OnceHub Inc.

So that was a deal that we thought was scary early on.

Another deal that happened around that time as well, call it 2011, 2012, was we funded probably our biggest deal at that point.

And it was about a million bucks.

I was just looking, Chris, at the numbers.

So this was a 10,000 square foot building that, I mean, I don't even know where you begin on a deal like this, but we went back, like this was a deal that had been going on for a long period of time.

It had two prior fires to us.

So we were, we were technically the third fire.

The The property was completely finished and renovated.

So let's dive in.

First one is, do you recommend a main number on your marketing as opposed to a personal cell phone? It's just me and my associate, and I've used myself for years as really the only number, but I prefer a main number to be able to scale as opposed to every call coming to my personal cell phone.

What are some pros and cons? Sorry, this got cut off, but what are some pros and cons? I'm sure, you know, it's not just me and I'd like your opinion on what other people do.

What cell phone services or what phone services do you do? All right.

Now we're using GoHighLevel.

We've been using that almost a whole year now.

And we have several geographically driven phone numbers.

We're in seven different states, but our core market is in Maryland.

You learn very, very quickly what happens based on the outcomes.

Another thing I would recommend at startup time is to come up with your own underwriting model, your own investment thesis, as some people in the industry call it.

Like what kinds of loans are you doing? Like rehab loans? What size for each one? What kind of leverage? What geographic areas? What you don't want to do is just have a few million bucks, go to the meetup groups and have local real estate investors determine your underwriting for you.

because they will they say yeah if you want to fund my deals it's going to have to look like this you're going to have to give me you know 90 financing and accrue all interest until the end so like you can take on a lot of risk and not get paid which is no good at all and there's a lot of people i mean frankly that come into the mastermind group that start like this because they were told by borrowers local real estate investors here's what it needs to look like and then i'll borrow from you you got to take frame control on that you have to come out with your own underwriting model And one that you believe in and that it's within the risk tolerance and the rate of return that's acceptable.

That front-end person is more like a processor, and then the back-end person is more like a bookkeeper or a controller that's servicing the loans.

Potentially they're in QuickBooks, depending on how your accounting structure and your loan servicing software is set up on that side.

Yes, you could technically combine that.

There's an argument that that's a good thing or a bad thing.

ran away with their money.

The best way to mitigate that one is to... do background, whatever you can find on the title company, and then also call or search online the title insurance commitment number.

So if it's written through First American, that you can identify it's a real policy because when it's a completely fake title work and everything else and that policy number doesn't exist.

So that's one way there.

Another common one is just being very, very careful with wire instructions.

And everyone in the industry knows this.

You call and verbally verify.

You even like independently get the phone number to call, not just say, oh, somebody told me this is the number to call.

And so the way to generate These opportunistic deals that we're talking about is to put the word out there constantly, repeatedly to all channels, to your email list, to your social media, to possibly even your personal social media in addition to business, wherever you can get to your audience.

very consistently daily weekly several times a week whatever it might be letting them know the different stuff that's happening in your lending you can talk you can just straight up talk about the fact that like you know we'll do resi investment and commercial deals in these seven states like that's part of our regular messaging and you can put out uh what they call a tombstone like the details on a recently closed loan or even a recently quoted loan like whatever whatever's happening That is creating the messaging that you want to put out to the audience that is going to bring you more of the stuff you want.

Put it out there consistently, creatively, whatever it might be.

Follow the trends on social and content and stuff like that because you just frankly get more run, more eyeballs, more views.

And then I'm the oldest of four kids.

When I woke up one day, I got a call that my brother had got diagnosed with cancer and he was in high school.

Um, and being the oldest and I'm much older than the other siblings, I'm like their second mother.

And so I had a very emotional reaction at the time and like quit my job on the spot and said, I'm moving home to help you guys.

Um, and then my parents live in Northwest Ohio.

So jumped in my car, packed a pillow, blanket, some clothes and left literally the day I found out and left everything I had behind.

Um, and when I had the two hour drive North Owens Corning global, which is headquartered in my hometown, found out that I had just quit my job two hours before somehow, um, And their vice president calls me and was like, Hey, our headquarters is by your parents.

Would you be interested in coming work for us? So it all worked out.