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Get ready to find your recipe for a successful real estate lifestyle from America's top experts here at Greenlight REI with your host, Lance Edwards.

Well, hello everyone. Hi. This is Lance Edwards. Welcome to this edition of Greenlight REI where we teach you and you learn the recipe for the successful real estate lifestyle. I'll tell you right now, there's nothing more important to a successful real estate lifestyle than raising private money. This is number one question people ask, this is the number one false belief that people think they need all their own personal money. That's what holds them back and getting started. And we're gonna be breaking those myths down with an expert here today. And he's a special guest who's committed his entire entrepreneurial life in real estate to raising private money and specifically for real estate. And he shares his secrets with others. His name is Mr. Alan Cowgill. I've been watching Alan for many, many years. I dare say for decades. He's been around for that long teach and doing this for himself. And since 1995, Alan's done hundreds of real estate transactions for himself. Anybody uses private lenders to fund these transactions. And, and what's unique about Allen's approach, he looks for a win win situations where the seller, the lender and the eventual homeowner moving into the house can all win. And he's, he's not a realtor, but instead he considers himself, he's a private, private investor like all of us listening here, I'm sure today. And in the process, he's created very innovative systems and tools and personal training that put him squarely on the cutting edge of real estate investing education. He's been, like I say, been doing it for quite a long time. And I've asked him to speak today on this topic of investing for the beginning investor and finding private lenders his own study system called Private Lending Made Easy, which you're going to want to check out. And he shows both new and seasoned real estate investors how to find private lenders for their own real estate business and their own real estate transactions. And now check out this statistic right here. Over his span of his career through his education, business at his live events, his students under Allen's guidance at the live events, have raised over half a billion dollars in just the first 24 hours. That is darn impressive, Alan. I want to hear about that a little bit here in a while. He's also as he's author of an ebook on private money and we're going to explain how you can get it for free matter of fact, go ahead and teach you tell you right now how you get it for free. We're going to put it on the show notes with the podcast. I'll give you the, the URL to go to for that but you can get his book on private money which you're going to want after this, after this interview. So with that, Alan, thank you so much for joining us today on Greenlight rei.

Well thanks Lance. I appreciate you doing this for everybody. Yeah, this is awesome. I'm tickled about this. So thank you very much.

Well, I'm excited and for, for myself and for our listeners to hear not only your story but your, the secrets you're going to be sharing. So I, I always want to start off. Alan, come on story. What was your story? How did you get started? How did you get into, into this private lending thing?

Yeah, I, well, I was in the corporate world. I was climbing the corporate ladder was with five different companies and the second company I was with had me go out and do systems for the company to, to get rid of chaos and streamline the company. And in every company since then they tapped me to, to do implementation programs along the way. I was, the last company I was with is Honeywell 2000 person plant aerospace and all those flash and lights that you see go over in the night, that's, that's, that was my department and I had 60 folks working for me at that time. Also had cockpit lights and so I did acquisitions in Europe. I moved plants. I on the implementation programs. I had five different implementation programs that I put into place for these companies. The last one was a multi million dollar, multi state multi plant implementation program and is actually one that I recommended to the president to do and it doubled their pre tax earnings and tripled their cash flow. So I was rocking. I was rocking. But in my personal life I was living paycheck to paycheck like so many people were and, and I was struggling. In fact I'm a little bit embarrassed to tell you, I, I had an old beat up car that my mom gave me and so one night on the first date with that car, I, I went to the end of the end of the date and hopped out of the car and her, I was walking her up to the door and I heard something. I turned around, look, my car burst into flames. And yeah, that's, that's what everybody does. Lance. I, you know, you know here, here's this manager great, doing a great job and all of a sudden here he's got this old beat up car and you know, and every morning when she woke up, there's a burnt, charred mark in the parking lot. Can you imagine half the date and, and standing there watching a fireman put your car out? I mean, you know, you talk about first and last date, that was it. And, and you're right, I mean, when I speak out, you know, to different, different real estate groups and I tell them this, you know, you'll hear somebody in the back room say hot date, you know, and, and just embarrassment. So I, I needed to change my life. I just didn't know how. I looked into franchises and they take money. I couldn't do that. I did decide to invest though. I took my whole federal tax return and plunked down on lottery tickets, lost on every ticket, just, you know, just trying to, trying to survive. And so I even, I even noticed that my aunt and uncle had worked in corporate America all their life and when they retired, they retired at poverty level. Just about. They were struggling. And I thought, man, is that the way my life is going to, going to end up? And what happened was I couldn't sleep one night and I got up at 2 o' clock in the morning and I turned on the TV and I started a channel surf and I hit a real estate infomercial and I watched it and I thought, maybe this is the answer to my situation. And I picked up the phone and ordered that home study system and it changed my life. I was enthralled with real estate. First year I had two properties, the next year five, then 18, and like you said, hundred. So that's, that's how I started, that's how I got going.

So, and at what point maybe get a little bit ahead of the story here. At what point did you get introduced to private lenders? How did that, how did that, because you're talking about, you didn't, you didn't have your own means of doing it. So how did, how did private lenders enter into the question in the equation here?

Well, I'm, I'm coming up through my real estate education and I hear this thing about hard money lenders and private lenders and stuff like that. I thought they were the same, I thought they were interchangeable and they, and in doing that, I, I, I found out that I could borrow money from my mom. And so I, I sat down with mom, told her about it and she had come into some money when we sold the farm. Dad passed away and they sold the farm and she put the money on the bank cd and so I, I told her about What I did, and I, she started to loan me money. That was my first private lender. But going back on that, I, I, I had, I had, I saw private money as a sporting event, which might sound a little bit odd, but I went out for high school football, and I had, and I was doing the fundamentals. That's what the coach teach me, how to block and how to tackle. And then what he did was he gave me a rule book. And in that rule book, it said, if you're going 10 yards with the ball, you get a first down. If you go into getting the, you know, goal line, you. You get a touchdown. And I realized that that's the way it is with, with private money. And that's how I, I really took off. At that point. What happened was I hired an SEC attorney to research my state. And what had happened was prior to that, I was at a, at a boot camp I wasn't teaching back then. And somebody got up on stage and said something about private money. And I went to the back of the room when he, he was done, and I asked him some questions. And one of the questions I asked, is there any rules? And he said, no, it's the Wild West. You can do what you want. And yeah, I cringe, too, a little bit on that. So I thought I'd, I'd make sure. At the time, I didn't have private money. And so I thought, you know, I'd make sure. So I hired an SEC attorney and in my state, and I thought he was going to come back, just like the guy told me, the speaker, and the guy, the SEC attorney says, no, there's rules. You got rules that you got to follow. And so I, along the way, over time, I had him research every state in the United States on the SEC programs and in Canada, and that's pretty darn expensive. And so when, when I got done, he called me up and he said, I want to thank you. And I said, why is that? He said, I'm moving into my new house, and you just paid for it. So, so. But what that did was it set me apart from all other real estate investors out there that are talking about private money. In fact, a lot of them that I've. That I've known over the years had no clue what that. So we got to have the rule book, and that's, that's what sets me apart with, with private, Private money. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Critical. Critical. Critical. And so I want to, I want to go back a minute here, because we're using the term Private lender, private money. So let's, for somebody, maybe it's fairly new. What, what is private money? That define private money. And what type of transactions is it used for? Let's, let's get, you know, some solid foundation here, if you don't mind. Alan.

Yeah, with. Well, it's pretty simple when you, when you look at it, it's, it's. You're borrowing money from another person. You see, what happens with hard money lenders and banks is they set the rules. But with private lenders, I got to set the rules. Okay? So when I, back when, you know, I talked about my mom a second ago, so when I figured that out with her, she was my first private lender. And then later on that year I had a second private lender. But the structure is, is fairly simple. You, you talk to somebody that has some money and, and you ask them if they want to get a high rate of return. And I, I correlate this to bank CDs. So what happens on a, on a bank CD, which is where my mom started out, and you know, she drove 45 minutes to get it, get her, get a little bit of money, higher money on a bank cd, she wouldn't take care of the finances. And you know, when she had to, when dad passed away. So on this, on, on your question is, is you ask somebody if they want to loan money and then I don't take the money. Some, some people, I've had students take the money right up the front. I don't do that. I wait till I have a deal and then I don't take the money to me. I have, I have the money go to the deal. Okay, and, and you know, just like the bank doesn't give you money early, so that money goes into the deal. We agree on, on the interest rate with the terms, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. And, and then on different options that I, that I do now. And so it's really, really simple. You just borrow the money and then when you, when you give the money back, you know, to them, when you. Let's, let's do it this way. When you sell the property, what I did with mom was I didn't keep the interest going in, in the middle because that interest, interest rate, you know, they want us to, to keep giving them the interest. And here if we don't have a deal, you don't want to do that. And it also exposes them to where, you know, something happens, then they're exposed. So I wait till the Next deal, I crank up the next deal and then put the money in, in back in the thing. So go, we go to a formal closing and you know, go from there. So that's what we do.

So really the, I think it's the key distinction. You said it's very simple. What distinguishes private money from hard money, bank money, is you create the rules, not otherwise. They create the rules. It's their rules. Yeah, I think that's a great, great distinction. Great, great distinction.

It's huge. And like I said before, here is, is. I, I thought when I was coming up that, that they were interchangeable with hard money lenders. Okay. And one of, one of the points I'd like to make is that prior to Covid, I, when I would go around and speak, people that are hard money lenders would have a banner up that says private money. And that, that started like right before COVID And I thought this is, this is, is not good because a private person, private money is one category. And here the hard money lenders putting up private money. Okay. And I felt that as a, as a misnomer, I, so it's one of the, one of the things that I, I saw out there and I, what I'd like to do is make sure that, that my students know the difference between hard money lender and private lenders. Cause I sure the hell didn't know it when I got started, you know, so.

Yeah, that's a very important point there. That's a very important point. They think it's all the same. No, no, it's the rules, you know, and, and by the way, the hard money lender is going to want some points up front and an application fee and, and all these stuff that comes with it. That's totally usually non existent private money deals. I do. It's. You get paid out of the property and that's, you know, those are the rules.

Yeah. And I've had eight, eight hard money lenders over the years, you know, start now. And yeah, they're expensive. So.

Yeah. All right. So we define the private money. You make the rules. So I want to share a little bit about your story about maybe back in your career when you have a lot of people have intimidation about approaching a private lender, who do you approach? How do you approach? Can you maybe share a story about early on when you mentioned your mom, maybe was approaching her. How did you approach your first private lender? What was the arrangement?

Well, the, the. I'm talking about the second private lender that I had.

Okay.

What happened Was I sat down at the kitchen table just like I did with mom, and I, I told him about my, my business, you know, and the real estate investor, and, and he was really interested on getting private money. And we just had a nice talk. I explained the, the foundation, the rules and how it works. And, and what I did with the money. And he was in. And what happened was, here's something that's really cool that happens in this business is his wife loaned me money, his son loaned me money. So one private lender will bring you to two can bring you four. And it was, it was amazing to me. So here I, you know, all of a sudden I had more private lenders just by asking one person, you know, that's excellent.

So you didn't go in with a big pitch deck.

I know some people do that, you know, and, but, but that, that just wasn't me. I just went in and I sat down and I explained, I explained the program to them about private money.

And Alan, what was his. What was the attractor factor for him? What was it, what was it that he really liked, you know, doing with you versus, I don't know, doing anything. Product he could buy on the, on, on the street. What, what did he. What was the advantage that you offered him? Do you feel what was.

High rate of return? It's always the high rate of return, you know, I mean, you know, on a bank cd, you know, you know, sometimes they're really pathetic. It's like a double or nothing. A few, you know, a couple years ago, you know, now it's up about 5%. And, and so we just add a little more on that. And, and people go for it because they want to get a nice rate of return. And they trust you. The bottom line is they trust you.

Right? Well, that leads to the next question. I think that's a big part of it. So their money, they've made the investment. You don't take the money up front. You take it, I guess it goes through escrow. It goes into the property at a closing. Also at the closing. How is their money secured? What's the protection that they have, as you know, a private money lender to.

You, What I do is I do the same thing as a bank loan. Okay? So when I'm, when I'm talking to somebody, what'll happen is, is they might 80% ask, is my money secure? 80% will ask my. My money secure. And you can't say yes on that because that would be a violation of the sec. And people don't Know that you can't say guarantee. They can't, you can't say low risk, you can't say secure. They always, so they'll always ask something along those lines. Okay, those three things. And so what I do is I, I tell my students to do this and this what I do. We all know real estate is risky, so I can't promise you that your money is secure, but I can tell you that your money is secured with a mortgage. A promissory note has insurance, lender title insurance, and a disclosure statement. Those, those five things. And it's the same thing that the bank gave you when you bought your home. That's what I tell mortgage promissory note has insurance, lender title insurance and disclosure statement. And one of the things, really.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

One of the things I do with my, with my students is I, the SEC attorney I talked about, I had him create a fill in the blank disclosure statement. And folks that buy my system get that for free. If they go to an attorney to do it, they, you know, it, it would be 1500, 2000, 500, according to my attorney to do that.

Yeah.

So that disclosure statement is, it just shows the risk and benefits of having private money. In fact, that document by itself would encourage somebody to loan you money.

So it's, it's, so, yeah, it's the same paperwork as if a bank, it's the same protection. It's the same paperwork as if a bank would do same steps, same steps. And I think, I think an important point is one of the things I find sometimes, and I like to hear you comment on this, so you're, you're borrowing money from this individual. Okay, they, they're going to get paid back. We're going to talk a moment here about, you know, how they get paid back when they get paid back. But I think a distinction is are you paying them back personally or is the property paying them back? I think there's.

Property's paying them back. The property's paying them back. So, you know, I, I go out, I got a good deal, I need to fund it, so I'm not going to the bank. And with the intent of giving, you know, having a profit, and so we go ahead and do the deal and I do different, different types of deals we can talk about here in a little bit. But you know, we send the money into closing. Once closing's there, we send the money into closing and, and then we start giving them interest. In some cases, some cases, we don't give interest till the Till the, we sell the property. You know, so we have, I have three different ways that I do that and works really great. And then when we go to closing, we let, we let the private lender know so he knows it's coming up. And, and what they want to do is, is like I said a little bit ago is, is they want to keep the money in the gap. And I don't want them to keep it in the gap because I don't have a property at that point for the money. Okay. So I pay them back and then I crank up the buying machine and I get another deal and that I put that money back on a different deal. Yeah.

Because. And they, and they tip. They want to keep rolling it over, right? They want to keep over and over.

Yeah, yeah. They don't go, they don't, they don't go away. There's only, there's only one, one time where they, they take the money where they don't take the money anymore. It's because when they have a life change. For an example, I had, I had a, a lender and he was saving up money for his twin daughters to go to college. And so I was with him for a few years when the, when the daughters were ready for college, he had, he had to take the money and he didn't, he didn't, you know, return it. So, you know, so that's, that's, that's.

You can be proud of that, Alan. You help fund the man's kids college education.

Exactly.

Real estate.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

All right, now you've mentioned, and I want to kind of open up here because you've mentioned open it up a couple times. People always want to know how are these deals structured? I think you've mentioned you've got different ways. And I know you could do a whole seminar on this, but do you have some examples you could talk about, you could share about typical. Or maybe even atypical. I'll let you decide. Or creative type of ways doing these private, Private money transactions.

Yeah. Well, let's start out with the one with mom on a bank cd. I, I use that same concept for, for deals. And so what happens is what, what happened with mom is she wanted to, she wanted to get all the principal back when I sold the property. Okay. And so I, I gave her interest payments every month just like she, she had with a bank cd and she used that money for, for groceries. And so that's one of my, one of my programs. Another one of my programs is amortizing just like a Mortgage. I got a couple of these going right now to where it pays off over time. And at the end they own the property. So nice thing about that is they, they love it. And you know, I'm, I'm the bank and if you will, it seems like so it just go, you know, buy the property that way and then, and then on the property it, it goes down over time and at the end they, you know, they're free and clear. The other one I have, which I really, really like is they get paid when I get paid. And what I mean by that is on, on buy, fixed, sell properties, I cut a deal, somebody funds the deal, and the people that fund the deal, they get paid when I, when I sell the property. And a lot of times I'll give a little bit higher interest rate on that one. Like the amortization would be lower. The, the one like my mom and the bank CD would be like, if you're doing different interest rates would be in the middle. And then they get paid. When I get paid, I pay a little bit more because it's a quick deal. You know, they go in there, they might rehab it in a month and a half or two months or three, whatever it is, and they get a higher rate and then I go look for another property. So it's a win, win, win. Yeah.

So are you using, are you using private money to not only buy but to sell property as well? Are you acting as the private money lender on some of these transactions, the property that you hold on to?

I haven't done much of that, no. No, I like doing it the other way.

Yeah, you do it the other way. Okay. And so if on a, so on a buy, fixed, sell, you're buying a property, it's going to be empty, it's going to be fixed up and sold. So there's, I thought, what I'm understanding is there's no monthly payments being made there because there's no cash flow being generated by the property. Right. You're paying them when you get your money, when you sell it, you pay them then.

Yeah, there was a, there was a time when I quit Honeywell and I had a chunk of money and I put that on, on properties. And so, you know, I got to correct that to make sure, you know, that I had, I had money myself on a 401k and you know, started to, started to use the money that way on, on a self directed ira. So I thought.

Yeah, a whole other way. Yeah, whole other way right there.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So when you These relationships you have with these private money, they could span, I guess, years. They just want to keep the money rolling it over into, into Allen's projects.

Definitely, definitely. I mean, it's a better deal for them, you know, once they trust you, really goes simple. And they bring in other private lenders, you know. Yeah, one will bring you to. I mean, it's really cool.

So the question people want to ask is, so how are you finding these private lenders? How do you, how do you find them, Alan?

Well, what, what happened was I, when I quit my job, the bank quit me and I, and yeah, you know, surprise, surprise, I actually, I thought, I thought they would stay with me, but they didn't, so I quit my job. And so what I did was I created a 37 slide PowerPoint presentation so I could tell people what my program was all about. And I called a meeting And I had 18 folks show up. I didn't know if I was going to be in an echo chamber alone, if I was going to have 50 folks, but I had 18 folks show up and I get up in front of them and I told them about my dreams, my aspirations, and then I showed them my PowerPoint slides and then I gave them lunch. I gave him a free lunch. You want to talk first and eat second? Don't nuts that up. Okay, so talk first, eat second, and. Because when they're back at the back table, what, what happens is, is I go around and talk to people. And when you, when you're putting together a program like that, what happens is the conversion rate skyrockets because they get peer confirmation. Listen to what I just said. Peer confirmation. And it goes through the roof. And so when I had that first luncheon, I, I did it. And afterwards money came in and 30 days later I, I did another, had 12 folks and more money came in and I started a role in Private money just with those, those two events. And it was very simple to go on in and just do a PowerPoint presentation and have them eat. And then they, and they're there because they're in there. They're there because they're, they're looking for an investment and they're looking for a high rate of return, and I give them a high rate of return.

Very smart, Very smart for someone that was back in, you know, go back to your days or just getting started. And, and by the way, I understand the corporate background. That's, that was, that's my story too. Pretty much what you were telling there a moment ago.

And it's good leaving it isn't it, it's good when you leave it.

That's exactly right for somebody that's looking to do their first project, their first deal, and they may use private money. Listen to you speak private money. How, what, what suggestion would you give them about how to go approach someone? They're probably not going to be ready to go out and do a, you know, PowerPoint presentation to 18 people.

How would you recommend my students on my students showing them, you know, how to get, how to get private money? Well, just like in my live event, you said we get private money in the first 24 hours. And so, and, and I birthed a ton of multimillionaires throughout the years. A ton. So, so I have a system to where the first thing I do is I have them write down people that they know. I want them to write down at least 18 folks or 20. And, and, and just make a list. Just make a list and not overthink. People that you don't think have money. And there's many, many times people think somebody doesn't have money and the next thing you know, you talk to them and they got tons of money. So, so I asked my students to, to make a list and then I give them a script on, on what to say to private lenders. Okay. And then I have them make calls that night. And, and one of the things that happened is, is that phone is really heavy for a lot of people to where they don't want to do that. But once they pick up the phone and call somebody, the other person is really gracious about it. It's, it's amazing how, how shocking my students are on day two to where they, they, they had this great conversation with somebody they hadn't talked to for X years or whatever. And, and it's startling to them. And so they come back and, and what I do the next day is, is I, we go through, put everybody on a microphone and have them share what they, what they did the night before. And the, and the results are stunning. Results are stunning on how much money people. People got. I remember, I remember my second boot camp was out in Mesa, Arizona and I had a lady that was, didn't think she could do it. In fact, she got to the place where she's almost flailing that she didn't think she could, she could do it, wanted to do it, but didn't, didn't think she could do it. And, and she was broke. She was broke. And she came back the next day and she had $5 million of private money and then she didn't know how to spend it, so she was flailing on how to spend the money. So. So yeah, I've got, I got another student that I talked to less than a year ago and she came to a RE event and told her story and she was there because she wanted to thank me for what happened to her. And she went to my event in Texas a few years back and she didn't have any money going in. She. She was spending everything she could to just get to Texas. And so she did the homework like I just explained here a second ago. So she did the homework and the next thing that happened is her mom loaned her money that night. The next person loaned her money, next person. And, and she was shocked that it worked. That, you know, but that's what it does when. With my system. And so it worked. And so she, she ended up now a few years later coming to a RE event and this last year and, and she is now doing a $22 million property.

Wow. Wow, that's awesome. What an awesome story. And a comment you made, a phrase you used a moment ago is that that phone gets heavy. Right?

Yep.

Especially on that. I imagine on, especially on the first call. Right. The first time. Because the human brain manages all this nightmare scenario and, and you show that is. That's just brilliant what you're doing with them. It's brilliant.

Yeah. The thing, one of the things I do do is on the, on the script is, is I give them a basic script to use and then they can tailor that the way they want. And then we practice before. Before they call anybody. And that is, that's a gold mine. Because I find out that some students write a book that they can't remember. You know, we want to keep it terse. All right. So you can remember it. And they craft it to fit. Fit them. And so some of them that use. Use mine. Other ones like, like to change it a little bit and we critique it and I let the crowd critique the person. Okay. And so it's a great learning experience for everybody and, and power. So I just have a step by step process that I put together and. And it works. And it works. I just took what I did in business and, and morphed it over into the boot camp.

So it's certainly not limited to single family. You mentioned a 22 million dollar purchase. Yeah, it's all real estate. Right?

Yeah. I got about 35% of my student base are doing commercial stuff.

There you go. Okay.

Yeah.

So are they using, are they using Multiple private money lenders, in some cases on the same transaction, same property.

Yep, yep.

All right.

I had another, I had another guy and it's kind of funny, his name's Alan. Like my name's Alan is that he wrote, he wrote me a beautiful testimonial where he said I, I, I got my first million when I was 30 and I'm now 33 and I've got multi million. So, you know, I get testimonials that are just awesome. You know, they come to the boot camp, they go back and do what I say and it, it works for them.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And the impact you're making, you know, changing their, completely changing people's lives, the use of something many of them, they know they could do. Probably before they met you, they didn't even know.

That's 100 true. Yeah, they didn't know. In fact, I was in St. Louis a while back and got, got done speaking and the guy came back and I wish he'd have told me this at the start, you know, because I brought it up. He said, I want to shake your hand because I, I've got 75 properties, all thanks to you.

That's fantastic. That's fantastic.

I just, it's like every place I show up anymore, somebody's got a gotta thank you and a story which is really a blessing.

That's very gratifying. Yeah, that's very gratifying. So you've, you've had this, and you have this career, you know, for yourself, for your family, but for these now your students and the many lives you impacted there over all these years, introducing them to private money and giving them the tools. So this question I have here, kind of wrap it all up. Alan, Looking back over all this time, is there anything you would have done differently? Is there anything you would have done differently?

Yeah, I get private lenders quicker. What I didn't tell you was after I got my first two private lenders, you know, I was doing bank stuff. And then I, I, in year two, three, mom, you know, came in and I got another private lender. But then for four years I was, I was just doing bank loans and corporate America, you know, going, working in corporate America and behind the scenes I was, I was, you know, doing my real estate business. And then when the bank quit me, when I quit the company, I had to do something different. And that's when, that's when the world changed because I had to go, go do that and, and man, what a, what a great blessing. That, that was. So finding private lenders earlier and getting a good foundation of an education, I was very fortunate. I bought that for first home study system. And then I had this newspaper ad that I, I saw they had a meeting on real estate and I went to that and I bought a home study system. And, and then this guy took me under his wing and helped me with the first, first deal and, and just doing, just doing deal after deal. And then after I, after a while I went to a boot camp a couple years later and that really changed, changed my life because I got a tremendous education, you know, learning from some other person, somebody I'm sure you would know. And, and so after that, I went to a bunch of them. I went to a bunch of boot camps and then over the years I started doing my own, you know. So, yeah, that's where, that's where it works.

Do it sooner and faster. Sooner and faster.

Yeah. No question about it. No question about it. Get a good, good foundation, good education and go for it.

Yeah, that's excellent. All right, well, Alan's got a book we're going to make available to you, wants to give to you. As for listening, today is very gracious of Alan. And Alan, tell folks about the book that is private money book that you're going to have. What does it include, what does it cover? And by the way, you're going to get it on the show notes@greenlight reinvesting.com greenlight reinvesting.com so, Alex, tell them about what the book covers.

It's a great little starter book for folks on, on, you know, putting their toe in the water on, on private money and, you know, get, get good feedback on it. So it's, it's just an, a good e book for folks to, to go through and start to make a decision about, you know, getting private money. It's glorious when you figure it out.

And it's an essential tool, guys. It's essential to, I mean, you have. Unless you want to keep going to the banks and, you know, and doing that route, I guess, you know, but that even that runs out, you're going to run out at some point or life changes are going to take that option away from you. Like, I had the same thing. Alan had the same thing. What'd you say when the business quits you, the bank quit you or something like that. Or something?

Yeah, when I quit the job, the bank quit me, you know.

Yeah, that's just the way it works. Or they're going to, they're going to limit Number of loans, they don't like the number of loans you have. And you know, none of this comes along with private money. None of this.

Well, the thing of it is people go on into a bank or hard money lender and, and you got to jump through all these hoops and all that, you know, and it takes forever and they, they don't get back with you and da, da, da, and you chase them, they lose paper, all that. I mean, I can do a private loan almost in a day. I mean, you know, just boom, it's easy.

Yeah.

You know, you just got to follow the rules. You know, you gotta be, be cognizant of the rules out there, the rule book, and, and it's simple, you know, just follow the rules and go from there.

Well, I got one final question for this. This has been fabulous, by the way. I want to thank you so much for sharing your, your wisdom over all this time in real estate. And my final question, is there any other bit of advice or one other thing that question I haven't asked. I should have, I should have asked that you'd want to share with our listeners.

Well, one of the, yeah, one of the things, Lance, that, that, that people ask is, is interest rate. And so going rate right now is, is 5%. I told you, you know, a couple years ago, it was double O, nothing. It was really, really low. Yeah, What I do is I tell my students to go to the local bank and look at the one year bank CD rate. One year bank CD rate. So it's 5%. Then they tack on, let's say 3% or maybe three and a half, maybe four. But don't go crazy because obviously, you know, these bank rates fluctuate. And so you don't. What I see some lenders or, you know, real estate investors, you know, they'll go out and offer somebody 15%. Well, you know, it's a year 20. It's, it's exorbitant because when the rates go up, they got to go up too. They could be in the stratosphere. So I've seen that over and over again. So I recommend bank CD, local bank CD, 3%. So if it's 5% right now, which it is, and then 8, 8% would be what I'd offer the private lender.

And is it floating or is it a fix over the term?

Fixed over the term. Good question. Got it.

Good. Got it. All right, Alan, this has been fabulous. I'm just thinking about that half a million dollars. No, the half a billion dollars. 500 million, million dollars that people raised over your career on a, the first phone calls. How much impact do you imagine that's had? Good gosh. Gallon.

I mean, it's, it's gigantic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's just, it's just amazing. It's amazing. Seeing the people that come in on the second day of the boot camp and share their experiences is just amazing. I mean, some of the people are almost teared up that they can't believe what, what happened, you know, and jumping for joy. They're tearing up because they're happy, you know, so it, and by the way.

When they're, when they're raising this $500 million, are they putting up their credit report? Are they putting up their financial statement? And none of that, none of that.

None of that, none of that, none of that. They go to the person, they ask for money, the person sends the money into closing. Pretty simple.

This is, I mean, everyone, it's, it's, it's, it's an essential, essential tool in your tool toolkit for real estate and the one you most likely take out first when you're in your acquisition mode. And this gentleman right here, Alan Cowgill, has put together the system and making available to you is a free book on private lending, is the ebook. You can get it on the show notes. We'll have the transcript, all the notes here for this, this podcast, but greenlight reinvesting.com. greenlight reinvesting.com get the book, check it out and take it from there. Get involved with Alan. Get him part of his home study system. He's mentioned, he's got his events. Maybe get you, you still, do you still put him on the phone, Alan, to go raise that money.

You can. Yeah, yeah.

All right. I mean, yeah, there's your, there's your way to start right there. Get involved. This gentleman right here, Alan, Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Great job.

It's been a treat. And, and everybody out there just, just jump in and, and go for it. You know, get the rules, get the rule book and go for it. Yep. Thank you.

All right, everyone, it took till the next issue. Make your life a successful real estate lifestyle and take care, everybody. Bye bye.

You've been listening to Interview with the Experts with Lance Edwards. Let us now blatantly and shamelessly bribe you toward creating your own real estate lifestyle by offering you a whole bunch of free stuff. Go to greenlight reinvesting.com and get you some free stuff. And this session's show notes. That's greenlightreinvesting. Com.