The Science of Flipping - F*ck Big Banks: How This Man is Flipping the Lending System | Tim Herriage

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and industry powerhouse Tim Herridge, the founder of Turnus. We dive deep into how he went from helping bring Wall Street money into real estate to now flipping the script and decentralizing the entire lending model. Tim shares how Turnus is making real estate investing easier and faster with 100% financing, 24-hour draw payments, and a no-nonsense, people-first approach. We talk about why he built Turnus for real investors—by real investors—and how anyone, not just institutions, can now own a piece of the lending game through their new crowdfunding model. If you're tired of big banks and slow lenders, this episode is for you. -- About Tim Herriage: ​Tim Herriage is a seasoned real estate entrepreneur and investor with over two decades of experience in the industry. As the Founder and CEO of Ternus, he leads a company dedicated to providing fast and reliable capital to real estate investors, emphasizing a partnership approach to help clients build wealth and create lasting legacies. Resources & Links: Learn more & apply: https://turnus.comInvest & become a shareholder: https://invest.turnus.com Instagram: @timherriage LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timherriage​ YouTube: youtube.com/c/timherriage​ Facebook: facebook.com/herriage -- Thank you to our partners for supporting today's episode! Empowered Investor LIVE! - Take control of your financial future with top real estate experts, builders, lenders, and investors. Join Us at Empowered Investor Live – April 4-6, 2025, in Irvine, CA! Spots are limited – grab your ticket now! 👉 Get Tickets Joe Homebuyer – Want to scale your real estate business fast? Get expert training, weekly coaching, and a proven system to close more deals. High achievers even qualify for luxury rewards! Learn more at joehomebuyer.com. 📊 Quality Skip – More accurate data means more deals! Get premium skip tracing for just 6 cents per match and connect with the right sellers every time. Use code "SOF" for 10% off at qualityskip.com! Mando Whole Body Deodorant – Stay fresh and confident with Mando's doctor-developed, aluminum-free deodorant. Clinically proven to block odor for up to 72 hours, it's safe for use anywhere on your body. Use code 'COLBY' for $5 off a Starter Pack! -- About Justin: After investing in real estate for over 17 years and almost 3000 deals done, Justin has created a business that generates 7 figures in active income through wholesaling and fix and flipping as well as accumulating millions of dollars of rental properties including 5 apartment buildings, 50+ single family homes, and 1 storage facility Justins longevity in real estate is due to his ability to look around the corners, adapt to changing markets, perfecting Raising private capital, and focusing on lead generation which allows him to not just wholesale and fix & flip, but also accumulate wealth through long term holds. His success in real estate led him to start The Entrepreneur DNA podcast and The Science Of Flipping podcast and education company, and REI LIVE where he’s actively doing deals with members. He has coached and mentored thousands of aspiring and active investors over the last decade. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby​ YouTube: Justin Colby​ TikTok: @justincolbytsof​ LinkedIn: Justin Colby

I get goosebumps as I say this every time because I tell the team we make millionaires. You know, when I got out of the Marine Corps, I wanted to be a cop. I was going to be a cop, then a state trooper, then a Texas Ranger. I feel like you would have killed that also. I would have, but I would not be flying around the way I fly around. That's right. That's no doubt. But, I mean, that's what I wanted to do.

I found real estate. I got in as a project manager. Then I was an acquisitions guy for a home investors franchise. Then I partnered up with my partners. Then I met my wife and then we went out on it together. And we have, you know, the Ed Mylett book, The One, we have changed the course of our family with this business. And the fact that we get to help others do it,

it makes me so happy. And that's why we will loan to a first time investor just like they're an experienced investor. The science of flipping family, fuck the big banks. Decentralized financing, these are mottos that my next guest lives by. This man is a very dear friend of mine, but over 10 years ago, he brought Wall Street

to Main Street, and now he's reversing the whole system he helped build and bringing back that money into Main Street. Tim Harridge is here with Ternus, what's up, dude? Dude, just glad to be here. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. So you are, your motto's, I call them like trigger words, but fuck big banking, right?

Decentral finance, decentralizing finance. This is now your new mission, but you're the motherfucker that basically went out and started the whole thing. Yeah, I'm trying to undo the problem I created. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I get it. You know, it's, part of my lesson in life has been everyone gets their money from somewhere. And during the Great Recession, I was an active flipper and

money dried up for investors. So 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I partnered with Blackstone to start a company called B2R Finance. I know them well. Which became Finance of America, which we took public in 2021. And in that 11 year period, now investors don't realize, so in 08, 09, there was no Wall Street money for flippers. Now almost 95% of the money flippers use comes from Wall Street.

Kiavi and some of the big guys, I mean, it's all securitization. It's all Wall Street money. And the problem is it's slow. It's hard to predict. Dude, it's brutal to use. They ding your credit every other week. They, you know, appraisals take two months and all of a sudden, you know, now an appraisal is like $900.

I don't even know. I don't even know how that works. That's right. But now, I mean, we just, it started off with the concept of if I can, cause I buy houses, you know, I've bought a couple thousand, um, if I can buy a house houses, you know, I've bought a couple thousand. Um, if I can buy a house with pictures and comps, why can't I make a loan on a house with pictures and comps? That's right.

And that was kind of the entire beginning of the company. And here we are 13 months later and it's working. It's been fun. And a little background on that guys, uh, about 13, maybe 15 months ago, uh, him and I have a couple of cocktails, jump on a private jet headed to Dallas I believe, and he says, Colby, I need you to poke holes into this business model. Tell me why this doesn't work.

That's right. Tell me why this doesn't work. And I couldn't, I couldn't think of one. I mean, I literally was like, okay, the challenge would be is, you know, you have a rookie investor. But to your point, if you are the one running this and running the ship and you're willing to buy on pictures and comps, why can't you lend? And I'm like, bro, if you have that much confidence and there's no reason this doesn't work and to your point, you know, I'm very still active after 18 years. You're still active.

You are still buying deals. I called you the other day and you're like, dude, I might want to buy this damn thing, right? Like you're not a lender in the way that we think of Kyavi or we think of some of these bigger, again, institutional funds. You are on the streets, in the trenches, teaching, and not just teaching, but like creating an opportunity for us, your client, to be a part of something

really special at Ternus. Well, I'm like so many of the people listening to this. I mean, my wife and I still actively buy, flip, keep rentals. She still loves short-term rentals, midterm rentals. And we just really know what it's like to be on the other side of the closing table. And I say to my team all the time, I'm like, never forget the people behind the paper because it's easy.

You know, you, you get up in your office and you're looking at the paper and you start making these decisions and you forget about the realtor, the title agent, the investor, the contractors, their acquisitions people, their dispo people, like all the people counting on us, you know, in, in, in a hundred loans, we were kind of just guessing. We probably impact 2,000 or 3,000 families between all the contractors and the supply people and the realtors and the title agents and the insurance people. I mean, there's just a lot of people that real estate influences. So kind of that's one of our mantras is don't forget the people behind the paper.

Now out of the gates, people are like, all right, what's the company? So let's hit it out of the head. Ternus and where can people go find fill out applications I mean obviously Ternus is the name of the company but what's the easiest way for them to start the process of getting in your world? So it's kind of a funny origin story I don't even know if I'd come up with it yet when you and I were flying back from Austin the name I was reading Simon Sinek's book, Start With Why, for the second time. And it talked about kind of everything's in threes, everything's in threes. And I thought, okay, if I want this product to sell itself from the inside out, the product has to align with the customer's kind of core reasons.

And I kind of worked on it. And I would imagine the hundred thousand people that listen to this, the three things they'll all have in common is number one, they want to make money. Number two, they want to make passive income or cash flow, say it different, whatever. And then number three, they want to build a legacy or

long-term wealth for their family. Yeah. And that's really like the three most common denominators, everyone that ever gets in this business. And I anyway, that bounced around my head, bounced around my head. And I started looking for like threefold.com, like really just trying to align with the three core pillars that, and I wasn't available. Some other dude had it.

And then I was playing with it. So I got on Chad GPT and I'm like, what's Latin for threefold. Give me a bunch of different variations. And Ternus is actually Latin for threefold. So I go to, you know, go daddy, I'm going to buy ternus.com. Uh, yeah, it wasn't available. Uh, hire the domain broker. Cause I now I'm sold on it.

Like I, and I'm like you, like once I decide I'm going to do something like. You're on. Yeah, I'm done. Offer them three grand. They say no. I'm like, you like, once I decide I'm going to do something like, you're on, yeah, I'm done. I offer them three grand. They say no offer like six grand. They said, no. I offer like eight grand. They said, no, I'm like, man, maybe I need to find a different name.

Like, cause I don't even have a company yet. Right. Like, um, but about a week later, the guy calls the domain broker says, give me 15 K and you can have it this week. So broker calls me. I grabbed the Amex, I pay for it. My wife gets a text from Amex. Your husband just spent $15,000 ago, daddy. She calls me like, what the fuck are you doing?

Man, like I'm like, it's that new business idea. She goes, Tim, you know, it's like, but I know the idea. So the answer is they can go to turn us.com. Yeah. I wanted a short URL that meant something. Yeah. And it not about capital, not about finance because that's not what we do. Yeah.

Like, so ternus.com, they can get all the information, but yeah, so ternus is Latin for threefold because by our existence, the customer can do loans with us and make money on flips. They can buy rental property with us and build passive income and cash flow. And then now, they can actually have shared ownership in the company, which allows them to help me direct the future of finance for real estate. So this gives me shivers a little bit because I'm one of those people that have now ownership in Ternus.

And for all of you out there, you too can have ownership. This isn't just because he's my buddy. Like quite literally, if you go to ternus.com, there's opportunities for anybody listening to this, watching this on Instagram to be an owner and have shares of Ternus. And I think that's cool for here's the big takeaway for me. I'm out of control when it comes to the lending space.

I'm not the lender. I can present you the deal and give you the comps and you can say yes or you can say no. But I have no skin, like I'm not in any level of control and I can't help you become a better lender to me. By the way, not you, the Kyavis of the world. I can't help them become better lenders. You are flipping that and saying, Colby, specifically you, but then the rest of you, make me the best lender that could possibly be lending to you for all purposes, whether it's flipping, long-term rental, short-term, make me the best by giving

me the Feed Act and having ownership in the company. Yeah. So the crazy thing is, man, I get excited about this still, even though I've been dreaming of it for over two years now. And we just now launched the crowdfunding raise that allows us to let the everyday investor own part of it. Mm hmm. So I got fed up a little bit. There's a ton of debt funds out there like, yeah, I mean, DLP and all these other groups. I mean, you can invest in their debt fund if you're an accredited investor. And then the problem is you only own the loans they give to that fund. And if that fund goes belly up, they can walk away and just form a new fund, or they can use that fund to get where they're going and then get rid of the fund.

And you have no upside, no continued interest in it. So I was looking at it as like, okay, I've never done a crowdfunding before. I was like, how can I make it where it's available to everyone? Even my customers just getting started. How can I make it available to everyone and not just Wall Street? Like I've made a lot of money with Wall Street and it would be really easy to go raise 5 million from Wall Street. I mean, I had a guy at the conference I'm down here for on Tuesday, offer me $20

million worth of buy in loans. We don't need money. The entire vision is to make, so with the crowdfunding, you don't have to be accredited. I mean, you can put it on a credit card and buy shares in Ternus. And it's Ternus incorporated. It's like the real company. Yeah. Right.

I mean, it's the company that owns all the sub companies and we're starting an insurance company, a servicing company, we will raise some debt funds because I've got some rich buddies that would love to drop, you know, a million bucks in and make a 10% cashflow type yield. But for now, before I did any of that, I had to make sure it was available to the masses. Like, like I would rather have a thousand shareholders own a thousand shares

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Well, this is why it's, like, so you are one of my bigger lenders and so all you who want to know where I borrow money from you're looking at him right now, Ternus. And so... I'm not a loan officer. Yeah. You don't want me working on your loan. Right. My team. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, the company. The company. But I'll tell you as a company you guys are some of the fastest, easygoing, most flexible. I mean, we have a couple deals right now that like, Kyavi would not have been ideal, right? Or I'm using Kyavi because they're known as

probably one of the largest. Well, they're my target. Right. And so, but if you keep that level of flexibility, you keep that level of like, you know, being adjustable and fluid depending upon the asset, the borrower, the whatever, you will have more clients you will ever know, that you will beat Kiavi.

Because they are so stringent, they are so by the book, they are so New York Wall Street money, they have a box. If it's not in the box, even an inch, it doesn't fly with them. And you have made my life and all of your borrowers, and I know you have a hundred something loans current like It's easy to work with you. It is just as easy to work with you as it is to give Hey, here's the property. Here's comps. Here's pictures. Let's buy it and in seven days we have money type of idea

Well, and don't forget you put it on Instagram last year. We have a really small package It was like the best worst compliment ever ever it's like Tim Aarons has a small package. It was like the best worst compliment ever. Ever. It's like, Tim Harridge has a small package. It's great. I'm like, thanks. I guess. Right. But by doing, we don't have to securitize our loans.

Yeah. So I just have to make sure that if you don't pay me, I can foreclose. So my loans can be more simple and straightforward, much more like a traditional hard money. And, and, and, and it's great like that because I already have capital partners like we will give you, you know, millions of dollars, but you're going to need to pull credit. I said, no, I don't.

I don't because my partner's Bill and Tom and I have enough money to not need Wall Street's money. But I also don't because I now have shareholders that understand that the credit frankly is your liquidity, the money you have in the bank. Do you have the money to get the project started? Cause I'm going to loan you all the rehab and to pay the interest. That's it. That's your credit.

And the asset is the collateral and having bought thousands of houses. I'm still just an asset guy. I was talking to my mentor, uh, Jeff Tennyson. He took Lima one from like a hundred million a year to three billion a year. He's my CEO coach. And I was like, we haven't brought this yesterday down here in Miami. And he was like, dude, you've got to make sure you don't lose that as you grow the company.

That's right. Like you have to keep it. It's asset based lending. Yeah. It's not true to asset based lending. And that's the difference right now. Right? Like I, that's why I would tell everybody to go to turn this.com because if you're buying

any level of asset, fix and flip long-term hold shirt, like it is the asset, they underwrite the asset for the assets best potential and you lend on it. If it has good potential. Well, it's also important. This is probably a good part to talk about. We really live, eat, breathe and sleep our core values. And I'm a Marine so kind of dumb sometimes we need acronyms to figure shit out. So our core values is stars. Speed, transparency, accountability, respect, and service.

And when I talked to my team about it, I've been on the other side of the table so many times, time kills deals. And if I yank you around or don't give you an answer quickly, even if the answer is no, I'm doing you a disservice, right? And transparency, so many times lenders will collect that app or let you order that appraisal and they know it's going to be hard to get done. I would rather say, dude, you need to keep looking for money and we'll do our best to figure it out, but like, this is not a yes, it's a no, but there may be something there, let us go look at it, but for now, keep looking.

It's funny 13, 14 months into it. We get so many people that just love our transparency because they're, they're like, they'll call you back. Hey, real quick. Can you tell me if this one will work for you? Cause we already told them no twice, but they know that they can get a no from us so quick that they might as well bring us every deal and we'll just quickly tell them yes or no.

Yeah. And if, and the other thing is, is if we say yes, funny story, uh, your second loan you did with us, you text me on a Monday morning, uh, nice and early. You're on the East coast. I'm in central time. You get up at like 4 AM. So then I think I woke up to your text at like six and it's like. Harridge, what the fuck?

Uh, cause we were supposed to close that day and apparently somewhere downstream there was a problem. What it was, was our capital partners, we have different pools of money that we pull from and one of the partners that was going to fund that loan was like, wait a second, if we fund this loan for Colby, it'll put us where he is over 10% of the money we have outstanding with you. And that's a violation of your warehouse line. I was like, well, shit, why didn't we catch that? Well, we didn't catch it because it was the first time it had happened.

Sure. That was in April of last year. We'd only been originating loans for two months. Right. Like he had had time to get to that point, but I quickly said, hey, we fucked up. Give me a minute, let me figure it out. We had to pull from our own cash to get the deal funded. But part of that is we don't retrade people

and we're gonna do what we say. We're gonna hold ourselves accountable. You have stuck to that and I will vouch for you. You have stuck to that for every deal we've done. The ones that you say, Colby, I don't love it. I mean, I see the numbers, I don't love it. You've stuck by me when you were right and I was not and I was like, bro, but look at these numbers and right and sometimes you get like, oh shit, the numbers did make sense but you didn't do X, Y, and Z which made it not make sense. But you've stuck by me

that whole one terrible deal we're talking about. Like, you do what you say you're gonna do. You kind of wish I hadn't funded it now, huh? Oh yeah, I do. Because I wouldn't have been able to get it and I would have given up on it. But I say all I did is just to give you the kudos that this is who your company is, this is who you are, it's what you stand by.

And so that star's acronym is true for you. Yeah, so that's speed, transparency, and accountability. The next is respect. And I talk a lot about this. It's an internal core value and an external core value. I mean, and it's not this woke bullshit. It's actually like something I super believe in. You know, you're going to get up every morning.

You're going to respect yourself. You're going to show up. Manic, you know, with you can be shaved and your shirt's tucked in. And that's just how we do it at Ternus. Uh, you're going to, you know, answer the phone politely. You're going to treat your teammates with respect. You're not going to allow a shitty deal into the pipeline that our, then our ops team has to clean up.

Um, you're going to respect that when Justin Colby buys a house, there's a realtor title agent and you know, oftentimes in this business, a little old lady that ends up at the title company on Friday and all everything she's ever owned is in a U-Haul. And if we don't close, it's like the most disrespectful thing you can do in the world. And we've all gotten those calls from the little old lady. It's a metaphor, but it actually happens.

Uh, and then the last is service. And when I say service, I get goosebumps as I say this every time, because I tell the team we make millionaires. And, you know, when I got out of the Marine Corps, I wanted to be a cop. I was going to be a cop, the state trooper, then a Texas ranger. And I feel like you would have killed that also. I would have, but I would not be flying around the way I fly around. That's right.

That's no doubt. But I mean, that's what I wanted to do. And, and, and I found real estate. I got in as a project manager. Then I was an acquisitions guy for a home investors franchise. Then I partnered up with my partners. Then I met my wife and then we went out on it together. And we have, you know, the Ed Myleth book, the one, we have changed the course of our

family with this business. And the fact that we get to help others do it, it makes me so happy. And that's why we will loan to a first time investor just like they're an experienced investor. What if your real estate business ran like a machine with constant deals, higher profits, a roadmap to financial freedom. That's exactly what we help entrepreneurs achieve at Joe Homebuyer. We provide the sales, negotiation, and marketing training that separates top investors from the rest.

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you guys have heard me say this a bunch of times here on this podcast, but I just genuinely believe it. Tim and I have gotten increasingly close over the last three years or so because of boardroom mastermind which is just an incredible room I believe it's the best in the industry but there was a time probably 12 years 10 years ago that Tim didn't know me I didn't know Tim but I was invited to a Dallas meetup Ria whatever we want to call what you guys were running at the time right and there's this guy in a suit with no tie and you

had thousand people in the room? Was it the REI Expo or yeah the biggest one of those was 1,800 people? Right and you're up there and I don't know who Tim Harridge is but everyone's like dude the guy who runs this thing is he's the man. We're there? Yeah. You never told me this. I'm telling you now. So you're in a suit, no tie. You're up there. You're kind of giving your thing. And I forget what you're talking about, but you got a slide deck, the whole thing.

And I intentionally sat in the back because I was invited by one of my private clients who lived in Dallas. So I would fly to my private clients once a month. I would work with them. So we lined it up to go to this because one of the points I always make to everyone for the over a decade is the more hands you shake, the more money you make. Amen. And I said, you need to get intentional with going to every damn meetup.

I don't care if there's 10 people in the room or if there's a thousand at this Dallas Expo, get in the room. And so I went with them. Now I intentionally sat in the back because I wanted to kind of see what you guys were doing as a speaker myself but it was an incredible point of like you need to get in these rooms you need to meet people you need to shake hands because a decade later here we are you on my podcast you didn't know this story I'm telling you but this is a very real reason that you always want to put yourself out there because you never

know when that paycheck comes, right? My first mentor in real estate said take every meeting, even if it doesn't lead to a paycheck in your pocket right now, you never know where that meeting takes you in a decade. And it's just true because we've done a lot of deals now together. We're now business partners together with Ternus. Like it's just a cool transition to see. Everyone needs to go follow Tim first of all, go to his social media page.

He's putting a lot of effort in it right now, so I'm watching it. But go check out Ternus, but then connect with him, right? He's a real guy, he really does deals, he's very active. And I just wanted people to hear that because it truly is, I've made more money from people, knowing people, relationship capital than I've ever made from direct mail PPC Facebook ads etc. So two points on that one the REI Expo started out is just I'd been a home investors franchisee for a long time and I missed the annual convention

because I just missed getting in the room with people and this is like really pre Facebook and message boards and Instagram. And there was just no real way to connect other than being in a room with someone back then. And so I started the expo as it was supposed to be just a Dallas trade show. And a couple of people showed up. They're like, man, you need to take this national. I was like, no. And we had 200 the first year, we had 400 the second year.

Then I agreed to take it national. We went to Baltimore, Chicago and LA. And by the time we got through our fourth year, we had 1800 people at the gay Lord in Dallas for our kind of January event. And man, through that, I got invited to speak at the five star conference and the five star conference, if you don't know those big default servicing mortgage, REO conference in Dallas and the conference organizer happened to sit in the room and he was like, Hey, we would love you to come share the path of the individual investor with

these corporate finance executives and all that. I've got the picture still. I almost didn't go. I was fish out of water. It felt like the audience was going to see right through me. I'm just a pretender. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm the, you know, not a college graduate and how am I going to talk to these Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac executives? Um, and I was, I have the picture. I'm in my closet. I've got my suit and tie on and I'll grab my Marine Corps challenge coin. And I'm just like, you made it. I'm like, you made the commitment. I meant to bring that coin.

I have mine. Don't worry. Uh, I was like, you made the commitment. You will go. I spoke afterwards, got a line of people to talk to me. One of them is this billionaire from England. He was the founder of invitation homes, you know, the company that is the largest home owner in the world.

Uh, and, uh, he's a British man and, uh, he actually has already bought shares in Ternus. Nice. He, he, I'll buy this money for luck, Tim, good job. Uh, but he's in line and he's like, uh, so we're working on a project and we need you help and I'm like, okay, who is we? And he pulls out his card, you know, chairman and founder of Invitation Homes. And you're like, got it. Yeah.

Um, the next day I'm in his Dallas office. The next week they fly me to New York. I'm at the Blackstone headquarters and these 20 foot mahogany walls on the 50 something floor looking at central park, same building as the NFL rich. Like mahogany. Man. Like, and you talk about, I didn't belong in that room. Yeah.

And I sit down at the head of the table. Nick, uh, is his name. He positions me and I'm like his puppet that day. And they bring in all these analysts, 20 something people sitting around the table is okay, tell him this is like, cause he had memorized my speech and he knew exactly how I was going to help him sell the B2R idea to Blackstone. And I'm like, da da da da.

He's like, okay, enough of that. Now tell him this. And then like, he had, okay, enough of that. Tell him this. 10 minutes into the meeting, the senior managing director guy that has like a $20 billion authority is like, okay, good to meet you, man. Got a bounce. He gets a believe.

I'm like, that's weird. That's just got here. Yeah. You flew me up, you know, and then, you know, 10 minutes later, the next senior guy, okay, man, good to meet you. I got a bounce on. All right. I must be tanking this.

10 minutes later, Nick's like, okay, that'll do. Let's go to him. And he walks me to the elevator. I'm thinking like, maybe we'll grab lunch. Talk. Elevators closing. He's like, okay, be in touch. And he stays on the floor and I'm going down.

I get in the car, go back to the airport, call my wife. I'm like, I'm done. She's like, well, what did you do wrong? I had like, I don't know. Right. A couple of months later, I'm the managing director of a multi-billion dollar company. And I learned all this institutional stuff. And I mean, I'm got an office in

Manhattan and apartment and it's just these rooms when you're really there for a non transactional purpose, if you're really just there to expand your universe and add value to people, you are one phone call, one handshake away from changing the entire trajectory of your life, of your family. I mean, even my partners, Tom and Bill at Ternus, we started hanging out two years ago at boardroom and we just became friends so much that one night in Tampa last year, we're dragging back in from the casino at 4.30 in the morning and here goes Casey Quinn and all the hard charges

out for their morning run. It's just like you're passing in the lobby like, good luck buddy. See you in a couple hours. But I didn't, I never knew we'd be partners. I just knew we were friends. And then my original founding partners, Charlie, Charlie and Taylor, uh, internist. I wanted to take the company in this direction of the crowdfunding. They felt like it was too risky.

We parted very amicably. They still buy most of our loans from us. Um, they wanted to be more of a loan buyer. I wanted to be more of an originator and crowd funders. So it worked out perfect. Well, I made the offer to Charlie. We're at lunch in October. And I'm like, Hey, you know, what if, what if I just gave you all your money back and, you know, he's like, we'd take it.

I was like, Oh, I thought my wife afterwards, like, yeah, we got to come up with a couple million bucks. Um, a couple of text messages. Yeah. Tom and Bill are like, dude, we're in, we'll do the whole thing. Next thing you know, we buy them out and it's just me, Tom and Bill are like, dude, we're in, we'll do the whole thing. Next thing you know, we buy them out, and it's just me, Tom and Bill. But it's a friendship that turned into business

because it was never intended to be business. It wasn't transactional. So you can get in these rooms and do it wrong if you're walking around only thinking about what can I get from you? What's in it for me, what's in it for me. Kent talks a lot about that, right? So I tell people all the time, every conversation

that is not an enlightened person. So when you talk to Tim Harridge, he's very enlightened. He's not thinking what's in it for me. 99% of the human race will be thinking, what am I going to get out of Tim Harridge? What am I going to get out of Justin Kolbe? And that's how people think.

And it's kind of natural human condition at this point. But if you go into it, even if you might be thinking it and you actually say, okay, how can I genuinely start a relationship, build a relationship with no agenda? The agenda becomes clear down the road. And this is why I talk a lot about giving yourself runway. If you give yourself enough runway,

Tim didn't know me 10 years ago, I didn't know Tim. I saw him speaking at his own event. I was forcing my client to go kind of engage in what we're talking about now. Um, 10 years later, we become very close friends. Now we are business partners. You are my main lender and all these different synergistic. You're a shareholder in Ternus. I'm a shareholder in Ternus.

Which is so fun to say. Right. Well, I got to interrupt because that is so much the idea behind Ternus. Yeah. I do not need the money I'm going to get from the crowdfunding. As a matter of fact, we have this thing called the Founders Club for this round of investors where they get 500 bucks off of any loan they do. So if the minimum investment's a thousand dollars and you do two loans,

you got shares for nothing. Essentially. Yes. I mean you got shares for nothing. Essentially. Yes. I mean, literally dollar for dollar. Yes. The value in this offering is going to become twofold. One, obviously now you have these ambassadors that are shareholders throughout the nation telling people about Ternus, but two, when we have the annual shareholder meeting,

we want a community of people to tell us what we're doing wrong. I don't want a community of people to blow smoke up my ass or tell me that we need to focus on progress. Southwest Airlines made the world's worst mistake this week. It isn't weak. Yeah. They, uh, bags no longer fly free. Oof. Uh, and now, and now they are, um, reorganizing their, uh,

workforce in the airports and a CEO when explaining it on the news, he led with the word profit. Not ideal. And the minute if you've ever read, uh, Jim Collins, good to great. And that's right. The minute you start talking about profit first versus how do I serve my customer? How do I get better? What am I doing wrong?

It means you're going in the wrong direction. I would almost guarantee you Southwest airlines out of business the next 10 years and merged with someone else. Cause now it's all about profit. And if it's all about profit and shareholder value at that point, it's commoditized, right? And you're not actually caring about the people and what they did so well for so long was they cared about the people.

They became very inexpensive flights with great value ads that were quick, cheap, fast flights. I used to fly them living living on the west coast, I'd fly them all the time. Yeah. From Dallas to Phoenix, Phoenix to Vegas, Vegas to LA, like all the time. But now they're more expensive than American.

Flights are ridiculous. That's another, I looked at a flight today to go to Tampa. $400 each way, not first class, just like to Tampa. It's a 40 minute flight. You might as well get an Uber and just work from the back and get to skip a. You think I'm not considering it? Yeah.

Like I'm legit like why don't I take a bright line, which is a train down here. It's a three hour to Orlando an hour Uber to Tampa. I'm just working the whole time. Like I'm on the phone. I can actually use it versus plan. Anyway, sorry. We're digressing people. This is what happens with the engine.

So the that's the fun part about this share offering is it is not about the $5 million that we're going to raise. It is not about the valuation that we attached to the offering. It's not about the perks. The reason I wanted people like Bill and Tom to be my partners and not Wall Street is they get it. You know, Tom has built a very large, almost a thousand unit portfolio in Yuma, Arizona, by himself, scrappy, over the last 15 years.

Bill and his family turned being dairy farmers into one of the most impressive business operations I've ever seen in my life. The amount that they sell bull semen for is just crazy. I can't even say what they call that business. Uh, the point is they buy commercial properties. They buy that they're scrappy. I want to be surrounded by people that get what it's like to be belly

to belly at a closing table, not the wall street elite that only care about how can we make more profit off of each person that walks in the door. So because I don't want people to get lost on this, can you explain terms for Ternus? Just because people are like, well dude, what does a normal loan look like? Yeah, so on our fixed flip, it's 100% financing up to 70 LTV. 100%, rewind that, 100% financing up to 70% of LTV of end value after you re-app out. Of your ARV. Um, it doesn't matter if you've done 10 deals or zero deals.

Uh, we charge 12% interest and we charge 2% origination. And we have a $2,000 closing fee. If you're in the founders club, that fee is reduced to 1500. Um, if somebody calls and says, you're not competitive, I said, great, call someone else. Oftentimes they call us back because that someone else wants an appraisal and a credit score and you know, a proctology exam and all that. And for us, send us pictures. Send us your bank statements. Would you like to close tomorrow? Yeah. Studies. Yeah. Now, if your pictures are just the exterior picture and the back picture,

and there's no inside pictures, we, we, we're going to have to ask for some more pictures, right? I mean, and we'll send you a link and you can do all that. And probably the thing I'm most proud of Justin is we pay draws in 24 hours. It's fast. And, and having been the flipper that, you know, Friday payroll sneaks up on you. And it's hard. It's hard out there.

And you need to pay your people quickly because we ask people to work kind of on the cheap and fast and so that you need to pay them. And so I'm really happy with our draw process. It's, it's, you fill out some form online and we text you a link and you can even text that link. I think you guys do it. You text it to your general contractor down in San Antonio. They run over to the house.

They take pictures. It tells me that they were actually at the house on that date. And it gets emailed to my draw inspector in house, which is actually my brother. Uh, which is another superpower we have right now that we're trying to, you know, as we get to scale, we have to figure out. My brother, Jamon is, he's probably bought 800, 900 houses for me that I made every decision based off of what he told me. Yeah. So to have him kind of in that draw department and on the front

and diligent side is helpful. We're looking at hiring some other people, maybe some people that were, uh, if you're out there, say you were an acquisitions manager somewhere, uh, and volume slowed down. We want to talk to them. They worked at open doors, Zillow. We want to talk to them, uh, because we've got to make sure we're staffed with asset guys and gals, right? People that really understand real estate. I can figure the rest out with finance people.

I just need to make sure we're making good loans on good houses and good neighborhoods. Yeah. It's, um, guys, first of all, a hundred percent lending is incredible. Buy it right. Like understand how to come to property, understand what the actual ARV is. Just buy it right. And they're going to give you a hundred percent of the money you need. They do it very fast.

Yesterday you text me. You said you need to be able to cut the check by today. You said, hey, you got to solve for this thing that my team needs. Literally my general manager replies, hey, that's on the deal. And then you're like, great, I can't send the wire until you guys give us a thing. That wire will hit today. And literally you brought it up yesterday. So we're talking about one day and we have brought it up last night.

Last night. Right. And so that's one of the reasons Justin that we're selling shares is I'm insanely obsessed with technology. Yeah. We are implementing machine learning into everything we do from even sizing or reconfiguring loan offers. So if you're a new person and you're buying a heavy rehab and you've never done a deal and you're borrowing money from your dad to get it done, we will do that loan.

No doubt. But you're going to prepay six months of interest and we may lower your loan to 65%. Well, we've now w for six months, we've been building and testing this automatic little robot that takes in those data points and says, and we'll give the customer a quicker answer to those, what we call exceptions. Yeah. Right.

If you're just buying a normal three, two, two brick house and these paint and carpet, and you have money in the bank, like here's the money. Super easy. Yep. We've got to be able to say yes to some other things. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and we're using AI and machine learning to do it. Um, one thing that I'm super excited about is we download all call transcripts

every night and we load it into the machine learning engine. I love that. And then my IT guy, my VP of technology has figured out a way to wait towards our top producing salespeople in those call transcripts to, because we want to, we're designing a chat bot that basically can underwrite your deals online and answer your questions, but we want to wait towards the guy or gal that's actually getting stuff closed. Yeah. Not the maybe dip shit that's going to get fired.

Right. That's right. Uh, we were using VA's for a lot of stuff. So we're just like the customer. I mean, it's like VA's and this and that, but we're downloading their inbox every day, like what questions are they getting asked? How are they being answered? Are there common threads? inbox every day? Like what questions are they getting asked? How are they being answered?

Are there common threads? Does it point to a part in your process that needs to be fixed? If 80% of the customers ask the same question, you've got a massive problem on the front end. Massive is not massive, but for me it's massive because again, my core values, speed and transparency, right? I need to be able to tell you everything as fast as possible. So you can make an educated decision for your business and your family. Yep. So part of this fundraise, if they go to invest.turners.com, it breaks down

to use of proceeds, you know, we're going to spend two and a half million on funding loans and there's like, I don't know, half a million, you have to reference the thing on just pure technology development. Like we're trying to so fun to build something on new technology and not be stuck on old technology. Yeah. Uh, so, so that's, that's another reason that we decided to raise the capital. We did is, is to improve in every way we can as fast as possible.

Guys, if you aren't getting the gist here, Ternus is the company, Tim Harridge is the man. There's opportunities not just to get loans that are relatively fair market, right? Like may not be the total cheapest, but is the easiest, the fastest coming from a true operator, yourself, your wife. Like guys, I don't know how else to sell what I'm saying right now. Besides, if you're following me and watching this, you got to trust that Ternus is the company that I use and if it's good enough for me, it's damn sure good enough for you.

Right? And all investments involve risk. I've had some really good friends in the industry call like, hey, what do you think the projected return is? I'm like, I can't say that. Yeah. Like you should, if you can't afford this, you should just expect expect you shouldn't do it. Yeah. And you should expect that the minimum investments like a thousand bucks. Uh, if you can't afford to lose that thousand dollars, don't buy, don't invest. Uh, but if you want to be supportive of a company that is insanely obsessed in the customer experience, uh, you should definitely check us out. Yeah, I think everyone understands who always wins in every transaction.

The lender. The lender, the bank, right? I mean, and you and I were just talking about this off camera. I don't want to go be a bank, but if I can just cut a check to Ternus and own shares and be your partner in that, I'm effectively getting the win I want without having to go build what you are building. And that's what everyone wants. They don't wanna do the work.

They don't wanna have the labor. They want the baby. And I just want the damn baby, Tim. And so if you guys are out there, I don't want the babies. I don't want the, I mean, either. But if you don't want the labor of like building a lending business

and knowing that that's a great space, cause it is, right? And getting 10, 12, 15% and great. But if you don't want the labor of doing what Tim has to do, then take a strategy like me, like be an investor, right? Get shares, because now I can just have the baby with the payoff and not have to go through the labor. Well, Google has an awesome saying, it says, no one knows everything and everyone knows something.

And probably the most thing, the thing I'm most excited about is the first shareholder meeting that's going to be in September where we bring together, you know, we do it somewhere really cool. Yeah. All right. I got it planned. Uh, you know, you bring together 500, 1000 people that have all invested in the successful outcome of something.

Um, and the board and I are just super excited about bringing them together. And hearing them and doing little focus groups, doing surveys. Like, I don't want to just have people invest. I want people to hold us accountable and be a part of the next evolution of financing for investors. Like I said, 10 years ago, these DSCR loans, we be to our finance. My, I ran the sales and marketing team there. We originated the first ever DSCR loan

almost 10 years ago as in April. May have been March actually. It may have been exactly 10 years ago. Until that it was only DSCR portfolio at B2R. And I went to the board at Blackstone. I said, look, 89% of the people that call us, even though like our website straight up says, don't call unless you have five fricking houses. 89% of the people that call say, I only have one.

Can you help me? I can't get money anywhere. And so Blackstone's like, fine. You can do $10 million worth of single asset loans. I'm a nerd. I'm a finance nerd now. In the securitizations, it's still called the SLP, which we came up with on the fly. It means single loan product. There you go.

Because we had the entrepreneurial loan product, which was the five house portfolio and I had to call it something for the sales team. I was like, Brendan, what are we going to call it? He's my VP of sales. The time he goes, uh, SLP is like, there you go. Uh, still call that in the securitization documents. Kind of funny, but, um, yeah, man, Brian Partridge, who you've met, uh, was kind of our number one sales guy, B2R back then.

He sold the first couple dozen of them and we sold out in like three days. And you're like, Oh, that's something. Yeah. And so we do DSCR as well, uh, long-term rental loans. That is not a turn this product yet. Um, that is just a, it's a, since those have to be sold to life insurance companies or hedge funds or whatever, because nobody has money to tie up for 30 years like that, that's still conforming to kind of the pain of normal.

And, you know, you gotta have credit and appraisal and all that, but, you know, we're closing them in two weeks and that's kind of unheard of, but we're doing that because my team is just, I mean, the reason speed is the first letter in stars and not the last is not only does time kill deals, but time will get you deals. So like today is the 20th of March. No way. Most lenders could close a DSCR by March 31st. No way. No way. We could.

How? Because we would be really transparent with you up front. We'd say, listen, we can do it. I need all of your bank statements today. I need your insurance today. I need you to pay for the appraisal today, and you need to make a call and follow up with the appraiser tomorrow and make sure the report is done tomorrow. Tomorrow is a Friday. So then I'd have it in by Monday and I'd have full seven days. Once I have the appraisal, the credit report, the lease, the bank statements, I can get you into underwriting. Underwriting can clear in 48 hours. It can be done. The problem is most of our customers, we are unorganized and slow because we like to bitch about the lenders, not bitch about ourselves.

I talked about this yesterday. And I'm saying we, because I'm one of them. That's right. I mean, I bitch about lenders too. That's right. So yeah, I mean, we are radically obsessed with changing the way business is done and eventually we'll have our own DSCR product. I mean I see a world where we can do a DSCR product

without credit. I mean we don't DSCR through you yet? I think. I think we have one. Yeah I don't know. I didn't force you to do it in seven days. It's probably the point is it's not ideal but we close them in two weeks all the time. It's um guys I want to see you guys watching this and listening to this at the shareholder meeting in September. That's what I want because I want you and me to be able to help this man create a product that is needed in this space. Cause it doesn't exist.

What you've done at Ternus and what you're building in the direction you're going with your thesis is a product that doesn't currently exist that makes my life, your life as an investor, and your guys' life as an investor way easier, faster, and smoother. So my encouragement, find Ternus, go to their website, but also I want you guys to join me in helping this man on the journeys on, and we can do that as shareholders. That's how we make an actual dent in how lending is done moving forward. We'll take it back.

And so I appreciate you joining me too today and we have a long journey but it's gonna be fun. Man, I appreciate you having me. Yeah man. All right, if this was pretty cool and you think there's two people that need to know more about Ternus, hard money lending, the space we're in or just need money, then make sure you share this with those two friends and we'll see you on the next episode. Peace.