Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - The Guy Who Can Fund Anything: Chris Piro of Searchlight Lending | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

In this episode of Coffeez for Closers, Joe sits down with Chris Piro—CEO and Founder of Searchlight Lending, and the guy loan officers call when a deal’s “too weird to fund.”From multifamily and SBA loans to fire-damaged properties, cannabis facilities, churches, art, and even airplanes—Chris has built a niche business out of saying yes when everyone else says no.We talk about earning trust in unconventional lending, building a real referral ecosystem, managing ethics in a grey-space market, and why being the solution—no matter how complex the deal—is how you win in today’s mortgage game.It’s all about grit, clarity, and knowing exactly where to take the stuff no one else will touch.Top producers at E Mortgage Capital are earning more per deal—with faster closings, better tech, and no junk fees.👉 Learn more: https://join.emortgagecapital.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Most lenders grind. Chris Piro, he grows greens, raises chickens, surfs at sunrise, and still funds billion dollar deals before most people even hit snooze. From modular builds to hotel portfolios, church loans, cannabis, classic cars. Chris built a boutique powerhouse on the deals nobody else wanted. I don't want to make a fee out somebody just to kick their pain down the hall. I probably could have, but I like to sleep a night, right? A dad first, a lender with integrity, a renegade broker, rewriting what boutique lending really means.

This isn't just about rates and points. It's about presence, passion, and doing business in a way you're proud to pass on. From street sweepers to sharks and Pismo, this is the Chris Piro Playbook. Welcome to Coffees. Right on. Thanks for coming down to SoCal here. Hopefully the drive was nice. and, you know, we can make the best of it.

Now, Chris, I like to start the show off the way I start every single show, which is, Chris, what's your morning routine? A morning routine. That's actually on my list here to go over. I mean, I'm a routine guy, which we can get into that as well. You know, discipline is freedom, I always say. So I get up in the morning, do my big cup of cold lemon water, splash my face with cold water, just try to wake up first. So I don't hit the computer, the phone. You know, everyone says no phone or computer for an hour or two. I don't go that hardcore, but I start with that,

have my cup of tea in the morning. I do like to get up early. You probably see, I don't know if you got my monthly mailers, I do get up at 5 a.m. I try to get my two hours in so I can get my day set up, set up my team, and that way I can make my kids breakfast and hang out with them before they go to school. So I get my cup of tea.

I'm not a coffee guy. I just can't work on coffee. I get too jury. And then I sit down with my notepad, I write down my do-do list. So whether it's three items, five items, items. I try to go through what's what's important I did to accomplish. And then you got kids breakfast. Usually I'll make a workout after that. I've already gotten at this point I said about

two hours in of work. And then breakfast did a workout or a surf or depends on how the tides are. And then yeah, just hit it from there. So routine, routine, routine. Love it, love it. How close are you to the water in Santa Cruz? Right. Well, I can see the ocean from my deck, about 0.8 miles, about 12 minute walk from my house. Nice. Yeah. You walk with the surfboard? Don't walk with the surfboard. You know, I'm a long border. So you guys have no opinions on that. I'm too old to be a to be a short boarder at this time of my life. But yeah, I like to go down. I have an e-bike or I got, you know, a van. We have a B-class van that we took out during COVID with the family. So I can throw boards in there and go down. And,

that, you know, in this industry, I just put in my calendar, like, surf like it's a meeting. And, you know, we've had a big clients, like, oh, from 10 or 11, you know, you call it a board meeting, right? I have a board meeting. I love that. Love that. You know, one thing I'm surprised at with Searchlight Lending is you've really built your business on, like, the difficult products.

Now, you know, what is it that makes you say yes to the things that, like, nobody wants to say to like nobody wants to work with SBA loans in the more space nobody wants to do commercial no one no one well good they can send them all my way and that's why I mean that's I think why we've built a niche I think they're and I don't want to you know say too much you know there's a connotation that they're more difficult the connotation that they're impossible or there's different lingo but I know a rate's a rate LTV is LTV collateral right so as long as you know you're I always say as long as you know what more than the borrow

you're an expert. So I guess to answer you a question, why we say yes to it, I started by saying yes. So back in, you know, I started in retail, did my whole stick at the big banks, and then started my wholesale shop.

And someone says, hey, any SBA loan, any construction loan, I don't know what the heck I was doing. And I said, great, I'll get back to you in 24 hours, hit the Google, hit my network, called bankers, and said, okay, I didn't even know what 504 versus 7A was at that point.

and I get back to the borrower and I'm learning as I'm going and then you learn during the loan process right I mean the best way to learn is to do the process and by just getting those loans in you know after two three four five years now I'm the expert and we can go in more to like fill relationships and how I'm leveraging and monetizing that but just by saying yes then we could go into life it's about saying yes in life right you know you become the expert through experience and now that's kind of what we're known for now in our research that we were doing about you. I saw that, you know, you've done cannabis. You've done, you know, churches. Cannabis loans. Yeah, yeah, cannabis loans, churches, even airplanes and art.

Like, that is so outside the box. Art, how do you, how do you get financing on art? How do you get financing on? Yeah, so the art actually does have to be held. A lot of the times these are high net worth individuals and they're non-recourse loans just based on their balance sheet. So we're not attach anything to them. We're saying this person's worth $500 million net worth. We're giving them $50 million. And, you know, same with the auto collection. We're not taking the pink slips. We're actually just going off their wherewithal and their net worth. We're assuming they're to keep their net worth. So, you know, if something does hit the fan, you know, they have other assets that they'll liquidate. So you use art, you collateralize the art, you collateralize the art,

you collateralize it. I mean, we're not collateralizing, we're not putting it. We will insure it, But we're not like putting it into like my basement, you know, in a lockbox, right? It's still where it is. The same with cars and, you know, all that. I mean, the planes and stuff will have to have UCC filings, like business filings. But yeah, it's really going over the financial strength of, and that worth of that, of that individual or entity. Right on. So what's the most unconventional deal you think you've ever done?

I've done some funny ones. I mean, it did a street sweeper. You know, I did SBA loan for a street sweeper. a barge for the SF Bay that like dredge the the the bay um oh i mean i've done 2,000 acres in florida for a pre-entitled uh development deal um you know there i could probably throw off i was working on a hotel in mexico with like kenny chesney and um out of the uh cobo-wabo tequila guy so i like to work on there's out-of-the-box stuff that's kind of funny I mean, I did the power exchange in San Francisco, if you know what that is.

You know, you probably look it up. So we had to do a walkthrough on that. Yeah, you could look that up. I don't need to say what it was, but it was, you know, involves a gentleman's club kind of theme. But I really like the putting the deals together where it's syndication plus equity investors. They're not easy, but it's fun seeing a lot of dirt go vertical to permanent to, permanent to sale or stabilization. And working with these people, they are professionals. They're developers and builders. This isn't, I'm fixing, flipping. And we do that, don't worry,

the one-off fix and flips, but these are people building large construction projects. We've done stuff in the billions of dollars and piece it together. Nice, nice. Now, being in the business 23 years, you know, you've seen some funky stuff. What deal do you think still haunts you? I mean, the deals that haunt me are always the ones where the borrower client either just shopping you the whole time is wasting your time, right? And I just like I prefer when people are upfront and honest. I try to be the same way. If, you know, if I'm talking to an attorney or a doctor, I'll say, yeah, I'm getting a second opinion. These people ring you through, put you through the ringer.

And then at the end of it, they're like, oh, I'm going somewhere else. And then they just disappear with no explanation. That just shouts my hide. It just be up front and. honest. It's a small lending world. It's just, you know, I like to sleep at night. I like to have good ethics. Tell me you don't like how my face looks. I'm going to sound my voice or my rate was terrible. Um, whatever. Yeah, it just don't disappear. I mean, just be professional. I mean, we're professionals. We have families. I like to sleep at night. You know, we're all people. It's not like

just because you're through the email or the phone that you're impermeable, you know, it's just, you know, be nice. And, uh, Yeah, it's a small rule. A lot of times they come back later and I'm like, oh. Don't work with them again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've had that happen quite a few times in my career as well. You know, you came from big banks, right?

Now, big banks teach you a certain way of doing business, you know, the retail banking model, let's say. And I think big banks are even different than traditional IMBs. Now, what did you have to unlearn to really lead searchlight in the right way? I mean, the big reason I left was because I could not do the out of the box or the tertiary programs. I mean, they have a smaller box. If you're dealing with the big banks, we all know who they are. They want this kind of program, this kind of product, this kind of borrower. They want deposits.

They want banking relationships. They want credit card. They make the money in relationships. So, you know, I hate turning deals down. I like to do the tricky ones. and really what switched for me was saying, I want to be able to do everything. I want to help this borrower out.

And when I go to do talks at like affiliate shops, whether it's an EXP or side office, I say the reason you want to work with a broker full service is if your buyer or seller, let's say they have a broker and they're working with and they say, okay, I'm going to go to B of A and get a business loan. Well, that B of A person probably has a mortgage person that probably knows a realtor.

You might have just lost your real estate relationship, right? You might have lost your transaction. So when I go into these affiliate relationships with either other mortgage offices or with realtor offices, I say we can do everything under the sun. And that way, when they come back, we track them in our CRM, what was the lead source. Two years later, Sparter comes back or client and they say, I want to sell my home. I say, oh, this is from XYZ realtor. So I'm relationship, relationship, keep it in the family, keep it in the circle of trust.

And I think that's really got us to where we are right now is just giving me. back, keeping people in, you know, in the circle and relationship. Now, you'd like to offer, you know, your no doc loans, DSCR loans, stuff that like brokers don't like to touch, right? What take on that kind of fire or, and what's your take on that kind of fire and how do you protect yourself from these funky deals? I mean, I am, I do lose deals sometimes that there is a, less ethical broker on the other side, and I'm okay with it.

If the person truly cannot afford their payment, or they're getting funky on their income or they're, you know, I'd say, here's an attorney's phone number. Let's go sell your property. Here's a realtor's phone number. Get a price. Like, I don't want to make a fee off somebody just to kick their pain down the hall. Like, I'd rather, and I have people come back to me.

They're like, oh, I've got to loan somewhere else. And I'm like, almost like, I'm sorry, but, you know, know, I probably could have, but I like to sleep at night, right? I don't want to put people in a worse pain point. So I understand if there is a borrower that has bank statement income on a non-QM loan and they really show income, but if they just can't qualify for the property or if they're behind on their current payments and I'm going to put them in a higher interest rate, how are they going to keep it for their payments just because I gave them, you know, six months of interest, right? So I don't like to make things worse for people. You know,

you try to say ethical. It's easier. Maybe the people, they need that check to pay their Mercedes payment or their house payment that month. And, you know, you don't know what other people are going through. But I'd rather just, you know, not make money on other people's backs and their equity. Love it. Now, what's the most unconventional deal that you've ever funded?

And what do you think it taught you? Oh, might take a second whether to come back around to that. But, you know, most of my stuff that comes my way, because I did have the nine years in retail, I'm kind of know with my retail buddies at the big banks as the out of the box guys. So, or out of the box guys. So most of my stuff doesn't fit into that box. So maybe the permits aren't in place yet.

I love doing construction right now. We've done manufactured modular home. We've done, I mean, I really like doing business loans because you're helping a business expand. So we're doing some stuff right now in the fire burn areas right now putting together investors athletes, people that want to invest in the rebuild. So you're doing business, true business loans, not DSCR, like actual business loans. It's not collateralized. Well, these people are putting together a fund, then they're going to try to buy the fire areas and rebuild. So they have this do stick build off site. They're going to come in and build for cheaper than they can build on

site and they're putting together they're putting together local people to help fund the redevelopment and the rebuild in the fireburn areas so we're putting together you know a hundred million dollar plus fund to to work on that right now so if anyone's interested you know we're still having people come in but there's you know athletes musicians and we're putting together local people so the insurance companies don't come in or the the vultures come in and just snake these lots away from the community so that's I mean I'm working on some pretty size big stuff and it doesn't always go through but it still teaches you stuff it still builds your network you're still talking to people with high net worth so even if it doesn't come together

or they go somewhere else uh and not always especially on the bigger deals we know they kind of you know they don't always go through but you're still learning during the process and you're getting contacts and relationships so i like piecing together big deals whether it's bringing investors together high net worth individuals um you know builders people they experience Now, I mean, it's crazy because we were talking earlier, you got 100 agents, and half of your revenue comes from these non-conventional deals. So you really have become this niche lender, you know, because I don't know anybody in the entire industry that makes half their money on these funky products, where you just take basically the toughest deals and make a true, like a high income off of it. Yeah, I mean, especially in this lower volume. market. It's worked out really well. It's worked out well for our recruiting. It's a good value add when I say,

you know, everyone at, I must say everyone has the same stuff, but there's so many wholesale lenders out there, so much technology out there, CRM, AI, we can throw that around. But when I say you can come over here and you do multifamily, mixed use, commercial, special, you know, assisted living, hospitality. So many times the loan officer comes over and says, I just lost a land deal. I didn't know where to take it. I just had a construction deal. You know, I could have made, X amount of dollars. So especially this lower volume market, it's a good sales point and recruiting tool

to bring over his agents. And it's kind of like a flywheel effect. The more we get, the more we're unknown. You know, I'm on realtor lists and offices out of the box guy. And yes, we do the conventional stuff and most of our agents are 90% residential first. But that's the value add with myself and Searchlight

is we can train them, whether we take it over as a referral or we take it over, you know, and keep them on communication so they can learn or tell them, you know, the summary needsless, what kind of applications? And that's kind of, like I said, say it again, the value add is that we have specialized in that and now we're known as that. And I think it's, people can keep thinking it's harder than a conventional loan, but LECD, Trid, cool off with all the new regulations. I mean, residential loans aren't that easy either these days. Yeah, that's true. Now, I just, I'm curious, like, what's the biggest deal you've

ever done in this unconventional space? I mean, I have a term sheet right now in a $1.4 billion deal. It's a bunch of flagged hotels, portfolio of 100 flagged hotels. So we're working on that right now. That's interesting because we are not actually, we'll see if that comes to fruition. Not every deal does, right? But that's too big to even put on a balance sheet. So we're going to put that together in a bond and sell it right to New York. So, yeah, a couple, you know, 3,000 unit round up here and there. You've done something like that, 3,000 units? Yeah, yeah.

But our biggest funded loan is probably in the 200, $250 million range. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, you're talking truly unconventional stuff, but like, do you still make two points on a $250 million deal? I wish. Or $1.2 billion deal? No, no, no. And I won't say exactly what we make, but usually at that point, you're making an eighth, a quarter.

Because most of these people can get institutional money or they have relationships with high-neutral. It's almost like being in the broker space. If they have 10 million bucks at JP Morgan or Merrill and they're an eight-paper borrower, they're going to get relationship discounts. We're probably not going to beat them on a super jumbo purchase loan. We can't win everything, right? So it's this kind of the same thing with these high-net-worth individuals, a lot of times they're flying on private jets with these banks and maybe they have relationships

with Hyatt people. We're probably not going to win that, but it's still the tertiary products of people that maybe use up the credit at the bank or maybe have a blemish in their history or maybe aren't cash flowing to stabilize. So there is still a niche market for broker services. And I always like I hate to say sales lines, it sounds salesy. But so I use it. I use a salesy. using a contractor. You can get your own plumber, build a house, get a plumber, you can get a painter, you can get a tile person right,

or you can go to a contractor, which is pretty much a broker, and say, okay, well, this guy trusts this plumber, he trusts this, you know, painter. So we get the Home Depot discount. We know we're not dealing with the teller at the bank, we're dealing with the VP or president at the bank, right? So we have different rules, different qualifications,

and we get preferred pricing relationships. So yeah, maybe you're paying us a fee for our services, but we're shopping around to hundreds, if not thousands of lenders, which most consumers have time for, and we're getting you the best deal. It more than makes up for the fee that we charge for our services. A lot of people talk about solutions-based lending, right? You actually live it. So what's your brutal rule for turning chaos into closings? Hmm, I mean, I like to, one thing I teach my team is really managing expectations. So if the borrower wants to close a private money owner-a-a-a-a-a-cdeal, which is a trid loan in three days, not going to happen.

It's a trid loan, 12 days minimum, right, with cool-out periods. Like, day one, I almost treat it like a relationship or a marriage. If we're going to walk down the aisle together, it's not going to be that easy. right it's I'm gonna need additional documents I may need additional documents later don't yell at me I'm here to help you right because a lot of times you get in a deal with somebody and you haven't laid the groundwork for what the next steps are and what's going to happen and yes they may ask for additional XYZ the appraisal may come on low so here's what's going to happen mr. mrs bar work client you know I've been I've done enough of these thousands of these and then I get the buy-in

right if you really want to work together i want to work with you to the end because i if you're working somebody else tell me please right you know if you're dating somebody else tell me please it's like a relationship and you want to get to the end with a bar to understand the process because if you say yeah i'll close in 24 hours and the rates 5% you know it's not you don't have a pissed off borrower right and it's bad for your reputation work gets out especially in these smaller circles with high north individuals builders developers. So I'd rather break up day one or hour one than three weeks into the process and they don't like me anymore. That's good strategy. It's a good strategy. A lot of people just kind of cling on and just get burned. Now let's dive into some of your initial passions. You know,

what's crazy, you're a chef at heart, broker by trade, right? Now how does being in the kitchen sharpen your edge in the boardroom. I mean, I'll start off by being honest. I rarely worked in a kitchen. I did open a restaurant as far as the passion side on the business side of it. I guess to sell a story because all my chef friends are all with them yelling to me that, you know, I wasn't in a crowded kitchen as much as, you know, maybe my bio says here. But I did open a restaurant and it taught me a lot about delegation.

It taught me a lot about people in different slices of society, you know, just about business ownership, right? Because you know or we know mortgage. We grew it and lived it 20 plus years. We can do mortgage while we sleep. It's almost like we're in the zone. We do mortgage, right? But cooking for me is more of a passion.

And I was going to go to culinary school and college. My parents, thank you, you know, put me through a nice UC. I ended up finishing college. I went back to culinary school. to start after my four-year degree. And then my buddy actually brought me to a job fair, you know, right in the mortgage boom, 2002 and a half. And I was in a suit, college degree, and I got an offer from HSBC.

That was way more than I expected. And I said, do I want to flip burgers and work nights and weekends and holidays? And I cabosh the working in a kitchen idea. And then the rest is history. I was, you know, platinum club at Wells, top of 100 person. And I guess I was good at it. It paid the bills and afforded me what I wanted to do in my life, travel and all those fun things. And then, you know, I did have the bugs still in me, the passion.

I opened a restaurant and I did make it through COVID. It was four years, but it's definitely the passion was gone. And that's a long conversation. But I got out of my system. And now I'd rather just cook for my friends and family and loved ones because that way I can pick what I want to cook. I can relax at home. I can see the end product and the happiness and the nutrition and all that. I mean, I cook six days a week probably.

It's like I can work 12 hour days and the relaxing part of my days is put on some music, you know, maybe have a glass of wine and just cooking what I want for my family and loved ones. Nice. What's your favorite thing to cook? I mean, anything on the grill, a barbecue, I got three different grills and smokers. Family loves ribs. I just made chicken wings last night. They love tariki chicken wings.

We do sushi night. I get shashimi-grade sushi. and do it up. It's hard to get all you can eat sushi when you go out. We eat a lot. Especially my kids get older. My kids eat like 40 bucks of salmon shishimi. So I'll do lots of sushi. Yeah. And then we have a big garden. Like gardening is kind of my zen as well. Because I can be in a conference call with the client. I have a big, I mean, I have so much kale and lettuce and tomatoes coming on my ears. Come bring it back by. It's a you pick garden. But yeah, the kids usually you eat anything out of the garden they can get their hands on.

But I'd like to see them, you know, healthy, nutritious. That's awesome. So you're teaching them in the garden. Yeah. Eat off your own land. Yeah. I say go pick whatever you want. Whatever's in the garden you go eat.

It's good. It's like the blue ocean thing. It's like community, keep moving and then like have your own food source, right? So how much of your own food do you eat besides the garden? Do you have like chickens? Do you have chickens? My wife's in charge of the chicken. chickens. So we just got 10. We had five or six. They had their run. They lost about three years

while they're producing eggs. And we just got 10 more chickens this Easter. So, but that's my wife's department. So we share the, do you have a full farm? No. I mean, we have some, land. It's enough. I mean, I do have a ranch, which is a different story. But that's a, yeah, that's a longer story. But we have enough, you know, a three quarter acre. So we have enough to enough to feed our family before. So usually I'm buying some, you know, meats and then having a big salad or kale or I did broccoli this year. So I do all the greens and everything and then I'll add some protein on the side. That's awesome.

You don't get, you don't get that kind of land here in Orange County. No? No. No, I mean, we tried chickens for a while, but. You need like a rooftop garden here to be perfect. That's a big thing in New York, right? Yeah, yeah. Now, Circelight doesn't just like survive on each land.

It's like it's dominating in that space. Now, what's one regulation or policy or trend you're actively pushing right now? I might have to think about that. I mean, I'm not currently active. I was doing MBA and all these different events. I am networking groups like Bama and stuff like that. So I'm really into, I think talked about this before the cast here is I'm really into working with other broker owners, like-minded people.

I'm an open book. I like to talk about, if my agents want to talk marketing, business planning, what books I'm reading, you know, et cetera. I'm an open book.

Like I meet with other broker owners as almost advisors. And I'm fine sharing information. What marketing is working. What marketing is not working. You know, here's my, you know,

contract XYZ. So I'm fine sharing that because I think, especially in this broker world, uh, anything helps. And to have a trust the community where people can, you know, have experiences, whether good or bad. It helps you

guide the company, you know, share business back and forth. If I, you know, I can't do this property or that property. So I really like building a strong network of other like-minded broker owners and being able to share content and success and failures. I mean, it's, sometimes it's a lonely, you know, industry we're in. A lot of people behind phones are still working at home. And to have a voice or like I always say my group search light as a team or a family you know when somebody dies we know who they are somebody's a birthday right it's it's not just you know your nmLS MLO number these are people with families and you probably think the same thing sometimes you're like wow I've hundreds if not more people that rely on their whole you know livelihood on what I've built

or what I support and it's you know when I started this Like, you know, 15 years ago, I was probably the second youngest one of the company. And sometimes I'm like, these people's livelihood, they're putting their kids through college on the platform model lenders, um, marketing that I put together. You know, it's almost like, uh, sometimes it's exciting. Sometimes it's daunting, right? It is. That's right. You know, it's a lot of pressure.

Yeah. Now, a couple last questions. Now, if you had to pitch searchlights model in one sentence to a burnt out loan officer. What would you say would make them quit their job right now? To keep it short, we have sources that will make you revenue for the loans you may be turning down right now. Simple. Now, a couple last questions. Now, you've been fortunate enough to basically establish a pretty successful business on your own.

You're obviously a grinder. And I asked this question to all my guests. It's how are you instilling that same grit, that same tenacity that you have in your children? I prefer hustler or a grinder, but maybe grinder has a worst term these days. I think the best way to, it's just by, you know, them seeing you work, them seeing you up before they are and working. Them seeing you working out and, you know, working on your health because health is wealth and without your health. you know, we don't have the energy to work, right? So I think just by showing them, you know, what you're doing and showing them success,

it's not, it's nice to sticking on vacations. I mean, I brought my family down here this week. I'm doing a, you know, I mean, a bunch of people. I don't like to leave my family for more than one or two nights. I actually like my kids. And wife, of course, honey. So it's like, I think just by showing them, even bringing them here shows me that, you know, I can work and I have the life balance.

because we can all make more money. We could all work more, especially in this business. No one's telling you to stop. And just by saying, okay, well, I went to surf with my kids this morning, even though I was up at 545 on vacation, plugging in, so I could be ready for meeting everyone today and just my general office works. So just shown by example.

I think is the best way to do it, whether I'm reading at night instead of watching TV, spending time with them, whether I'm doing Little League or driving them, sports or playing we love board games and rummy and backgammon just bikes by you know living the right way that they see love that now what's a personal goal that you have for yourself

a family goal that you have for the family and a business goal that you have for search site personal goal would probably be you know just keep the work life balance going I think it's easy sometimes especially in this a little tougher market, lower volume market we're in to say I'm going to work more, but just having enough and being okay with having enough because most of us in this modern world we're in have more than enough and just being okay with that. I think over the last couple years, I've stopped acquiring, I've done more divulging, you know, times more important than material wealth and enjoying the things you already have,

whether it's the garden, whether it's time together or the simple things. You know, just play. I got a, I got like an adult Lego for me and my son. So you get 2,000 piece adult Lego, the pieces are this big. And so that Japanese wave and turns into a frame that you put in the art wall. And it's like doing that has been so fun and relaxing. So it's really, I guess my personal goal would be more, being more present and just enjoying the things I already have and the things I've accomplished, which sometimes when that character keeps moving, you know, we want to get bigger. We want to get more important.

you're never going to get that carrot, right? And you're just disappointed. And the next one was business or family? You can go in any order. I mean, family kind of just goes into personal. It's just time, right? You know, there's all these stats out there. You spend like 80, 90% of your time with your kids

before they're like 12 or something, if you count up all the time. So really just relationships with family. I almost, I like the dad phomo, right? I don't like to miss events. and graduation, of course, but like sports and music and school, this and that. Like I like to, which gives us in our business, we have the flexibility being more or less self-employed, right?

And that was one reason I left retail because when I was retail, single, younger, it was no big deal, hang out the office, you know, fun, or whatever. But now I can cut out in the middle of the day if I need to see X, Y, Z. Or if my kids are junior guards in a competition, I want to go watch, right? no one's telling me when to work. And yes, I have to pay for it later by working. But just really, I mean, time with the family. And, yeah, it's being the best out I can be.

Yeah, I mean, it's like these times are fleeting. And I try to be there for every event myself. Even like now, I'm like, not going to be able to take them to Jitsu at like three for a couple hours. I get dad FOMO too. I didn't look at it in that context, but it's so important to be at every single thing for me. Yeah. Last question. When you're in front of the pearly gates.

what do you think God's going to tell you? Well, yeah, man, you're going to finish strong here, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think that a couple things. You always think back at that saying you never, you're never on your deathbed wishing you worked more, right? You all look back and, you know, my uncle told me this thing.

You never remember every dollar he made, but you remember every fish you caught. And me and my son love fishing. So it's like, I think, you know, to get philosophical, religious, we're going to call it, you know, I think when you die, hopefully you die with your experiences and your memories. And the more you make, I mean, you're not going to, you can't take stuff with you, take stuff with you, right? You can be buried with it. It doesn't matter. But I think, you know, magically to make it all seem like it has purpose and reason, you die with your experiences, your stories, your times, memories, right?

So yeah, you're, yeah, you're a red dye wishing you worked more. But, you know, but success is still there and you need, you know, you can't pay your mortgage with love, right? It's like, you know, so there is, it all comes down to balance, you know, balance, balance, balance, hit that pendulum in the middle when it comes down to it, right? You know, when you say you don't remember the money you made, but you remember every fish you got, like, that hits hard for me personally because me and my, my, my, kid, my, my, always all we love fishing yeah we just caught a halibut like in a shark and like my my five row

just keeps talking about the shark he got it's just amazing yeah he's isn't care if you got another 10 LOs recruited right he's not talking about that shark versus life i actually caught a leopard shark in pizmo uh on father's day so yeah yeah we did too we went we it was uh we caught a leopard shark uh was it father's day no the night before father's yeah yeah so that was the same one you know it's our kindred shark yeah it's cool it's like it won't stop talking about that shark. I totally understand I could care less about the money you make. It's like he'll always remember that for a shark.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I really like that con. That really hits me personally. Well, thanks so much. If people want to connect with you, how do they find you? I mean, our website is searchlightlending.com. And email's always best.

We can do team Chris because I do have a sports staff, team Chris at searchlightlating.com. and I think all my social media fun is on, you know, maybe some notes, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, which my wife's getting me more into, but I'm catching up. But yeah, I mean, there's emails fastest. If you have a load request or someone that out of the box stuff that you don't know where to place, or if you just want me to send our offerings or have a conversation, or if you want to talk about smoking ribs or catching fish, you know, please reach out.

Cool. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you coming down and it's been great sharing with you. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.