The Plan

I have been in Michigan for about 1.5 years and it’s been almost 2 years since Black Friday ended my poker career.  Whenever I look back at a block of time, depending on my perspective, it can seem both really slow and really fast.  When I look back at my time in Michigan, fast or slow doesn’t even seem like an appropriate question.  It’s more like “WTF?”

If you would have shown me a snapshot of a random day now, back in March 2011, the only possible explanation would have been that I lost it all playing HossTBF in an epic tilted bender; and I was rebuilding working for as a temp.

The snapshot would have shown me in a city I’ve never been to, in a nondescript office, with three random people I’ve never met, and hieroglyphic-like notes scribbled on a whiteboard.  Honestly, I would have told the Ghost of Christmas Future that he had the wrong guy.

Our company, New Hope Financial buys bad debt in bulk packages and figures out ways to unravel the asset from the note (mortgage).  Our company is literally a bank.  We modify loans, foreclose, short sell, deal with bankruptcies, and do other bank things.

I think we are on the “next big thing” in American real estate.  The horizon is very bright for these type of assets.  Along with that, we have two huge competitive advantages: we are very, very good at working the notes (which is not easy to learn), and we have a connection that accesses us to MANY notes at an extremely cheap price.  That’s a pretty good combination.

In the last 9 months, we started with a package of 27 notes (our own money).  Then raised money from investors twice (through the blog) for packages of 55, and 217 respectively.

Some people might say we are escalating really/unnecessarily fast, but the game doesn’t get any harder as the stakes escalate, the numbers are just bigger.  In fact the game actually gets easier – handling a Miami mansion is a lot easier than handling a Detroit crackhouse.

Another reason that we are moving so fast is that by nature there are only so many bad debt assets out there.  Eventually as the economy improves and the housing crisis unravels there won’t be piles and piles of bad notes.  Our rough estimate is that we have 2-3 years to capitalize before the bubble is gone.  Time truly is money.

The Plan

We want to finish “working” the 27 and 55 lists where each asset is individually solved and sold.  We want to create performas proving that what we are doing not only works, but crushes.

Then, we want to sell the 217 note list.  We want to pay back all investors with interest as promised.

Then…….we want to raise a huge amount of $$$$$.  The same game, the same strategies – just Isildur-style.  6 games and a lot of zeros.  We have physically seen lists ready to be vetted and bought that are nosebleeds stakes with nosebleed profits.  Our team is young, hardworking and very good at what we do.  I fully expect to own those lists soon.  I will keep the blog readers updated on how things are moving as it pertains to this plan and when the door opens for funding.

Lastly, I want to end the blog on anyone that is thinking about switching careers or changing your life drastically.  At first seems impossible to start.  There will be days where you don’t know what to do or how to  begin toward your goal.  Just remember, slow motion is better than no motion.  If you just keep moving, you’ll find paths you couldn’t have foreseen.  You just have to keep moving – forward, backwards, sideways –  anything but stagnation.  If you were going to walk through a forest with no idea where you were going, you’d be better off walking than standing still.