Private Money Lending for Real Estate: The Leverage Con Secret

Hey everybody, Toby Potter here, Global Integrity Finance. Today we are in Dallas at LeverageCon. I'm telling you, if you were not here today, you missed out. Over 500 people registered. I don't know how many vendors. But I'm going to tell you, we got the man that made all this happen. My good friend Brett Alazawi is here right now to sit here and tell us about his remarkable transformation from where he and I met in 2017 to where we are today. LeverageCon, NLE, all that's going on. We've saved the best for last because this is the guy that makes it all happen. Brett, thank you so much.

Wow.

For being here. Thank you. Right here, right now.

That's fantastic. What a great introduction. Thank you, Toby. Great to, great to be here and Appreciate your support. I know you remember meeting you on that cold day on a Saturday in Dallas.

Saturday in Dallas.

I couldn't believe— I didn't believe that it could be that cold in Dallas.

It was probably one of the record lows and the most miserable time I've ever had in my entire life at a trade show.

Wow.

If you remember right, the thing was, we get there, it's like 12 degrees, it's raining, it's cold, windy. The doors are locked. None of the vendors can get in. I don't know if you knew about that.

Nope, I didn't hear that story.

We finally get in, we set up our booth and we're there. And because it was so miserable and it was in Las Colinas, right?

Las Colinas.

Las Colinas. I remember that at the convention center. Nobody showed up. All the vendors showed, but—

Well, I showed up.

Yeah. Brett shows up. He's walking around.

I was a seller.

He—

damn, I wasn't the buyer. I was a seller.

So you want to tell the story? You want me to tell it?

You go ahead and I'll help you out if I need to.

All right, all right, all right, you correct me if I'm wrong. So Brett, we got our booth set up. We have only been in the space for 2 years, but we were launching, we were growing, and, uh, Brett comes around and says, hey, you know, what do you guys do? What are you looking for? And somehow we got on the topic of we're looking for capital, because right now I was funding everything out of my own pocket, and it was all local, was all in the Dallas Metro. He goes, well, if you need capital You need to go to this event called Pitbull in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's like in 2 weeks. I'm like, so, and I remembered, I remember this. I had heard about Pitbull and I think I'd even looked you guys up because we were looking for conferences. We were doing about 2 or 3 a month, but it was all local. And I think I'd seen it. So when you said you need to go to Pitbull, this is who has what we do, largest capital markets conference in the nation. I'm like, all right, tell me about it. We went into a little room. Moved into a little area. He said, here's what it is. Here's my American Express right there.

And I couldn't believe you gave it to me.

Yeah, I gave it to him right then and there. He even called Leonard.

I called him while you were still sitting there.

Hey, you got this guy signed up. Totally.

Terrific. Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly how it went down. And you came, you know, 2 weeks later. And I remember, you know, really, you know, spending a lot of time because I, you know, I said, this gentleman's going to give me his credit card. I gotta deliver. Yeah, I just, I said, let me just make as many introductions.

Oh, you did. Yeah, I was overwhelmed. And, and that was what was so, uh, unbelievable was we went to Pit Bull. What was that, probably been around 15 years at that time?

Yeah, I think, yes, I think so.

So you guys were well established.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, you had 200-plus vendors there. Uh, we show up, I'm overwhelmed. I had no, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I don't know. You're introducing me to every person that has any value. I'm like, holy shit, this guy's got to slow down because now I'm drinking from a fire hydrant.

Yeah, a lot of truth to that. Yeah, a lot of truth to that. Absolutely. I remember those days and, uh, yeah, it's, uh, we've come a long way.

Well, and I've told every person since that day, without you, we wouldn't be who we are.

That's, that's, I love hearing that. And, uh, it's very humbling. I appreciate that.

It launched us to the next level. We met Hornick. We met Tennyson, Tesh. We met every—

Torak.

Torak. Alpha One.

Alpha.

Yeah, we met them all.

Peer Street. Remember Peer Street?

Oh yeah.

People that aren't even—

Yeah, you brought something bad. But we did. We met them all. Yeah, we met them all. We were able to align ourselves and go to the next level because of you.

Thank you.

Because you came to Dallas, you came to that miserable— and the event was a great event. Just nobody showed up because of the weather.

Yeah, I think so.

But you were there. And you were, you, you, you took, you know, the initiative to, to come find us. And it was a true godsend because it did launch us to the next stage. And I have been one of your biggest supporters.

You have been.

Since then.

Absolutely. And here's the deal, Toby, and you've, we've heard this before. Um, there's an old saying that the salesman, uh, old salesman who was at, uh, uh, Ziglar.

Zig Ziglar.

He said that, you know, if you, uh, you can get what you want if you help other people solve their problems.

I love you said it because Zig Ziglar is my number one mentor. I met Zig, worked for Zig in mid-'90s, mid to late '90s. And that was the one thing that he told me, two things that's always stuck with me. Number one, if you want to get something out of life, all you got to do is help enough other people get what they want out of life.

You met him?

I worked for him.

That's— I never knew that.

Yeah, I worked for him for almost a full year and we were going around to different mortgage companies selling his product, his sales skills, and he would go with me. And so, and this is the second thing he taught me because I get so mad. We'd go up there and do this amazing presentation. Be 20, 30 loan officers in there and we do this and nobody would buy a product. I'm like, dude, or they would and then they would never perform. And I'm like, Zig, what is— what am I doing wrong? He goes, you're overthinking this. You got to understand, people will do exactly what they want to do.

100%.

I'm like, holy cow, that's, that's profound. How, how— and so that's why he was the man, because he had simple logic that, that resonated throughout the industry and it didn't matter what it was. But you help people get to where they want, but then understand they're only going to do what they want to do. And there may be an excuse, there may be a reason, but that's because that's more of a want than the glory. They're not willing to put in the time, the energy, and they want to be miserable. They want to be poor. They want to be less than. And so— so they're comfortable. Yeah, they're comfortable and they don't want to get out of the zone. But let's talk about your revolution because you wanted more out of life. You wanted a bigger opportunity than where you were. And look at you today, man. Yeah.

Thank you for saying that. You know what? I tell the story all the time. And you know what? When I was working with, you know, back in the day when I met you, you know, I started to make a lot of relationships, developing relationships. And I kept hearing, you know, what people wanted. And, you know, it came— COVID came.

Yeah.

And when COVID came, it just totally took out the conference.

Oh, it killed us.

And we didn't really know what we were going to do. And, you know, I had to I had to find something that I could do. I had to make a decision.

Yeah.

And, um, I decided that it was the right time to, um, go out on my own and create a conference for the industry where they can, I can fulfill the needs to solve the people's problem. The problem was at, at what everybody's problem was in, in, in, in finance is finding, uh, borrowers, clients, clients, finding, buying investors, brokers.

Yeah.

And I said, you know what, if I can do that, I can scale, I can cut the fat.

Yeah.

I can make it work. And, um, we started off light. You came to my first event. We were in Co— we were still in COVID.

Mm-hmm.

I had, uh, had an event scheduled in San Diego and they, we even went on a reservation. Yeah.

Uh, yeah.

We had to get outside the city limits and they're like, we don't have to follow the rules in California.

That's right.

And about 3 weeks before I got a call and they said, lo siento. So I said, what am I gonna do? So I found the next, you know, the closest thing I could find was Arizona. So we went to Arizona and they told us that we can only have 150 people there, right? Because of, because of, we had to have our restrictions and all that distance. So, but we, we kept growing and, um, we kept evolving and, um, now the way, the way it's going and the way we're, where we're at, I don't think that we have, uh, We're— what do you call it? We're one of one. Yeah, I feel like we're one of one.

I feel like we're— you're—

with anything.

Yeah, you're a unicorn.

I don't have any competition. No, my only competition is myself.

Yeah.

So we're different than everybody else. We don't call ourselves a private lending event. We call ourselves a Build, Flip, Rent Finance Expo. What does that— is that— what does that mean? Well, I mean, anybody that's using private money to fund their deals, That's who we're marketing to and we're bringing in. And we like to bring in the new people to let them know, hey, there's, there's a whole lot of lenders nationwide that are doing creative finance.

Oh my gosh.

That they don't even know about.

I didn't know about it. Go to a bank.

Exactly. So we, we feel like we're one of one.

The people you brought in and I'm telling you, Brad, I've been to I don't know how many shows I've been for the last 10 years. So 30 to 45 shows, and today you're number 17 that I've interviewed, and I have learned more today about the evolution of our industry than I've learned in the last 10 years.

Wow.

Because, and here's why, because we're in a different situation than we were pre-COVID. Interest rates are higher, valuations are higher, and our clients, our brokers, and our investors need something unique. And there's individuals here that you brought put in together that have gone outside the box and created a platform that works, scales, and builds and changes lives.

It does. And I can't keep up with these people. They come, they come, and they— I don't want to say they come and they go, but it's just so many.

It's—

you can't keep up with it. No, you can't keep up with it. It's constantly changing.

So let's talk real quick about— you have two different, uh, conferences. You have the NLE, which is National Lenders Experts. Yep. Right. And then you have the LeverageCon, which is today. What's the difference between the two?

Great question. So NLE was our initial brand when we started connecting private lenders to capital, to capital partners. That's where the main focus was. There wasn't a whole lot of going out and getting the borrowers. They would show up, but we didn't really— it was more of a lender-to-lender, peer-to-peer kind of stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. We started LeverageCon and we change the model to bring in more borrowers, letting them know, hey, you're buying real estate, you want to, you want to use other people's money? Yeah, this is where you need to be. This is where the money is. So we've, we've been growing. I mean, our first event was in Miami and we had like 1,200 registered. We did Fort Lauderdale. That was like 700. We did Miami again, got another 1,000. But we've, we, we've scheduled the events and we've had really good timing with, with during times where there was a lot of finance leaders in, in town.

Yeah.

In Miami or in, in Dallas. Like today we have in our event, but tomorrow and the next day there's another multifamily event in town.

Right.

So we're getting a lot of carryover. Yeah. So we've been lucky with that.

They're already in town.

They're here.

They visit. Yeah. Both of them and we're not having to fly back and forth.

We're 100%.

So that's perfect. That's, it works out great. It's great.

So they would never usually come and, and vice versa.

Yeah.

So I'm happy to have, you know, hear that they've, got value out of that.

Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's, that just brings so much more value that you're bringing to us so that we can capitalize and maximize our ROI on the events.

100%.

Yep. What's next?

What's next? Well, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna enjoy the next 7 days. I'm gonna go back to California. I'm gonna pack up my Yukon and pack up my dogs and We're gonna drive to, uh, Chicago for the summer.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna work on our next event, which is September 7th and 8th in Nashville.

Nashville.

Music City.

Yeah.

At the Omni. I've been asked for years, let's do Nashville. I want to go to Nashville. I've never been to Nashville.

You've never been to Nashville?

I, I love country music.

Wow.

And, um, I love the, the, you know, the culture of, uh, you know, everything about country. And I'm like, you know what? Let's do it.

Yeah.

And we booked it and we've had great response. I'm gonna looking for another, uh, big crowd already, you know, be hitting numbers, you know, surpassing numbers. So I'm thrilled. And, um, and after, after that we're gonna do another turnaround and be in San Diego. Yeah, go back to Torrey Pines. And then, uh, who knows? But at this stage in my life, and, and the more we, you know, uh, keep doing events, the more proactive I am. And I'm already looking at 2026, 2027. I wanna— I, I don't like to waste time.

Yeah, I like to pull the trigger and get it done, get it booked up and running.

And it's— you'll have— you got goals and you look at them and it keeps you— it keeps you solid and it keeps you focused.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, being here, great honor. You know, you and I are really tight, good friends. But I'm going to have you tell— give a message to your brother. My brother. I needed him here. I was looking forward to seeing Brian.

Yeah.

Shaking hands with the man who is just remarkable. And for anybody that's listening, if you have not gone and seen the movie Warfare, you're missing out. True story, live action. His brother Brian Alzawi is in that, helps directing, helps choreographing.

Ray Bidoza, who you've met.

Yes, the director.

The director was at our first event and I called him up and at the time he had a film production company and he was just getting started. He was doing, um, he was trying to start the film production. He was doing consulting on the military, consultant on films and television. And at the time, he wasn't really working that much. And I knew that, you know, Brian was going to be speaking at the event, right, talking about, you know, leadership and things like that.

It was amazing to hear him talk about the leadership. And we— Chandler, my son-in-law, is big about that with the Navy SEAL formats and platforms. And Brian just, he just takes it to the next level.

Yep. So Ray was there. I, well, we were gonna go. I called, I said, Ray, why don't you come? Brian's gonna come with us. You can help me work. You can help give out badges. And you know, the, the Oscar, there's already Oscar buzz for this film. And everyone, you know, every time I talk to somebody and like, oh, uh, heard about this movie. I'm like, well, you know, Ray. Yeah. Gave you your badge in Arizona and, and Dallas.

You met the guy.

In San Diego too.

Yeah.

So, um, you've met him. Oscar-winning director.

Yeah.

I think it's not, it's not a long shot.

No.

No. So I'm looking for, I mean, they've changed their lives. So Brian's doing great. He's, uh, he's working with the St. Louis Cardinals. Uh, just did a road trip with them to, uh, Washington.

Now he's been doing that for a decade.

5 years. No, 5 years.

5 years.

No, he's been with the Cardinals for 5 years. He worked for the Texas Rangers in their, in their minor league system for I think 3 seasons.

Yeah. Uh, but, uh, but I knew he was kind of a coach mentor for them. When I first met him, he had told me that he had been doing that, which was also amazing because you get like great seats. Yeah, all the time. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.

That's the problem. You can't pay for tickets anymore. Why can you? Once you get the, um, the milk for free, you know, he's like, well, once you get some tickets. Yeah, right. It's hard to buy tickets.

So, but you're always showing that. Hey, we just finished the game. Yeah, right. So, so yeah, I was really disappointed when I had asked you, hey, is Brian gonna be there? Like, no, he's up in Washington, right?

He was in DC.

Yeah, DC. And so I was like, but Brian, I'll tell you what, buddy, you're going to see this. You're going to know that we're still thinking about you. I still got the coin.

Yeah, you gave me the coin that day.

I showed it on my— when we went to the movie, I showed the coin.

That's a special thing.

It is. It's an honor. And it was very heartfelt when he did give me that. And it'll always be a part of our relationship, our friendship, and the legacy that he has established between you and I.

I can't say anything, but Brian's got some pretty awesome things that's in the cooker.

Yeah.

And having it between him with him and Ray.

Yeah.

So, you know, every time, every time, um, you think he can't do anything more, you know, something new pops up, something new and, you know, more incredible pops up, uh, more opportunities. And look, opportunities come when you, when you're out and about, you're out, when you're, when you're good after it.

Yeah. When you're a hustler, when you're moving and you know, making things happen, things come find you.

You stumble upon opportunity. You just stumble upon greatness. That's right.

It's the way of the universe. So what about you? What about any more fights?

Well, I was active. Here's the thing. I like to compete, you know, in jiu-jitsu. I like to, and I do it because, not because I love to go out there and the thrill of combat, it's because I like to Set goals. Yeah, it's so important. And when you, when you sign up and you go on the website and you sign up for the World Championships, and as soon as you click that Pay Now button, it's on. Yeah, and it changes everything. And right from that moment, you know that you have to eat right, you have to get good sleep, you have to set your, your schedule, you have to be, have, um, um You know, I hope there's editing in this.

Discipline.

You have to be disciplined.

Yeah.

So it's been a long day, Toby. Oh, please bear with me. My, my brain is, is oatmeal right now.

Yeah.

But, but I love that feeling of, of looking at every day, every week. I start my week off and I look at my board and I put my goals for the week, or I always put what's going to happen, what I'm looking forward to. My number of attendees.

Yeah.

How many I'm going to have. You see, and you look at that every day and it just, things become real.

Yep.

Yep. And you put on there LA Open Champion, World Champion, Pan Am Champion. And you, you look at it every day.

You manifested it.

Manifested. So it works.

And Zig Ziglar taught me that going back to our boy, was that when you write stuff down, it now becomes real. As long as you leave it up here, you can change it.

That's why journals are so important.

But you write it down and now it's real. And then you see it, you read it, you live it, you believe it.

Real.

You manifest towards it. And that's what's so powerful.

Um, I didn't understand that for the longest time.

Yeah.

And one more thing about Zig Ziglar, I can, I can listen to him read a pill bottle.

Oh my God.

Why?

Because he's, he's so infectious.

He makes you feel good about yourself.

He does. He's so inspirational. He's got the unique voice.

Yeah.

So he's one of a kind, you know, his voice. And here's the thing. So he's, you know, 90% of his stuff's all moved over into Audible and I listen to it a lot and, and I'll get something that somebody else narrated and I'm like, no, I'm not. I gotta go back to the 1990s stuff when it was him reading it in the studio. Yeah. Uh, and so, because it's just not the same feeling when you have somebody else narrate his stuff.

Yeah.

But yeah, he's infectious. He's, you know, he just inspires you. He just, you know, just lights you up internally. And you know, at the minute you're done listening, you can become better. Sure. You can become better. You just have to want to fight through it. You know, it's just like you said, you know, I'm going to sign up for the world championship. I've made my payment. Shit, now it's real.

Now it's real.

Now I got X amount of time. I gotta get conditioned. I gotta get ready. I'm gonna get my ass kicked.

Now it's written down.

Yeah, now it's written down. Now it's valid. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Otherwise, it's just an idea.

It's just a dream, a hope, a wish, whatever else you want to label it into. So, hey buddy, I'm gonna see you in Tennessee.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to add for the listeners?

No, I appreciate the support and, uh, this is great and, uh, let's keep— let's together we can, uh, The sky's the limit.

Let's move the needle.

We keep spending time together. We keep together. We're going to— good things are going to happen.

Always.

I'm going to get you on board with Bitcoin.

Yeah, no. Brett, appreciate it, buddy. Love you to death, buddy. Love you too, Brett.

Thanks so much.