004 - There's No Perfect Organization

A riveting conversation that bridges the gap between investing and loan servicing. We navigate the challenges and victories of launching and scaling a successful loan servicing company, Jamie lays bare the critical steps necessary for a smooth takeoff. We explore the vital importance of matching state licenses with customer demand, maintaining strict compliance with legal regulations, and the delicate balance of collection and compliance roles within the industry.

Jamie and I also discuss the growth and transformation of Bi-Fi, from weathering ownership changes and tackling past servicing issues to introducing a new business development lead focused on enhancing the investor experience. This episode is brimming with heart and strategy, offering a glimpse into the perseverance it takes to thrive in the ever-evolving world of real estate investment and entrepreneurship.

Resources and links discussed:
- Videocast on our YouTube Channel
- ANB Funds Website - https://anbfunds.com
- BIFI Loan Servicing - https://bifils.com
- From Adversity To Abundance -  Podcast by Jamie Bateman

About the Host:
Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!

Connect with the Host:
Facebook - bethebank
Twitter - bethebank1
Instagram - bethebankpodcast
American Note Buyers - https://anbfunds.com/
Monthly Broadcast - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzc944w1xydt5aLDrrEPHJhdJeDkBjjD4

Transcript

Narrator: 0:01

Interested in real estate. How about wealth? Well, they go hand in hand, and here you'll learn all about it. Welcome to Be the Bank, a podcast where we discuss and debate the topics centered around real estate investing. Your host, Justin Bogard, shares insights into investing in real estate to create real wealth and passive income for you and your family. He'll share stories of real estate investments done right, Walk you through the process of owning a real estate note and, most importantly, educate you so you can be the bank. This is Be the Bank brought to you by American Note Buyers. Now here's your host, Justin Bogard.

Justin Bogard: 0:46

Hey, listener, this is season six, episode number four almost at six, episode number four on Be the Bank podcast. Today I have a friend of mine, mr Jamie Bateman. He is the guy running things at Bifinal and Servicing. He also has a couple of funds that he's managed in the past and still manages today and the highlight of our conversation today is going to be kind of around servicing and kind of how a servicing company works and just kind of all around questions that people have around servicing companies. So you're not going to want to miss this, so stay tuned. Mr Jamie Bateman, welcome to the Be the Bank podcast.

Jamie Bateman: 1:33

Justin, thank you so much for having me. Man, this is going to be fun.

Justin Bogard: 1:37

You're welcome. I'll send you an invoice after we're done. Absolutely.

Jamie Bateman: 1:45

And I'll send it back with a link to my podcast. You were on.

Justin Bogard: 1:51

With a slightly more of a fee on top of that.

Jamie Bateman: 1:54

Exactly Upcharge.

Justin Bogard: 1:59

All right, jamie. So thanks again for being on the show. This is, I think, your second time on the Be the Bank podcast and it's been a few years, but thanks for being on again. We know each other kind of through the investing circle here and it's not a very big circle, so a lot of us know each other. But you don't live where I am. I'm in Indiana, so you're in, I'm in outside of Baltimore, Maryland.

Jamie Bateman: 2:22

So you must be an Orioles fan. I am an Orioles fan. I follow the Ravens a little bit more, although that stings right now.

Justin Bogard: 2:30

Yeah, and the.

Jamie Bateman: 2:31

Orioles, of course, were just sold last week. So that was interesting. They were sold. Yeah, the ownership changed. I don't know a lot about it, but so that was a big news in Orioles Orioles land. But yeah, I grew up going to Memorial Stadium and then Camden Yards was obviously one of the nicer parks once it, when it was built, and I think it still is one, one of the nicer ones.

Justin Bogard: 2:57

It looks pretty cool. A friend of mine went out there and he said it's a pretty awesome place to go watch a game. I thought the Orioles I didn't know about the Orioles ownership changing hands. I ought to read about that because I kind of follow baseball. The AL East is kind of the teams that I watch. Because I'm a Red Sox fan. It's because there's not really any American League good teams around where I'm at, so the White Sox are the kind of closest where I'm at. But I got the Cubs, the White Sox and the Reds and a lot of people like the Cardinals because they're close by too, and we've got Detroit. That's up there just a little bit, a few more hours. So yeah, Midwest is kind of cool. You can hit a lot of different baseball parks right here, For sure. We're not here to talk about that, All right. So you're in Maryland. You started a servicing company a few years ago and you also before that you kind of were a I'm assuming a landlord turned note investor.

Jamie Bateman: 3:46

Yeah, absolutely. And so landlord turned lean lord.

Narrator: 3:52

Yeah.

Jamie Bateman: 3:53

But my favorite one caveat, though, with that is that I don't it's not like I abandoned all my rentals and then I just went 100% into notes. I actually kind of see them working hand in hand. In fact, through my note investing we've acquired one other single family rental. That's in Florida. So to me they work well together and they're not their. Note investing is just another, another strategy. That's really in that larger real estate investing asset class.

Justin Bogard: 4:24

Well, it's disappointing to hear you say that, because I thought you would just doggone rentals. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks for being here.

Jamie Bateman: 4:30

Yeah, all right, I guess man, this invoice is growing by the minute. Yeah, look, the truth is, every asset class has pros and cons and we you know. I know we're not going to dive into all those today, but I love notes. I love note investing. The passive side of it is is huge, but our rentals have been an important part of my own portfolio as well, and continue to be so.

Justin Bogard: 4:58

Yeah, I can see rentals being pretty, pretty profitable and it depends on the situation. I always thought the rentals at least around here in Indianapolis area where I live the more expensive ones seem to thrive better than the lower end ones, Just because there's so much turnover and damage and stuff done to the lower end ones. So I think if you had a portfolio of a, you know, higher valued assets, it probably probably would pan off a little bit better. But notes fits my eye, so to speak, and I just stay in that lane and I'm pretty content with it. So you have a couple of funds that you've managed in the past. Right, yeah, that's right.

Jamie Bateman: 5:34

Currently still, we have one fund that's winding down. It's a three year fund, non-performing note fund, and that one has been a lot of work and but also has been profitable, and that one had a defined three year term. So it's winding down this year. And then the other fund is a re-performing slash performing note fund. That's a little more predictable, a little more boring, if you will. It provides the passive investor more of a predictable passive monthly return. So but yeah, both have been good.

Justin Bogard: 6:11

Awesome. So that is the Labrador lending center. And those of you that aren't watching the video of this, we are streaming this on our YouTube channel for American Notebuyers so you can check out Jamie's little tag there. So Labrador lending. How'd you come up with the name Labrador lending?

Jamie Bateman: 6:28

Yeah, I mean. So it's actually, in hindsight, a little bit misleading because we don't do actual lending and that's probably a topic for another. So but we don't really originate loans. We have done a couple, but that's not the. You know, we buy existing debt like you do, and so. But Labrador lending we live on Labrador Lane. My kids Lab actually have an entity that's called Labrador properties that has rentals in it as well, and my kids were the Labradors when they were in elementary school, which still surprises me that elementary schools have have mascots now. But yeah, that Labrador lending just made made sense. So what's?

Justin Bogard: 7:12

cool. I wasn't expecting that to be the street you live on. Cool, yeah. So when? When did you start by five loan servicing?

Jamie Bateman: 7:22

technically it was January 4th 2021 and, as we're recording this, tomorrow morning I have a podcast episode coming out on the from adversity to abundance podcast. That goes into depth from my perspective, but more so from Shanti Duffy's perspective, and we can get into who she is. She's the director of operations at Bifi. To answer your question, a little over three years ago, january 4th 2021 but we'd put in a good amount of work prior to actually, you know, creating the LLC. So probably three and a half years ago now, we were kind of planning things.

Justin Bogard: 8:01

What in the hell made you decide to start? A loan servicing company.

Jamie Bateman: 8:05

I asked myself that every day. No, look, I look, I try to keep it real and things. There have been ups and downs, for sure, and tons of lessons I've learned and I think we'll touch on a couple of those. You know, you hang around Chris 70 too much and and he pushes you into.

Jamie Bateman: 8:25

Yeah to get uncomfortable. Chris is a fellow note investor and a peer of ours and he's in some ways been a mentor of mine as well, and Chris and I were just frustrated with the service that we were, the level of service we were being provided as note investors. Fun, you know, fund managers from other servicing companies and that's not to say that other servicers are all terrible, and you know they're. They do nothing. Well, that's not it at all.

Jamie Bateman: 8:57

But we thought that, you know, we could have a little bit, maybe a little more control of the servicing element of, you know, as far as our own loans go, but primarily to provide investors with An investor first servicing company that really prided itself on communication and and, and you know, properly managing the servicing part of of alone. So it was out of frustration with other servicers, quite honestly. But for the record, I still use two other servicers today I've used five total, and so I know, you know, they all have pros and cons. Yeah, no perfect servicers out there, but that was the impetus behind by file on servicing, okay, and so my questions are gonna be more business related questions here, so love it.

Justin Bogard: 9:48

what? What is the biggest hurdle when you're setting up a loan servicing company that you have to go through? I'm sure there's a bunch of red tape that me, a consumer of a loan service company, doesn't doesn't know about.

Jamie Bateman: 10:02

Yeah, if you don't mind, I'm going to read this quote. I have a quote here and then I'm going to answer your question. So this is from. It was published in Forbes and it's a guy who I follow on Twitter. His name is Brent, be sure. Be sure. I'm not sure how you say it, but his quote was he's the CEO of Permanent Equity. You can look him up. His quote is all businesses are loosely functioning, disasters, and some are profitable despite it, he said.

Jamie Bateman: 10:33

At 30,000 feet, the world is beautiful and orderly. On the ground, it's chaotic and confusing. Nothing ever goes to plan. Surprises lurk around every corner, things are constantly breaking, someone is always upset, mistakes are made daily. Expecting anything, anything less, is out of touch with reality. Now, with that backdrop, to me that's actually been very comforting to know that, yeah, look, no company has it all figured out. There's no perfect organization. That's what you're creating. A business is all about solving problems, and the day you're not solving problems or facing problems, then you're really not adding value. So what are you bringing to the marketplace?

Jamie Bateman: 11:18

Starting a servicing company in particular has, you're absolutely right tons of hurdles, especially if you're dealing with the owner occupied space. So that's something that's important to point out because there are servicers who primarily or only focus on hard money loans, investment property, business purpose loans, right. So private money loans, hard money loans where the property is not occupied by the owner, right. That type of servicing company comes with a lot fewer hurdles when it comes to state licensing. So the licensing piece and quite honestly, this is a mistake that we made. I would do it differently if I had to start one from scratch again but the licensing piece is a huge, huge hurdle. It's very cumbersome, very expensive, very time consuming, very state dependent. So lots of nuance there that we're not going to be able to cover entirely. And but honestly, we don't want to put your listener to sleep but that is a big piece of you know, that's one of the major hurdles in the beginning when you're doing owner occupied loan servicing.

Justin Bogard: 12:26

So is it a process for getting a license in a certain state? Like you file documentation to say, hey, I'm a loan servicing company and I want to get a license, and then you probably have to answer many questions and provide certain things, and then somebody has to approve it and do you get audited. Is that kind of a little bit of helpers?

Jamie Bateman: 12:45

It is a little bit how it works it's. This is where I start to sound like an attorney and I say it depends, and you don't have to go into a very specific.

Justin Bogard: 12:53

I'm just trying to get like the 30,000 foot view of like how does, how does the process work from start to finish, and how long does it typically take?

Jamie Bateman: 13:01

Yeah, the problem I'm not dodging the question. I completely. It's a critical question, right, but if you're applying for a loan service, you know a servicing license in Texas versus New York entirely different, entirely different. You know processes, but in general, some states do require you to have full, a full gap audited financials, so where you do actually have to pay for an audit and the year end audit In fact, we're going through our 2023 year end audit right now to reapply and to renew and apply for additional state state licenses right now, but 30,000 foot view you should consider, at least, I'd say, two to three months before you're going to get most licenses back. And there also are net worth requirements and when I say that that's the business, so not my net worth, but the business is equity, right, so it really does vary considerably per state, though. So it is those are some of the hurdles is having audited financials and then also net worth requirement for the business itself.

Justin Bogard: 14:11

Two or three months actually sounds kind of quick just in relative terms in our business, considering how things can take and stuff, especially when you get the foreclosures. But yeah, that doesn't seem too bad at all. But yeah, I'm sure the monetary investment can be pretty steep too to get those licenses.

Jamie Bateman: 14:26

And again I'm answering really from like one state. You know so if you're working on many states, it's going to take a lot more time, so it might take six months. Just because you don't have, you're not only doing that in a vacuum, but that's definitely one of the one of the initial hurdles and I refer to a lesson learned and this is just my own takeaway is from a more of a business standpoint is one of the tips I would give people whether you're starting a loan servicing company or any business that's kind of service related is make sure you have the demand there initially before you set up, before you invest a lot into licenses and then you're signing up for annual renewals and you're committing yourself to higher expenses. So I would have scaled if I had to start over. I would get fewer licenses initially maybe five to 10 states and then make sure we have the demand and the number of loans there to service those and then slowly acquire additional licenses.

Jamie Bateman: 15:32

The hard part is some people some note investors and lenders really want to work with just one servicer, so they want one solution. So that can be tricky when we could. Only we don't service every state. Currently we have 25 licenses and growing. It's pretty good.

Jamie Bateman: 15:46

Yeah.

Justin Bogard: 15:48

Yeah, so when you're setting up a loan servicing company and going through the red tape and you're learning about the state requirements and you're getting the licenses, and there's also federal requirements too and, as it pertains to you know, notifying and disclosing to the borrower of a change of service or a change of ownership of that note as well, so how do you learn about those things? Are you like reaching out to other people to say, hey, what specific things are going on? Or an attorney says like, hey, here's what you got to go through and walk this way, yeah.

Jamie Bateman: 16:21

To be perfectly honest, it's where I do rely pretty heavily on my team and the CFPB guides. A large part of the requirements as far as the timeline that you referred to, hello and goodbye letters and RESPA and CFPB are kind of the federal guidelines. Your listener can Google those. We do have training for anyone who's going to be reaching out to borrowers directly to make sure that we're following federal guidelines. We're not texting people at three in the morning hey, you got to pay your mortgage, or you know there are federal regulations as far as how, what is too frequent, you know what's considered harassment or something like that. But that is. That is the primary function of.

Jamie Bateman: 17:08

In my mind, the two functions that a loan servicing company provides are one is collecting payment and then dispersing those funds to the lender, but two, making sure that everyone is compliant. So one of the reasons to use a loan servicer and not self service your own loan is that you have. Then you alluded to foreclosure. We can produce, you know, pay, pay history that is backed up and can be presented in court to help with that foreclosure process. But yeah, to be perfectly honest, I've been more involved in the state processes as far as state licensing, because that's some. Those are things, honestly, that I need to sign off on as CEO, typically as an officer of the company, whereas I'm not personally calling and interacting with with borrowers, so I'm not personally involved in the day to day of the. You know those, the more federal related requirements.

Justin Bogard: 18:08

Very cool. So a lot of red tape Just want to make that.

Justin Bogard: 18:15

So this world that we're in and the note investing world, the note investing community, it's not a very big community and, like I said in the opening thing, when, when you got on, like we all kind of know each other, yeah, and then you also know rumors and you also hear things out there and kind of wonder what's true and what's not. And obviously, with a rumor, there's three sides to every story. There's one side, there's the other side and there's the stuff in the middle. That's probably the accurate stuff.

Justin Bogard: 18:38

Sure, so, like any other company that starts up or any other fun that's out there that we know there's, there's always things that you hear about struggles, and so your company by FI is is one of those companies that have had rumors out there that they've had some struggles in there and you've actually went out and kind of got in front of it and mentioned, you know, through you know a blast messaging through, you know people that are inclined to say, hey, here's, here's some transitions that we're going through, here's some changes that are happening and blah blah. And I just kind of wanted to give you the floor to kind of walk through this kind of when you start up a business, how it struggled and then kind of how you kind of shifted your focus back towards other things and got on the right track and the path, yeah, and before it was a lot more clear and and more fun.

Jamie Bateman: 19:23

Well, I had heard that you, you learn more through your, through adversity, than you know success. So I just I wanted to learn a lot, so the so we created a bunch of adversity. You know I'm kidding, but look, the reality is we've had a lot of ups and downs. I, in hindsight, several of the downs could have been prevented and again, I've walked away with a bunch of. I haven't walked away, I'm continuing to learn, but looking back, I've gained a lot of knowledge.

Jamie Bateman: 19:52

With regard to lessons learned, you know, I actually would point your listener to the episode. It's our 100th episode because we go into a lot of detail on adversity to abundance podcast and I'm I just think, if anyone's interested in more of the true behind the scenes details of by fi, chante gives a really good. It's from her perspective mostly, and Chante is our director of operations, like I alluded to, and she's the servicing guru in our, in our company. I mean we have a team as well. But so, for further detail, check that out.

Jamie Bateman: 20:32

But yeah, I mean the first year, just to kind of quickly hit some some the timeline and some, yeah, maybe low lights and highlights during 2021, chris 70, shanti Duffy and and I were putting together our plan and Getting licenses. So when I say our plan, I mean SOPs. How are we gonna handle foreclosures? What are we gonna charge for for this? You know, what are the monthly servicing fees? What are? What are the the? The whole fee schedule? What's um? What are we offering right? So what services actually are we offering? Because you think, oh, every servicer has the same.

Justin Bogard: 21:10

Well, no, what's your value at? You know how does it make us our?

Jamie Bateman: 21:13

value at 100%. What's, um, what? What? Why are? Why would someone choose us, right? You know, and that's where it's we.

Jamie Bateman: 21:22

What we did was Chris and I are very active note investors. Chris had already run, at this time, probably six, maybe seven, note funds when we were three years ago, and you know so, not only the two of us Shanti also is an active note investor, but we also had meetings with active investors to find out what were their pain points with other servicers and, ultimately, the big thing was communication. That's the. That's probably the main piece. But so for 2021, we were putting together those processes and are Kind of the just the overall plan as well as Obtaining licenses. That was really kind of just laying the groundwork for the, for the company. And then in late 2020, so August of 2021, chris and I Boarded our own loans at Bifi, and when I say our own loans, those were funds that we were managing that, funds that we ran or still run as well as just, you know, owned by our entity. So, yeah, we wanted to make sure, yes, these were live loans and these are real. If these are not play money kind of thing, right.

Jamie Bateman: 22:33

Yeah but we wanted to make sure we would feel the pain first, if there, if there was to paint, paint right. And so we did that for a couple of months September and October, really the two months that we serviced our own loans and then we felt comfortable right after. I would say early November of 2021 is when we kind of opened up the doors to third-party Servicing. So servicing, you know, loans for other note investors like yourself. And so I Would say, during then, over the next I know we're not, we don't have a too much time but over the next, say, a Year, almost year, 10 to 12 months things were going pretty well at by. Yeah, we were growing, you know, slowly growing. Yeah, we certainly, you know you don't just hit the ground running and Make a million dollars, you know, a year out of the gate, right, so we weren't, we weren't profitable. It's not like, you know, it's not like, and most companies aren't.

Justin Bogard: 23:36

And now, that's most. Most are not. Yeah, for these three to five years.

Jamie Bateman: 23:39

Yeah, so, and we knew that was that was to be expected, right, the the biggest. Just being totally honest with you, it. Things took a turn for the worse in late 2022 and what happened? That the you know you can get, like you said. There's other perspectives, for sure, but from my perspective, what was going on was we put too much on Shantae's plate. Chris and I did, and when I say that, I mean, um, you know, we expected, yes, we'd put a lot of work into this ourselves, yeah, put a lot of money into it, but we kind of expected that she could take the ball and run with it. Now, before anyone hears that that, uh, she's not, you know, able to take the ball and run with it, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is creating a servicing company from scratch by. We bought office space in New Jersey. That was a big deal.

Jamie Bateman: 24:36

So there were a lot of pieces that Chante had to deal with that Chris and I either weren't dealing with because we were remote or we didn't have the time because we were dealing with our funds and everything else, yeah, and that she had never dealt with before. So, creating processes, you know, it's one thing to she she worked at Madison management for about nine years and she rose through the ranks and she was very well respected and gained a ton of knowledge. But she didn't start Madison management. You know, she didn't start a company there, right? She'd never been a landlord. So all of a sudden the HVAC goes out in our, in our, office space, or she has to collect rent from the tenant next door because we bought two to office spaces. Well, these are not things she's ever done before, and and so there were a lot of hurdles. Those are just a couple of examples. Well, a lot of challenges that that Chante specifically had never dealt with and quite frankly, in hindsight it was like it was probably on on. I don't want to say unfair, but just unrealistic of Chris and me to expect that this could just take off and be successful out of the gate like that.

Jamie Bateman: 25:46

So things somewhat devolved. Honestly, what we tried to do was we, we brought in someone and I'll just fast forward here but we, we hired someone to be more of the business and accounting and sort of a model, role model for Chante from a business standpoint, almost like a mentor and a guide. Yeah, and Chante could still then. Then what would? The thought was that we would free her up to focus on loan servicing, which is really what she does best. I mean that she's she's an absolute beast when it comes to servicing loans. Yeah, unfortunately, that did not go well. We didn't hire the right person.

Jamie Bateman: 26:24

Quite honestly, and coming out of into 2023. That's when, I would say, bifi hit rock bottom. Chante had actually left the company and she talks about this on my podcast. Yeah, she had some things going on personally in her own, in her own world. You know that she had a lot of podcasts. Yeah, she had some things going on personally in her own, in her own world.

Jamie Bateman: 26:43

You know that she had to get, get right, and it's one of the risks you run when you have a small company. You know if, if someone leaves, say, let's just say FCI, they're a bigger servicing company. If one of their employees leaves tomorrow for six months, you might not notice as a client, right? Or if you do, it's a little blip, chante. When Chante left, it was a big, big deal, and so it did take us quite, quite a bit of time to dig out of the hole that was created in the beginning part of 2023. And I'm happy to say we've rebounded and we're making a ton of progress. We've already, we've put in. I'm super excited about the future of Bi-Fi, you know but but the reality is it has it. We've had, we've had some low points, for sure.

Justin Bogard: 27:30

That was your adversity, that you didn't intend to happen, but that's right, yes, but that's understandable and, like we mentioned before, anybody that has a company started a company there there are things that are just you can't foresee happening and you gotta be able to be malleable. You know you can't be able to flex and bend and pivot and move and change direction if you need to, and it definitely sounds like we've had a lot of offline conversations so I know a little bit more of the what you do, what you've been through then what we're explaining here. But this is a short podcast that we're just trying to give you the high level of the struggle and then how you've Redefined everything and kind of moving forward today, fast forward to today. You're obviously you are a servicing company and you do service many loans and we still have loans with you and stuff.

Jamie Bateman: 28:15

so yeah, well, let me just say that some of the, so the ownership structure has changed in the last few months and you know, chris is no longer An owner of by five, christ seven, he is still a client of by fives, and chris and I are on great terms. We're gonna be on your show here in a couple days and this is the release after valentine's day, but yeah, so look back for that for 14th broadcast and see if chris and I got along or not.

Jamie Bateman: 28:47

But we still communicate and we're still in touch on a lot of different things.

Jamie Bateman: 28:52

And what he decided was that he had to focus focuses huge right in business in general, and I think he'd taken on a bit too much, to be honest, and I think you would admit that, and so he's.

Jamie Bateman: 29:05

He had to focus on what he had going on with his regulation a and his big fund, and so he left by five august and then we actually there's some more recent changes that have been very positive from a resource standpoint, in late december in particular, and some of that I can't get into, but I'm really excited about the future and some of the resources that and support that are have been brought to by fire already as and are on the horizon. So I think that's just gonna really provide a higher level of service for clients and and I'll be perfectly honest, I was looking like the dumb idiot who was just too stubborn to walk away, didn't want to admit defeat there for a little bit it wasn't looking good. Just be being real, yeah, but and I'm not saying I'm not ready to spike the football, but it's looking a lot better than it was in, say, august, september, october of twenty twenty three.

Justin Bogard: 30:06

Well, you're an entrepreneur in heart and if it's not in your any on any entrepreneurs heart to give up. And because you didn't give up, you know that you can. You can see the light in the tunnel. So, speaker, you're really close to being there or you're already there and you're getting ready to break through. I'm really cool what you've been through. I mean I obviously it wasn't fun going through the low points.

Justin Bogard: 30:26

But, yeah, all of us out there we think, especially you know the younger, the younger generation that comes through and starts to build these new businesses are just businesses in our industry and you know it.

Justin Bogard: 30:39

It kind of looks easier. We think we know the way to do it and it's really a blend of knowing what the experience folks out there have been doing, how they started their companies, in a blend of what technology is helping today versus what they didn't have back then, all those things about. So there's, it is a struggle and if anybody out there thinks that you know anybody that's started a fund or started a company in the notes base, that's been easy and it's been. You know they hit 100% perfect. You know dart throws every single time. It's absolutely not the case at all every single person we could put on this podcast and we can interview them and they would all talk about what, what you have talked about today and some of the stakes and struggles that they've been through and how they overcame it but I saw it over come and how you pick yourself up right, move forward.

Jamie Bateman: 31:22

Absolutely, and I just you know, does it get old talking about yeah? I don't love to focus on the negative right, but at the same time, one of the things I want to make clear is I am not walking away from any, any. If we've, if we, messed up the servicing on a loan back, you know a year ago, I'm owning that right. I'm not, I'm not walking away from that. That's so we're. We're facing it head on, we're cleaning up the issues and that's why We've also hired someone to come on as our business development lead and hit what the one of the first things he did was Set up a call with any investor, any current client who wanted to talk to him, so that we could understand the pain points and address them, as opposed to just pretend everything's fine or ignore the issues.

Justin Bogard: 32:04

It's because you care yeah, absolutely. I do and.

Jamie Bateman: 32:07

I, I do and my goal is just can continue to provide a high level of service and continue to improve the service, the level of service that we're, that we're providing, and again, we're these recent changes, which I'll be able to speak about more in the future. Yeah, I'm thrilled about it. So the we're able to lean on a big partner who is providing a lot of the day to day support, meaning when I say support, I mean it support, hr support, accounting support, the business side as opposed to the loan servicing side. That we know really well, and so it's been able to provide shanta and me a lot of clarity and focus On the investor to be able to provide that higher level of service. So, by five has a bright future for sure that's awesome, jamie.

Justin Bogard: 33:00

You're awesome. Thanks for being on the podcast today. This is episode number four, season six maybe the bank podcast, jamie Bateman of by five, loan servicing and Labrador lending. As we know, that's the street that he kind of lives on there. That's right. Thanks a lot, man, for being on the show today. Can't wait to do the broadcast together here in a few days as we're recording this, so we will catch you all on the next episode. Thanks, jamie, see you. Thanks, justin.

Narrator: 33:28

Thanks for listening to be the bank. We hope you learned something from today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review us. Plus, check out our channel on YouTube and follow us on Facebook and Twitter at be the bank and on Instagram at be the bank podcast. Be the bank is sponsored by American note buyers. Thanks again for listening.