Private Lending For Real Estate Investors with Kevin Amolsch

Josh Wilson
 Alright, fellow deal makers, welcome to the Deal Scout. On this show we're going to talk about deals ranging from live lemonade stands all the way to SPAC and everything min between. We want to have conversations with dealmakers to bring them on the show to learn him. Right. The main purpose for you, the audience, is that you hear a deal and then you connect with our deal maker and do a deal together. Mission purpose of the show, put deals and dealmakers together. With that, we have Kevin on the show. Kevin, welcome. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Josh, thanks so much for putting this together, having me on. This is a fantastic platform that you put together. 

 Josh Wilson
 Thanks man, I appreciate it. We are having fun and we love deals. I love deals. I had to create a show that allows me to get my fix, get my head of deals, and explore many different types of opportunities. With that, what kind of dial do you do, Kevin? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 We're all over the place inside of real estate. We're not doing lemonade stands or anything like that, but we're definitely buying and selling real estate, funding real estate. Our primary focus is helping real estate investors funded their projects. We have, we do some high leverage short term lending. It's perfect stuff for repositioning some commercial value add or doing fix and flips or new construction projects, that kind of thing. 

 Josh Wilson
 Okay, got it. So Kevin, who are you? Right, I heard what you do, but who's Kevin? Yeah. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm the founder of pine financial group. Out of high school, I went into the army. I wanted to learn how to play Fraser tag instead of going to college. I did that, played Fraser tag for three years and decided it's pretty hard to make money being an infantryman in the army. Although I highly appreciate my time, I decided to pursue other solutions, other opportunities. What I learned when I was in the army, as I was reading books on investing? Where do I put my small amount of savings account I had when I was 21 years old? Right. Was real estate. Real estate. More people hold and make wealth in that investment than anything else. I started focusing in on that and ended up buying one house or two houses every single month while I was in college, working a job I was calling motivated sellers as I was walking between my classes on campus and trying to set up appointments to put deals together. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm a deal guy too. So that's how I got my start. What I really love about the real estate game is the financing side. That's where all the action is. That's where how you negotiate your deal, that's how you put it together, all the structure on your offer and all of that comes down to how you're going to fund it. I really honed in on the financing side. And started buying financial. That was in 2008. We've grown and we have a little over 130,000,000 in private capital that we loan out to real estate investors. 

 Josh Wilson
 Awesome, man. 

 Josh Wilson
 What year were you walking in between classes making phone calls? Because I want to imagine which kind of cell phone you were using during that time. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, dude, it's crazy. I can't remember. It was my very first cell phone. I didn't have a cell phone in high school like everyone does now. I think it was a Nokia or something. It was before the one that flips right when the flip phone came out. That was fantastic. It was before that. So this was 2001. I remember so clearly because 911 and I was still min the National Guard at the time. That was when I was really heavy into school and all that. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Where did you go to school and what did you go for? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, I got my degree. Min Finance from Metro State University. It was not a university at the time. It was just a four year accredited college then, but Metro State and Denver. 

 Josh Wilson
 Okay, right on. All right, so you went into the army. Thank you for your service. Really appreciate you volunteering to do that and fighting for our freedom. So thank you. When you got out, you're like, man, I want to make money. Let's study money. Let's go to school, study money. You had this idea, you had the phone that probably had 2000 minutes a month or whatever, remember? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Right. 

 Josh Wilson
 You're like, I'm going to call motivated sellers. 2001. How in the world did you find motivated sellers? Because not a lot of people were doing this in 2001. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, I mean, this was back when they had newspapers. I would pull the newspapers and have all the classified. I call all the fizzbos and furbos for sale by owner, for rent by owner, anybody that wasn't going to live in the property, I was calling them. I also called foreclosure lists so you could get a hold of those, and a lot of times you could track down phone numbers on that or the lists even more now come with phone numbers. So I was calling foreclosures as well. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 What was your pitch back in 2001 in between classes? Let's hear it. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Holy cow, you're bringing me way back. I don't even know if I can remember that. But I'll tell you this. I got my scripts that I used when I was calling from a book I bought off the shelf. I went to Barnes and Noble, bought a book off the shelf, and I just read that and it told me exactly what to say and I just said that. It was something like, hey, I'm interested in your house. Can you tell me about it? This is if I was calling a Firbo or fizzbo, they start telling me about their house, and I needed to keep these calls pretty short. I interrupt after how many bedrooms and bathrooms or whatever, and it's like, Josh, fantastic. Sounds like a wonderful house. Why would you even consider selling this thing? That would draw out their motivation, and depending on how they answered that question, I knew whether it was a lead or not. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yes. 

 Josh Wilson
 Awesome, man. Went through this process since then about how many houses or how many deals do you think you've done? What kind of dollar volume, or give us an idea of how far you've come. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, just on the buy and sell side. I was an active sponsor or investor, probably $250 on the lending side, helping other people fund their transactions. We're well over 2000, so I think we've had over 2200 deals closed now, so a couple of thousand? 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Now, today you probably have a different cell phone. Are you an Apple guy or android guy? Which side do you play on? Tesla. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Now, gosh, I get made fun of all the time for this. I'm an Apple guy, but I don't upgrade my cars or my phones are min. I'm pretty frugal. Just recently I had to upgrade my phone. I had an iPhone five until this Christmas, and now I got the 13 mini. Yeah, definitely Apple got it. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, I love it, man. I'll keep a phone I try to keep a phone until it's no longer functional, and then I give it to the kids or something like that, or drop it in a pool somehow. You got your start buying houses, right? You said you had a small bucket of money that you made during the army. You're working. What kind of job do you have? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 At the time when I got out of the army, so my first job was in collections. I worked for Chase Manhattan in the call center. And that was freaking terrible. Yeah, I couldn't handle that. I lasted three months at Chase, and I got an offer at a bank in Colorado. First bank is a pretty large bank out here, so I started working at First Bank, also in a call center, but on the lending side, so there's no outbound calls. It was all inbound, and I was helping people with their mortgages and car loans and credit cards and that kind of thing. The beautiful thing about that job Josh was inbound, so between calls, I could study. That's when I was getting my homework done, because when I was at home, I was buying real estate. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool, man. You go through this process and you didn't have a lot of money at the time, but you're making these phone calls. You're like red Carlton sheets, no money down and stuff like that, right? I had the one with the binder and the cassettes. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 I loved it and it was great. All the friends were spending all their money on booze and such. I was splitting it between real estate training and booze. You found the first one and you're like, I got something on the hook. I don't have the money. How did you do that? First deal? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, my gosh. My first deal was a disaster. So this was a foreclosure. I was told that short selling was super easy to do. I got a foreclosure, Min, a town in a neighborhood in Denver, and it was through a friend. His friend was losing the house to foreclosure. So I called him up. Heath, let's do the deal. Well, I got some terrible advice, and that advice was, before you negotiate this short sell, you really should get control of the house. Get the deed, have them deed the house to you so that you can't sell it to anybody else. Go negotiate the short selling, get the approval, and then you could flip out of it. So fantastic. I got the deed, but it cost me three grand to get that deed. The bank said, no, we're not accepting your offer. I was literally in the middle of remodeling this house. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I was sure this was going to work. Three grand started the remodel, which didn't cost us anything because it was a mild sweat labor. I ended up losing the three grand. The problem was, I didn't have three grand, so I had to bring in a partner for that. I lost his money. So that was a pretty terrible experience. Now, I understand a contract controls a property. All I had to do was put it under contract with no earnest money, josh house, nothing. I would have been in a much better position. But that was the first one. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. Let's unpack this a little bit. 

 Josh Wilson
 Right? 

 Josh Wilson
 You could have got an assignment contract. You could have just tied it up for give you enough time to research, maybe sell the contract, maybe work out something min lieu of or something. The person who gave you advice, have they ever completed one of these dial? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I don't know. People looked up to him. He was at one of the investor associations. The guy everyone follows around purpose to be doing all these deals. This name is Bill. Bill. This advice, I don't know the answer to that, but I looked up to him before this transaction. 

 Josh Wilson
 How much did that cost you the first deal, in terms of live? If you had to round out the exact dollar that the first deal hit you, what was that like? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I mean, if it's just out of pocket, it was that three grand. The remodel this story, we could totally impact, because when I got to the house to start my rehab, he left his dog behind. His dog was literally in the garage, barking at me. I was scared to death of this thing. It was like pit bull or something. I don't remember. But that was terrible. We had all the stuff in the house. We got it all. We were unloading all of the stuff out of the house to start through model. We were demoing the cabinets and that kind of thing. It's just my partner and I sweat equity at that time. We didn't spend any money on the rehab or lost it. 

 Josh Wilson
 The first gig you got into, you brought in a partner, an investor, right? You lose his money on the first gig or her money, whatever, and you said it was a catastrophe. Right. Freaking Bill maybe gave you some wrong advice, but now you're like, what should I do? Go back to work. Keep working. Figure that thing out with the investor. But why did you keep going? Why did you go past the first deal? My first deal was pretty good. I made 14K on a good assignment of contract. You had the opposite story. What made you keep on going? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 There's no quit. I'm from Denver. I'm a big Bronco fan. John always says Plan B is there is no Plan B. So this has got to work. We're going to keep going until I can make it work. I knew it would work. I've talked to enough people and I've read enough about it that I knew that there's a way to make it work. I just made some mistakes and I could see those mistakes. Right? It's pretty obvious. Not that one. That was like my first kind of creative deal where I called the seller and I'm negotiating directly with the owner of the house. I had purchased my first home when I was still in the army. Moved into it with a roommate. My roommate paid my bills for me and then I moved out of it and kept it as a rental. Now, that first tenant was a disaster. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's a whole other story. My very first tenant, my very first eviction. I did see the appreciation on the property. I was making cash flow up until they decided to stop paying me. I had seen the light, I guess, right. I knew this would work. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, you felt it. You had a gut instinct. Right? I think after interviewing a thousand entrepreneurs, investors and just people, there's this thing that I have a gut instinct and I'm just going to keep on fighting for it, keep working towards it until it materializes or whatever Bob Rocker would say, what gave you that vision? Where did that vision come from? Because you could have been a career army guy. You could have been the best in the world at collections. You could have been the best in the world just at working for a bank. What gave you the vision? I got to build this for myself. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Look, it's your why as many interviews as you've done, I'm sure you've heard this probably a thousand times. It's, why are you interested in doing this? Why are you interested in this success? And for me, it was my dad. I mean, I lost my mom when I was nine years old, and I have a brother and sister, and my dad raised me and oh my God, I would not be here without him. He's not as smart with his money as maybe we are. Min this you and me. He couldn't retire, and here he is, 70 years old, working his a** off, and I owe it to him. He wasn't 70 then, but I owed it to him. I knew that I was going to have to take care of him. My goal is to buy him a house free and clear so he doesn't have to work. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 So that was my wife. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 As you were sharing this, you were getting a little choked up. You have a unique story, losing your mom early on, and then your dad, who's just working his a** off to make it work. What kind of industry or what kind of work was he doing? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, he was an entrepreneur as well, but he was more of a solo guy, like the technician. You learn about Min, the emotion. He's working inside this business. He was a one man shop. He programmed computers. This is dos. He was writing programs for Dos, if any of your listeners know what that program is. So he was doing that. He was working evenings and weekends, and he was at all of our soccer games and all of that. He made everything. He made it work. 

 Josh Wilson
 What's your dad's name? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Ray. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super shout out to Ray and all the hard working parents out there who work their a** off to help us get our start. I've failed many times, been bankrupt, min venture capital, private equity, wiped out. I've had to go back to mom and dad, and man, I hope to be able to do that for my kids when they get older. Super cool that you would have that motivation for dad as you were going through this process. Right? You got your bumps and bruises. 2001 was not a great year because the 911 and such, perhaps, but on the buy side, it was probably really good. Did you come across a lot of good opportunities during that time? What made you think to double down? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, look, I was 21 years old. I didn't know what the h*** I was doing. When you look back, that was the.com bubble in 2001. You had the.com and you had 911, senior, but real estate values actually went up. That I don't remember feeling it, but I don't think that there was tremendous opportunity then, like we might see now or what we did see in eight, nine, and ten. I'll tell you could create that opportunity. You don't need the market to help you with that. You can go out and find that. And so that's what I was doing. I was being very direct. I was hanging my bandit signs on the weekend. I'd run out of the car and I'd dress it all black. No one could see me. I was so embarrassed, right? I jump out and I'm hammering stakes into the ground and stapling my we buy houses signed to it on the freeway. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Off the freeway, on the freeway, every intersection down the highway, right. Just put in the work, put in the effort. And I created those opportunities. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool. I started in just real estate trying to list houses and I was like, this is not for me. I couldn't stand ups. Well, this house is pink or blue. The emotions of that until I found I started calling on the bandit sign saying I'm in real estate. What exactly kind of house are you looking for? I started working exclusively for the real estate investors, the people we buy. I was knocking on doors and either I'm going to list the house or I'm going to flip it to one of my investors or pick it up myself. But I had no money. I was just trying to do it for other people at the time. Those bandit signs, I still see them. They still work. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's right. 

 Josh Wilson
 20 years later, they still work. Out of all the deals you've ever done, right. Your first deal was a complete disaster. You had some tenant issues and you've seen a lot of dial for yourself, over 200 and then thousands for other people. What has been your favorite deal you've ever done? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, gosh, my favorite deal. I'm pretty excited about one I just did. Now I don't know how it's going to turn out, but we bought a good year center, so I'm excited to see how good year as a tenant is going to be. Their lease is coming up, so we're going to start the process of renegotiating that lease. If not, we're going to redevelop that. So that could be fun. My favorite one was my first seven figure deal. We assembled four parcels together and we built a townhome complex. There was 14 townhomes right in Sloanes Lake in Denver, and we sold out of that very fast. So that was fantastic. I was in and out of that deal, made a million dollars. A little over that and just my first real successful development. That's probably my favorite. Interesting thing about that one is I had the fourplex tied up on a lease option for ten years and then I exercise my option, assembled the parcels and then built the complex. 

 Josh Wilson
 Super cool. From carrying a gun and struggling, what kind of gun did you carry? Like what was your MoS in the army? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 It was Charlie. I carried an M 16, but were morteman, so were to hang it. Copy that. 

 Josh Wilson
 From doing that to a Nokia cell phone, making calls and slinging deals, you struggle financially. Even your father said struggle financially when it comes to breaking a family pattern. Right. The shift of yourself becoming successful when you didn't have that, as your father didn't pass on financial success and business principles to you. Right. What was the hardest thing in that, and how did you do that? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's an interesting question and the way you worded that, because I think my dad did pass that on to me. He was putting books in my hand. Oh, gosh. Like sales books and training books and motivation books. He was putting those in, and I was reading these in high school, and I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't for him. He was always super motivated and very into self development. He just never really had the success. I'm not sure where the disconnect there was, but he definitely was a huge part in my trajectory, I guess you could say. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, I stayed right at it, man. As you read the books, applied it, what makes you think your story is different from the guy next door who worked his a** off, read the books, went to the seminars? Why? Success over here versus maybe not Bob next door. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Why is one person successful and another is not? It's such a fantastic question, and I feel so incredibly fortunate because I don't have any issues with self motivation at all. I can get up when my alarm goes off and I can go to the gym when I'm supposed to. A lot of people can't do that. Why? Some people can, some people can, I don't know. What I can tell you is it comes back to that why. Again, if you're having trouble with that motivation, then your why is not strong enough or it's not in front of you. If you have a strong why and you don't think about it, that's going to be an issue. Freaking post that thing on your desk, on your wall and put it behind you. I think that would be one step that somebody could take that would separate them from someone who is not successful. 

 Josh Wilson
 Do you mind if I ask a tough personal question? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Fire away. 

 Josh Wilson
 Is dad still with us? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yes. 

 Josh Wilson
 Awesome. 

 Josh Wilson
 Okay, good. Did you ever accomplish that Gmail of getting him a place? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm so proud to say this. Yeah, he's got his own place, free and clear. His car went out not long ago and bought him a car. He's got a car that's paid for. He's got a house that's paid for, and he's freaking living a dream. He's out everywhere. I've never seen him happier than I'm seeing right now. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, I'm sure. He's so proud of you. Good job, man. Really cool job. As you're doing this, right, you accomplished the goal that you set forward like in your y what happens when you need to elevate your why or expand on your why? Because you made a bunch of money, you bought your dad some cool stuff. Now why keep going? Why more? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 There's more wise, man. There's more wise now. There's a big believer in helping kids. A big passion of mine is helping underprivileged kids. The ones that their parents don't give a s*** about them. And I didn't have that. So I feel so incredibly lucky. That how I grew up. These kids don't have that same opportunity and the same chance. Whatever I can do to help support that, I'm a big believer in that. Now I have a whole team, I got Pine Financials, got a team of eleven and I'm helping support them and their families, right? Let's keep this train going so that we could help more and more people. 

 Josh Wilson
 In your building. You started out Nokia between classes but at some point you caught traction in your business. Pine Financial, what was that pivot point where it went from just pure freaking grind deal by deal, min the hunt, right? But at some point you caught traction. Now you have eleven people. What was that pivot point? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yes, it was 2008. I was starting to lend money in 2006 and I had a ton of success. I was a millionaire before I was 30 and then I lost it all. I go into 2008 and my partner and I call her my partner, but it was really her company, she decided to split and she was scared of the market and she wanted to teach real estate instead of do real estate. I'm a deal guy, right? We're dealing. I decided to start buying financial and this was a fantastic time because the market was collapsing and people were running and that's when you go in. I was definitely going in at the exact right time. And so just grew immediately. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. Wow. 

 Josh Wilson
 I hit a pretty rock bottom in 2007 and were in speculation, right? Instead of running towards it, I ran away from it. I swore on my left pinky right, like I'll never do this again. Here I am doing real estate again. When people are running, that's really when you should be paying attention. I think Buffett who says be fearful when people are greedy and greedy when people are fearful or something like that. Probably butchered. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That sounds right. 

 Josh Wilson
 Sounds like someone smarter than you made it up but you stuck in it. Even partners pulling out and everybody was running. Like 2008 was a catastrophe for real estate. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Lost my. 

 Josh Wilson
 You lost it. You said, I'm sticking to this. Why and how? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Because I knew it would work. Like we talked about before, and then we're starting to see proverbs that you could rent for one $200, selling for 60 grand. Why wouldn't you do that? People are nervous and afraid and I'm buying. Look, my credit was wrecked at that time. I had no credit when I got started, so I learned how to acquire properties without any credit or money. So I already knew that. Once my credit went down and I was negotiating short sales from my own proverbs and trying not to lose them into foreclosure and all of that, I saw these deals and I'm like, I got to buy these. That's when you start bringing in your partners and your resources and whatever you can do to keep going. And that's what I did. 

 Josh Wilson
 When you're driving down the road sometimes I don't know about you, but I like to take different paths because I'm always looking for a deal. You see the house and you're like, I should go knock on the door. Do you ever go knocking? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I don't do that now, no. My focus is so much on Pine Financial and we're doing outbound marketing, so we're getting all the leads coming in. So that's really my focus. Josh, when I was getting started, I would knock on doors all the time. Heath I definitely have that experience. I'm just not interested in looking for the sounds so arrogant. I'm not trying to sound that way, but deals come to me a lot more now than they once did. 

 Josh Wilson
 Heath, man wow. This is such a great lesson for deal makers, right? The hunt is fun, but man, can they get tiring and brutal. When it comes to the inbound, the motivation seems to be higher and better than an outbound, right? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Sure. 

 Josh Wilson
 This is just my observation. I might be wrong. How in the world did you create this inbound engine? Because when people are coming to you, they're coming to ask for help, ask for support or whatever. How did you do that? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Gosh, it's just like when we started raising cloucapital. It's like a snowball, right? It just keeps going. You get that. You call it momentum. We just got a deal two weeks ago. I got an attorney to call me that had a note. The note was when you add all the principal and Internet and fees and everything, it's a $292,000 principal balance on a $407,000 house. I bought it for $190. It's because the attorney is like, I don't know how to liquidate this note for the estate and they need to get out right now. Called me and live. I'll take it. I mean, there's no real diligence. I know what CRE principles amount is. I know what the proverbs is worth because I know the area. So it's really am I buying. What I'm expecting is all I had to do, and I can get that done in a day or. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Two. We closed on that and tried to negotiate with the owner of the house. Want to keep her in the home, but we need to get that snow performing, and she's refusing, so we're starting to foreclosure. It's sad, but we're going to end up with all of the $290 to $1,000 $1,00,000 profit for me, or we'll end up with the house. 

 Josh Wilson
 Looks like a win. Do you do a lot of note buying? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Well, I'm in the note business, right. Because we originate loans. We're not doing a lot of note buying and selling necessarily, but this is the second it's only the second time I've done it. I bought another house. We're into it for about 700,000 in a resort town in Colorado, and I actually bought a judgment on that one, and it was a third position judgment and took control of the house. That way. This don't come up as often unless you're actively looking for them, but people know that I'm in the industry, so they all call me. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 All right, so explain the third position judgment for people listening in who don't really understand note buying and the opportunities there are, but also the positioning of it, like how to get in the right place, right time. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah. Interesting, Josh, because this one is a fun story. There's a $220,000 1st mortgage with Wells Fargo. There was $150,000 HELOC home equity line of credit in a second position. There was a $64 million judgment in third position. That just means it was recorded after the two mortgages. I was going to try to lease or borrow or buy the redemption rights for this judgment. I didn't even want the judgment necessarily. I just wanted the rights to redeem the property after the Wells Fargo foreclosed on it because you have rights to the property in that third position you could redeem. We called the judgment, the attorney for the judgment, and they're like, we don't even want it. We'll sell it to you. We offer them 80 grand, and they said yes. I bought a $64 million judgment for $80,000. Now it's not worth $64 million. It was probably worth $80,000. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 The only asset this guy had was the property, but he was a developer way back in the day and lost a lawsuit, a $5 million lawsuit, and he decided not to pay it. It just started accruing interest, and they kept meeting the judgment. Penalties and interest is accrued over the years, and it went up to 64 million. That's how I got to that number. What ended up happening in this specific scenario is he cured his Wells Fargo foreclosure, which means he brought it all the way current. There's no more foreclosure. Now here I am dealing with him directly. I'm going to foreclose on your man because I bought this to redeem. I didn't think you were going to cure it. Do you want to pay me to keep the house some amount? Do you want to move out? What do we do here? He ended up moving out, and I paid him his homestead rights there's $110,000, I think, in homestead protection in Colorado. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I paid him that and he deleted me the house. We remodeled it, and we ended up keeping that one as a second home for us. But that's how that one went. 

 Josh Wilson
 You went into this, 220 on the first, 150 on the HELOC, and he probably maxed out that HELOC, right? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I assumed so, but he didn't. It was like a small amount live, 40 grand or something. We didn't know that because all you see is a public record, which was 150. 

 Josh Wilson
 Okay. How much at the time of you guys buying the judgment, what was the property worth, do you think? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 1.1, maybe a little bit more. 

 Josh Wilson
 Wow. All right. This judgment got racked up, and the attorneys are going, we're never going to connect on this, right? We're giving up on this. Did they come up with the 80 or did you come up with the 80 live? Where did 80 come from? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm running the numbers, thinking about I couldn't get in the house, I couldn't see it, and I know somebody was living there, so I knew there was going to be a pretty substantial remodel, especially in this town. It's very hard to get labor. I was trying to give a real strong cushy budget number, and when I ran the numbers, I don't remember what it was. It was like 100 and 2130 thousand. It's kind of where I was comfortable paying, so I just offered lower expecting a negotiation there, and they said yes. 

 Josh Wilson
 Heath so before renovation cost, what were you all in on this property? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 There's 220 plus about 40, and then the $110 for the I don't know. Do you have a calculator there? No, I had Shlomit barthattorneys fees and little over 400,000. 

 Josh Wilson
 Awesome. For a property that's worth, over a million after renovation, that's pretty sweet, man. I think a lot of people would see the third position. Holy moly. And probably not even go for it. Too complex, too hairy. Right. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 It's the perfect position to be in because you're the last one in line to redeem, so you have the strongest chance of acquiring the property. That's the perfect position to be in. 

 Josh Wilson
 Explain that. All right. Maybe that just went way over my head, and I probably should know this. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yes, sir. I mean, every state is different. So this is in colorado. In Colorado, there's no owner redemption. Redemption means a right to pay off whoever the foreclosing, bank, or lender was, pay them in full, and then you have rights to the property. So in Colorado, there's no owner redemption. The owner is not allowed to pay it off after the foreclosure. But the lien holders are. There's eight day redemption for every lean holder. After Wells Fargo $220,000 1st forecloses, and if they're the winning bidder at the auction, which they would have been because there's just too much debt there, then Wells Fargo second can say, no, I want the property. Here's your 220 grand plus fees. And now it's seconds. Now there's eight days more. After that, it goes to a third position. Now they have the right to redeem. Now I got to pay off the first everything that the second paid for the first, plus everything that the second is owed in full 100%, and then I own the property. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 If there was someone behind me in a fourth position eight days, they would have to redeem me. Even if there was, it in this case, at least not been recorded. Even if there was, my full payoff was over $64 million, so there's no way I would have gotten redeemed out. That was the perfect position to be in, had my strategy work, which was just to redeem the property, and then I wouldn't have had to pay that $110,000. Homestead right? Yeah, he cured it, which blew my mind because it was like, a $40,000 cured number, and he came up with that somehow. 

 Josh Wilson
 Cool, man. 

 Josh Wilson
 Wow. The different types of deals that I learned about on this show, and there's no way I could implement on all the things that I heard. It sounds like that is a really interesting strategy. You have to know your state's laws. Right, but that seems like a pretty interesting strategy. Look at the clerk, county clerk or whatever and look for judgments. Find something with a massive judgment on it. Low ball it scoop in, right? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's exactly right. 

 Josh Wilson
 Holy moly. The property itself has to be valuable enough that making its way through the different positions. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah. You have to understand what position you're in, where your redemption rights are in this scenario, Josh, if the second chooses not to redeem, then they would just get wiped off. Right. They would get nothing. The only redemption number would be that first. There's always a chance that you could redeem for much less if a lien holder in front of you chooses not to. Obviously, you would not take that chance. You would budget in everybody redeeming all the way through the chain. And that's what number you would use. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 If I picked up your iPhone five before you upgraded and I saw the song that you played the most over the last 20 years of you having that one phone, what song would that be? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm a big kitty. Chesney. Fans would have to be in that genre. I'm a country music guy. I actually rode bulls when I was in high school, so I got into country music Heath, so it would be a Kitty Chesney. 

 Josh Wilson
 What's the biggest belt buckle you have? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I was never good enough to win one of those dang things. I was one of those guys that everyone just I'm glad that I showed up because they would beat me but it was a lot of fun. 

 Josh Wilson
 You wrote bulls? I wrestled alligators. Did you really? I did. It seems like it takes a deal. Makers usually have a weird story about running towards fire. I was a firefighter running towards bullets. Like you wrestling alligators riding bulls. There's something about our personality that runs towards things that other people are running from. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's fantastic. I love that. I've never met anybody maybe offline you Ian Hill me this storyon because I'm tired of hearing that. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, well my ankle still clicks from Big Al, the largest alligator in captivity. He whooped my b***. Yeah, that would be an offline story. On redemption rates and as you guys are Pine Financial you guys are lending tons of money. You it is imperative that you guys understand the laws and the places that you do business. Where does Pine Financial do business? It rross the nation across the world. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 We really want to protect our investors money. We're pretty careful with this geographically concentrated colorado, Minnesota are to big ones. We also do some lending in Wisconsin. In Washington, DC. I know it's kind of scattered and you're going to ask me why those areas but it's those four right now on the residential side, commercial I feel a bit more comfortable with especially on the value add space because it's easy to cash flofr that stuff and you have a higher quality borrower generally. We'll go national on the commercial stuff but we're reducing our loan to value in case there are any issues. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 How do the different areas, their laws, the regulations, the redemption, how do you stay on top of all those different things? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Such a great question because we're over governed right now. The amount of regulation in lending and raising private capital is insane. So lucky for me. I feel so fortunate about so many things but this one I have a general counsel on staff so he handles all of that complexity for us. 

 Josh Wilson
 You have said this at least three or four times. I feel so fortunate. I feel so thankful. Right. Have you always been pretty thankful, gratitude? Has it always been important to you or is it something that you had to learn? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 That's a good question. I know when I lost my mom that was tough so I blamed everybody for that. The books that you read and as you learn from people who are doing what you want to do, they're all positive mindset. They're all grateful for things and then the secret had a big impact to me. That book and the gratitude rocks and that kind of thing and gosh if you're in a bad mood and you just start thinking about things that you're actually happy for. You'll flip like that and you cannot be in a bad mood and be thinking about something that you're happy about or thankful for. 

 Josh Wilson
 I learned this little happiness hack, right? Yes, write down what you're thankful for. Speak it out. Don't just think it in your head. Be like, I'm thankful for my kids. I'm thankful for my dog. That's annoying the crap out. You just go through the same and you say it. There's this actual hack where you take a pencil and you shove it live sideways in your mouth as far back as you can. I get so people are going to be listening, but if you're watching on YouTube and what it does is it forces almost like a smile and just the muscle memory tells your brain that you're happy. My wife and I have a picture of us doing this. We look like complete idiots, but there was something to it. We started giggling and our attitudes started shifting. So there's something about muscle memory. There is something about this gratitude list. 

 Josh Wilson
 Top three things that you're thankful for right now. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, gosh, I can go forever. My family for sure. I have a blended family. We have five kids. Amazing. It's amazing. I just freaking love it. Our house is a fun house, so all the kids bring their friends over. So we're live insane all the time. I love that. I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful for my heath. I feel really strong and healthy, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for my business, my career. It's going fantastic. I couldn't dream of doing something different. Thankful for my gosh, we talked a lot about it, but thankful for my dad, what he was able to do and help and create us. For me and for us. I keep going, man. Life is awesome. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 I'm so happy to meet you, man. Why Pine Financial? I see a little pine tree in the background live. How did you come up with that name? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I was starting it, I was hyper focused on Colorado. I know pine trees aren't just Colorado. People tell me that all the time, but pine trees are kind of Colorado, right? I wanted to think of something that was kind of resembled Colorado, but I could find a domain name for and Pine Financial group was available. I was like, pine trees in Colorado, the domain's available. So there it is. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 Do you have a pine tattoo somewhere on your arms or something like that? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I should get a tattoo. I don't even have a tattoo. 

 Josh Wilson
 All right. If we ever hang out, we'll get a tattoo together. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Let's do it. 

 Josh Wilson
 Pine trees. Okay. During this interview, there's probably besides, where can people go to connect with you? Right? We're going to get to that. There's probably some questions around the deals that you do or something that I should have asked you that I screwed up and did not ask you because I went on these rabbit trails. What questions should I have asked you? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'm just thinking Wall Street, what's going on there? I don't know when this is going to actually air, Josh, but there's a lot of turmoil right now and there's a lot of people hurting, and we really want to try to help people, and I think one way to do that is to get true diversification in your portfolio. A lot of people think a mutual fund, you're diversified or not because of what's happened to you over the last year. I think if you can get out of Wall Street and into Main Street like you and I are doing some real estate investments or some private lending or something like that, I think it's a good way to diversify. We've decided to lower the minimum investment into our public fund to ten grand, try to help as many people as we can. Just start getting something steady in this portfolio. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, super cool. 

 Josh Wilson
 From Wall Street to Main Street with Kevin as you're building out, what are your favorite Pine Financial group? A deal comes through your deal machine through this podcast show, and it's like the perfect deal. What does the perfect deal look like? I mean, other than investors saying, hey, here's a bunch of money, go make me a bunch of money and let's have some fun, but what's the perfect team chat you guys lend for? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 The perfect deal is going to be on a residential side, so probably a fix and flip. We really want to help someone with 100% financing. If there's a deal in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, or DC where you could buy it, repair it and get it ready for the market and be at or under 70% of that value, the completed value, that's really our sweet spot because we'll finance 100% of the deal for you could still make money over 70%. I'm not saying that, but we're not going over that. The borrower or the client would have to come in with the difference to get that project complete. I'm not really looking for deals per se. I'm looking for relationships with people that want to do deals and want to be successful. The perfect deal for me would be someone that just wants to be successful and has that drive. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 And let me help you. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, I'm looking on your LinkedIn. It says that you're an author and speaker. Tell us about the book you wrote. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, so I was getting questions constantly. How are you buying a house or to a month when you're 20 to or 23 years old? This makes no sense. I know you don't have any money. I was meeting code questions right at the real estate investor associations and my friends and family and all of this. They were seeing some success. I don't know if I just got sick of answering that all the time or what, but I said, Let me just write it down. I started off as a biography, just my story of how I was able to do that with scripts and forms and all of that. It turned into a how to book. It's not so much a biography, but there's a ton of stories, my wins and my losses and all of that. So it's called the 45 Day Investor. It's basically how you buy your first property with no money down in 45 days or less. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 And it's a blueprint. 

 Josh Wilson
 What year did you write that book? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I wrote that. So I wrote that early on. That might have been 2010 or eleven. I would say I published it maybe five years ago or so. 

 Josh Wilson
 Do the principles in the books still work? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Oh, absolutely. They're going to even become more relevant because the strategy that I had the most success with was the lease option. Lease options were fantastic when there's locked in low fixed interest rates on the properties and rates are higher. Team chat. Right? Because if you go out and borrow, you'll be borrowing at X 7%, let's say. They have a locked in rate at three. Why would I want to go out and borrow money and buy your house with my new loan when I san Jose? Take your loan at 3%. As we move into this recession, you're going to see much more owner financing strategies, like the lease option. 

 Josh Wilson
 Do you have physical copies? Can I buy a signed copy from you? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I'll send you some. Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 All right. I collect my friends books. Signed books are my weird thing. That and hats. Love hats. Are there any other books or podcasts or YouTubes or online courses that people in our audience could go and follow your work? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah. So the book is so cheap. It's 45 day investor.com. I don't make money on education, guys. I make money on doing deals. I don't have coaching or programs or anything like that. We do have a YouTube channel that we're really proud of. We group one video a week and it's short and it's to the point, and it's packed with content to help real estate investors. That's just YouTube. Compinefinancial. So that's probably the best. If you're in Denver or Minnesota, we do a lot offline classes and education. All of it is free. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah. 

 Josh Wilson
 As a deal maker, right, I feel like we always have something that we're working towards, like this crazy a** Gmail or big hairy Audacious goal, if you would follow Collins or whatever. What's one of your crazy a** goals that you're fighting for? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 We're going to double the size of the business. By the end of 2025 will be two times what were when we started this year. 

 Josh Wilson
 Nice. Awesome. 

 Josh Wilson
 Well when that happens we'll get you back on the show or maybe even before that, right? We'll get you back on the show and celebrate with you. Pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate. All right, so we have YouTube channel which is Pine Financial. You have 45 dayinvestor.com and then Pinefinancialgroup.com. Is that right? 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Yeah, that's it. That's all pinefinancialgroup.com. I have this report if you go to Pinereport thepinereport.com it's a free report for people who are interested in private lending. Here's what I see, Josh. There's a lot of people that want to do private lending because look, it's secured by real estate. You got a fixed rate of return. It's hard to find real estate deals right now. Here's something. You dan PR some cash in for a little while, start generating a pretty high rate of return, but they don't really know what they're doing and they fall into the pitfalls of going into a junior position or not getting the correct insurance or something like that. This report kind of helps get rid of those pitfalls. It explains it to you. So you watch out for it. If you're out there doing these types of transactions on your own, just be careful. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I've seen somebody I this lady, oh my gosh. She lost $80,000, her entire IRA, all of her retirement one private lending deal because she was in a second position and didn't understand that there wasn't enough collateral to secure her. And I went home. I lost sep that night. There was nothing I could do. She was calling me for help. But she already did the deal. There's nothing I could do to help. It's those types of stories I'm like let me just write this down so that people can avoid that. 

 Josh Wilson
 Yeah, like the explanation of positions, man. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 Well, because there's a lot of gurus out there that say, hey, let's gap fund. That's what the term is, right. Your hard money lender won't finance over 70% but you don't want to come up with the difference. You don't want that three or four or 5% down payment. You want nobody down because that's what you hear on TV. They're going to go out and find a private lender to come in and find that gap. And they're learning this in these programs. They go out and do that and they're borrowing from other people in the program and neither one of them know what they're doing and then it's not a deal. That's exactly what happened in this case. 

 Josh Wilson
 The Pine report is where people could go to learn about lending and being the bank. Becoming the bank, exactly. 

 Kevin Amolsch
 I think that's what we called it. Become the bank and it's free report. 

 Josh Wilson
 Cool. 

 Josh Wilson
 Kevin, incredible job today. Fellow deal makers, thanks for listening and as always man, reach out to our guest. Hey, let's do a deal together. Thanks for being on the show. I'll put all the links for the waste of contact with Kevin and the following to learn from them. Let's celebrate as a double in the next few years. Federal Deal Makers. If you're working on a deal and you'd like to talk about it here on the show, head over to the deal scout.com, fill out a quick form, maybe get you on the show next. Till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Bye, everybody.