How It All Began

Back in the mid 2000's, the mortgage industry was HOT! I was in my mid 20's working as an Account Executive for Alliance Bancorp, an A-Paper, Alt-A lender. The industry was blowing up and loan programs were continually getting more and more aggressive with option arms, sub prime loans, and hard money lenders were able to lend to owner occupied borrowers. Competition was fierce and I needed a way to compete.

So I hired a low cost software developer in India and built a webform that made it easy to submit loans to me vs. Email or fax, which never contained enough data for me to accurately price out a loan. This webform turned into a CRM, which then became used by my other AE buddies, which then turned into a marketplace for many brokers to connect with many AEs from various wholesale lenders for Alt-A, Sub Prime, Hard money & even commercial loans too. The Loan Post was officially born October 30, 2006... the same day my 1st daughter was born! Wow! Talk about motivation to make it happen! After officially quitting my job, I took out some 0% credit card loans and started grinding it out! I can't count the number of late nights & early mornings I had working with India, but it was worth the savings & headache. I couldn't even find or afford to hire developers locally anyways.

By the end of 2008 we had grew to thousands of brokers and over 400 wholesale lenders! But things were about to change for the worst, as the mortgage market started to meltdown, so did my business. The whole world was falling apart in almost every sector. Luckily, my clients pushed me into the loss mitigation world, and I converted the software to help manage loan modifications, short sales & foreclosures, which led to non-performing note management as well. We had a lot of big companies using our platform, some with 100's of users. This pushed us into building powerful features like workflow management, customizable modules, and a really scalable platform that can handle millions of files and thousands of users. Remember, this was way before the Amazon or Microsoft Azure cloud days.

By 2015 the industry had reached its peak and I was unsure where to go next. Our growth plateaued, and so I started winding down the business & letting go employees to reduce costs. After seeing so many of my clients buying and selling notes and properties at huge discounts, I wanted to get in on the action. But here in Miami, it was a very competitive market and you needed lots of cash! Lots of properties were over priced & auctions were unreliable. I started giving up on buying real estate for fix and flip and went back to software. During the growth days of The Loan Post, I developed a marketing platform internally to help sales rep connect with more leads based on Email open/Email link click/Webform sign up using a voip dialer system. It was a great way to get reps on the phone. I started working to convert it into a SaaS based platform for anyone to use and called is CallWise.io During that build out, a real estate deal landed in my lap around mid 2015. My General Contractor buddy was living with his girl friend in the guest house of this huge 2 acre, historic 7500 Sq Ft estate. He said the family wanted to sell it quickly, but it needed major repairs.

I knew how to get financing for a flip and my buddy & Dad had all the GC experience needed to handle the work. It was such a HUGE project, especially for my first flip. Long story short, my wife stepped in & said we need to keep this forever home! And just like that, my first flip turned into a year long labor of love with just me and my Dad grinding all day, everyday. Watch this video to see all our hard work...

During the financing process with LendingHome, I saw how their application intake and processing worked... it resembled a lot of my CRM features already built. The light bulb went off right away, and I got my developers to work on building a LOS friendly version of our existing software. So I had CallWise.io and the new brand LendingWise.com both getting developed. If you haven't noticed, I have a HUGE appetite for business opportunity & natural love for building an idea into a final product.

By early 2017, I was done with the renovations and started marketing both callwise.io & Lendingwise. It turns out LendingWise.com got way more traction than CallWise.io and started to demand all my attention. I started going to conferences & promoting LendingWise first at AAPL annual 2017 conference, then to Geraci's, Pitbull, and IMN conferences. We have been growing like crazy ever since, picking up bigger and bigger clients that are constantly pushing us in growing our features and overall product. We now have almost 100 clients in private lending space all within 1.5 years of launching.

What makes things interesting and exciting for me now, is that this time around, I am building a lending platform that has longevity. Before, I was managing The Loan Post's loss mitigation CRM with a short sighted view, knowing there was shelf life to the product and industry to a certain degree. Recently I hired a CTO & we expanded our development team in India to 12 full timers and I have my own office there now, vs. relying on 3 full time contractors.

We have a clear roadmap that focuses on the commercial private lending space. We have plans to roll out our legacy marketplace business model inside the LOS, add on servicing capabilities, fund management tools, and 3rd party integrations for credit, appraisal, & numerous others.

Thanks for reading my story in a nutshell. We look forward to being apart of your growth story. If you want to learn more about us book a meeting or visit LendingWise or contact me directly 786-735-1188