How Private Lenders Evaluate Borrowers and Commercial Real Estate Deals

Anthony OBrien (00:00)
Lenders look at risk, and always the risk is not the project, the risk is the borrower. That’s our primary risk. I I foreclosed on one property in all the years I did this. and I lent money to the borrower. ⁓ and it turned out that he was a con man. And but we caught him and ⁓ we broke even on the property. ⁓ I wrote I I just I just wrote a great book that it’s one of the analogies in my s in my book is the story about how I got fleeced for about two and a half million dollars by a guy who failed to give me the proper information. And it was my fault. I didn’t ask for the information.

Quentin Edmonds (02:14)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am indeed excited to be here today. I have a fantastic guest who has a ton of credentials? And so I’m so glad that we’re gonna get to learn today. ⁓ this gentleman, listen, he he done read ran a hedge fund, started out in lending, he’s sold a company, he done wrote five books. and now he has Fyntra AI I’m sorry. And ⁓ I’m excited. I’m excited. He had his own podcast. I mean, listen, we’re gonna learn a lot today, and so I am super excited for us to learn from Mr. Tony O’Brien. Mr. Tony, how you doing today, sir?

Anthony OBrien (02:54)
Good morning, Q. How are you doing?

Quentin Edmonds (02:55)
Doing good. I’m doing good. And then I correct myself with the name of that company. Did I get it right the second time?

Anthony OBrien (03:00)
It’s Fyntra, F Y N T R A, and I did that on purpose to make it very difficult to pronounce. So don’t feel badly. That was that that was a design that forces people to think about the name because they have to try to understand the name. And it’s yeah, so it it it achieved its results with you.

Quentin Edmonds (03:19)
Bro brilliant. Cause I I’m looking at it and I’m like, I know we said it. I’m trying to see it, read it phonetically. So brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And so listen, sir. I I’m so glad you’re here. ⁓ I’m excited to do this with you. I I’m the type I like to dive right in. So, Mr. Tony, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about what’s your main focus these days, what markets you’re operating in, and then give us a little origin story, kind of how you got to where you are.

Anthony OBrien (03:43)
Well, I mean, it’s yeah, you know, I played ice hockey in college, ⁓ realized I wasn’t gonna become a professional ice hockey player. And my second goal in life was to become a stockbroker. ⁓ so I went to work for ⁓ Prudential Based Securities and rose to the level in about five years to senior vice president in charge of the institutional trading desk in the Midwest and ⁓

During that period of time, I realized that ⁓ the money that was being realized in the marketplace was was through the hedge fund industry. So I resigned from Beige, moved to San Francisco and started Spinnaker Partners, ⁓ raised over the period of time about four and a half billion dollars, and we managed it successfully for almost 19 years, ⁓ sold it to a major bank and got out of it and then got into the energy field.

And ⁓ ran glacial energy for a number of years very successfully, ⁓ revenue close to thirty million dollars a month before we sold the company. And then I got into real estate. And ⁓ at the time real estate looked like it was starting to ramp up. And ⁓ I felt the place for me to be because I was a money money guy was on the lending side. Yeah. So I developed a number of credit lines, got into

the commercial space. I didn’t I didn’t lend the residential. I I lent to commercial, new construction, acquisition, rehab. in 40 states, we were big enough that we broad based into 40 states. We were doing pretty close to 50 million dollars a month in ⁓ in lending. And ⁓ w wrote a wrote a book 2021. It was a bestseller. ⁓ I was named one of the top 100 real estate executives.

And ⁓ wrote a book called Comprehensive Guide to Private Money Markets. Because what I learned ⁓ is that the banks re pulled out after 2008, the banks pulled out of lending in real estate. So small and medium-sized investors couldn’t raise any money, could couldn’t get money for their projects. And a lot of commercial space basically broke down because they couldn’t get money together. So I wrote a book about that process because I was on the front lines.

Lending money.

And I looked for a certain type of investor. So what I did was I I put that model on paper. It was called Comprehensive Guide to Private Money Markets. And it was a bestseller. What was funny was all my competitors who also lent money, they made all their sales reps read my book. So I I I heard that from a a number of competitors. yeah, we we Tony, all our salespeople read your book.

It’s a mandatory book that has to be read because I basically talk about how to borrow money in the private sector and and and your demeanor and and how you have to appear and what you have to bring to the table and what you what is not gonna fly. you know, I’d use an example, you know, you’ve you’ve rehabbed a couple of single family homes and now you think you’re going to buy a 40 unit apartment building and you’re gonna borrow money against it. And I said, you know.

My my analogy was you played high school baseball and you you go down to Yankee Stadium and ask them if you can slide into the lineup tonight. Like, you know, it it’s just there there’s a process and there’s a step to everything in the business world, and real estate borrowing is no different.

⁓ lenders look at risk, and always the risk is not the project, the risk is the borrower. That’s our primary risk.

I I foreclosed on one property in all the years I did this. and I lent money to the borrower. ⁓ and it turned out that he was a con man. And but we caught him and ⁓ we broke even on the property. ⁓ I wrote I I just I just wrote a great book ⁓ that it’s one of the analogies in my s in my book is the story about how I got fleeced for about two and a half million dollars.

By a guy who failed to give me the proper information. And it was my fault. I didn’t ask for the information. I it was a commercial property. And I said, Look, I forgot to ask for the leases. So the 70% of the building was occupied by the United States Post Office. And they were leaving. Wow. So they so they’re leaving in six months’ time. And I didn’t know that. So

The I gave the guy two and a half million dollars. He never made a mortgage payment. Wow. Right. So I was his exit strategy. And the post office left and the building no longer ⁓ cap ⁓ cap flowed to pay the mortgage. Yeah. So I had to go through the expensive cost of foreclosure. And then I had to find someone that would rent that space, which we finally did. And then when I got that done, I sold the building.

And I broke even. I didn’t lose any money.

other than t loss of time and and commitment ⁓ and use of the two and a half million for for the eighteen months that it took me to pull this off. But after that, I always got every lease on a commercial building. I okay, you want to buy this? Great. Show me all the leases. I want to see who’s moving out, who’s and it it saved me a tremendous amount of problem. And ⁓ I would ⁓ I would ⁓ learn I learned a big lesson from it and

You know, business is just a series of lessons, right? It’s ⁓ we all we all make mistakes. If you don’t learn from that mistake, then you’re just a fool trying to do the same thing over and over again, right? You’re you’re rolling a boat with one oar, as I like to say.

Quentin Edmonds (10:15)
Yes, sir. man, you hit the line. that line that we learn from our mistakes. I mean, that kind of walked me right into what I want to ask you. ⁓ I really believe destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning, like no matter where we’re doing in life, we’re building to the people that we are now. We’re borrowing from each leg of the journey. And so I would love to know, Tony, what has the moments? I mean, you just gave me beautiful story, but what is these moments taught you about yourself?

Have they taught you discipline, resilience? Has it changed the way you look at innovation? Like what is the moments taught you about you?

Anthony OBrien (10:46)
Well, I I I’ve always been very disciplined, but I’ve also always learned that I don’t know everything. So I I like to pretend I know everything, but the one thing you never do is you never lie to yourself. If you you know, there there’s an adage when I live in California, you fake it till you make it. Right. And and and that is the that is the landscape of ⁓ Silicon Valley. Yeah.

⁓ and and unfortunately when you’re in in a hard asset like capital, you can’t fake it till you make it. Yeah. Because every deal it it is one deal. You know, if I didn’t pay back my lines of credit, yeah, I lost my lines of credit. If a c if if a borrower didn’t pay me back, ⁓ well, I still gotta pay my line of credit back, right? So you

You learn very quickly that the buck stops here, as Harry S. Truman said. And ⁓ you you take responsibility not only for your problems and your errors, but you take responsibility for the people that you’re engaged with. You take responsibility for their errors and their problems because ultimately they’re gonna come back on you. So that’s probably the biggest thing I learned that there are no victims in the business world. There are there are just predators.

And there are sheep and which one are you? ⁓ and you proceed from there.

Quentin Edmonds (12:16)
Yeah, yeah. Whew. Thank you, man. Thank you for that answer. Thank you for that reflective answer. And I know one thing you’ve already put into place, you told us, is that you want to know who’s leasing the building before you buy. So that’s obviously one thing you’ve put into place that has helped you tremendously. But what’s one operational thing you’ve put in place the last two years that has made the biggest difference in how you run deals?

Anthony OBrien (13:14)
I I would probably say it’s my focus on detail. ⁓ I I you know, when you’re in business, especially new in business, you tend to think about shortcuts which are gonna get you down the road faster. Yeah. Like so you want to be a football player. And and so you okay, I’m not gonna spend any time in a weight room because that’s just gonna take me off the field and I’m not gonna have time to practice my skills.

Except when you get on the field and every time you get hit, you get launched in the next week, right? That’s that’s a look lack of focus on detail. So ⁓ I was I was a I was a world champion bike racer for many years. I I rode with Lance Armstrong on the same team. ⁓ I was a two-time world champion and we focused on tenths of seconds. So if my time dropped a tenth of a second, that was a big win for me. And

how you got there are the steps necessary and it’s just stayed with me for the rest of my life. So my focus to detail is has been the critical reason why I’ve had more success than failure because I take nothing for granted.

Quentin Edmonds (14:27)
Yeah. Whoo, take nothing for granted. ⁓ I absolutely love it. I I mean again, that’s why I say destiny has no wasted moments. We don’t take anything for granted. It all adds up to where we are now. And I love it. So what’s next for you, Tony? Like what is the next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next?

Anthony OBrien (14:45)
Well, ⁓ it it’s my country company, Fyntra I believe, that we are driven to help other companies. So as a business consultant, I’ve seen a lot of success and I’ve seen failure and why failures occurred. We brought that to the table and now we support B2B companies with their sales operations, understanding why they’re struggling, because I’ve been down that path.

I know that path, I know how to deal with it. I know what it takes to fix. I just wrote a book called The O’Brien Method, which are the five domains of selling. And I’ve ⁓ I’ve brought that to the marketplace where founders, business executives can utilize the book, utilize our company and straighten out a problem instead of just keep throwing money at it.

That that is isn’t that the definition of ⁓ craziness is seeing a problem and and continue to throw money at it and and never solve the problem. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (15:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. So I mean, you you’re obviously helping people. I mean, you’re you’re helping businesses, you’re changing things around for people, helping them with their sales process. So when I would love to know what is your philosophy on business relationships?

Have have have they served you well? Who’s in your circle now? Like who are people that you’re working with that’s that’s adding to your business or referring people to you, or maybe you’re working with them, referring people, you know, to them. Like talk to me a little bit about your relationships and your philosophy on on business relationships.

Anthony OBrien (16:23)
So business relationships are like relationships. They’re all ending with the word relationship. So if if you’re married or if you have a girlfriend in your life, you know that there’s give and take on both sides of the fence. And when that stops and becomes unequal either side, there’s a breakdown and a failure in a communication of the relationship. Business is the exact same way. If you want to get something, you’ve got to give something.

Right. There’s there’s no free ride, you know, cue, just you give me, you give me, you give me, I’ll become successful. You’re gonna get very tired. Right. If I’m not giving back to you, then the the the the term that we always hear about is karma. Karma will swing in an opposite direction, the pendulum swings and things break down. You stop talking to me, I lose a great friend, I lose a great business source.

Because I did nothing for you. Yeah. Right. And and so ⁓ we, you know, that’s part of the reason why I created this company is we want to just give back to sales companies what I’ve learned over 30 years and help them achieve. that’s why I wrote the second book, Comprehensive Guide to Private Money Markets, the second edition. I felt that that book needed to be updated and and fixed because Dodd Frank is now in that. So borrowers can now

Read the updated version, and all the all the good stuff is still there from episode one, volume one, but all the new stuff is also in there.

Quentin Edmonds (17:55)
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely love it, sir. ⁓ now I want to talk about the name. I I know you said you did the name strategically to make people slow down and really have to think about it. And I love hearing the story behind people business name. So talk to me about the name, how we came about, and your intentionality around what you chose.

Anthony OBrien (18:54)
So when I founded Spinnaker Partners, Spinnaker is a is the is the big billowy sail in the front of a sailboat. I was racing sailboats very seriously. I was I was in the 88 Olympics. I was very active in sailing. And my big love and my big passion was sailing. So putting the word Spinnaker in the name of my company brought that personal aspect to my naming of the company.

When I s when I started Cape Fear Capital Group. Cape Fear River is a very ⁓ interesting river in in North Carolina. Everyone everyone had heard of it. I just thought that sounds like a really cool name. I’m gonna go with Cape Fear because that’s the region of the country I would love to live in. So Cape Fear Capital came to be. Real estate lender. I actually own the name real estate lender dot com. ⁓ Bought it. I bought it off the internet, right? think it was

Eight dollars or something like that. But what do I do for a living? I lend money. I’m I’m a real estate lender.com. So I own that name, and that’s how the name came to be. ⁓ when I started Fyntra, I sat down, and you know, every business has to start with a name. You don’t have a name that you love and cherish. You really don’t have a business that you’re engaged in, that you’re invested in. So

I sat down and spent a lot of time and thought I could come up with, you know, crawdaddy capital, you know, any kind of, but the word Fyntra is an interesting word. ⁓ it it it stuck, it’s still with a Y, F Y, and T-R-A, Fyntra. And ⁓ I thought this is a word that when people see, they’re gonna spend time trying to make sure that they can pronounce it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Stays in your head, right?

I got free rent in your head for for every time you see me. Is that Fyntra or is that right? You know, so that’s how it came to be. Yeah. I just thought I’d have fun with it. And ⁓ it’s actually fyntraai.com is the actual website. So AI is attached to it. ⁓ and it’s because we do a lot of stuff in artificial intelligence today. Our business is a lot of it done, but

I just wrote an another book called AI Won’t Fix It. It’s a great book, right? So we tell business people, you can look at artificial intelligence, but that’s not your problem. Your problem is the sales side of your business. Don’t be throwing software at it, don’t be throwing more money at it. Let’s fix the core. And then everything else will matriculate out of that issue. It’s like marriage counseling.

Quentin Edmonds (21:40)
Yes, sir. Yes,

sir. Yes, sir. Well, that finch right is definitely rent-free in my head for sure. So yeah, like again, brilliant. Listen, sir. If if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, sir?

Anthony OBrien (21:58)
All right, so fyntraai.com is our website. [email protected] is an email that I or or or any of my people in operations will answer. But if it’s directed to me, it gets sent to me and I respond to it personally all the time. ⁓ if if they want to pick up the phone, they can call my office, you know, my office is out in Charlotte, North Carolina. ⁓

704-680-7535 is our company phone number. ⁓ I’m I’m personally engaged in our business. You know, as you know, you run your business. If you’re not personally engaged, nobody will run your business. I’m the same way. I run my business. ⁓ my people work for me, but they also work with me. So we have a collaborative effort in.

driving this company forward. And so ⁓ that’s you know I ⁓ you you you want to read my books you go to Amazon Anthony A. O’Brien ⁓ as the author I’ve got five books there and ⁓ if you want to read ⁓ the the ⁓ comprehensive guide edition too you it’s it’s available in either ⁓ Kindle or Hard Copy. ⁓ if you contact me I’ll send you a book. Yeah yeah easy squeezy.

Quentin Edmonds (23:21)
of it. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Listen, sir, I’m I I’m so glad again we got to do this. I want to say three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story, your your authenticity, your integrity, planting those seeds so that people can really let those seeds get inside and grow. So thank you for sharing. And lastly sir, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for your way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform.

Anthony OBrien (23:22)
It’s all about communication, right?

Quentin Edmonds (23:50)
I greatly appreciate you coming on today, sir.

Anthony OBrien (23:52)
don’t cute it and you should thank yourself because you make it available for people like me to share with your audience right so you’re also performing a service right and that’s what we just talked about right there’s there’s give and take and this is your giving and this is my giving back as a complimentary source. So you’re welcome and thanks for having me.

Quentin Edmonds (24:14)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Tony. He gave us his information. It’s in the show notes. His contact information is in the show notes. So please get in contact with him. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here. Cause I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Mr. Tony. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.