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The beauty in private lending is that private lenders get to set the rules. Alan Cowgill, owner of Colby Properties, LLC and President of Integrity Home Buyers, Inc., tells us how this goes down as he goes deep into raising private money. He shares how he got started in the whole real estate game, taking us into exit strategies, keeping investors and landlords safe, and paying private lenders. Alan also touches on 401(k)s and self-directed IRAs. Ending it with more great insights, he shares what he looks for in a lender and how communication is key.
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Listen to the podcast here:

The Art Of Raising Private Money with Alan Cowgill
I'll speak with Alan Cowgill who was the first person to put the concept of private lending into my noggin several years ago. I'm honored to have him on the show. Speaking of the show, you can probably tell that I've been making some changes here and there particularly in the format. Whereas I've gotten away from selling mid-roll advertisements mostly because I didn't feel like it suited me. I like the flow of the show better without the adverts. I'm experimenting with that to see how it goes. I've also brought in some more plans, reevaluated a few things and I hope to broaden the topics of the interviews a little. I'm going to go into some areas that hopefully bring you, the reader value in other aspects of your life not just in investing in real estate. It's very closely tied to all that. Let's go ahead and cut to the chase and get to the interview with Alan Cowgill.
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Lender Nation, I'm excited to introduce to you, Alan Cowgill, who is one of the people who got the private lending kernel in my brain about a decade ago. It's an honor to have him on. Alan, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm tickled to be here. This is exciting for me.

To give the readers some background, I was introduced to Alan years ago. I went to a Larry Goins boot camp and he came up and said, "How many of you guys deal with private lenders? I need to work with private lenders." Long story short, going to the real library, finding one of your old programs on cassette tape and whatnot, CD and trying to put it all together, here we are in 2019. I'm stoked. Thank you for coming on. Amongst the many questions that I have, I want to try to narrow it down for you to just a few. I'd like you to tell our readers how you got started in this whole real estate game.

I was broke. I got a quarter century in Corporate America. As I was climbing that corporate ladder, one day, I realized I had the ladder against the wrong wall. I had to do something else with my life. I'd seen so many of my family members work a job all their life and retired poor. I thought, "I don't want that to happen to me." What I was going through, I was broke. Even though I had been successful in Corporate America, I was living in a little dinky two-bedroom apartment and I was struggling to pay my bills. What was happening is I had this old beat up car and I needed to put some repair work into it, but I put that on the backburner as we do.

I was busy doing other things and paying my bills and going along. All of a sudden on a first date, this car paid me back. It's an ugly story. I pulled up in front of this apartment complex to walk her to the door after our very first date. Halfway up to the door, I heard something, I turned around and looked at my car that had burst into flames. Keith, when I tell people this, when I speak on stage, somebody on the back room goes, "Hot date." It's more like first and last date. Can you imagine how embarrassing this is holding her hand, watching the firemen put your car out?

Here's this successful middle manager in Corporate America. He can't even afford to get his car fixed. Every morning when she woke up, there was a burnt charred mark in her parking lot.