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Zero-Interest Funding Source With Mike Banks – REPLAY

Mitch Stephen|By June 3, 2021

Episode 481: Zero-Interest Funding Source With Mike Banks – REPLAY

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REIS 481 | Zero Interest Funding Source

If you’re looking to start a business but unsure where to get your capital, Mike Banks is the person you need. He is the Chief Operations Officer of Fund&Grow, and he is here to talk to Mitch Stephen about providing zero-interest funding sources through his company. Fund&Grow empowers entrepreneurs and real estate investors by assisting them in utilizing the most innovative form of funding, which is low interest, unsecured business credit. Mike explains how entrepreneurs can qualify for this and what other services his company can help them become more confident in sealing those deals.

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I’m here with a very successful guy named Mike. Mike owns this company and this company does some wonderful things for real estate investors. It does some crazy stuff. I don’t know if you know it or not, but I bought my first 100 houses on credit cards. Once upon a time, I was doing something out of common sense that I saw was a possibility. Back in the day when I did it, they didn’t have all these algorithms and they weren’t checking to see how much unsecured credit you had available to you. Back in the day that I did it, if you had a good credit score, you just apply for the card and got everything that card had to offer. You got the best card and all the cash advance rates.

Since then, I recognized that I could get about $800,000 on my kitchen table if I applied for every credit card I ever set my hands on and then went out and got the cash advances. It also dawned on me that I could walk off with that and go to Mexico and not pay him back. They didn’t have anything to take away from me except my good credit score. A lot of people would sell their credit score for $800,000. I don’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t want to live like that, but apparently, a lot of people did do that. They made it a little more difficult these days to get your hands on unsecured debt.

Zero Interest Funding Source: Whether you’re a wholesaler, doing owner finance deals, flips, or whatever, if you have the credit, you are the cash buyer.

What Mike specializes in is helping people use credit cards, the business lines of credit and all different ways to get your hands on some cash, some borrowed money that you need to pay back and you should pay back. It’s a lot of times unsecured. A lot of times, it’s at 0% or 1%. When you get these introductory offers, they can be 0% interest. I did a lot of that and I still do a lot of that. This is a long-winded way to say that this guy right here, Mike, you’re going to want to know. Mike, how are you doing?

I’m doing good, Mitch. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. Give us a little bit about your background. Tell us how screwed up your childhood was and then let’s figure out how you got here.

I’ve been in this industry for ten years. We’ve established over $1 billion in zero interest business credit. That’s what we focus on, zero interest for an average of twelve months. We work with all the major banks here in the country. Within the first 3 to 4 weeks, our clients receive the funding in their hands, assuming that they qualify. Qualification is super simple. It’s just about their credit score. Within the first 3 to 4 weeks, you can get up to $100,000. Over the course of the twelve-month membership, people are getting up to and sometimes over $250,000. A lot of our clients are in real estate, doing real estate deals. That’s what they’re using the funding for.

If you have the credit available, if you have the money, you’re going to go in with more confidence. Share on X

When I got started with the company, we were super small. We had a couple of employees at that point. Now, we have over 55 employees. We’re on the Inc. 5000 list five years in a row, going on six. We’ve got over 2,400 positive reviews with a 4.9 rating. We’re continuing to grow our team and do more volume every month. We establish about $10 million to $15 million, depending on the month and the way the banks are responding. That’s $10 million to $15 million a month in credit that we’re establishing for our clients. I run the company now with Ari as the CEO. We have great relationships with guys like Mitch. I think you were saying before we started, you sent us 400 clients since we started several years ago.

The last time I looked, it was at 437. The reason why that happened is I know the power of what you do and how important it is as a young investor because I was one once upon a time. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Where was I going to get some money to even turn around with? I needed something to work with. When I met you, guys, I saw immediately an opportunity for my audience. A lot of the people in my audience are starting out. That means they’re starting out broke or with very little cash. I recognized that this is a good marriage. I wasn’t wrong because you use these strategies the right way. You have a little bit of juice to get you over the hump, such as some money or cash. You don’t need that money out for a long time. You just need it for a little bit. The problem is where you get it and you guys were solving the problem. It was no surprise to me that a lot of my audience tuned into what you’re doing.

Especially when you’re younger or you don’t have as much funding on hand, you don’t want to come out of pocket. You’re going to feel a lot more hesitant to pull the trigger. I’ve had so many clients tell me the same thing. If you’ve got the funding on hand, pulling the trigger when the deal shows up is much easier. I interviewed a guy who said the same thing. He’s working on a deal, a big rehab project. He’s buying another land deal because he has the credit available. It gives you that confidence to pull the trigger when the deal shows up on your desk. I’ve seen that personally too.

It’s about the confidence. I see a lot of people miss the acquisition because you can see in their face that they’re worried about where they’re going to get the money. They don’t want to promise this seller and sign the documents because they’re petrified that they’re not going to be able to honor their word and close this deal. It shows up like, through the air, you can pick up the vibe. When you have this money in your back pocket and you go, “I know exactly where I’m getting the money,” you’re walking in to buy the house with a whole different confidence level, “I can close in four days, sir. No problem. Absolutely, I can.” It’s a whole different attitude and the sellers pick up on it.

The cool thing is you’re a cash buyer when you walk in that door. A lot of wholesalers say that they’re the cash buyer. Whether you’re a wholesaler, doing owner finance deals, flips or whatever, if you have the credit, you are the cash buyer. You can send a wire transfer from the credit account that we set up to the title company and close like a cash buyer would because you got that wire transferability. We have a partner that we work with who will charge your card and then send the wire to the title company, the contractor or any place of business.

For that matter, if it’s a 0% interest for a certain amount of months, you transfer it to your bank and show the guy your bank balance, “It’s right here so-and-so bank. Look, I got the money. No problem.”

That’s a little trickier. They don’t just let you transfer the credit to your bank account because that’s like a cash advance. Our partner is called Plastic. There’s also another partner that we have called Nelio. They’re set up as a bill pay service in a sense. What they’ll do is charge your credit card. You’ll pay them 2.85% and then they will send the wire to the title company. Nelio or Plastic charges your card and then they send the wire to the title company. That’s how it works. You can’t just take the credit and put it in your bank account. It might have been that easy a while ago, but it’s not that easy anymore.

In my younger days, I can still figure out how to get it done. Don’t worry about it. I don’t need to now.

Some of the banks still do allow you to do a balance transfer, but not all of them allow for that. What we’ve found, even looking at the balance transfer side, using the wire transfer is the easiest. It only costs 2.85%. You set up with Plastic and then you add your title company to your pay-to accounts. Plastic charges your credit card and then sends that money to the title company. That’s the way we see a lot of people do it.

That’s a good plan. We won’t trip over the minutia. Some of the things I did back then can’t be done now. I used to buy houses on my credit cards, but that was many years ago. Houses in San Antonio were $15,000, $20,000, $13,000, $12,000, $10,000. Years ago, I was buying mobile homes for $6,000, $7,000, seller financing those and flipping them. Now, it’s a little more expensive. You can still buy houses on credit cards, but there’s this much bigger numbers. There’s a whole other ways to use it like in the rehab. A rehab is $20,000, $15,000, $30,000, $45,000. These are the credit card numbers. I have a hard money loan business. Maybe some of those 430–plus customers I sent to you are probably from my hard money loan business. They would come in and they would want a $75,000 loan on a $100,000 house. They were buying the house for $50,000 and they needed $25,000 for the repairs.

Zero Interest Funding Source: When you’re younger, or you don’t have as much funding on hand, you’re going to feel a lot more hesitant to pull the trigger.

I don’t want to be in the $75,000 on a $100,000 house that the repairs hadn’t even been done yet. I was going to have to watch that $25,000 to make sure it went into the house. I would talk to them and say, “Why don’t you call my friends over here, get a low interest to 0% credit card and get the rehab off of that?” Now, I only have to loan $50,000 on this house that’s going to be worth $100,000. If they blow the rehab money or something, that wasn’t on me, it was on their credit card. They were better off because my hard money loan business was charging them 15%. That credit card was charging them 0%, 1%, 2% or nothing. It worked out well. It helped me make a lot of loans that I probably wouldn’t have made with your help. You didn’t even know you were helping me do this stuff, did you?

Not directly. I didn’t realize it. You weren’t like, “Mike, I’m sending over a client.”

You’ve been helping me a lot in my hard money loan business because you’re there and you do what you do.

I was going to say it lowers the risk for you and the client. They’re paying less than interest so they’re saving more of the deal, more of the profits. It’s a win-win.

This doesn’t have to just be for real estate people. Tell me about a non-real estate related person who used your service to get the funds to be prolific and make some money.

A perfect example, we had a client here who owned a barbecue restaurant. They closed down in June of 2020 because of COVID. They happened to be Ari’s neighbor. They found out about using business credit. Now, they bought the food truck that they have out there. They bought it for $50,000. They bought it with the credit we got for them just by using the Plastic partner who can send the wire. That’s how they bought the truck. Now they’ve got less overhead. They’re not paying rent anymore on the building that they used to have. They’re doing close to the same numbers that they were doing when they had the restaurant. They’re doing more events and catering gigs. We did an interview with them but other types of businesses as well like restaurants, Amazon businesses and truck drivers. I’ve interviewed a guy who started with one truck and now he has ten trucks because of the credit he got with us. Any type of business like local type of businesses. Doctors and lawyers have used this.

You said the Amazon businesses. I interviewed Ann Sieg who does online Amazon third-party sellers and they need money to buy a product. This is a great way to snag some extra inventory during the hot time, instead of having to watch all those customers walk by or not have enough during your high season or whatever to buy some more inventory with this kind of stuff. It’s exciting. What credit score does a person need to get started with you?

Ideally a 720 and up, but there’s a little more to it than just the credit score. If you’re around 720 and up, you should be close to qualifying as is. There are other things that we look at like debt-to-credit ratio. We want that to be at about 30% of your total credit limits. That’s where your debt should be at 30%. You don’t want to have a bunch of new accounts like credit card accounts. It’s okay if you’ve got one new credit card account, but if you’ve got 3 or 4 new credit cards that are showing on your personal report within the last six months, then usually you want to wait. There are a couple of things like that. Credit score, debt, new accounts, negative accounts and that’s pretty much it.

If your credit is overall in decent shape, you got a couple of major bank credit cards open that you’ve had open for a couple of years or so, then you qualify. If you’ve only got a $500 Walmart card and a 680 score, then you’re in a limited situation. We would need you to grow your personal credit a little bit. We help with that as well. We’ll get people personal credit in the beginning if they’re super limited. In order to qualify for a business credit, you have to have a strong personal credit profile consisting of a couple of major bank cards, a 720 score, and about 30% debt to credit.

Let’s do this. We can go into all that. That will boggle the average guy’s mind. You’re a professional on this. These words come out of your mouth like water down out of a hose. Let’s send them over to 1000Houses.com/Fundnow. Over there, you’ll put in your range of credit score. A consult will come to size up, see where you’re at and tell you how it’s going, what you need to do or what it’s going to take. I think that’s the best way to do it. Go there. You’ve got to know your three credit scores.

You need to be ready for the opportunities that will come your way. Share on X

If you have a general idea, most people nowadays know where their credit is at. It will ask you, “Is your score between a 680 and 720 or a 720 and 780?” They’ll pick a multiple choice and then somebody will call them from our business development team. We’ll go over your credit report and the program. We’ll also give you a prequalification like a strategy session or a console. It’s totally free. If you guys go there, you’ll learn about your credit, how much you qualify for and how you can use it in your business. The call isn’t going to be usually just a quick call. We’ll get on the phone with you and go over everything within your business and with your credit so you fully understand what we can do for you.

I want to point out that I have been through your company’s whole course of things that we need to do. I’ve gotten business lines of credit. Your company is professional. I’ve heard it from a lot of the students that I’ve sent there. It’s very professional. You guys don’t drop the ball. If you don’t make it to where you’re going with this company, it’s because you didn’t do it. Their follow-up is relentless. I can attest to it. I was like, “These guys are not letting me sit. They’re going to get this thing going.”

Do you know why? It’s partially because we’re a done-for-you service. We have to do what we have to do. Sometimes we need to speak with the client. We need information but because we’re doing all of it completely done for you, it’s not a course. We’re doing it so we have to get info from you guys sometimes. Other than that, it’s just basic quick phone calls or having you fill out your information as a client, and then we take the ball and run with it. We set up the accounts. We do all of the communication with the underwriter at the bank. We negotiate each account so we increase the account. If they deny you off the bat, sometimes that happens, we increase those accounts or we overturn a denial. If it’s only a small limit, we’ll increase that to $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 sometimes with each bank that we applied to.

I said I went through the course with you all. I went through the course of things I needed to do to get where you all needed to take me. It’s a done-for-you business, but you do need to give them information. If they hit certain blocks or obstacles, they might need to call you and say, “What’s up with this?” or “Can you help us with this?” My point was you guys don’t let any grass grow under your feet. You’re right there in the next step. When I wasn’t showing up like, “I’ll do that tomorrow,” and then I didn’t do it tomorrow, you guys were on the phone like, “What’s up? We’re waiting on you.” It’s neat. The last I heard, you could get up to $240,000 worth of unsecured credit advance loan. Is that still the same?

Yes, up to $250,000. A lot of people do get more than that. Some people get less than that. It depends on where your credit is at when you start. I was telling you about a client of mine who, in his first year, had over $200,000. After working with us for two years, we have established just for one person over $500,000. I’ve interviewed him and he told me how he was able to 10X his revenue. It sounds like cliché or an exaggeration, but it’s not as exactly what he told me. He went from doing $40,000 a month to doing $400,000 a month wholesaling real estate nationwide. He’s one of the few who are doing it in every state across the country.

Let’s think about that. If you’re a wholesaler and you’ve got $150,000 house on a contractor that you can sell for $180,000, there’s $30,000 on the line there. As a wholesaler, you’re trying to operate between the time you signed the papers and the 30 or 15 days that you have to close. You might have to take a substantially less profit because you don’t have time. When you do have this funding source over there, you can take the property down yourself. Take it in and get it. Slow the hell down. Who knows if you can put it up for $200,000 and see if a Floridian comes by and pays too much for it.

Do you mean someone from California?

That’s where I was going, but then I thought you were from Florida.

You’re right because I personally experienced that. I was wholesaling deals. I hadn’t done any fix and flips. I got tired of having a deal under contract. All my buyers wanted to pay what I had it under contract for. I was in a tough spot and I couldn’t get rid of it.

They knew you were running out of time.

Yes, but I didn’t want to come out of pocket all the time. Finally, I had a deal. The seller had multiple contracts at the same price. I sent it out to my list. I couldn’t find a buyer. I was like, “Screw this. I’m keeping this. I’m going to do the flip. I’ll get my feet wet. It will be my first one.” I ended up making $35,000 net after expenses. I only paid $65,000 for the property. I only had to put in $25,000. It wasn’t a huge project. That deal, you’d be passing that by if you were a wholesaler who didn’t have the cash in the bank to close the deal yourself. If you can’t find a buyer, but you know it’s a deal, it’s like a catch–22. You got the deal, but you can’t find a buyer so you let the other guy get it who already gave the contract, the other fix and flip guy or you keep it and make the money.

You decide that you’re going to partner with a guy with the money and you lose 50%. That’s expensive money. You would have lost 50% of $35,000 just because you didn’t have the money and you had to partner up with someone who did. This makes perfect sense. I’m going to tell the audience this. I don’t remember what they were charging last 2020. I don’t know that says what it is or it isn’t but it doesn’t matter. Whatever they’re charging for this, and I know the range, it pales in comparison of what you make when you know how to use it. If you know how to use it or know how to find deals, having this money in your back pocket or this availability of funds that is so cheap is worth the homework.

Here’s what I’m going to tell you. This is what a lot of you are going to do and it’s going to be a mistake. You’re going to sit around and wait until you lose a damn deal that could have made you $20,000, $30,000 $40,000 and then you’re going to go, “I should have got with Mike. I should have got with that company and I should have been ready.” Because I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t laid the groundwork, I hadn’t done my homework and done what I needed to do, you lost the deal. You’re going to have to split that deal with someone and that’s going to cost you way more than meeting with Mike and Ari. Please, I want you to go to 1000Houses.com/Fundnow.

I want you to get your consult, give them your range of credit and tell them about your credits between here and here. They’re going to size you up. Don’t wait until there’s a deal sitting right in front of your face because deals don’t hang around long. You need to be ready and have all this credit in place when you’re done before it happens. I promise you, I’m going to get emails from people right now who say, “I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve got off my ass. I didn’t do it and I lost $40,000 because I wasn’t ready.”

Zero Interest Funding Source: If your credit is overall in decent shape, you have a couple of major bank credit cards that you’ve had open for a couple of years or so, then you qualify.

That’s so true. It’s good advice because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen hundreds of my clients who never did a deal before, they got the credit and went and did their first deal. One guy, I interviewed, Maurice. He bought his first six investment properties all with the credit we got for him. He got some killer deals. He got a four-property package for $68,000. It depends on the market you’re in and all that how much you can fund. How much can you buy outright? How much do you have to use hard money half and use the credit on the other half? Whatever it is, this is something that is going to change the way you respond to the deal. If you have the credit available, if you have the money, you’re going to go in with more confidence. You’re going to take action on a deal instead of thinking, “I don’t have enough money in the bank and I don’t have the credit. I don’t have a hard money lender yet or maybe they do.” Whatever it is, it gives you that. It does. If you guys look into it, you’ll see. If you look into what we’re talking about, it’s a very possible thing. You can use credit to buy a house or at least fund half of it.

The crazy thing about it is it’s 0% half the time or 1% or 2%. It’s stupid and near free. I’m going to refinance my house with the local credit union down here. They want to charge me a 3.6% interest. To me, that’s free money.

They’re paying you to go out and do the deal.

Check it out, 1000Houses.com/Fundnow. There are a lot of ways to use this kind of money. Always be responsible, do the right thing but be ready. When a deal comes by, you can pull the trigger. It’s having an extra tool in your tool belt. You’re going to have one other tool in the belt that when a certain situation shows up, you’re going to be able to capitalize on it because you got that tool in your belt. I can’t be any more enthusiastic than I am because I already know you guys. I know how it works. I know it’s helped a lot of people. Anything else you need to mention?

If there are any wholesalers who are in your audience, I used it personally for my marketing budget each month. I was way more aggressive, getting more or less, sending out more direct mail. You can use it for marketing and use it to buy the property. You can use it for payroll. You can use it for property management to pay off pretty much any of your bills. If you can’t find a use for it, then it might not be a perfect fit for you. If you’re doing deals, if you’ve got a business, it should be very glaringly obvious that you should use business credit. I don’t think we talked about the fact that the business credit doesn’t show up on your personal report. They qualify you based on your personal score, but the business credit doesn’t report there.

Don’t drop the ball. Be relentless. Share on X

When you are spending $50,000, $100,000 on the business credit, your personal score is going to stay nice and high. If you’re a buy and hold investor and you like to do a cash–out refinance on your deals, you can use the credit to buy the deal as a cash buyer. Now the debt is sitting on your business credit, not on your personal. When you go and do the cash–out refinance, they’re looking at your personal credit and the cash–out refi goes through very smoothly. I’ve interviewed people and they’ve told me point blank that they were able to get the refi done way easier this time because now they don’t have a bunch of personal debt on their personal report. They have that debt on the business report where it belongs, but there are a lot of different benefits. I think we pretty much covered everything.

I forgot to even mention that a lot of times it’s on the business report. I appreciate you being on, Mike. I’ve invited you down to my place. I hope you come and visit my little ranch down here in Texas. We‘ll have some fun. I can’t invite the whole world, but you’ve done so much for my customers. You’ve done a lot for me. You do a lot for your community. I think you’re having a blood drive right now.

Yes. We’re also giving away free memberships. We’re giving two memberships every month in 2021 because of the pandemic and the businesses struggling and all that. We’re trying to give back. We’re still growing. The demand for funding is still there. We haven’t been struggling, but we’re trying to give back. We’re all about helping people and being of service to other people.

Tell me about the two free memberships that you’re giving away. This is a substantial savings, by the way, because they do a great service. Whoever gets free memberships are good.

I forgot another thing. If they go through your link, they’ll get a $500 discount on our service. If you are reading this, you have to go through Mitch’s link so you can get that $500 discount. Otherwise, you will be paying for the price. With the membership giveaway that we’re doing, we are pulling random people who enter the giveaway through our YouTube channel. If you guys want to get information about that, you have to go through Mitch’s link and then you’ll be able to get more information about the $500 discount and also the giveaway. We’re pulling from 1,000 people every month. We’re picking two winners and we’re announcing it online that way.

There’s a whole bunch of reasons to go to this link. You get a chance to be one of those two free memberships every month for a year. You can take your credit score range and they can have that consult. They can tell you where you sit and how much you could get your hands on, how fast, how slow or whatever, and then also to get the $500 discount. That’s a lot. Go over to 1000Houses.com/Fundnow. Believe me, if you’re a wholesaler and you don’t go there, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Maybe you need to try something else. This is where the wholesaler needs to go so he can eventually work himself out of being a wholesaler and be a real guy. Be the guy that you are getting the wholesale things from.

My friends, I’d like to thank the audience for stopping by to get you some Mike Banks. I want you to stop by and see him. I’d also like to thank my sponsor, TaxFreeFuture.com. You won’t believe what your financial advisors aren’t telling you. We’re going to tell you what they’re not telling you. We’re going to tell you why they’re not telling you. We’re going to tell you what to do about what they’re not telling you. You can do with it what you want. Believe me, if you have tax-deferred or tax-free retirement funds and you’re not with TaxFreeFuture.com, you need to listen to what they have to say. They can save you a lot of money. You can do a lot of things in these retirement funds that you probably don’t even know you can do.

They’re very lucrative. I paid $3,000 once upon a time to go to a seminar to take $250,000 to $1 million in an IRA in about eighteen months. It worked for me. Check it out. There are about nineteen little video vignettes over there. Believe me, it has worked. I was bustling all the way, but the theory worked. You had to work it and I worked my overtime. That was 24/7. I was so excited about the chance to get ahead that I didn’t even want to sleep. I could see it. I could smell it. It was like I didn’t care. People said, “Aren’t you tired as hell?” “No, I’m not tired. I’m ready to find that next house.” That next deal, I’m ready to go. I was watching my financial future blossom. I was higher than the kite on a natural high. I appreciate you.