Alan Cowgill:
Yeah. That was the whole goal is when they came in I wanted them to know that I was professional and that they would be, you know, taken care of with my company. You know I dressed appropriately, I had a suit on and I – when everybody was there, or at least I thought everybody was there – I'll tell you something funny here in just a second that happened to me, but I walked to the front of the room and I turned off the slide presentation of the homes. I called it "The Parade of Homes" actually. And then I booted up the slides that I put together, there was 37 slides that tell the story of what I'm trying to do, it shows how their money is secured, it tells them the company and the background of the company and how I can pay them back, which is what they're really interested in.

And one of the funny things that happened to me was the postcards I sent out were bright pink in color and I was up here talking and halfway through the presentation I see this couple come into the back of the room and they're all excited and they've got this pink postcard in their hand and I – you know up front I thought oh, darn, they've missed it. And most of the presentation – and they aren't going to be interested. Like I said, this is the first one I had, so I didn't know how this was going to work out. And I'll be darned if those folks weren't the first people to step up and loan money.
Jeff Adams:
Man, that's great.

Alan Cowgill:
Yeah, so I just thought that was kind of interesting. They missed part of the presentation, they still jumped in. So anyhow, that was my first experience at doing a luncheon and it worked so well I did another one the following month and I had 12 people show up and a couple of months later I sat down with pad and pen and added it up and I had a million dollars to go buy houses.

Jeff Adams:
Well, that's great.

Alan Cowgill:
Yeah, that'll change your life, buddy. You don't have to depend on banks anymore, you don't have to depend on credit cards; you don't have to depend on lines of credit. You don't have to depend on hard moneylenders. You are in control. And the neat thing about this that I realized after the fact is that you can – this money gets recycled. What happens is someone will loan you money and let me just share a number of lessons learned right now if that's okay, Jeff.

Jeff Adams:
Sure, sure.

Alan Cowgill:
They'll loan you money and you buy, fix and sell a property and they get their check back; they get their principle and their accrued interest back and they're sitting there with a check. Now obviously they wanted the interest; that's why they loaned it to you to start with. And they'll call the office up and say hey I got my check back. Didn't want my check back. Wanted the interest. You know, how do we get this money back going again? And they'll walk in the door of the office – had it happen to me last week. Lady walks in she says hey, I got my check back. I didn't want my check back; I wanted it out there earning interest.

Now we don't touch the checks. What we do is we have the private lender take them and they'll either wire or they will get a bank check and take it to our closing agent and they'll make it out in the name of the closing agent, not out to us. So we don't touch the checks coming in or touch the checks going back out and we go – we have a "closing to buy" and a "closing to sell." And we let those – the closing agent disburse and handle all the funds. So that was a big lesson learned that you can recycle this money so when you buy, fix and sell a property your next loan is setting there ready to go again.

Jeff Adams:
That's great – I'll tell you this, Alan, I can relate to that because I have two lenders right now, private lenders, and they call me every week and they say Jeff what do you got, Jeff, what do you got? Because they know I'm going to pay them. They're making the interest every month and it's a win-win.

Alan Cowgill:
Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. You know that was a big lesson learned that, you know, I would – if you go to a bank or a hard moneylender you gotta fill out all this paperwork, you gotta send in all this paperwork, you gotta wait and wait for the phone to ring till you get a approved or you hope – or you might get turned down. But – and then when you buy, fix and sell a house you gotta go through that whole pain again and again.

Jeff Adams:
The other thing, too, Alan is that when you're buying a rehab, that's a major red flag with these banks, too, because they just don't understand. You know they think it needs a new kitchen, new bathrooms, landscaping and that's a big hassle as well.

Alan Cowgill:
Oh, you aren't kidding. Let me tell you a sad story that I ran into. I had a duplex that I wanted to buy and one side didn't have a furnace in it. Now as a rehabber to me that's a great buy because the seller is going to sell it to you dirt-cheap and they don't want to put the furnace in it they just want to unload the property, which is what was happening. And the bank went in back when I was doing business with the bank, they would – they went in and appraised the property and then they went back and I've got a nice line of credit and you know I know unfortunately a lot of people – imagine if you don't, you know, what you go through. Well in my case with this property it took the bank four and a half months to make up their mind.

Jeff Adams:
Man.