Introduction & Welcome to Turn Up the Hustle

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hustlers, on today's episode of the Trump to Hustle Podcast, we're joined by a top producing loan officer with Conventus and the trusted loan officer behind many of the real estate projects Scott and I have completed. He specializes in helping investors secure financing they need to grow their portfolios, whether it's fix and flips, rentals, or new construction, through fast, flexible lending solutions built specifically for real estate investors. In this episode, we break down how hard money lending really works, when it makes sense to use it, and why choosing the right lending partner can make all the difference in scaling your real estate business. On today's episode, Mike Leva. Welcome to another episode of the Trump the Hustle Podcast, where real estate investors and entrepreneurs share

Who is Mike Leiva? From Suburbs to Sales Hustle

SPEAKER_02 0:43

their stories, strategies, and mindset behind our hustle. I'm Mr. Giannis, Mr. Hustle. AKA Michael Giannis. To my right, Scott and Moon. Let's go. Today's special guest, Mike Leva, man. How are you doing? I'm good, man. I'm good. It's good to good to be here with you guys. I'm glad you came out of town to be on this podcast, man. And uh I'm excited for this podcast because you're our money guy, man. And if you guys don't know how hard money works, I'm excited to this podcast because to break down our hard money, it's really, really cool, it's really, really fascinating, and there's a lot of opportunities that most people don't know about. But before we get started, my real estate hustle is wholesaling houses, flipping houses, and taking over payments via subject two. When someone thinks of Mike's lever, what's Mike's hustle?

SPEAKER_03 1:23

They think that I'm a direct private money lender helping investors scale their portfolios, scale their investment strategies, and doing it quick with reliable capital.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Hustlers, real estate investing doesn't have to be overwhelming, and you don't have to do it alone. If you've been watching from the sidelines, scrolling past deals on Zillow, or binging YouTube videos, but still not taking action, this is for you. That's why we built Hustle Academy, a community designed for new and experienced real estate investors who want to learn, network, and grow. Inside Hustle Academy, you'll get weekly live calls,

Door-to-Door Magazine Sales & First Jobs

SPEAKER_02 1:58

QA sessions, and step-by-step classes on fix and flip, wholesaling, creative finance, and my favorite subject to deals. Everything you need to know to build real skills and start closing real deals. You'll join a powerful group of like-minded hustlers who are sharing wins, breaking down deals, and all pushing toward the same goal: financial freedom through real estate. If you're ready to level up, no matter what stage you're starting at, join Hustle Academy today, tap the link in the description, or visit hustleacademy.com and let's trump the hustle together.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

That makes sense. Good way to put it. Yeah, it's really good. Money man Mike, we might have to put that on Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Call you Money Mike. Yeah, there we go. So we keep talking about money. And if you guys don't know about how this works, and we're gonna get into it uh with Mike's story. For us to flip all these houses, we gotta the money gotta come from somewhere, right? I hate using Skylar's money, so I'll use this guy's money, right? I always want to use other people's money, and we'll break down on exactly how we're able to flip almost 80 houses this year using most of this guy's money and how he kind of coordinates it from us. But before we go into all the uh cool stuff and how we're borrowing millions of dollars from you, let's take it back, man. Who's Mike from from day one? Let's take it back on where you grew up from and how did you get into your mindset of this hustle mentality today?

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Yeah, I mean, I'm just your average kid, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Uh, had my mom and dad both in the real estate industry. And so, you know, really just grew up around this, uh, hustling, uh, going door-to-door selling magazines when I was a kid, doing stuff like that, to, you know, being in sales, all sorts of different sales from gym memberships, car sales, uh, phone sales, and then eventually into real estate over the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

The door-to-door magazines because you wanted to or because your parents made you?

SPEAKER_03 3:37

No, more because I wanted to. So uh my school at the time had this fundraiser thing where if you sold a certain amount of magazines, you got all these perks, you got to go in a Hummer Limo uh to I think it was like Culver's or something like that. And so I always wanted to be the top uh top guy to get that and earn it every single year. So I was always going door to door, knocking on my little scooter, you know, hey, you want to buy a magazine? Uh just like very little much, very little to uh subscribe for for an entire year. Like, and so I'd always get the uh the most amount of subscriptions for that. And that's kind of where my sales, I would say, started. So as sales as a kid, what was your first job? My first actual job, uh, I would say was when I was 15, I worked at a sports center. So I actually taught kid kids uh sports. I did birthday parties, I worked concession stand, I'd played sports my entire life, so it was really just an easy thing for me to do because I actually played sports at that center as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

What's a sports center? Like uh like a basketball, or what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_03 4:37

There was like uh indoor soccer, uh, like awards. Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, like indoor soccer fields, basketball courts,

Sports, High School Football, & Breaking Into Car Sales

SPEAKER_03 4:44

um, things like that, flag football, all that good stuff. Okay. Well, you what age was this? I was 15 when I when I was working there, and I worked there all the way through high school. So I was actually their first ever uh ever employee of the month, which was crazy. They just created it because I was always working, taking people's shifts. I was like, you know what? I might as well make money. If someone doesn't want to doesn't want to work, I'll take their shift.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

So I actually had the same mindset, man. My first job was actually McDonald's. And man, I would love to you know, yeah. My first job, well, they're by Marbon. My first job was uh McDonald's, and man, I just love to work, man. And I would actually call other people, hey man, you want to work today? Because I'll take your shift. And I actually got in trouble because I got too much overtime. And uh and uh so it's crazy how you say that. Man, I would just love to work, man.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

I would message people, I'd be like, hey, are you gonna work this weekend? Or you know, I can take your shift if you want.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

I wouldn't even call in the manager when my days off. Hey, you guys busy? Because I can come in if you need me to. You'd be surprised at how many times they say yes. Yep, I want to have a paycheck.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

Yeah, I want that paycheck. So, okay, cool. So, what's after high school? After high school, uh, I ended up playing uh football as a field goal kicker. Uh, my first semester ended up taking a break from that and came back, started working full-time while I was part-time uh at school. And that's where kind of my sales started. Uh, I actually started my first sales job at LA Fitness, selling gym memberships, went on to car sales, went on to logistics sales, and then went into the real estate world. Fell out of sports, man.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah. Sports from the sports center from school to uh after school to after high school. Thoughts on athletes? Did you want to be someone uh a football player, basketball player? What were your thoughts?

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Growing up, I always wanted to be a professional soccer player. That was the dream. But uh after once I was in high school, I started doing field goal kicking. All my buddies were on the football team, they needed a kicker. I said, All right, I'll try it out. And turned out I was pretty good at it. So I ended up going that route instead. But uh just ended up taking a break after because I didn't really like the school I was at. So I figured, okay, take a break, see what I want to do, and find my passion from there.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

And then you said you went to car sales, man. You you hear all these horror stories on a sleazy car salesman. Oh, I can give you some.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

I said, Oh, I can give you some.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Being in car sales, how strong did that make you in sales in general?

SPEAKER_03 6:49

I would say that's one of the best experiences that I had. Um, I hated it, but it was definitely the hardest working like experience that I had because those guys are are working from nine to nine, is sometimes their schedule. But the reality is is you're not leaving until

Leaving Chicago & Growing Up in a Real Estate Family

SPEAKER_03 7:06

the last person that you're selling to is actually gone. So if I'm selling a car at 8 p.m., sometimes it's a three, four hour process if you know they're going through paperwork, all that stuff, and I'm there until the end of it. So uh it's definitely a grind, uh, definitely very hard to get days off. Uh so it's it's something that I would say really translated well into all the other different sales that I've done as as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

What's the top misconception about car salesmen?

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Or are they true? Some are true, I will I will admit some are true, and that's kind of why I got out of it. I only did it for about six months. I was pretty good at it, but it just wasn't for me. And I'm the type of person that even if I'm good at something, I'm not gonna stay where I'm not happy. Who are you at a big brand dealer or a used car dealer? Yeah, actually a Chevy. Okay. Uh Chevrolet. So I was actually uh in the suburbs of Chicago, big Chevrolet. Uh it was cool to be able to drive all the all the cars, you know. If it wasn't busy, I'd go out and test drive the uh Corvettes on the lot, you know. That's cool. See how that was. But it was definitely uh an interesting experience.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, I feel like the big buck stores, it's a little bit less lazy. It's still a lot of it's still very pushy sales. Yes. But the used cars is when it's I mean, that's bad because I know guys that have used car lots, and I know guys that do it right and do guys that don't do it right. And you know, they know that the car is gonna break down in six months, it's as is, no warranty, and they just I mean, they're there to push a product, push a line on the Excel sheet, and just another number that they got to get out, hit their quotas. And uh yeah, that's where I think it gets very um tricky where you're running a business and you know if you go repair what needs to be repaired, you're gonna lose money because the margin's not maybe as good. So that's that's that's a tough business to be in. Yeah. Uh how was Chicago? I know that Chicago gets a bad rep, and I kind of joked about it a second ago.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

It's funny, I was when I moved here, everyone was always like Shy Rack, Chyrack, and I was like, it's not that bad, but granted, I'm from the north side of Chicago, so suburbs and you know, the north side of Chicago is pretty nice. Um it was great, honestly. I I think I didn't realize how much Chicago has until I left. Um, you know, we were one of the first places to have Uber. I I left to a different state and they didn't even have Uber after Chicago having it for like seven years. So little things like that that I was just mind blown that Chicago is a really big hub, obviously, of a lot of different things. Uh a lot of culture there, a lot of Hispanics there, being half Mexican, half Colombian. Uh, you know, the Hispanic community out there is really big too. So it's it's just uh a melting pot, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

I'm definitely gonna hit you up. I've been to Chicago twice, and I just was not a fan. I I went in the winter both times, so it was cold. Oh, that's the same. But I don't really care. I've been to New York in the winter, like, and I still like New York. And I feel like it was, you know, I thought it was gonna be comparable because I am a huge New York fan. Like the background on my phone, computers in New York, like I as a kid I wanted, not even a kid, in my twenties, I wanted to move to New York really bad. And so I just I don't know, I just had this big conception it was gonna be a really cool place. I don't know, I just didn't enjoy it. I uh but I think I've definitely maybe one day you'll give me a trip up there. Okay, I gotta take you around the good spots.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

We'll take you to Wrigleyville, all the all the good places uh over there. And actually, my brother and my sister, they're both realtors downtown, they know all the hot spots. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

You said you're half Mexican, half Colombian.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Yes, sir. I thought you're a white man. Look, why does

Why I Chose Hard Money Lending

SPEAKER_03 10:11

it be? I thought you're a white man. Why did you teach you? Spanish, that I like surprising people with that. You know, it's a little uh little surprise when people start hearing me speak Spanish. How do you Spanish? It's pretty good. I've spoken it since I was a little kid, so uh whenever I whenever I don't speak it for a while, you know, it takes a little bit to get back into it. But my cousins in Mexico, uh I pride myself on this. Uh my they always say I'm the best speaking Spanish uh out of my brother, my sister, and me.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

So I thought you were a white man. We got two white guys that speak Spanish and I don't. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

You gotta pick it up, man.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

I don't know, man. I've had a hard time with it. Okay, so you said what earlier you said your family's in real estate. Who's all in real estate and your family? Yeah, I mean that the whole family, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's funny because I don't my parents definitely did not want me to go into the real estate world. They wanted me to get my degree, go into finance, go into you know, some sort of corporate job. Um, but real estate just kept pulling me back in and something that I'm good at because I was around it my whole life. My mom's a realtor, my dad's a lender, all of my uncles are lenders. I grew up with my dad

Private Money vs. Hard Money Explained

SPEAKER_03 11:11

having a mortgage company. And so all of my uncles, they all worked for him. Uh all of them work for different banks now. Uh, so they've always been around and I've always seen the hustle that they put into it and what they can come out of it now. On top of that, they're always helping people get into a home. I mean, I always thought that was a cool experience for someone to get their first home and you to be the one to help them. Um, on top of it, my brother and my sister, they're both realtors. Uh, so I'm the one uh as well on the uh investment side of real estate, though.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Yeah, it's definitely a cool feeling, man, being part of uh the home processing journey, a whole home purchasing journey and see the eyes light up when they get those keys. And whether you're on the lending side or the realtor side, it's really cool to see. Now, real estate space because of your family, or you happen to fall into it? Like, why did you really come into hard money lending?

SPEAKER_03 11:56

So, hard money lending, uh, I would say is more my decision. The uh private money lending, the investment side of the real estate world is what I've been more interested in. I've done the real estate side, I've done the traditional mortgage uh side, and while I was good at both of those, they just weren't that giving me that fulfilling feeling. Um when I got into the investment side, that's where I felt like I actually found my place. Um obviously being successful in it helps, but the reality of learning what I'm helping other people do and being able to learn through their experiences and not have to make

Scaling with Asset-Based Loans Over Traditional Banking

SPEAKER_03 12:33

some of those mistakes on my own, I find really beneficial to me, but I can also help guide other people when I see that stuff. Um, so that's kind of you know what I really love about being in the space and kind of how I got into it, really.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Let's break this down, man, because there's a lot of beginners who are watching this YouTube channel, and you know, people want to flip houses and they you know, follow the Hustle Academy. Write down because you're saying private money and you're saying hard money. And your words as a what I would call a hard money lender or work with a hard money lender, what exactly is the difference between private money and what exactly is hard money?

SPEAKER_03 13:04

That's and that's a great question because I get it all the time, honestly. Um, it's tough to distinguish, right? But the reality is that a lot of people look at private money as being like an individual. And so that individual like is someone like your uncle, uh your grandma, you know, someone that is just lending you money to purchase a property or whatever. And so I would say that when it comes to hard money, you're looking at a lot of costs. You're looking at someone who's really trying to make a profit, they're charging you, you know, 15, sometimes 16% interest rate, maybe you know, they're good, 13%. Um that's kind of where we separate ourselves. We're more of a private uh private money lender and we're more institutional on that side of things. We have our own capital that we use and we lend out. Um, and so we're not just like lending someone else's money where you know we have to charge a higher interest rate because we're getting at a different interest rate. Um, I would say that that's the big difference between us and hard money is that you know our costs are so much better because we're able to provide our actual capital to those clients. Make sense?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Yeah, I really want to deep deep dive into hard money, man. So when I was flipping houses for my very first flip, I wasn't knowledgeable on hard money. I just I was using my own money. I was using my own money out of pocket. So of course I was at the time I was in the military, I was every I was saving my military money and I was a realtor, so I was using all my commissions, and I saved all of that to buy my first flip. And and uh I went to get personal loans from a bank, and I really didn't understand hard money. I thought, man, I'm not gonna get approved. I'm in the army. Who's gonna want to give me a loan while I'm in the army full-time? I have zero, I've never done a flip before. So uh in this episode, I really want to deep dive into how hard money can be beneficial to you, but or beneficial to that first flipper. Thoughts on those people who are borderline, like I can't do that. What exactly as

Overcoming the Fear of Borrowing Short-Term Capital

SPEAKER_02 14:52

a hard money lender looks for um to get someone off their first flip?

SPEAKER_03 14:57

Yeah, I mean, I think that's uh a common thing that a lot of people are thinking about. I mean, even my father included, he's done flips when I was growing up, but he always did a cash, right? And so uh being able to use someone else's money to do that flip just helps you be able to scale and be more profitable because you're able to move quicker. You're not waiting for more money to come in from your paycheck to fund the next project. And so that's kind of what separates that that mindset. And once you're ready to kind of start scaling and take that next step, I think that's when it's really time to, you know, look into the types of loans that I offer where we can help you scale. Uh, like you said, you know, the traditional banking route, it's hard to get qualified on certain deals, especially if you already have some debt, if you already have a home you own. Uh most of the time, like we're not looking at that kind of stuff. That's not what we care about. We're really more concerned about the investment side of things. And so if a deal makes sense, like we're gonna do the loan because the numbers add up to everything. Um, we're not just going, okay, well, hey, this property is worth $400,000. You're only putting, you know, $250 into it, but your income isn't there, so we can't approve you. Like that doesn't make sense because the whole purpose is to flip that property quickly, not to be in it for a 30-year loan, like a traditional bank would most likely give you.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

So I this is something that a lot of people ask me when they're first time flippers. Obviously, you know, I do a lot of flips and I coach a lot of people to do flips, and they just get so scared to borrow somebody else's money. And I don't know, I never had that issue, so I don't I don't I can't really you know relate really well. But for that person who is qualified to you guys, well qualified, um, you know, they've got some money saved up, they do qualify. How do you get them to over because

The Instagram DM That Started It All: Persistence in Sales

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I'm sure you've seen it as well? It seems like a common question. How do you get them over that fear of like, well, what if I can't pay it back and and all this stuff? How do you get it? What's like the objection that you use to overcome that?

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Yeah, I think people kind of are scared off when it when they hear short-term loan, like it's gonna be due in 12 months, right? The reality is is that that meaning that it's due doesn't mean you have to come out of pocket with all that cash or you need to sell it. There's options of refinancing it, there's options to you know borrow money from someone else to complete the project, or you know, like I just said, selling it too, obviously. Um so I think that's probably one of the biggest things that scares people off. They think you know the whole balance is due, there's no other option, you know, and and they're scared off that they might not finish it in that time frame.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, yeah, that's one thing I've seen, and it's it's really keeps people held back from either doing their first one or scaling and doing another one because they think that, you know, uh the end of the world's gonna happen, there's gonna, you know, it's gonna go on their credit and all this stuff. And it's like, you know, as somebody, we just spoke about this last night at the event, as somebody who's done a lot of flips and has been in different situations, you know, it's especially working with you guys. I worked a lot of different hard money lenders, and there are a bunch of very good ones out there that work with you and you know, obviously have helped me grow my business and other flippers grow their business. But it is a, I mean, it's almost a must. Like you have unless you've just got hundreds of thousands of dollars, which most people don't, you know, um, it is a must to your business to have a hard money lender and then the different which we'll get into in a minute, the difference between a good hard money lender and then maybe some of the nuances of why some people were better and some people were not. I guess I can ask you some questions around that, but but it's just um it's been a real pleasure working with you and Conventis, and I'm real glad that that we linked up. And uh, I guess I'll give a quick little story here. I uh I had been flipping houses full time for a little over a year. I've been on and offering 10 years, and Mike got me back into it. And uh we partnered up, you know, almost two years ago now. And uh I had been flipping houses, we had a bunch of lenders we worked with, and the timing was just right. Our main lender had just gone to a merger, and uh, you know, we were looking for new lenders, and then I had found uh a competitor, we'll call him out Chiavi. Kiavi's a great lender, but um, you know, I had just done my very first deal with them, and we thought, man, these guys are great, they're gonna give us um getting into some of those nuances we talked about. Most of our local guys are giving six-month loans, which are even shorter than the 12 months we talked about. So, I mean, that's really where you've got to be like, if you're a brand new person, you've never flipped a house, to be honest, that's short. That's very short to do it in six months. I mean, to understand how to find a contractor, how to, you know, what the contractor's gonna do if they don't show up, all the stuff we talked about last night. Are they, you know, are they showing up on time, getting the job done on time? What are the days on market? Maybe as a new flipper, somebody sold you a deal, you don't even know, maybe days on market or 200 days, you didn't even take that into consideration. And so you're already set up for failure from day one, right? Um, and so with you guys at least having a year, that's one of the nuances that you know I like working with you guys, and Kiavi does the same thing, does a year, sometimes longer. Um, but that's number one. Number two is you guys offer obviously the best rates. I can say confidently to everybody out there watching this, Conventus offers the best rates. The only reason I know is because out of the last year or so, us doing, you know, 80 flips or so, and we've tried probably seven different lenders, and a lot of them are good. I'm not saying I don't want to bash anybody out there. A lot of them are very good lenders and they have their different sectors that work better. You know, some are you know for shorter, smaller loans, some are for you know larger loans, dollar amount. Um, but with you guys particularly, y'all were able to beat anybody's rate. And so the way that we connected was very crazy. You sent me a DM on Instagram, and just like this guy, if you go into any of our, you know, um, what do they call them? Requests, message requests, I mean it's just full mainly with bots and spam, you know. Just hey, I I would like to help you run your funnel. Hey, I would like to know whatever. So just a bunch of spam. And I don't know why. I was uh going through my spam one night, and I try I have OCD like crazy. Everything has to be clean, everything has to be organized, and so even my spam box, I want to make it clean. And so I was going through this deleting message, deleting messages, deleting messages, and I get messages every week. I get phone calls, voicemails, text messages, DMs, people reaching out, literally on a day basis, I can't I'm not even joking, on a daily basis, people ask, Do you want money? Do you need money? I'm a lender, I'm a lender, I'm private out of this company, out of this company, out of that place. And I would just say no, because I was happy with who we're with. For us, we really like to work with people who we know, like, and trust. Um, you know, we do people who know us pretty well. We have a pretty small niche of people we work with, our contractors. Once you're in with us, we're not looking for anybody else. You know, we may test here and there, but for the most part, once you're in our inner circle and we work with you, we're loyal to you, you're loyal to us, and we basically it's very, very hard to kind of get into our inner circle. And a lot of people have seen that in the past. And so for us to even get in, or for you to even have him come in with us would have been like impossible because we were very happy with Chiavi, with our previous lenders. We had, you know, some local guys that actually used to work with Mike at his office, and he's a local guy here in town that does hard money lending. And so it's just hard. And so you sent me a DM, and it was nothing special. Meaning you've gone back and looked at it, it was nothing crazy. It was, you know, hey, I'm a hard money lender, would love to uh, you know, have a media conversation or whatever it is. And I'm gonna be honest, opened your profile, had like 300 followers, like, oh dude, there's another one of these guys. Yeah, he had like three posts, 300 followers. It's like, oh, okay, this guy. And so me being kind of a uh not very nice guy at the moment was like, Yeah, dude, if you can beat these raids, I got you. You know, because I say that's everybody. I literally, even to this day, somebody calls me and I'll be right off the bat. If you can be half point down and 9%, I'll do it. Oh, we can't do that? Okay, cool. I just hang up because I don't want to have conversations about oh, we can do this and that. And they'll try to convince you. And I've been through all the sales pitches and you know, me being in sales with our business. I already know how the objections and all that stuff had overcome them. And so I basically just right to the point. If you can beat this, I can do it. No. Okay, cool.

Meeting at Wholesaling Live & The Power of Personal Follow-Up

SPEAKER_01 22:18

That's it. And so I did the same thing with you. I said, hey, if you can beat my current rates, cool, we got it. And sure enough, I was already getting good terms, and you came in and said, you know, yeah, I got you. And I asked for crazy terms. Oh yeah. And so yeah. I made sure we we took care of you though. And so, because for me, it's not impossible to get into our business. If you can benefit our business, why am I not going to say yes, right? Just with Mike. If somebody can come in and do something for us as a business that is beneficial and you know, we're going to benefit from it, then that's what we're going to do. Not to say that we're cutthroat with everybody, but at the end of the day, we're running a business. We have to be conscious of costs. We have to be conscious of how much money's coming in and out. And so with that said, we opened the conversation. You said you could beat it. I didn't believe it. I was like, okay, cool. So I'll give you a deal. And so we did our first deal, and sure enough, you closed on time. It was very similar to Kiavi, who was our other lender as far. So I understood the process. You know, you asked for the same documents, the same underwriting, the same, you know, it's very, very similar to what they guys, what those guys had going on. And uh ever since then, I mean, we have done, I would say 98 out of 100 deals go to you. Yeah. Maybe 99 out of 100 deals. And so, you know, it's been a very it's been a pleasure working with you. And for those of you guys who are out there sending out the DMs, keep on sending them because it just takes one person, right? And you can talk, you I'll let you take it over the kind of how the history between us has evolved and you know what doors that have opened for you and for for conventus as a whole. But um, but yeah, if it's shout out to you and your persistence. I'm sure you sent out tons and tons of DMs, and it just takes one, you know, one guy to get on the hook, rule them in, and then you know, doors open and things happen. So I'll let you kind of explain your side of the story because obviously I have my side and how it went, but I want to see, you know, kind of what we're doing.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

I mean I very spot on. I mean, I think the the biggest thing was just my follow-up too. Um, I just kept touching touching, you know, on your stories, like making sure I was reacting to them, uh, following up on some of your posts, uh being a little bit more personal, I think. That was probably the biggest difference. Um, I think I said something originally on that uh message about something you posted, um, and that's kind of where I relate to my clients a little bit more, um, making sure that I'm more personal with my outreach because like you said, everyone and their mother is reaching out to you uh via DMs, you're getting just all this spam. And so, how are you gonna separate yourself? You know, on top of it, you're already going to uh a spam folder or a request folder. But when it comes to you know the actual personal touch, that's what's gonna help you separate yourself from those people in that spam folder. And so that's I think one of the biggest things also that helped was uh we ended up I and I I just I believe that you know things happen for a reason. Uh I think when we finally spoke over over uh Instagram, there was an event going on. Uh the uh what was it? Wholesaling live. And so I ended up meeting you guys there. Uh, but I I you said you were going. I was like, perfect, I'm actually gonna be there. And uh we ended up meeting in person. I think that was also very, very beneficial to us because having that personal touch, making sure like you see the warm body, you know, put a face uh to the name is probably even more crucial than anything, you know. Uh, you know that you can reach out to me too, obviously, with your experience. Call me, text me. Anytime, you know, you can reach me. It's not just office hours, right? Yeah. Um, so I think that's what really separated me.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

So I've actually pulled it up. Obviously, you guys can't see on the camera, but so I posted a story and you just put fire emoji. Cool, whatever. That was the opener, October 11th. And then on the next day, you followed up, hey Skylar, I've been following your content for a little bit. Um, I like how you break things down for investors and keep it real. Uh blah, blah, blah. You just went on and on and on. Basically saying that you're a lender and would love to see what you've got going on and find ways we can work together. Interesting. Respond. No, heck no. So two days later, I posted one of my stores of a house we just finished, Homeless Great Man. Didn't respond. The next day, I'll be in San Antonio this weekend. We'd love to connect with you guys. And I said, Hey, we hey brother, don't work on the weekends,

Sponsoring TV Shows & Climbing to the Top of Conventus

SPEAKER_01 26:15

but we can jump on a call. Totally get it. Here's my number, love the chat. Uh, or let me know uh where you'll be at. And I just sent you my email. I didn't send you my phone number. And then I sent you a link for whatever reason to Hustle Academy. That was, I think, after we had met at uh at the event. But, anyways, yeah, you kept following up and following up and following up. And like you said, um I followed another one. You said love this flip. It was great meeting you in person, wholesaling live, ended up uh buying the meta ray bands. We talked about the glasses, excited for a chance to work with you. I said, Thanks, man, I'll reach out to you once I get the next one. And then sounds good. You joined the academy, which obviously helps, gets you kudos points, how many points there. And thanks for hopping in. So, anyways, but yeah, your follow-up game was strong. I mean, it took a couple months. I don't think we got our first deal until maybe December 18th. Yeah, there we go. Exactly. First deal, December 18th. And your first hard outreach was October 11th. So it took almost two months of follow-up, coming in person, joining the academy. And so, you know, for those of you guys out there who are sending DMs, you've got to, you know, be very personable. Because I mean, guys like us are getting messages all day every day, and there's you know, it's very hard to stand out. Um, and so kudos to you for your follow-up game being strong. And obviously, the product sales itself as well. Once I heard the pitch from you, you know, because most of the time people don't even get to pitch us because you know, we've got a million calls a day. If we took every sales call we got, we wouldn't run a business because we'd be on sales calls all day getting pitched. And so unfortunately, it's hard to get in. But once you kind of broke through that barrier and you became you know personable, we talked about Ray Ban glasses and all the other stuff. Um, you came to wholesale live, we got to meet you in person. Another kind of fun fact, he tried to meet you there. You were too busy running around. I guess so. You're a celebrity over there. So take a picture. Mike, can I get you right now? I'm chasing you around that everybody was busy, and so, anyways, but shout out to you for not giving up, for having that uh persistency. And um, I mean, at the end of the day, I'll just say this you know, having met us, you know, I do a lot of deals, but I'm not the biggest guy by any means in the country, but I do have a lot of connections. So I connected you with our mutual now friend Tommy Harg. Shout out to Tommy in Ohio. Tommy is a beast of a man, he's a beast of a human being, just an all-around

Closing 25 Loans a Month: How to Outpace the Average Lender

SPEAKER_01 28:15

good person. And uh, you know, he's got his own TV show. That was before even we connected, that wasn't even in the works yet. So now he's got a TV show, and you guys are sponsoring his house is on the TV show. So tons and tons and tons of doors have opened. He's referred people, I've referred people, and I believe you are one of the top sales reps in your entire uh company, right? I am, I am.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

I'm by lone count, yeah. I actually am uh up there for the last few months. I've been uh one of the top. So it's it's great to have you guys, obviously part of my whole network, uh growing it, not just you know locally here, but uh where I'm from in Chicago and in you know the Midwest, uh like Ohio, where Tommy's at, doing the houses there. And uh funny you mentioned him because uh you obviously introduced us, but it was the same thing with him too, actually. I had to be persistent on following up with him. Uh, because I called him maybe seven times before we finally got. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Uh that's after I had done a uh introduction.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Warm intro, exactly. And so I think that was the that's the key thing, you know, making sure that you're just persistent, following up. Um, because I mean, how many times do you guys tell people or do do people tell you that, yeah, I can beat that rate, but then they come back a couple days later, you know what, I couldn't do it. It's like, okay, well, you gotta not only mean what you say, but you gotta also be persistent to even get to that point. So I think that's that's a huge part of why I've seen success with you know the network that you have and you've introduced me to, as well as other people I reached out to on Instagram, same way, you know, doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

How many loan officers are recommended?

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Who would you say nationwide? It varies. Um, obviously, sales is a revolving door, right? So it just depends on you know what time the what season it is, uh all that good stuff. But I think at any given point between 30 to 40, something like that.

How Property Qualification Works for Beginner Flippers

SPEAKER_02 29:52

What's the average amount of closings per lender?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

I would say per lender, probably like it depends if they're good or not, but at the end of the day, yeah. If they're actually doing stuff, uh probably between like three to eight.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Three to eight is the average lender doing deals uh for hard money. Yep, yep. What are you doing? At least in my company. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 30:17

Uh I closed right as of today, I'm at 25 loans closed. Uh last month I closed 25 loans. Month before that was uh 21 loans. And it's you know, just pushing numbers, man.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Yeah, so your persistence, your hustle, not only on following up and try to find clients, but you're also pushing them on the back. And it's tough because you gotta do both sides, right? You gotta market yourself to get loans, and you also gotta do all the hard work to promise what you said you were gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

And the crazy thing is, how long were you at Conventus before you reached out to me?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

I was actually only at with Conventus for a little over a month and a half, I think, before I started reaching out and talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

So you're doing four to five times what your average guy does in your first six months to a year, basically.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

Yeah, yeah. I'm about to hit a year over there in two months, September. I joined them. So uh it's been crazy how how fast I've been growing over there. But you know, I I really speak it speaks volume to one the product, and then obviously half of it being me, you know, the relationship that I have with my clients, you know, making sure that um I'm getting in front of you guys.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Stamp the certified hustler on this certified hustler.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

How about turn up the hustle, man? Now, of course, we're talking about Tommy Harr, who's doing millions in flips, and and Skylar doing all the flips that he's doing. Let's talk about the the guy who wants to get started, right? So, someone who files their first deals that they're watching this podcast or they're in the hustle academy. And in the hustle academy, we teach flipping houses and how to get started. And convinces is one of the uh sponsors in the hustle academy as a resource to say, hey, reach out to Mike if you want a deal. Let's talk about that guy. So they're understanding, they're going through YouTube or TikTok and they say, hey, I think I want to flip a house. They find the first house. How would they even contact? How does it look like for someone who says, Let me try an application? How much do I qualify for? I want to talk about that first process and from start to finish. Let me ask you something. You ever thought about investing in real estate but assumed they needed perfect credit, a huge savings account, or a bank willing to say yes? That's

Understanding Points, Origination, and LTV

SPEAKER_02 32:08

exactly why we're starting to partner with our guy Mike Leva at Conventus. Conventus is a real estate lender built specifically for investors and not homeowners. They help people fund deals like fix and flips, buy and hold rentals, and even ground up construction. And here's the part most beginners don't realize Conventus doesn't lend based on your W-2 income or your personal credit score. They focus on the deal itself, the value of the property, and the numbers behind it. That means investors can often access higher loan amounts and more flexible terms than a traditional bank, sometimes with rates that are more competitive than people expect. So instead of asking, do I qualify? The better question becomes, is this a good deal? If you're serious about getting to real estate investing and want a funding partner that truly understands investors, reach out to our go-to guy at Conventus, Mike Leva, today using the link in the show notes and see how real estate investors are actually getting deals funded.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Yeah, I mean, I it's funny because you people are always asking, like, what do I qualify for? All this stuff. And you know, it's it's not really what you qualify for. It's okay, what does the property qualify for? Right. Because the reality of it is that, you know, we're gonna look at what things in that area are selling for, what you're getting it at, and you know, what kind of work you're putting into it. So that's what's gonna determine if we can actually do a deal with you. Um, obviously, we're gonna look at a little bit of stuff on the back end, like your credit score, all that good stuff, to just make sure you're legit and you're paying things on time. Uh, but the reality is we're not looking at your debt credit score to or your credit report to look at your debt to income ratios or you know, factor all that stuff in uh to what the mortgage payment's gonna be. We don't care about that because we're going off of the actual deal itself. So when people come over to me and ask, like, what do I qualify for? I'm like, well, we need a deal first, right? So find the deal, bring it to me. We can run numbers because at the end of the day, a lot of beginners don't exactly know where to start. So I try to help give guidance at least. I want them to know as much as possible when they come to me, and that's why I usually point them to learning communities like yours, like Tommy's, uh like my other guy in Chicago, his name's Aaron Gazaryan. Uh, they got a big program out there in Chicago as well. So getting around these communities and learning from the people who are doing it themselves is gonna help you understand enough to bring me a deal and then me say, okay, yes, this one works. And from there, we just get everything rolling.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

That's cool, man. And it's crazy to see the process when you're showing these guys, and we talk about, or I always say this before, when it comes to hard money, it's not really um credit-based, it's it's asset based. Right. So it's not really about the credit, like you said, for the DTI and the credit score. Obviously, the credit score has to do with a factor, but the deals will make a deal, right? And when I tell first-time flippers, like, hey, no one cares about you personally, they care about the deal, right? If the deal makes sense, they're gonna fund the deal. Talk about because this can be confusing too, right? When someone says, Hey, I'm interested in doing a loan, and you say, Oh, we do 112 or 212, or what does that mean? Break it down to someone who's never heard of the terminology of

How Conventus Differentiates and Beats the Competition

SPEAKER_02 35:08

212 with LTV and uh cash to close. Can you rephrase that clearly? Like the points and interest. Yeah, so when you're saying obviously when it's 112 or what are the terms are with commitments, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

I mean, when when they're coming to me, I kind of break it down like, look, there's these costs to it, right? Then you have every other lender that's looking at what they're charging, you know, as far as whether it's an underwriting fee, uh legal fee, a processing fee, all these things that sometimes are like, what is this fee actually for? Um the reality with us is like we are very upfront. We want to be partnering with our clients because the reality is that if you're profitable on your deal, you're gonna bring me more. So you know, giving you a good interest rate on top of giving you great cost uh is probably the big thing that we focus on. So for us, we usually charge one point origination, you know. That's kind of the standard. It can vary, but you know, the standard usually is one point origination, a $9.99 processing fee, and that's kind of where we where we go from. You know, the interest rate is gonna be a little bit dependent on your experience on flipping. But you know, the good part is we're still really competitive when it comes to brand new borrowers that are have no experience. So, you know, when they ask me what does that mean, I tell them like, well, hey, one point origination, that's one percent of the loan. So that fee is a one percent fee of the entire loan balance that you're borrowing. So that meaning that if you're borrowing $100,000 plus $50,000 for rehab, $150,000 is what you're borrowing. So we're gonna charge one point on that being fifteen hundred dollars, right? And so that's kind of the easy way to break it down for someone so that they can understand, okay, well, what does one point mean? What does two points mean? Because it's not clearly listed as a dollar amount for them.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Yeah. So exactly. That's what I was looking for. And then LTV, when they say loan to value, what does that mean for someone who hasn't heard that before?

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah, that's a great question. Because on the investing side, there's a couple different ways to look at it, right? Like there's the loan to value of the as is property and you know what it currently sits at. So uh if it's worth 200,000 uh and we're lending you 90% of that the purchase price, you know, we're looking at a hundred and eighty thousand dollar loan amount, right? But if you're looking at, okay, well, what are we lending on on the after repair value, where like loan to value at that point, the max amount we would do is 75% of that after repair value. So the loan to value, LTV, what you just were mentioning, is really just what the amount you're borrowing in comparison to what the property is actually worth.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

So I'm gonna graduate to the next step. So you've got your beginners that come in that have never done a flip, or maybe have done one, and they're understanding what you're talking about now, and they know more or less, you're gonna explain to them how the loan actually works, what the terms mean. But I want to get into because my goal for this podcast is to make sure that Convencus gets a lot of business. For the guys who have done five to ten, the guys that have done five to ten flips, and I can speak from experience, but I want you to explain it. From the guys that have done five, or just call it five plus. It could be five to ten, five to twenty, whatever the number is. And they've got their hard money, they're guys like me, because I was the perfect avatar for you guys in the business. I was already with Chiavi, who is like one of the biggest lenders in the country. They're very, very, very well known. They're very popular.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

Um, they're probably one of the top they're number two in the Bay Area where we're both headquartered. There you go, let's go. We're number one in the in the San Francisco Bay Area where we're headquartered. So Detroit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

So well in San Francisco, nationwide, I think. But y'all need to get Texas, Florida, which we're trying to help you guys do that as well.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Jump from, I think, nine to five nationwide now.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

There you go. So our goal is to get convinced us to number one. Yep. With the help of the hustle brand. Exactly. Um, but anyway, so if you're like me, perfect avatar, you're five plus, you're probably using Chiavi, you've been with them for years, you're happy, they're taking care of you, they're scratching

Landing 100% Financing: Skin in the Game & Due Diligence

SPEAKER_01 38:52

your back, whatever. I know just me being in that same situation, having Switch, I know that you guys can be better. Explain to the audience how you guys differentiate. I'm gonna just call them out specifically, Kiavi. How do you guys beat Kiavi?

SPEAKER_03 39:04

I think it when it comes down to it, like I'll be quite frank, like the pricing, right, is very similar. Like we're very competitive in pricing. With Kiavi, I'd say they'd probably be just as competitive too. But where we separate ourselves is the personal touch we give. You know, you being able to reach out to me directly, uh, having that point of contact, you know, if something's going south on a on a deal, you're not just dealing with a computer, you know, where, hey, you know, when can someone get back to me? Um, no, like you text me, you call me, whatever you need, like I'm there for it. Um, so I think the big separation is the personal touch as well as kind of trying to be a little bit more local presence as well. I mean, you know, I come down here at least once a month to see you guys uh for the event, or you know, maybe we're going doing some site visits at some of the properties, things like that. And so I think showing that we actually care about your projects rather than just caring about the deal being done uh separates us a lot from that, right? We're not just being transactional, we're being uh we're building a relationship.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Yeah. And to be frank, you guys do beat the rates. That is the reason why I switched, that's the reason why Tom switched. So to give you guys more credit, you you do have that local presence. Whereas from my experience, I don't know how many markets they have local reps with uh Kiavi. I don't know how many guys you have either, but luckily for here in Texas, we've got you know our big state, y'all have a big presence or having or gonna be having a big presence once we continue to grow it out. But um, you know, even that, even not having such a big presence, y'all guys have you know boots on the ground. And again, I'm gonna give you kudos again. You go to not only do you follow up in DMs and text messages and phone calls after you have introductions, but I mean you're traveling all the time. You're coming down to our event, you're going up to events in you know, Austin, Dallas, you're flying out to Tommy's events in Ohio. I mean, I think since the introduction, you've probably been out there, what, six times?

SPEAKER_03 40:43

A lot.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Yes. You're going out to Ohio. So I mean, again, going back to that, you know, are you earning that certified hustler? I mean, you're flying to Chicago all the time to meet your investors out there. So I mean, this guy is on the road all the time. And this is business he already has. It's not like he has to impress us anymore. He's already given us good raids, he already, you know, closes on time, does all the things, but he's still going out to follow up and make sure that he has that relationship. And so that's a very, very big difference. But I will say the main thing for flippers, if you're a guy that's flipping five to ten houses, I can I can say confidently that these guys will beat the rates because that's how they won me over, that's how you won Tommy over. Tommy, you know, as much as he likes the relationship, he's not gonna switch over. A guy like that and a guy like me is not gonna switch over, a guy like Mike's not gonna switch over, you know, who's been doing business for however many years with some of the other businesses just because we have the relationship, to be frank. It's it comes down to the product. You guys have a what I consider a superior product. Um another thing, just to be very specific, you guys offered, you know, guys like me, I think you have to hit 15 loans. Yeah, 15 in the past 36 months, not necessarily with them, but if you have flipped 15 houses or done 15 investment properties, rentals, uh flips in the last 36 months, so in three years, so again, you're at a higher level. This is that kind of mid-tier guy. Um, you know, y'all are offering 100 and 100, which means 100% of the purchase price and 100% of the rehab budget. And so that is huge for a guy like me who was, I mean, I was right at the perfect point. I was ready to break out where I was doing, you know, a certain amount of month, maybe one or two a month, and wanted to break out to that four or five a month. In order to do that, you either have to go raise a ton of private money, like we talked about from an individual from aunt, uncle, friend, coworker, somebody you know, somebody you met on social media, or you have a lender like yourself that says, Hey, we have confidence in you, you've proven yourself, you've done a lot of successful deals, you obviously pay back your loans on time. We're gonna now

Real Estate Due Diligence: Protecting Investors From Bad Deals

SPEAKER_01 42:24

give you 100-100. So on top of having lower interest rates, lower origination points, having a hundred percent leverage on both sides really, really is what you know really made me make the jump to you guys, and then you know, it just it really exploded after that.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Yeah, no, I mean definitely we so when it comes to like experienced borrowers and even just a relationship that's growing within, you know, a brand new borrower to them gaining that experience, uh, we're gonna give better pricing, we're gonna give better leverage. And so obviously that product is something that not everyone qualifies for, but a lot of my clients are striving to be at, you know. That's that's kind of their end goal is like, hey, I want a hundred percent financing because I want to scale, I want to do multiple projects. And to be honest, sometimes it may not be the best thing to be qualified for right at the beginning. You know, there are some lenders that maybe you know give you 100% financing for less experience, but the reality is is you know, uh can you handle it yet? Yeah, I think that's where it comes down to understanding like what type of projects you're focusing on. Have you actually sold them? Have you, you know, what kind of finishes, you know, have you put into it and has that actually uh transitioned into like an actual sale of what you thought it was gonna be. Um I think that's you know the the benefit of you know us having it at a little bit higher of 15 exits just because you you you get to understand, you know, the the process behind everything first before you say, Hey, you know what, let me over leverage myself with a bunch of loans that you know I have to pay back and I have no skin in the game on. Um it's a little bit different than okay, hey, I have you know twenty grand of my own cash in this, plus I have to pay back my lender. Um, I need to figure this out, right? Okay, well, all this money is the lenders if you're already you know starting off at 100% financing. So I think it's definitely a good thing to scale up to. You guys are nationwide? We are nationwide. There's uh we're in 44 of the 50 states. So uh we just don't lend in Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Vermont.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Somebody asked me last night at the event. Do you all live in Puerto Rico?

SPEAKER_03 44:23

We don't, unfortunately. I have uh have had some people reach out to me about Puerto Rico. Um, who knows if eventually, you know, that's down the road. I think that's the beautiful thing about utilizing uh private money and you know, uh business purpose loans. Um we're a lot more flexible than you know your traditional bank that, you know, like I said, I've I've been in the traditional uh mortgage side of things, you know. Shout out Wells Fargo. So impossible to get loans. Not a chance you're getting an exception over there. You know, the big banks, they have their rules and they have their guidelines, and that's what they're sticking to.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:52

Um, once you have a relationship with us, like we can make exceptions, we can get things through. You know, I'm not saying it's gonna happen every single time, but you know, when we have the relationship we have, you know, something comes up, we're most likely gonna be a little bit more flexible for you.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

Yeah, the cool thing about hard money too man is it's kind of like a protection will, if that makes sense. The appraisals, right? You guys run appraisals on properties to make sure as you're lending out money, because it is easy to get a loan, right? It is easy to say, hey, Conventus, I got this flip, and a lot of flippers get emotionally involved and they say, I really want to flip this house. And I like how hard money says, hey, before we lend you this money, let's make sure it's a deal too. So you first time flippers or even some of you experienced flippers, it's always good to get a second set of eyes. And one, let's look at the ARV, let's look at the appraisal, let's make sure the numbers make sense. And one, it protects the money, but also protects the client. So that's really cool to see versus first-time flippers who are using their own cash. I've heard a lot of stories, a lot of horror stories. And I brought uh aunt and uncle's money and grandma's money, and I flipped this house, and man, I man, was that wrong? I was off on the rehab, I was off on the ARV, I didn't realize the days on market. So that hard money kind of gives you that little barrier of cushion of protection, if that makes sense. So that's pretty cool how that that process helps.

SPEAKER_03 46:01

Rather than just giving you money and saying go for it.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

That makes sense. I like that word partnering. It makes it as a, hey, you got my back, and looking as a set of eyes of on this deal to make sure it makes a deal because the lender, Conventus, is gonna give you guys the money and make sure that they want to make sure that money is protected too. Definitely. Now, we are borrowing millions of dollars from Conventus, and we're flipping lots of houses from Conventus, and you give us 100% of the money to buy the house, and you give us 100% of money to flip the house. And that's a really cool partnership that we have for those guys that are watching and say, hey, I'm thinking about using Conventus. Why would they use you? What really separates you personally, Mike, from any other hard money lender?

SPEAKER_03 46:40

I think I've uh you know, I've kind of touched on that a little bit, right? Like it's it's the personal touch I give, me, myself, like as a as a loan officer. But you know, the the rates, the costs, I think the profit, the profit margins is gonna be better because you we're not just nickel and diming you for everything, right? Like we're trying to make sure that not only do we make money, but that you are actually profitable. We're not charging you an arm and a leg to get the loan. So I think that's probably the biggest separation between a lot of traditional like hard money lenders that you see out there charging, you know, three, four points, maybe five points, um, and you know, crazy interest rate. I know uh Skylar and I met someone in Nebraska that was getting like a what was it? 18% credit pressure rate, dude. I was like, that's insane. We'll cut that in half for you. And three points down. And he had experience. I was I was shocked. So yeah, so it was it's just little things like that that I know separate us from your average lenders that just want to make money and be transactional rather than partnering with you guys, making sure that you're profitable because that profit is most likely going to come into another deal that you're gonna bring me.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

One thing I can speak on, or that you can speak on rather, is well, first of all, in the beginning of the show, you said that you guys are a little more like private money because it's your own money. And so for those of you guys out there who don't understand this, a lot of hard money lenders will borrow money from whether it's treasury bonds or wherever they're getting it from at a call it a 4% rate, and they have to go rent it at lend it out at a 12% rate because they need to have enough spread to account for overhead, costs, employees, commissions, um, a profit, and potentially having to foreclose on houses and lose money on loans, right? And so you have to calculate and factor all those together, and that determines what's your spread and what your rate needs to be spread set at in order for them to make money as a lender, right? With you guys, if you guys are using your own money, whether that be through a pool of investors or one person or whatever the situation is with you guys, obviously now you don't have that first three or four or five percent that you're borrowing. It's a hundred, so that can help you guys lower your rate, right? But speak on, I don't know if you know the national uh numbers for you guys and for other companies, but because you guys partner, like we talked about with us, and you do go through stricter underwriting, then as an investor, sometimes it feels like, oh man, they just, you know, they're uh crapping on my deal and they don't want me to get this deal because, you know, ARV came back low or because whatever the underwriting or underwriter comes back with, maybe that, you know, maybe has a slightly lower approval rate. Me personally, we haven't seen that. We've been able to get pretty much all of our deals approved. But because you do put stricter set of eyes on it and underwriting into place on the deal, what is y'all's default rate versus other companies' default rates?

SPEAKER_03 49:17

That's a great question, actually. And uh I I wish generalized numbers, but just generalized. I I want to say it's like five percent or something like that or or lower, but I I honestly uh don't hold me to that. The the reality, like for us, is that you know, the default side of things, like we're gonna work with you as well, like especially if we have that relationship, we're gonna try everything we can to help you give you an extension or do something on that side of things to make sure that you don't default, right? Yeah, but it happens, right? It does, it does happen, and that's kind of why we have those, you know, I guess, walls in place to help us partner with you guys and understand the deal. I'll give you an example. Like uh just a couple weeks ago, I had this client who was brand new to flipping, he was gonna buy this house, and uh we were about a week from closing. Uh it ended up that my credit analyst looked into the deal a little bit more, found that the seller who had been arrested for murder was in jail, and the the buyer had no idea of any of this. Uh after that, the uh listing agent was they dug into her as well, who was supposedly dating this guy, and had a a bit of more of a relationship than was expected. So they reached out to them, asked them a couple questions, they lied to us about it, and it's one of those things that I called my client, I said, Hey, did you know this, this, and that? And he's like, What? No. And not that this happens often, but sometimes people buy houses out of state, like they don't even go look at them, right? And they maybe they have some people in the market, you know, doing the research for them that they trust. And so the reality of that is that there's a lot of risk

The Draw Reimbursement Process Step-by-Step

SPEAKER_03 50:57

behind that, and having a partner that's gonna do that due diligence to find that stuff out before you go to the closing table and get locked in on that, you know, is is huge. You know, for all we know, you know, that that that property was completely different than what he he was expecting. Um so there's just like scenarios like that that we're protecting our clients from. But like you said, we're not just trying to, you know, uh analyze the deal and and try to like completely kill it, uh, but we are trying to analyze the deal and make sure that it makes sense for you and for us, right? Because we want to make sure that you're protected and that you don't default on on a actual property that you're bringing us or bringing anyone. So I think that's really, really important.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yeah, and so that's again, that's one of the reasons why y'all can offer so good of deals, right? Because you're having that that partnership. You really are joining in as a partner. We know um some people, I know several people, but we know together a friend that owns a hard money company, and a lot of times they just want to get it, it's it's a volume game. Just like in the car business we talked about earlier, you have to sell those numbers regardless if it's a good deal or good car or bad car. So a lot of times these lenders are just it's a numbers game. They have to hit their quotas, the sales reps have to hit their quotas, the underwriters need to get a certain number of deals across the line, the company as a whole needs to make a certain number of loans to make profit and show growth. And so a lot of times some of these hard money lenders will go out and lend out, and we know I mean, a lot of them to be fair, will send us the deals that have gotten foreclosed on, right? Mike's bottom over the years, many, many, many deals that hard money lenders have loaned out to somebody. They start the project, they can't finish it. The guy was either unqualified, there was more work than they thought, and so they'll call this guy and say, hey, we've got a fire sale for you. We need to get you, we need you to help us offload these things. And so obviously that's never happened with Conventus with us because y'all really don't. I mean, again, I don't know y'all's internal business or y'all's numbers, but y'all really don't have a very high foreclosure rate or or a um default rate because y'all do that underwriting. And so as an investor, it may seem like you're coming down stricter on the investor, on the deal, scrutinizing the deal, but guys, I promise you, I promise you, this is something you want to be done because you do not want to get into a deal that, you know, even if you're looking at it, maybe have a mentor looking at it, you maybe have your agent looking at it, having a team of you guys are professionals. I mean, you guys hire top-tier analysts, credit analysts, you know, uh guys looking at the deals. And so with that, it is a you know, and y'all don't charge for that other than just a processing fee, but a lot of these companies charge a junk processing fee and aren't looking at anything other than just, you know, very, very basic fees, underwriting fees.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

So anyway, I just wanted to throw it out there. It's a very good thing. It seems like it's kind of a pain in the butt sometimes because y'all require a survey or y'all require other little things. Y'all's closing packet is super thick,

Utilizing Change Orders Online to Adjust Your Rehab Budget

SPEAKER_01 53:27

but there's a method to the madness because that really does help you guys as a company. And if you guys are healthy and solid and making money, you can then pass those rates down, and y'all do. Y'all do pass it down to us as customers. So, shout out to you guys for all that. Y'all do.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Let's talk about the uh the draw process real quick. So you borrow the money, you guys get the loan, and you say, hey, we're gonna fund either 95 of it or 100% of it, depending on the experience. Explain the draw process in the afterwards. So if we have X amount of, let's just say 50 grand on a potential project, how does the borrower take access to that 50 grand?

SPEAKER_03 53:55

So there's multiple ways, honestly. Um, you're able to basically draw that money in pieces, so you can do part of the project, ask for that reimbursement and get that money back, or you can do it all, you know, at one time. So you can finish the whole project. If you're moving quick like Skylar and you guys do, right? Like sometimes you guys are in and out of a property within three to four weeks. Um most of the time, you know, it just makes more sense to at that point draw it all at once because there is a fee when you do a draw each time, right? And so that fee can add up uh so to help your profits. You know, maybe it helps to do it all at once at the very end because the project's gonna go so quick, you're gonna be in and out of there, uh, the work's gonna get done in three to four weeks, and you know, you're gonna put it on a business credit card that you pay off before you pay any interest on it. So uh it just kind of depends how your operations are and really what makes most sense for you. A lot of

The Cost-Saving Difference Between Dutch and Non-Dutch Loans

SPEAKER_03 54:49

beginners that maybe don't have a lot of capital, or maybe they don't have access to a business uh credit card, or you know, just haven't figured out all the different ways to access that capital. Well, maybe they only have 10 grand, but it's and and it's a 50 grand rehab, so they have to do it in 10 grand increments. So, you know, it it makes more sense for them to do that draw each time. Um but yeah, it's really just case by case.

SPEAKER_02 55:10

And for those guys who are not knowledgeable on the draw process, do I spend 10 grand? I get 10 grand, do I gotta show receipts, do we gotta show invoices, uh inspections? How does that work?

SPEAKER_03 55:19

Yeah, so uh it it again, there's a couple different options when it comes to like receipts and things of that nature, like we can definitely look at those to make it a lot easier and just get the funds right out to you. But most of the time, you know, a lot of the investors are the GCs on the project, so you know they're not charging themselves money to be the GC, um, but they know the you know the cost of whatever went into the project, they're hiring subcontractors, things of that nature, right? And so if you you know sign a lien waiver, making sure that there's no liens on the property, you know, no mechanic liens, things like that, um, you know, we're gonna be able to release those funds to you because you're providing us with a scope of work of what you think it's gonna cost, and you know, we're going off of that. So uh if your plan completely changes after that, you know, that's that's can be a big deal because we're going off of the scope of your scope of work that we originally qualified you on.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

But you guys do offer one change order where if you need to change something, you can't be flexible in that area too.

SPEAKER_03 56:13

How does that work? Honestly, Sky, you could probably talk to us a little bit because I know you've had a lot of that one.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

No, so what happened was in one project we had allocated money intrigue. We'd allocated money for a couple things and then it ended up changing. And so, real simple, you log in online to the portal, you submit rather than a draw request, you select change order request, and you just say it says, okay, here's your original scope, what's changing? And you just allocate the dollars differently and put you know, something used to be zero, now you can add $800 to it, or something used to be $2,500 and it's now $2,000. You can change it, and then you submit that. You guys just take a day or so, 24 hours to underwrite it, approve it, and now you can basically reallocate those same dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

But it's gonna be based off of the same budget you had, right? Yeah, you can't raise your budget because once a loan's closed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Once the loans closed, you've already charged your points, you've already got on documentation, but you can reallocate to different things.

SPEAKER_03 56:58

Yeah, and that's kind of what I wanted to touch on because uh some people like come back to me and they're like, Well, actually, now I found out I have to do this and I have to do this. And it's like, well, you're approved for this amount based off of the scope of work. We can reallocate stuff, yes. Uh a change order in that sense. But you know, when it comes down to like what you thought it was gonna cost, well, that's where you got to be good with your numbers, you gotta understand the projects, and that's why when you're kind of getting into it, you want to make sure you learn those mistakes quickly, I guess. And also uh you try to mitigate some of them as fast as possible, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:30

So one more thing I want you to touch on is uh Dutch versus non-Dutch, because this is big for a very I didn't I didn't even understand this term probably until eight months after I'd been flipping, and I didn't understand the difference. And my first lender was doing it the wrong way, what I consider the wrong way. Obviously, each company can do whatever they want to, but speak on what that is real quick and what the benefits are.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

So when it comes to Dutch and non-Dutch, like they're two different ways of charging interest. And so non-Dutch just means that we're charging interest on the money that you've borrowed so far.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

When you're layman terms, the money you have in your pocket already.

SPEAKER_03 58:04

Exactly. The money that you use for the purchase. So the the money that you have for the rehab is still sitting on the side. You know, we're obviously lending you that and we're putting it to the side, but some lenders, because they have a limited amount of capital or you know can't lend out as much, you know, they have to charge interest on that because it's sitting there that they can't lend it to someone else. So what what we do in a lot of bigger lenders usually uh are non-Dutch, um, where you're not paying interest on that money until you actually draw it. So as you draw that money, you know, once you complete the kitchen and you draw $10,000 or $15,000, whatever, that increases your total balance that you are gonna have as your payoff now, right? And so that monthly payment that you're paying is gonna slightly increase as you pull those funds. And that's where when you start paying interest on it. Whereas if you're paying Dutch, well, let's say you you borrow $100,000 for the purchase, you got $50,000 in rehab costs. Well, they're gonna charge you a hundred on that hundred and fifty thousand right from the start. So your monthly payment isn't gonna change ever. It's never gonna go up because it's already at the max it can be at. You know, ours, we know we're gonna work up to that max amount of payment. And so that's where, like personally, none of my investors like to pay interest on money that they haven't borrowed yet. So non-Dutch is typically the way I like to go. Now, you know, someone maybe who has more experience utilizing Dutch loans could probably tell you the benefits of them. I I don't see any, yeah, I don't see any, but that's kind of the difference between those two different options.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

And so I'm gonna break it down real quick for the viewers who have never done a flip or maybe have done a couple, because I again I was flipping houses at a high level for over a year, and I didn't understand this until I switched to a lender and I saw my payment go up. I was like, dude, why are y'all charging me more? They're like, what do you mean charge me more? And so, anyways, they had to explain it to me because I didn't understand it. But basically, in really simple layman's terms, if you've got a loan, let's just say the house was $100,000, and then like you said, $50,000 in rehab budget. If you're doing it the Dutch way, you're getting charged interest on $150,000 from day one until you pay off that loan. With you guys, you're getting charged interest

Mindset & Motivation: Mentors, Accountability, and Favorite Movies

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

on $100,000. And if you're a guy like me who doesn't take the draw for let's just call it 60 days, you've got two months' worth of interest on $5,000, $50,000 that you're not charging on until it's drawn. And so you're basically saving. If you're at, you know, some of these guys, especially with other lenders that aren't you guys, if they're getting charged 13% on fifty thousand dollars, that's close to credit card rates, not quite, but you're getting charged 13% on fifty thousand dollars for two months that you don't even have that money in your pocket. And so again, that's a huge difference. It's a very small neon uh nuance that not many people know about. I didn't know about even as a high-level flipper. And so a lot of lenders, obviously, I'm not gonna say it up front, yeah, we're gonna charge you. You know, they just you sign the documents because the closing packet on a lot of people, we've even if it's just five pages, a lot of people aren't reading every single line of it. And so they don't understand that from day one. But that is another huge benefit to you guys, to lending or being a business a partner with you guys, is that you guys aren't taking advantage. Again, all the little junk fees at closing, all the title fees or the lawyer fees or whatever, all that, on top of having the best rates, on top of being able to earn your way up to 100% financing and being charged non-dutch. I mean, it's just it's a really good experience with you guys. I've had a a really good time working with you guys, and the personal touch that you offer is uh, I mean, I don't it's gonna be very, very, very hard for uh for somebody else to take my business. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:25

But no, I mean, it's you're not the only one. Uh a lot of investors have come to me and said, hey, this this lender is charging Dutch. What does that mean? And you know, I obviously explain it to them and they're like, Oh, I'm not going with them. Like, and they they understand it right away, like, I don't want to do that. And from a lender's perspective, I can see if you know I only have a million dollars to lend out and I have to, you know, put a hundred thousand dollars to the side that isn't being used. I get it, you know, you want to charge interest on it because you you're technically lending it out because it's sitting there. But the reality is that investors that want to scale, that are trying to, you know, be profitable and and kind of you know making sure that everything adds up, like they don't want to pay that interest right away. You know, that that money can, like you said, for 60 days, can add up, and especially at a higher interest rate, at you know, non-Dutch, you know, paying interest all the way from the start. Like it it's a huge difference, and you know, it's gonna make make ways in the end. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

That's definitely one reason why Conventus is being one of the fastest growing harmony lenders in the nation for the little things like that, from what we talked about from the beginning of the podcast to where we're at with this whole Dutch situation. A lot of, I mean, a lot of experienced flippers, like you said, just don't know about it. They're just paying the whole interest. And you know, at as flipping, the margins are real important, profits are important because we take that to move on to the next flip and the next flip. So and conventus has really come a long way from when I met you uh a year ago or a little over a year ago or shy of a year ago. Um, and to see the amount of volume that we're doing, it speaks a lot on on Conventus. Now, going back to Mike, man, I gotta understand your persona and the way as from athlete to uh uh magazine door sales to where you're at now as one of the top

What "Turn Up the Hustle" Means to Mike Leiva

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

loan officers in Conventus by the volume of sales, even though you just started there, shows a lot about your character. And I got a question for me. I just I got a curious curiosity in mindset. What's Mike's favorite movie?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

Oh it changes from time to time, I won't lie. Um that makes sense. It's funny. Growing up, I it was always Coach Carter for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

Coach Carter.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:20

Yeah, it was Samuel L. Jackson. That was one of mine. Yeah, yeah. That was one of mine. Uh, but I would say over the last few years it's more business movies like The Founder, uh, or you know, The Wolf of Wall Street, obviously, is just a classic. Um but so I would say probably one of those two now. Why Coach Carter? Coach Carter, there's a it's about really just growing. I think as a person, as a person, exactly. And and just like the lessons that life hands you and and ultimately like where that's gonna lead you. And so I I always took that away that you know what, wherever you start, wherever you're at, I it just always resonated with me that you know no matter where you're at right now, like you can be somewhere else. You just gotta put the work in, you gotta you know, grind it out till till you get there, basically. And so that movie to me, just uh well well, it's a good great movie, just emotional, I guess, too. So, but uh it just spoke volumes to me when it comes to like, hey, you know what, if you put your mind to something, you can actually accomplish it, and you just need the right mentors, right leaders in place uh to show you the way of doing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

The crazy thing about coach cardiot, even though you need the right mentors in place, Coach Carter was cool movie because of the uh he set the standards, right? He set the standards, he made them sign the contract for the standards, and when it's time to do the standards, they don't want to abide by it, right? To to include the parents. Being held accountable is being held accountable, yeah, being held accountable, even the parents that want to abide by it because they screw that, let's just play basketball. And that actually got the team closer together. Um, that kind of resonates. I don't know, I was quite heading towards like the Hustle Academy, man. And Hustle Academy, cool, we know the standards are. Let's abide by the standards, let's play by the standards. Whether you commit

Final Wrap-Up & Where to Connect Online

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

to yourself being accountable, it's a lot easier to take the easy left and the hard right. And that's a that's a really good coach card movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

Yeah, I mean, I think accountability is one of the biggest things in that movie, too. Yeah, that I that I forgot to mention somehow. But no, I think like to your point, in life, in business, in relationships, you have to be accountable. If you're not, you know, you're not going anywhere. You're gonna be staying in the same spot for the rest of your life. You're not gonna, in my opinion, make any milestones, you know. And so I think accountability, communication, all that stuff is huge. And it just, you know, makes you a better person.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

The founder? I was gonna say you don't watch a lot of movies, really. That's uh zero.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

I'm a movie guy, I'm not much of a TV show guy, but I am a movie guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Well, man, this is really cool to have this experience. And we we've been talking about Gitch on this podcast, man. You're actually the first harmony lender we had on the podcast, and we're saving this spot for you, man, because you know, we use Comventus pretty much at this point, like I said, 99% of our loans, uh, because it's just all the rates are awesome, customer service is awesome, and all that that puts it together that why Commendus. Comment is it. But this is the Trump the Hustle podcast. Now, Trump the Hustle to me is not a motto, it's not a it's not a slogan. It truly is a way of life for me. What does Trump the hustle mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

Trump the hustle, I would say, to me, well, first off, it it means it means means Mike Giannis and Skylar Moon one. But to me, I would say it just means like grinding it out, you know, making sure that you're giving it your all every single second of the day. Uh no matter if it's the weekend, I mean you guys have hit me up on the weekend, right? Like my office is closed, you know, from you know five until you know the next morning at 9 a.m. or whatever, and on weekends, but I'm still answering calls. I'm still talking to my clients, I'm still doing whatever I need to do because every second matters. If I'm not turning up the hustle, you know, then I'm not I'm not doing what what I need to do to be my best self.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

We almost had a Bridezilla situation. So I'm at Disney last week. Oh, this guy's at his, I don't know, what we are selecting, something for the wedding?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:02

Uh I think we were, yeah, we were at our wedding walkthrough. I'm gonna be getting married in a little over a month now. And so for you and uh one other client, I I was actually doing a couple things. She was not not happy, but it was it was it was alright.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

Yeah, we'd already done like all the business, and then he tells me, and I'm like, dude, get off your phone. Like, don't even don't even be doing this right now. But yeah, he's uh he's a hustler. So yeah, uh again, certified hustler stand for you. You are for sure, for sure in my books and Mike's books a certified hustler, and we appreciate you and all this.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:30

She's not a Bradzilla for when she watches.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:33

Almost. Um if he kept going, we would have. Um but, anyways, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. We appreciate which what you what you do for our business each and every day. You really have you know helped us scale the business and grow, and we continue to look forward to uh excited to see what we can do. You know, our personal goals are to be doing 100 plus flips a year, and not only that, but more importantly than that is I have a personal goal of helping, you know, as many people as I can in the flipping side. Mike on the subject too and the wholesaling side, you know, we really do care about you know the the people that are joining our our business and joining our inner circle, and we really do want to see results for everybody. And one way we can help do that is by hooking them up with the right lit vendors and and you know, with you guys being a hard money lender, we know that if you guys are taking care of them, they're gonna be, you know, on a very they're gonna be ahead of where they could have been with anybody else. Like you said, there's other people charging three percent point three points down, eighteen percent rates, and you guys are really not only giving the best rates but holding their hand the entire time. So shout out to you, what you do in your business every day, and for taking the time to come out on the podcast. And so we really appreciate you coming out. For people who want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with Mr. Leva?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:34

So they can reach out to me on Instagram because obviously you guys know I'm good there. Uh, loans by Leva.rei is my handle there. Uh there and on TikTok. Um starting to post a lot more, so I got more than three posts now. Uh, but they can reach out to me there. They can reach out to me uh through our landing page on our website as well. Uh they can just fill out a quick uh What's the website? So it's gonna be cvlending.com, and you just go to meet the team, go to Mike Leva, and you know you can inquire to work with me directly. Um, or like I said, you can reach out to me on Instagram, uh, my cell phone, my email, that's all on on there. So you guys can uh contact me at any point, basically. Always available.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:13

Well, awesome, man. We appreciate it. It's been fun. Reach out to this guy for all your hard money needs. He will take care of you, him and the team will definitely, definitely take care of. But again, this is another great episode of the Turn Up the Hustle podcast. We appreciate you guys tuning in each and every week. We try to provide as much value as we can to make sure that you guys are doing what you need to do to get into the investing game and learning a little bit along the way. So if you are enjoying these podcasts, we ask that you like, subscribe, comment, do all the things, share it with a friend of yours who will find value out of this. And as always, as always, do not forget to turn up the hustle. We'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.