Strength in Numbers with Marcus Crigler

Episode 58: He Runs His Real Estate Business…While Hiding in a Bomb Shelter with Haim Palman

• Marcus Crigler • Episode 58

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In this episode of the Strength in Numbers podcast, Marcus Crigler sits down with Haim Palman, a seasoned real estate investor who manages his U.S.-based business from Israel. Haim shares his incredible story of running operations even while navigating the daily realities of war and seeking safety in bomb shelters.

The two discuss Haim’s professional evolution from a kinesiologist and security director to a full-time real estate entrepreneur. Haim breaks down his transition through various strategies—rentals, wholesaling, and high-end flipping—before finding his "sweet spot" in private money lending. He provides a masterclass on how to transition from an operator to the "bank," prioritizing return on time and emotion to build a predictable, drama-free lifestyle.

You’ll Learn How To:

  • Pivot between real estate strategies by identifying when a model (like rentals or wholesaling) no longer serves your desired lifestyle or financial goals.
  • Transition into private money lending with limited capital by utilizing "co-lending" strategies to fund larger deals and increase your ROI.
  • Evaluate deals through three specific lenses: return on money, return on time, and "return on emotion" to reduce business-related stress.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • (03:03) Haim's journey from moving to the U.S. for education to starting a real estate career in San Francisco.
  • (07:07) Why Haim decided to leave a stable career in security to pursue time freedom through real estate.
  • (08:11) The evolution of a portfolio: Moving from California rentals to out-of-state investing and virtual wholesaling.
  • (09:36) The "Independence Day" moment: Firing the boss and the challenges of scaling a high-volume wholesaling operation.
  • (11:10) Shifting to the "Money Side": Why private money lending became the ultimate predictable cash flow model.
  • (20:51) The mechanics of lending: Using co-lenders and points to double your money without needing millions in the bank.
  • (26:00) Risk management in lending: Focusing on single-family homes, specific LTV ratios, and lender-friendly "red" markets.
  • (29:08) The power of repeat borrowers: How to build a system where 95% of your business comes from established relationships.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Real estate investors who feel like they have "created another job" for themselves and are looking for more passive, predictable income streams.
  • Entrepreneurs interested in the mechanics of private money lending and how to act as the bank in real estate transactions.

Why You Should Listen:

If you are tired of the "headaches" of physical real estate—like the $1,700 water heater that kills four months of cash flow—this episode offers a roadmap to a more streamlined business. Haim Palman proves that with the right systems and network, you can run a highly profitable real estate engine from anywhere in the world, even under the most extreme circumstances.

Connect with Haim Palman:

Connect with Marcus Crigler:

SPEAKER_00

If you have the network, if you have the system, the process, and you know what you're doing. And the beautiful thing about lending is that after you fund the deal, if you structure it the right way, it's again, it's there's no headaches. You have solid operators that run the deal, predictable cash flow. You get your money back in six months or eight months or twelve months, and you just do it again.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Strength in Numbers, the podcast for real estate entrepreneurs who are tired of being broke and not having control of their finances. If you're ready to finally take control of your money, slash your taxes, and start building real wealth, you're in the right place. And now here's your host, Marcus Krigler.

SPEAKER_02

Hey there and welcome to the Strength in Numbers Podcast, the podcast dedicated to helping real estate entrepreneurs just like you finally take control of your numbers so that you can stop living deal by deal and start living the life of real estate you truly desired. Today's episode is going to be a really, really interesting one if you want to truly take financial power into your own hands. Um we're going to be talking to Haim Palman from Israel, currently residing in Israel. He goes, before the episode starts, he told me he said it's been a really active day. We've been in the bomb shelter quite a bit today because of all the bombs coming over from Iran. So they are in the middle of war right now, and he is running his real estate business, and he's going to talk about how he has evolved that real estate business from being a real estate rental holder, holding real estate, to wholesaling, to fixing, flipping, and doing what he is doing now that he's going to talk about in this episode. Uh, before we get started in talking to Haeem, this episode is brought to you by Beck, CFO and CPA, the CPA firm dedicated to helping real estate entrepreneurs across the country make money, save money, and build more wealth in real estate. We do that through our accounting, our tax, and our CFO departments that are structured specifically for real estate entrepreneurs across the country. Guys, I hope you enjoy this episode with Haeem Pallman. All right, welcome back to another Strength in Numbers podcast. I've got my friend Haeem coming to the podcast from across the pond, so far across the pond. He is in Israel. Lot to talk about being an investor in Israel right now. Haeim, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Marcus. I'm excited to be here. Oh my goodness. I'm excited to talk to you. So you're an investor, you're in Israel, you invest in the United States. So there's a whole complication there right off the bat. How the heck did we even get to this spot?

SPEAKER_00

First of all, I lived in the States for 20 years. So I got to the States back in 2000 to pursue my higher education, quote unquote. That's what kind of brought me to the States. One thing led to another, had a family, finished my undergraduate and graduate degree, decided that I can support my the lifestyle that I want and the family living in San Francisco and kind of shift gears towards real estate. That's kind of what got me out of the of the 9 to 5. That was my first goal. And in 2020, we decided to move back to Israel to be close to family. This is where I'm from. That's where my family is. So we decided to kind of move the family, have my kids closer to grandpa, grandma, to the extended family. And yeah, that's kind of and I still carried the business with me when I moved back to Israel. I was still able to run the business remotely while living here, and most of my business in the States. That's in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, so let's go back. You got your college degree. What'd you get your college degree in? Kinesiology. Kinesiology, okay. And did you actually ever get into that field? So kinesi for what is kinesiology? That has something to do with moving your body, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's like uh exercise physiology. This is kind of uh uh the easier way to uh to explain it. Uh I really again I'm a mover, I always like sports, I love the human body, anatomy, physiology, and this is kind of what got me to this field. Uh I I thought I wanted to study business, like everybody that I knew uh got their MBA again. After looking at the curriculum, I said, this is not for me. I'm I'm not gonna I'm gonna hate it. Uh so why not studying something that I love? And this is how I got to kinesiology. Um the bad thing is that there's no money in this field, at least. Sure.

SPEAKER_02

Somebody who finishes what were you trying to get from that degree? What were you what did you want to be?

SPEAKER_00

My my dream job was to work with a professional team. Uh with athletes with professional athletes. That's because it was my my my dream job.

SPEAKER_02

Do you ever want to give it another shot? Do you ever think about giving it another shot?

SPEAKER_00

No, no, no, no, not really. Again, I love sports. Yeah, you got kids though, right? I have kids, yeah. But again, I I love sports, so I'm just attending cool sporting events. This is again another thing that's kind of my thing. I went to a World Series, uh uh NBA championship, World Cup three times, uh traveled to Europe to watch soccer games. So uh I love sports and just as a spectator and not as a part of the team, I guess. Sure, I love that. Um, how old are your kids? I have a 20 years old, 18 years old, and a three-year-old. Okay, wow.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, all right. So I'm sure you got to practice some of your kinesiology skills on them as they were growing up, and probably a little bit more on that three-year-old as they get to as they get uh to growing. But uh, so kinesiology to real estate. So we said, all right, well, there's not enough money, at least in the amount of time that I want to take. Like maybe if you're training Michael Jordan, there's probably good money in that, but it's gonna take a lot of work to get there, right? Or maybe not the amount of time that you want to give it. And you see real estate as a really good option to speed up that process. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it just put it in perspective. I was kind of not older, but I had two kids, I had a family, I had an established career that paid me good money. And I lived in San Francisco, which is kind of an expensive city to live in. Yeah, and I just finished a master's degree, and I need to now to start my career going back, building my resume for I don't know, $30 per hour, $40 per hour. And it just didn't feel right again, just having a family and starting from below, so it wasn't a good fit, and just decided to pivot and change career.

SPEAKER_02

You get into real estate. When you say you get into real estate, what does that mean? What is uh what does real estate mean to you?

SPEAKER_00

When I got to real estate, my number one goal was to quit my nine to five job. My background is in the security field. I was a director of security, that was kind of my career prior to real estate, and kind of got to a ceiling professionally, financially, and I just wanted to change, and I knew that I don't want to do it for 20 more years. So I started reading of what I can do to make a lot of money, to have free time, and to kind of control my time. So I started to read a lot again. After probably you read this book, a lot of real estate investors that kind of opened my mind. All the ways led to real estate investing. Every book that I read, so that's why I started real estate investing. Again, it wasn't like I it was my dream to be a real estate investor, it just I felt that this is something that can support my desired lifestyle, exactly. Uh so that's that's why I started to do that.

SPEAKER_02

So, what did you do to get started in real estate? How did how did you get into it? What did you do? Did you you know flip? Did you wholesale? Did you buy and hold? Did you do them all? What how did that look?

SPEAKER_00

So it's that's an interesting story. Again, probably we can spend a a good bunch of time on this. I started by buying rentals. That's what how I got started. I put 20% on, start to buy rentals in in California, uh, ran out of money, so I moved to out-of-state investing, buying rentals in Memphis, Tennessee. Three, four, five. Again, so I got to like rentals number seven and and started to do the math. I need to buy 30 more in order for me to quit my 925 job. So that was kind of realization number one that I need to change strategy because $300 or $200 per door was nice, but it started to create more headaches as I started to build a portfolio. So I changed and started to do wholesaling. One of the first guys that did virtual wholesaling before it was cool. So I was living in San Francisco, did virtual wholesaling in in Memphis, Tennessee, while working a 9 to 5 job. So that was cool until uh in September 30th, 2015. This is my independence day when I kind of fired my boss. That's my independence day. So that's what I did for the first part of my career, buying rentals, pivot to wholesaling, was able to make more money on my side gig as a virtual wholesaler than my 9 to 5 job. And this is when I decided to quit my job and go all in and become a full-time real estate investor and scale the business. Another cool world, what a lot of people like to say in our circles. So I scaled the business and started to be like a big, relatively big operation as a wholesaler in three different markets. It was cool, but I hated this model because I just created another job for me, just was sucking my time, energy, and my soul. Yeah, so I decided to pivot again to start to do high-end flips in the San Francisco Bay Area back at home, shifting from like high volume, low spread deals as a wholesaler to more like low volume but big spread on each deal. So, you know, so the the median price point in San Francisco was like $1.5 million for the exact same house that I was wholesaling in in Memphis. If you take this house, put it in San Francisco, this is a $150,000 home, this is a $1.5 million home, same square footage, same bedroom, bathroom. Uh so that's what I did for two years, just being a flipper. And and then I decided to move to Israel to be close to family. Um and and all of this time when I was uh flipping and wholesaling, I always remember this uh book to to buy income-producing assets. So rich dad, poor dad. Yeah, I so I bought assets and did private money loans. This is the two uh uh buckets for me to generate income, like passive income, if you will. And the more I did the two, I more lean towards private money loans. It was just much uh easier, more predictable, less drama, less effort. And now I do mostly private money loans. This is kind of my evolution as a real estate investing. Now I do mostly private money loans.

SPEAKER_02

Very interesting. So we go from kinesiologist to security to buying rentals to wholesaling to high-end fix and flips, to now we're the money guy. Yes, right, and so we're the bank. Yes, and I'm guessing part of that evolution comes along with a lot of lessons in holding on to this real estate, whether it's you know, a rental, a flip, you know, even a wholesale. That is, you know, those wholesales can be kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, too. A lot of people think wholesaling is not risky, but it is a risky business. You're putting out hundreds of thousands. Sometimes, you know, you're probably you're in three markets, you're probably putting out close to six figures in marketing, hoping to get the phone to ring, right? If that's not risk, I don't know what isn't.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but most people that get to this point, they usually know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02

So they do, they do. You're that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. But what we can't control, like you know, I had a few clients this last month, you know, for three weeks, phone just didn't ring, you know. Why they couldn't put it, they couldn't figure it out, right? There wasn't any rhyme or reason, it just didn't ring, and you probably remember that from back in the day, and you're like pulling your hair out, trying to figure out what's going on, and you're just like, I gotta just live with it, right? And eventually you learn when you're in it long enough that this is part of the business. The phone just sometimes doesn't ring and there's nothing we can do about it. That's a stressful time for a lot of investors, but experienced ones that have been kind of doing it for a while, like yourself, kind of understand that this just the ebbs and flows of this of this game.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And it's also related to the season in your life that you are in, you know, again. Younger, when I wanted to quit my job, I knew that I needed to hustle, work my nine to five job, and get early in the morning, get on the phone, uh, working weekends, late nights, because I knew that this is gonna, and and that was okay, but I knew that I can't do it always. That's not the lifestyle that I want. It's a season.

SPEAKER_02

So, yeah, I love that. That's a great saying, by the way. That that hustle, that time period is is just a season, right? It doesn't need to be your lifestyle. A lot of people glamorize that, yeah, right? Of hey, work hard, grind, kill yourself, you know, miss all the baseball games, miss all the family. There are, you know, if you want to build a billion-dollar business, that's what it's gonna take. I'm gonna be honest with you. It's probably gonna take that. But most people don't need to build a billion-dollar business, and most people, quite honestly, aren't capable of building a billion-dollar business, you know. But for those of us, you know, that just realize that hey, you can live a pretty good lifestyle and not be a you know running through every brick wall that you can find, right? That's where you can really start to enjoy life, I feel like. And I know that that's a big piece of your mindset is you know, making sure you enjoy life a little bit. I know this transition to where you're at today had all about had everything to do with how you wanted to live your lifestyle. So, talk to me about how the lifestyle transition went along with your real estate transition.

SPEAKER_00

I think I touched on that. So, my number one goal initially was to quit my nine to five job. So it depends on your goal. So you you put goals, sometimes people put goals too high. My first goal was to quit my nine to five job, and for me, it was like five to ten thousand dollars a month doing a wholesale deal. So that's a deal or two per month. That's changed my life. Five thousand dollars a month changed my life. So that was the first goal. But after I got there, I was able to quit my nine to five job. So I had another goal. So I want now to enjoy life and to be able to control my time and just the business that I built, which is a wholesaling operation. Again, maybe I didn't have the skill set to kind of delegate and let other people do it. Because a wholesale business, you need to be with your hand on the pulse because it can go out of hand very quickly. Uh, if you know your marketing didn't go out, you don't get the leads, you have I don't know, a closer or acquisition guy live, and you need to fill this role. Again, this is again it's gonna kill your business potentially. So I just knew that I need um something more predictable. You know, the flip was also great for me because I built the skill set as a wholesaler, how to generate leads, how to speak with agents, with wholesalers. I knew how to uh to raise capital for my flip. So I got the skill set, so I just was working on higher paydays. So a lot of people, I think maybe one of the lessons that I a lot of recommend it's the same deal, so why not working on bigger numbers?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, makes sense, makes total sense.

SPEAKER_00

So I think lifestyle now again. I want to make sure that again, when when I'm looking at investing or strategy or business, I'm looking at it from three lenses. One, return on my money, uh, return on my time, because I want to make sure that again it's not I'm not being a slave to the business. I learned this the hard way. Uh number three is the return on emotion, I call it not drama again. Less drama, less headaches. So for me, lending kind of now is the sweet spot for my season right now. I can tell you this is for life for the season that I'm now in my life. This is again fit the bill, predictable cash flow. So I I know more or less how much I'm gonna get. There is no like surprises, like rentals. I just got yesterday uh this I still hold rentals, even though I hate rentals. I still hold few rentals. Um water heater is gone, $1,700 out of the way. It's like three or four months worth of cash flow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I I make a lot of posts, and sometimes I get some negative feedback on you know the negative experiences that I post about that my clients have with rentals. Yeah. Right? You know, I don't ever post about anything that I don't already already see, right? But I certainly see you know these conversations where you know you're sitting here saying, Hey, I hate rentals, and the $1,700 water heater kills my cash flow for four months. And you know, I'm sure the other side of that is well, this rental's probably appreciated pretty good over the last you know chunk of years, and it's giving you a nice growth in your wealth building and principal pay down, probably a little tax advantage, maybe even. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So all those good things, but it is interesting that you know it seems like once everybody kind of gets their appreciation out of them, they're like, all right, time to get rid of these things and go do make life a little easier.

SPEAKER_00

I I still have three rentals that I purchased like 12, 15 years ago, so it almost uh triple in value, and I got it, you know, the mortgage was a four percent interest. So again, I have a hard time give it away. Uh sure, but I'm not building a portfolio, I can tell you that. Again, I'm done with that. There is I always say again, what do I prefer, appreciation or cash flow? I'm gonna go with cash flow. So I can't do anything with my 150,000 that is stuck in my rental right now. It's nice, I can refinance it if I want. I rather to have a cash flow. I take this $200,000 and just put it on the private money loans, I can make way more money in cash flow. And I'm cash flow team, not appreciation team.

SPEAKER_02

What a lot of people don't realize is you know, when you do that cash out refi and you take that $150,000 out, it's not just money that goes into your pocket and you don't have to pay it back, it's a loan, it's getting paid back, so it is reducing your cash flow. For sure. A lot of people say, Well, my tenant's paying that. Yeah, well, but if your cash flow is higher, then you would be putting that in your pocket. So kind of your tenant's paying it, but kind of not. Actually, you're you're paying it because you're not getting that couple hundred dollars of cash flow anymore, correct? Right. So it's just something to always be considerate of. One thing that I get to talk to people like you that get to this lending spot, and I think I think a lot of people conceptually are like, that makes a lot of sense. Like, I spent my career analyzing real estate, so I know a good deal, I know one when I see it, I know I can get outsized returns. I've borrowed from private money lenders, so I know how much they're making, and sometimes they were making more money than I was, yeah, you know, those kind of things. So I get it, but a lot of times it's how do I position myself financially to get into that spot? Like, how do I do that? Because you know, a lot of people are like, Yeah, I mean, I I would love to do that, but I got a couple hundred grand. That may be one loan out there. How do they build to a spot where they can actually become a legitimate lender where that's enough put out on the streets to bring uh an enough return home?

SPEAKER_00

It's a good point because this is the transition that I went to, and I'm helping others to do this. I call it my avatar because I'm also coaching people to become a private money lender now. And my avatar is tired landlords and flippers. This is kind of my so there's a few ways. First of all, is is the same deals as you mentioned, you're just sitting in a different seat in the table, same comps, same uh estimated repairs, same title company, same hot statement, you just a different line on the hot statement. There's few few ways to do it. First of all, there are people in your network that will need money because you're already in the circles of people that need money. Your title company know know them, your wholesalers know the but who are the buyers, so everybody is there. You just need to decide that I'm just moving team to team lending uh versus team operating. So I started by doing call lending, I didn't bring the entire amount because a lot of people think I need millions of dollars to become a private money lender. So I just did a deal uh uh last week that I brought only $20,000 to the table, and I had a call lender bringing $87,000 to the deal. Okay, what's a call lender? Explain that to me. Callender is somebody that is contributing money to lender callender, callender, okay. Yeah, got it. So they are basically my partner on the deal. Uh, they both we both go on the promissory note and on the deed of trust. Um, they making the calls together with me, they see all the deals, so they're not like it's not it's not like I promise them a return on the money, it's not a security, they are an active participant in the transaction. But obviously, I'm driving the car and they kind of my co pilot, if you will, but they bring money and I offer them 10% on their money, and I usually collect the points for the entire amount. So if it's a hundred thousand dollar loan, so I'm collecting the Three points, and usually I charge more than 10% for my bor, which is usually 12 to 30 to 14%. So I also make a spread on their money. So and that's bumps my ROI to like 25-30% on my money. And I also end the deal with $20,000, $30,000. So if I have $100,000, I can do five deals potentially like that. So I can double my money pretty quickly. If you have the network, if you have the system, the process, and you know what you're doing. And the beautiful thing about lending is that after you fund the deal, if you structure it the right way, it's again, it's there's no headaches. You have solid operators that run the deal, predictable cash flow. You get your money back in six months or eight months or 12 months, and you just do it again. And usually it's the same operator, same borrower, because they going for the next flip after they're finishing this one, or if it's uh their investors, they want to build the portfolio. If they do a refinance and got the money back, they want to put the money and buy another property to expand the portfolio. So it's something that can that's been working for me great with fairly low entry amount of money to get into this lending game.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, it seems like it because it sounds like first, you're taking experienced investors already. So these are people that already are dealing with private money lenders, anyways, a lot of times, and they're already paying them 10%. And so generally, you're just moving how you're paying them their same returns that they've always gotten, right? You know, so that doesn't really change all that much, right? They're still getting their 10% returns. I mean, I know a lot of my clients have those, you know, those long-lasting private money lenders that have been with them for five, seven, 10 years, then you know, half the time they don't even want collateral anymore. You know, they're just like, just pay me my return. You know those guys. Yes. And so we all kind of have those. If you've been in the industry for a while, then what you're saying is, okay, we'll take some of those private money lenders. They can come in and, you know, yes, you need to put some money up. You're gonna that'll help securitize it. But you know, there's probably a world where you don't have to put any money up, and they could come in and fund the whole thing and you could work that out. But ultimately, if you got a hundred grand, you could do potentially a million dollars worth of notes, even setting out there. Three points on a million bucks, that's thirty thousand dollars in just points alone plus your spread. Yeah, um, pretty good return on a hundred grand, right? Not a bad return on a hundred grand. And what are you planning on returning that one and a half times a year or twice a year? Do you think you twice a year?

SPEAKER_00

So, my my usually my loans are six-month loans. So that's that's why again, I want to work with experienced investors can get out of the deal quickly, and also minor rehab in the right markets with the right team, uh and just they have a machine. Yep, the quick distal.

SPEAKER_02

So, what's the downside of the lending business? So, obviously, default. You got to take over the property, right? Like, so you you're you're doing first lien on everything, right? That's that's your recommendation. What's your recommendation? Can I ask you this before we get into that question? What is your recommendation on the lending rules? Like, what do you 75% LTV? Are they putting 10% in, 100% re like how are you structuring those deals?

SPEAKER_00

So I'm looking at three things. Uh, I'm looking at the bar, I'm looking at the asset, I'm looking at the terms. That's usually kind of the three pillars of the process. So only experienced investors, exit strategies only refinance or quick flips or wholetailing. So deals that they can get out of in six months or less. I work only with specific markets, uh, usually red markets that it's easier and more lender-friendly states. So this is kind of the the borough side. Then the assets I do only single family homes, first position, after repair value up $250,000. Usually my loans are in the 150 to 185k range. I do 65% loan to value. Sometimes I will go 70% if it's a strong borrow with experience that we've done deals together. I usually want them to have 10 to 15% of their own money, depending on the deal. So I will go 10% if it's below 65% loan to value. And the terms I usually charge three points, 12 to 14% interest. Very easy funding, very easy process, not a lot of documents, certainty. I'm the only decision maker if there's one co-lender, it's me and another person, and that's kind of how I sell it. You know, a lot of people say, why would people pay three points, 12%? It's pretty expensive money. Yes, but it's expensive money if you lose a deal and don't close it because you have a lender that didn't do what they're supposed to be doing. So most of my boards are experienced investors that value speed, convenience, and certainty.

SPEAKER_02

How many loans at this point are you trying to do on a monthly basis? Is that something that you're tracking, or how do you measure, I guess, your performance in the lending business?

SPEAKER_00

As far as KPI, I'm trying to do three to five loans per month. That's kind of the target. Sometimes I hit that, sometimes not. You know, some right now I'm on pace. So I started like January and February strong. March, I have only two. I I funded one and I have one that it's kind of uh I'm not 100% sure. Kind of this is what I'm looking for. I'm I'm more focused on the cash flow. That's kind of the most important KPI for me. Yeah, not the numbers of deals, because if I just increase the loan size, can double my cash flow instead of doing a hundred thousand dollar loan, I do a two hundred thousand dollar loan. So it depends on my liquidity, it depends on my co-lender liquidity, it depends on the lead flow that I have from borrowers right now. The limiting factor is the lead flow of solid borrowers in the right markets with the right deal. Uh, it's usually not the money issue, it's the kind of the lead flow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And I've heard that from some other lenders that I I've spoken with. How are you going about finding those borrowers? Are you are you marketing to them? Is it a referral relationship? How are you typically going about finding borrowers?

SPEAKER_00

So it's mostly referrals and people in my network since I've been in the real estate space for almost, I don't know, 14 years now. So a lot of people for my mastermind that I used to be part of, a lot of wholesalers that became investors that in my network. I put content out so people reach out to me, kind of joining Facebook groups of private moneylenders or people always looking for money for their deals. Uh so kind of putting my name out there, and then people come to me and I still to and I start to qualify them based on my lending box. And if there is a good fit, we just jump on a Zoom call like we're doing right now. We see that there's a good fit. I understand that they're the experience level, and then if it's everything looks good, we decide to do a deal together to see how if there's a good uh vibe and good match, and like 95% are repeat customers. That's the beauty of this model. Once they are in the system, each bar is worth a lot of money because they're gonna be repeat gore. I have people that they do like 20-30 deals already together, and it's easier to do the second deal than the first deal because the paperwork is ready, they know how I operate, I know how they operate, the money, the bank account already set up, everything is easier with the second deal.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, totally makes sense. Key getting those repeat borrowers is is really the key of this business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's kind of one of my criteria. If there's no potential to do a deal again with them, I I'm not looking for a one-off. Yeah, I'm looking for a repeat customer.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And so you're running this lending business out of your home in Israel. Do you have a team? Do you have anybody that you work with, or you're doing this by yourself? So three to five loans a month, all loans in the United States, so completely remotely. And you were just telling me that, you know, today's been one of those busy days where you've had to go in the bomb shelter multiple times. You know, we've talked about this lifestyle business, and I'm sure some of that's you know really great, but being able to run a business and it not get completely disrupted by what's going on here in the middle of war, that's got to feel really satisfying as well.

SPEAKER_00

I worked hard. A lot of people get I worked hard to get here. So, and and I have a lot of scars on my back, and uh I've made mistakes, and I try different businesses and different structures and strategies, and I'm kind of right now in the my happy place that I think I find my my niche, the time that I want to spend on this business. I don't want to grow it, I don't want team members, I don't want to make sure I'm doing three or five or ten deals to make sure my my team are eating because I need to keep them busy. So I'm starting to compromise on my lending books. So so I'm kind of leveraging technology, AI, processes and systems and relationships, and and that's kind of what's been working for me.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And it's taken years, right? It wasn't just something that started overnight, for sure. But what one of the things that I've heard you say, you know, across your, you know, as we've talked about your story here, is I set a goal and then I went and did this. I set a goal to get out of my nine to five, and so I went and did this. Yeah, I set a goal to quit having to, you know, run a wholesaling company in three markets, so I went and did this. And then I set a goal to be able to go to Israel and run a business remotely, and I did this. Right. And so it's it's it's kind of this step by step, but I think the big thing is accomplishing each step along the way, right? I think a lot of people leave those steps open, right? A lot of times, and they don't just like, oh well, I'm still wholesaling, you know, a couple dozen properties a year because they just can't get away from it. And what they see is the profits from that, and maybe it is profitable, but they don't see the distraction it's taking from their next thing, right? Of what their evolution is. They're kind of stuck in what they know and not what they're capable of. It's interesting that you were able to kind of say, okay, I know where I want to be and I can see the path and I can cross the the finish line in each level. My question to you would be, what's that next thing? Right? What are you are you looking for that next, you know, path forward, or you're like, hey, I don't know what that is yet. I really like where I'm setting, and then we're gonna let the world allow us to go where it goes, and I'll make that decision when it comes.

SPEAKER_00

I think something that was very clear to me from the get-go, I always imagine or wanted to have my how my perfect day look like. That's kind of what my North Star. You can't get there from one step, there's like a few steps in between. So, first was to quit my nine to five job, and then to uh to clear my time so I can enjoy a family and enjoy the fruits of my labor. So it was kind of step by step, and right now I enjoy the lending side of the business, but I want to also the next step for me is the coaching because I really like to coach and I also like to kind of make an impact on others people that were in my shoes, uh unsatisfied because I know that this real estate game is fun, uh, but you need to find the right seat that aligns with the desired lifestyle that you want. Uh and a lot of people in the real estate space, but they hate it, they're making good money, uh, but because of the operational overload, they suffer, and the health is suffer, and the family suffer, and they don't they are not happy and they don't know how to get out of this cycle because it's addicting to make 10, 15, 20, 30,000 a deal on a wholesale deal or on a flip, but it suck you again to this uh operation to do it again and to do it again. Um so I don't know, so I start over at zero, yes, uh, and sometimes you can do it again and there is no payday. And this is when I I learned it also in the in the lending, uh the relationship can be great for five years, and then the market shift and the board is overexposed, and they can't sell a property, they can't finish a project, they can't pay it off, and then you need to foreclose. And so I don't know. I'm just trying to to help people at this point to switch teams, so no, because I used to be team wholesaling, team flipping, and team uh bear, the br. But if you are not happy playing for this team, you can you can trade to a different team or to move. Sure.

SPEAKER_02

I love that. I love that point. I love that point. It is an interesting evolution that I see a lot of people doing, and I always like it because I always tell people it's like lend on deals that you would buy at the price you would buy them, and you're gonna be in pretty good shape here, you know. Now, of course, there's paperwork and you got to securitize it, you know, you got to do all the detail work of it and understand it. But you know, from a high level, if you understand, you know, I'm an accountant, I know enough to be dangerous when analyzing a property, but when when you've analyzed a thousand of these deals, you know if it's a good deal or not, you know. Uh for me, I'd have to go through and I'd I'd analyze it, you know, 17 Ways to Sunday. You know, Haim, you're looking at these deals, you're like, nope, yeah, I can tell you right off the bat this one's got to go in the trash, right? You know, it's using that skill set that you've grown and had over the last decade, two decades, three decades, but just turning in a different way. And I love that, and I see that evolution with a lot of people. If somebody wanted to learn more about how to do that, and they're like, you know, I'd really like how Haim did it, how would they reach out to you? What's the best way? I want to make sure people can get a hold of you if they're on Facebook.

SPEAKER_00

I'm the most active on Facebook. So just again, as my name shows up here on the screen, you can reach out to me. I'm also active on on Instagram, which is Haim M. Palman. But Facebook and Instagram are my main platform that I'm I'm on. So I have my YouTube so people can check. Again, there's ways for me to have a school community that people can join for free and kind of if they want to get exposed to this private money world, they can see see there also, can get a taste of private money lending. Love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02

Um, by the way, if you uh are not watching this but you're listening to it on the podcast, Haeem H A I M, Paulman, P A L M A N, that's how you can find him on Facebook and Instagram. Make sure you get a hold of him if you want to learn more about lending. Aim, it's been a great conversation. We're running right at the end of time for both of us here. My last question for you, and I asked this to everybody. My big saying is this better decisions, better results. If you can just get better at making decisions, you will have better results long term. They compound, right? It's like compound interest. So, like if you were to leave somebody with, hey, what's that better decision you can go make today to get that better results? What might that be?

SPEAKER_00

The perfect lifestyle that you want to get to eventually, yeah, and reverse engineer it to choose your strategy, to choose the business that you want in, to choose the the team members that you want on your team. So always make sure that you have a North Star, which is the perfect lifestyle that you want to get to. And that should guide your decision that you make today, even though it can be five years from now.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. I love that. I love that. Great to have you on the show. Uh, great to meet you and have a great conversation. Uh, really, really enjoyed it. Learned a lot. Maybe you've convinced me to look more into private lending even more. So uh love that love that plan. So, Aeem, great to see you. We'll talk soon. Thanks for having me. That was such a great conversation about the evolution of a real estate entrepreneur to getting to a spot where they are running a real estate business in the middle of war, not disrupted, and able to maximize their business with one person, utilizing their Rolodex and some technology to run a really simple business, right? And so I encourage you if you are one of those people that you're like, hey, I'm I want to get to that next phase of my business. I just don't know what it looks like. You probably need to understand where you're at financially, right? To make that decision, to get out of wherever you're at in business and roll on to that next phase. It's a financial decision as much as anything. And that's what we do at Beck CFO and CPA. So feel free to reach out to us at BeckCFO at BeckCFO.com if you want to learn more about how we can help you understand when it's time to move on to that next phase of business. Until next time, keep making better decisions so that you can get better results.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for listening to Strength in Numbers. If you're ready to take control of your finances and start building real wealth in your business, be sure to schedule your free discovery call with markets at BECTFO.com to get started. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.