When Banks Say No: Real Estate Investor Loans for Difficult Deals | Scot Fields

Scot Fields (00:00)
We handle folks basically with bad credit all the way up to great credit. I got millionaires actually in our portfolio basically, and I’m dealing with deal for an eighty-year-old lady basically who’s actually at her wit’s end, and I’m trying to save all her actual houses. You know? This is what we do. The whole part of a business owner is also being able to actually help people. That’s the key about it, basically, because I know I’m gonna be able to help this 80-year-old lady out.

Q Edmonds (01:59)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am indeed excited to be here. And I indeed have another fantastic guest. I’m excited about this gentleman, excited about what he’s doing. I’m just excited about him and his character and his delivery and him showing up as his authentic self, right? And this gentleman is the founder of CEO Capital Funding. He is a lender, but it’s a small boutique. So this gentleman, he got his tunnel vision, he knows where his sweet spot is, and I’m excited. I’m excited that we get to glean through his experience so that we can apply it to ours. And so I would love to introduce you all to Mr. Scot Fields. Mr. Scot, how you doing today, sir?

Scot Fields (02:42)
How you doing, Quentin? Thank you very much.

Q Edmonds (02:44)
Yes, sir. No, man. Thank you, man. And I—and I mean that. I—I feel like time, our time, is our most precious commodity. So I take it very seriously that you gave us your time. And so I value it. Thank you so much. Now listen, I am the type—I love to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days, right? And then tell them kind of a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in.

And then, man, tell them what markets you’re operating in, sir.

Scot Fields (03:14)
Gotcha. So the co—our company, CEO Capital. I started this maybe about twelve years ago. But I’ve been in this business since the nineties. So I kind of grew up in this actual business. But knowing how business actually—how this lending world actually is, you know, I always wanted to kind of differentiate myself basically as far as what type of loans that we could actually give out to real estate investors.

So CEO Capital basically just offers real estate investment loans for residential and commercial. We’ll do down to about a hundred-thousand-dollar loan, all the way actually up on our—to our commercial—up to 10 million. And then we actually have a large commercial cap, cap that we can go all the way actually up to 75 million.

So that being said, but our products are actually more geared to offer things that they can’t get from another lender. Mainly, we’re also able to, you know, we’re able to do rural properties, we’re able to do borrowers who actually have credit—credit issues, you know, below, say, 600. We can go down to a 500 credit score. Some of our programs don’t even have a credit score requirement.

You know, we’re able to do rehab on commercial properties. Yeah. Things that they can’t get from your standard, you know, you know, investment loan lender. Yeah. So yeah. So that, that, that kind of makes us a little different. Yeah, yeah.

Q Edmonds (04:57)
Love it, man. Thank you, sir, man. Thank you for letting me know where you are, what you do, kind of, you know, how you got there a little bit. And so, Scot, I often have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning, like, we—we’re ball each leg of the journey, right? We learn from the ups and downs, we’re learning from the success, we’re learning from it all, right? So I would love to know, what is these moments, these moments in business, what have they taught you about yourself? Has it revealed discipline, humility, has increased your tenacity?

Like, what is the moment taught you about you?

Scot Fields (06:16)
Yeah, it’s—it’s definitely actually, you—you definitely gotta actually have some thick skin for this actual business. But I would say tenacity is probably the—the—the main thing, you know, because you’re—as a business owner, you—I—you’re gonna go through some ups and downs. And I’ve—I mean, I’ve gone through as many ups and downs as you can probably think of. You know, that first financial crash, you know, we—I couldn’t even do any business.

You know, it was just almost impossible. You know, the COVID basically, I was—I was—I think I was glad to kind of see it coming before it hit. Yeah. So I was able to shut down and basically pay all our, you know, all our bills basically for the first, you know, for those six months that we were shut down. But, you know, just being able to roll through those actual punches is the key. You know, and—

Q Edmonds (07:10)
Yeah.

Scot Fields (07:12)
You know, and you’ve really gotta have some internal fortitude to be able to deal with that, you know, because that’s—you know, that these are the type of things that actually shape your character. You know, how do you—how do you get up? You know, how do you keep, you know, moving forward? You know, I—I love that little Rocky line where it doesn’t matter how many times you get hit, it matters how many times you get up. Yeah, that is it, basically, you know, and, you know, I mean, even two years ago we had a—

We had an issue basically where we were almost put out of business because we got hit with that huge worldwide cyberattack. Wow. I’m like, it took everything out of our actual—out of every account that we actually had. You know, so dealing with that basically, that was a—you know, it was horrific, man. You know, so—so, you know, so one of the things I started to realize is that—

As a business owner, you just gotta just understand that you’re gonna have some trials and tribulations. Yes, sir. You know. And the more you just able to actually, like, listen, you know, what is happening today is not gonna last. You know, it might continue to tomorrow or the day after that, but eventually it’s gonna pass. You know, you just gotta weather that storm. That’s the thing.

Q Edmonds (08:28)
And you literally just summarize why I asked that question. I, you know, I always bring that question in because at the center of each business is the business owner. Yeah. And you may pivot strategies, you may, you may, you know, up—you want, you know, upsell, you may do different things. Like you said, you gotta know. So this is how my mentor said it to me: When you know who you are, you know what to do.

Scot Fields (08:43)
Well—

Q Edmonds (08:51)
When you know your why, you know how to power forward. You know, if—if we need to pivot, is this—will be a strong pivot? If this is just a little pivot, you know, do we change markets altogether? And so I—I thank you for that reflective answer. You literally summed up why I asked that question. So I appreciate it, man. No problem. I do want to talk to you a little bit about operational things, man. And so I would love to know what’s one operational thing you’ve put into place, let’s say, the last two years, that has really made the biggest difference on how you run your deals.

Scot Fields (09:59)
So right now, I’ll say basically everything that we have now is decentralized. You know, the—the sales aspect is basically it’s me and, of course, the actual loan officers and the processors. Our underwriting, basically, we use a third-party underwriting company. We use a third-party closing company, and we use, you know, we use third-party servicing companies now once the loan is actually closed.

So if one part of the business actually falls down, you know, we don’t stop. Yeah. That’s the key. You know, so realizing what those issues were that we were having, you know, whereas, you know, somebody actually goes out on maternity leave or somebody gets sick or whatever the case may be, as a small company, that’s a huge part of your business right there, you know. And if I’m already swamped with everything that’s going on, I can’t take up that slack.

So putting that actually out there basically and just getting all that done—even our marketing now is actually third-party. You know, so, you know, I mean, I step in here and, you know, and do some, some spot stuff here and there basically, but no, we—everything is decentralized, you know.

And we had to have it that way. Our, our, our compliance is decentralized. It’s a third party. You know? So does it allow us to still close loans on a, on a, on a quick basis? Yes and no. You know, understand that basically there’s going to be some extra scrutiny actually on there, but we’re not talking about something that’s going to take days to review or anything of that nature. We’re talking about maybe several hours at that particular point. But all that basically is actually done so that we don’t have those actual issues. And that was the—and, and when you just said the last two years, we put that together in the last two years.

Q Edmonds (12:01)
Yeah, yeah. Love it, Scot, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate all these answers that you’re giving. Like, I feel like you just—you’re sprinkling some seeds, man. So it’s gonna—yeah, you know, it’s seeds around so they can go ahead and land, sir. So what’s next, man? What’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next, man?

Scot Fields (12:20)
So the—I would say the—the—the next goal basically is I want to actually create our own, our own fund. You know, so—so that basically we can actually bring on other independent small lending companies basically and offer them just the capital basically to use as they see fit.

Yeah. You know. ‘Cause a lot of these brokers basically, there are—you know, they’re—they’re doing—some of these brokers are doing extremely well. But, you know, they—they, what they do is they’ll turn around, they’ll take the deal, and they’ll shop it out to like 10 different companies. And that still takes time, you know. So if they actually have their own guidelines in place and they just have the actual, you know, the capital to go ahead and just lend out, no, that’s something that they should be able to actually do.

You know, it took us a minute to kind of get to that point. So to kind of create that basically. And I’ve tried, you know, and it’s—it’s a hard piece to actually kind of build that basically because now you got to raise money and things of that nature, basically. So I’m basically giving myself the—within the next five years to actually have that actually in place. Gotcha.

And then let these—let those guys basically build their own firms the way I—we built ours over the last twelve years. Gotcha. Yeah.

Q Edmonds (13:51)
Man, I love it. So let me ask you this, man. I—I always like to get my guests their eye view on relationships, right? So tell me—talk to me about your philosophy on, you know, building healthy business relationships. Are there relationships that—that has helped you and continue to help you, like, you know, referral people or people who grow within the business? And so talk to me a little bit about relationships.

Scot Fields (13:58)
Yeah.

Relationships is actually—is—is the key to this business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, because when something actually goes—something goes south, I need to be able to actually pick up that phone, be like, hey, I’m in a jam. Can you help me out with this? Yeah. I need you to—can I run this deal actually through your compliance system so we can close it? Whatever.

You know, there used to be a guy, he passed away about two years ago, but he was over at Velocity Mortgage. And I had known him basically since probably ’96. He was a guy I was always calling and everything like that. Basically, like, hey, Troy, help me out with this. Let’s get this deal squared away, basically, or hey, can I run it through you? Or can you do the—the background action on this basically?

You know, so it’s important, you know, it’s important. But that’s—even business, business relationships are extremely important in this business. You gotta also have, like, somebody on the outside that you can just decompress with, you know, and, you know, thank God I actually have, like, a—a, you know, a plethora of friends basically that I can just reach out to.

I have two—I have two gorgeous female friends, single and everything like that, basically, that—but we meet up every Wednesday. Yeah. Every Wednesday night. Yeah. And all we’re doing is just cooking and drinking. You know, and just—just having a, you know, having a fun time because we need to decompress in the middle of week. Yeah. You know, so yeah. And—

You know, you gotta have that. We don’t talk business at all. You know, they’re—you know, they’re really not even in related fields that of mine, but we just need that basically, you know. And then, you know, I—like I said, I got my buddies actually from my—from—from college that I still take, you know, reach out to. Heck, I’m still friends with the one of the guys I went to kindergarten with. Like I said, talk to him every, every week.

Q Edmonds (17:03)
Come on, man. Yeah, sir.

Scot Fields (17:10)
Yeah. You know, so yeah, so—so relationships are—are definitely important basically because, you know, if you’re going through something, these are the ones that kind of pick you up. Yes, sir. You know? Yeah. Plus, your business associates, your business connections are the ones you bounce the ideas off of. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, if they’re really your—your friend, they’re gonna turn around and tell you, Scot, that’s—

Crazy. That doesn’t make any sense. What is on your mind? Like, the onus is always actually on me. I had a friend who was, you know, he was looking to open up a club, and the building was like this old dilapidated warehouse. There’s a garage in there, roof was coming off, and he was telling me, and I had to turn around and tell him, I said, listen, man, it’s not my place to see your vision.

It’s my—it’s my place to believe you at this particular point. You need to get it to the point where I can see your vision. Right now, I just had the faith in that you’re gonna get it done. Yeah. So, you know, and—and—and a true friend is gonna kinda walk you through that. Yeah. They’re not gonna—they’ll tell you basically when you actually do wrong and when—when you’re doing things that are messed up, yeah, and everything like that basically. And—and that’s—and that’s the key. You know.

That’s why if you’re doing things on the straight and narrow, you—you, you’re not doing things halfway. Your business associates, your business connections are always gonna be there for you. You know, they might move on to other companies and things of that nature, but they’re all gonna come back around. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, yeah.

Q Edmonds (18:50)
I appreciate— as you was talking, it reminded me actually of a scripture. It says, write the vision and make it plain so those that hear it can run with it. So you talk about your friend, like, yeah, you know, that’s—you talking like—you talking ancient language right there. You a smart man, but, like, listen, write that vision, make it plain, homeboy. I can’t—I can’t look in your eyes on there, no, man. Listen, Scot, is there—

Scot Fields (19:06)
No.

Q Edmonds (19:20)
Any question that I did not bring up and/or—or topic that you would like to talk about? Like, maybe you came in with a message in your head, like, I want to make sure I stick this message for the viewers. I just kind of want to open up space so you can land that message if you had something like that, sir.

Scot Fields (19:36)
Well, I mean, you basically—we took—we—you, you touched a lot of this stuff basically. I—I think basically going back to the business as far as what we actually do is that we’re the avenue basically that a lot of places can go to, that—the—if, if, if they can’t get it—if the other lenders are actually saying that, hey, I gotta send this guy our business because we can’t do it, then we should be the ones actually going to him right from—right from the start.

Gotcha. You know, so—and that doesn’t mean that we’re able to actually do every deal. Yeah. You know, so it—it—and again, it goes back to those relationships. ‘Cause there’s a lot of times I’ll see a deal, but, like, hey, I don’t—I can’t do this. But I think if you do it this way, and let me connect you with this person here, and I’ll set up that actual referral. Yeah. You know, so, you know, so it just works. You know, it just—it just works. So—so I think basically if they understand, you know, that—

We handle folks basically with bad credit all the way up to great credit. I got millionaires actually in our portfolio basically, and I’m dealing with deal for an eighty-year-old lady basically who’s actually at her wit’s end, and I’m trying to save all her actual houses. You know? This is what we do. The whole part of a business owner is also being able to actually help people. That’s the key about it, basically, because I know I’m gonna be able to help this 80-year-old lady out.

You know, I mean, she was majorly taken advantage of, but you know what that’s gonna do? That—that’s my—that’s my do-good basically for—for the month. And I, you know, and I’m like—and it’s so funny because basically I’m now—I’m now dealing with all her—all her children.

All her children have contacted me at this particular point. And they’re all saying, yeah, Mom, go ahead with this guy. We—we’ve already did our research on him. Yeah, he knows what he’s doing and everything like that, basically. So, you know, so it’s just, you know, being able to do things that are—that’s gonna help other people basically, as well as still, you know, put money in our pockets. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Q Edmonds (21:45)
Sir, this has been so good, man. I really appreciate, again, your time. And I’m—I’m gonna say that again, but I do want to say, 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, Scot?

Scot Fields (22:00)
Real easy. Basically, they can go right to our website, which is www.ceocapitalfunding.com. They can actually—they can email me at [email protected], or they can just give us a call. I mean, basically, if I don’t answer, one of the processors are always gonna answer, or it’ll go right to the general voicemail, and then we return that call basically within about 30 minutes.

Yeah. Which is (215) 882-9861. Awesome. So—and you can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and basically everywhere else.

Q Edmonds (22:38)
Man, I love it, sir. But listen, man, let me say three things to you sincerely. And this is me calling it back. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I think it’s our most precious commodity. Thank you for your story. Thank you for the gift of your authenticity. I believe, like I said again, our stories plant seeds, and those seeds can take root at any given time. So, man, thank you for leaving some seeds behind. And lastly, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I appreciate you coming on, sir.

Scot Fields (23:07)
Thank you very much.

Q Edmonds (23:08)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Scot. His information is in the show notes. 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 Scot Fields. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.