like you know you're not expected like hey we get in business you know we a for-profit business you know you don't ever want to lose money on on a

transaction but like you know it hit him hard and he been cautious ever since you know just because like that's what woke

him up you know woke him up or hit him so have you ever read the book the psychology of money no that uh I

recommend that to all your listeners it's so good and uh there a guy named Morgan howel he just actually came out

with a new book that I'm reading right now it's called same as ever but like the psychology of money is I mean it's

amazing because it's like you know you go by your past experiences like we're both going to look at a deal differently

just based on you know our goals you know moving forward and our experiences

from the past and that's just what and and that's how it is and I don't know psychology money just ties you know it

sums up everything you know how you look at a dollar how you look at money how

you look at everything that and it's and it's like you can't even like my takeaways wouldn't be relevant to you

and your takeaways wouldn't be relevant to me yeah but you know there there's like sub stories about like why people

win the lot why people play Lottery because like a lot of like rich people know that the that the odds are stupid

and you'll never win the you know you'll never win the lottery so they don't play they know it's a waste of money but a lot of poor people play the lottery

because they don't see a path to ever becoming a millionaire it's not conceivable to them so this is the one

path that they can play that there is a possibility even though it's very very slim so like it's just filled of like

amazing Stories like that so I so definitely recommend that book yeah I think that that equates to like um

people people putting their kids through Sports because they feel like that's the only way to succeed and they drive down

on Sports because the only way you're going to make it out of this neighborhood is if you you become the best baseball basketball player out

there same as win the lottery the numbers and that's I I to I totally

agree with that it's so crazy to me it's so crazy to me um yeah I mean the ones

at that level I mean I'm I'm a big advocate for orts um you're not

necessarily I'm realistic about actually professional or even playing at a collegate level but like I like I I I

get those are small chances but like there is I I do Lo love the you know the

sportsmanship you know being a part of a team a community Brotherhood Sisterhood like I think that is super you know

super important if if that's something what it you know if a kid's into that kids that play sports become really good

entrepreneurs I think you're right I think that makes sense so I mean a winner I mean listen a winner is a

winner like that's not like a means thing to say like you know I've got you know we we we have friends and people in

our in our sphere that are professional athletes at the highest level um and

like I'm like you can do whatever you want you're retired you know retired football player you know you're it's

like just do whatever you want like you'll be successful like you put in you put in the 10,000 hours that you put

into that like you will be successful you have it it's just a matter of like what you want to do are you guys set up

as like a fund structure we're not the way that we do uh all of our loans and

you know what our size and our capacity like you might think it's silly it's just the way we've always done it is

more like a direct placement model so like we we'll close we'll close a loan for $100,000 and then we'll have a co-

lending agreement with you know Jim Smith and he'll buy the $100,000 note

with us and then we'll retain the servicing so we so everything closes under our name and we keep it that way and but like you know some people call

it uh direct placement a lot of like inside private hard money lending companies call it like Tetris because if

you you feel like you're always playing Tetris it's like okay cool I got a million dollars here and I got a million dollars of loans coming out what capital's going into what but honestly

it's the only way we know we we know it it's what we've done for 16 or 17 years and at this point it's actually very

very easy like it just is I mean it's uh you know and I know you mentioned you

know we could talk about Capital today compared to yester you know in the past you know in the future you know how it is Raising it now compared to the past

but like now like the capital just raises itself and having that Capital availability now and you know having the

same investors you know for a long period of time that are you know investing and co- lending and deals with

us it makes life easy yeah no I've never I've never heard of somebody doing like

direct placement um and depending on your volume I would assume that's a big game of tetras yeah it it can be what

what state are you in again uh I live in California but we do a lot of stuff in Texas yeah

so I don't know if you can do it like this in California or not I know California is obviously a lot more regular I don't lend in California there

obviously there's a lot more regulations lender license broker license probably servicing license

um I do know a few lenders and I think they they they might have it set up like that but I'm not I'm not 100% sure so in

essence it's like a CO you know co- lending but it I mean it might sound

sophisticate it might sound like it's labor intensive but there's pros and cons I mean so here's the thing like if

you you know the there's pros and cons of a fund right the obviously the pro of a fund is let's say you have a 100 deals

outstanding you know you're one you know you're part of all those 100 deals and if one deal goes bad it's not really going to change any effect on the return

because you're Diversified into them y bad thing is you don't really have control over anything that's going into that fund or or or have anything related

to the deal when we started out it was kind of like a broker setup where it's like you have $100,000 I don't have any

money I have a good deal I will broker it to you and then I'll retain servicing for it so we'll broker it to you you

wire the $100,000 in and then we'll retain the servicing and we collect the payments and mixture tax insurance and

then it it's become obviously a little bit more robust and sophisticated since then yeah but you kind of stemm from

that gotcha gotcha no it's cool man I'm I'm very intrigued how it works in the

back end I'm very very intrigued because I think it's uh have having a lot of capital the capital stack on your fun on

your on your money side you have to kind of align all that stuff whenever absolutely I think it's cool it's it's

very cool um what is a quote that is yours or somebody else's that you resonate

with um that's a good question and I used to have that quote on my wall until

there was fire damage in the office above us and the sprinkler systems came on and when the fire Department came in

that was part of the stuff that they cleaned up so I don't exactly remember what it was but it was something like this it was a waren Buffett quote that I

got off the book snowball okay and in essence it was

similar I'm just gonna paraphrase it because I I don't really remember exactly how it goes but it

was I'm always looking for a business a business venture that can

continue to deploy my you know my own my own capital or Capital at very high rates of return

and continue to do that over and over and over it's this is a hard operation or

company to find but if you find one go all in with it something like that and that's and that's in essence what hard

money company can do you can deploy money at you know High interest rates of return or higher than stock market or

average rates of return but you just got to have to keep feeding the machine and finding good deals over and over and

over to do so and I completely butchered that term obviously want to find that quote

because that's I think that's that's I'll I can find it I have it somewhere because I in in order like in essence

like have youever read that book The Snowball by Warren Buffett I'm I'm not a big reader I'm really not audible I

don't know how to read I know how to listen to audio books I don't know how to read either my my my reading's very

Challen I mean I've I mean I've read very little physical books maybe never finished one um but I listen to a lot of

audio books and maybe like four years ago I I started heavy on that so I

usually can do like two books a month at this point all on audio and and I and as

you start listening to books you know I I walk around my neighborhood in the morning with in essence I just wander

because I'm like gred in a book um but like some people drive and listen to books wherever you can like absorb it

but I mean I can bang out you know 45 minutes or an hour a day and you know that get you know every two weeks that

gets you through a book um and it's it goes a long way you learn like it's

that's been a big a big a big thing for me I'm have to try that because um I've

been the last book I read I got the audio book and I got the physical version so I'm kind of like skiing while

I was reading it to me yeah that's what people say to do so I I did that I did that in the last book I read um to

trying to get like The Best of Both Worlds but well here's the thing if it's if it's something you're interested in it's

easy if it's something you're not interested in or the book doesn't work start with psychology and money I

promise you start re buy psychology on money psychology and money on Audible if

you can't get into that book like you just lose interest maybe reading's not for

you but I think I think you'll uh like the reason why it's just there's a lot

of it's storytelling you know I I heard this I wrote down this quote it wasn't a

quote but like something that I heard somebody say in an interview the other day and I mean I do bunch ofast podcast and I do a lot of content online and

like people don't want to be lectured to they want to be told stories and like that's how you learn right I mean I

could tell you how to flip a house and the mechanics of all this for in 10 minutes or I could just kind of story tell you of like hey this is how we did

this deal this is what I did toine you know and then you turn it into a story and then people are engaged and you know

that's also sales right storytelling compared to lecturing so a lot of I like

like biography I like stories like I like that's easy that's easy to listen to and

absorb gotcha um you have two podcasts that you do you give us a little bit

about those and where people can find those so we do so so I have two podcasts

for two diff completely totally different audiences I have private lenders podcast with with uh which I do

with my business partner Chris Haden at hard money Bankers where in essence we help other private and hard money

lenders throughout the country uh grow their hard money lending operation you know there's there's in essence two

types of folks in that business or in in in that uh we we have a a mastermind

group called The hard money Mastermind as well uh that's related to that but a lot of them are just folks that have

their own capital and they're trying to just responsibly deploy it into their own deals and learn how to do that the other side of it are um lenders kind of

like us that they have their own money and they raise capital and they're trying to scale into a bigger hard money operation and then I also have the real

estate Reserve podc that um my friend Ian Horwitz and I host

and that's geared towards Real Estate Investors and uh we talk about single family real

estate we talk about self storage real estate we talk about commercial real estate multi family real estate anything kind of real estate investment focused

and that's a fun one we I do them both weekly okay all right amazing amazing um

I think this has been an amazing episode I appreciate your time coming on Jason and abely here if you're want to be a

hard money lender go check out those podcasts I think it's a great resource and I think a lot of people they can

create a better Roi if they invested actively invest themselves no doubt no I

I I agree I mean if you're investing yourself actively I mean you should be making you know 100 you know 100 plus

percent on your Capital like very very high you know if you're I mean that's a big difference between passive and a capital passive and active if you're a

passive investor you should be able to achieve you know 8 10% maybe 12% % give or take to pain on your deal but as an

active investor should be you know hitting that out of the park out of the

park 100% I agree with that 100% so for everybody here go like share here go like share subscribe thank you for

coming hey if you have any deals you'd like to submit to The Hive mine and our team go to Hive bc. is actually the hive

Buyers Club submit your deals and we can hopefully dispose your deal for you have a great

day

Ep 474: Becoming A Hard Money Banker With Jason Balin

Daniel Esteban Martinez

Jason Balin