October 28, 2026 – Breezy AI James Harris and Funding Funding Funding Michael Praver

00:04 Intro 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:27 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there growing your entrepreneurial skill set. Hopefully, we’re giving you the motivation to get off the sofa and go out there and grow a business, start a business wherever you are. Hopefully we are giving you the motivation to be more successful.

00:54 Jim Beach: And we hopefully are giving you the tips, the tricks, and the techniques to do it well, to have a pattern or a system that you can fall back on and know that this is the way I’m going to start my business. I’m not going to go into a bunch of debt. All of these things that we try to emphasize and teach here on the show. Thanks for being with us. Great show today. First up, we have a TV star.

01:27 Jim Beach: I don’t know if you watched the Bravo TV where they have, say, 5 working real estate agents in a town and they all compete for business. It’s the Beverly Hills millionaire real estate type show. We have one of their stars on James Harris. He is from the UK and had an amazing success. You know, he didn’t inherit a business in Beverly Hills like some of the other stars did. He worked hard to build it from scratch, and it’s an amazing thing. I really, really impressed with what James has done.

02:07 Jim Beach: I’m even more impressed with what he’s doing now. He’s built an AI product called Breezy AI. It’s just for real estate agents. And it is amazing and it’s really, really growing fast. And so James, I think, is going to be one of the big winners. He’s smart. He’s taking AI and applying it to a particular niche, a particular industry, real estate. And I think that’s going to make a huge difference. And then we have Michael Praver with us. He is with funding, funding, funding. That’s the name of the website.

02:46 Jim Beach: And I love it because you cannot forget what he does. And we’re going to have a great conversation about all of the different ways of getting funding. We going to talk about bank stacking, um, a whole bunch of other stuff stuff. Corporations that are sitting on the shelf. Oh, one of the best points I’ve learned it a long time. A shelf corporation. Absolutely, you’ve got to know this. Anyway, Michael’s great. Great show to gather with James, thanks for being with us. We will be right back to get started.

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04:06 Jim Beach: Thank you. We are back and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another amazing entrepreneur to the mix. Please welcome James Harris to the show. He is the founder and CEO of Breezy. It is a new AI platform for the real estate agents. We will learn a lot about it. You may have seen him on Bravo TV’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles.

INTERVIEW 1 — JAMES HARRIS | BREEZY

04:33 Jim Beach: I watched several seasons where he and his partner were fighting the other LA real estate agents for all of the big listings and the million-dollar sales. It was absolutely delicious trash TV, which I thoroughly enjoyed. He has sold $6 billion in residential real estate. It is now branching into breezy. We will find out why. James, welcome to the show. How you doing?

04:58 James Harris: I’m fantastic, Jim. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the really lovely intro. App appreciate it, man. Happy to be here.

05:08 Jim Beach: So, TV was fun. Did you hate it? Why did you stop doing the show? I always enjoyed it.

05:15 James Harris: Yeah, I loved the show. Listen, I was on it for 8 years. Filmed over 100 episodes. We shot the show 11 months a year, so it took a lot of time. I learned an incredible amount. And I would do it all over again had I known everything I know today. It’s just real estate’s always been the primary focus and I got really everything I hoped to get out of it and more.

05:43 Jim Beach: All right. Are you still working and selling big houses now or are you moving on to Breezy entirely?

05:50 James Harris: Both. So we still have an extraordinary real estate team where we close close to a 1000000000 a year in transactions. Um, and I have been building Breezy for almost 2 years. We launched April 21st of this year. Um, and so I am spending a ton of my time on that and definitely focused on on building that at the moment.

06:12 Jim Beach: All right, where are you selling? Through houses through right now, which of the big agencies or?

06:19 James Harris: I’m with Carolwood in Beverly Hills, which is a boutique based out of Los Angeles.

06:25 Jim Beach: All right. How is the market in Los Angeles right now with the new millionaire tax on the houses? What are you seeing?

06:33 James Harris: I would say the market. Very interesting. I think California is definitely having its moment. I’m not a personal fan of many of the policies here in our state, and I think LA is going through a very challenging time. Um, you know, I think COVID was an interesting time, but bank rates were in the 2s and it was a buying frenzy, and then we had the fires, and look, I think the, the, the ULA tax that they enforced, and of course, the billionaire tax that um, is on the ballot for this November is very concerning, and I think uh, a lot of wealthy people are really considering their next moves, but ultimately LA, to me, is the best city in America and offers the best lifestyle of any other city around the country.

07:24 James Harris: Long term LA will always do very, very well.

07:27 Jim Beach: Why aren’t they rebuilding any yet? What’s the, is it all political?

07:32 James Harris: I think a lot of it’s red tape and politics and I think a lot of people are still figuring out what their next move looks like where they’re going to go, what they’re going to do. I think, look, the cost of construction is extremely high.

07:49 James Harris: And I think a lot of these homeowners that sadly lost everything, think of what does the next 3 to 5 years look like, and in many cases, kids have gone to college or whatever it might be where their lifestyles have changed and they’re actually considering buying another property that’s already built instead of selling. And there’s still a lot of unknown.

08:13 James Harris: And then, of course, you’ve got the government, the policies, the red tape, the planning, um, which obviously slows everybody down, but there is a ton of action in the Palisades right now. A lot of these lots are transacting. And ultimately, I feel, I feel like the Palisades is one of the best little pockets in America, not just Los Angeles, and ultimately it will come back 10 times stronger.

08:39 Jim Beach: How did you come from the United Kingdom, all the way to LA and establish a network from zero. You got there a new nobody. How did you do that?

08:49 James Harris: A lot of hard work, Jim. Came here with nothing, didn’t know anybody, had no contacts in my phone and really didn’t even know my way around the city, but, you know, early on when you’re just trying to build, trying to grow, trying to learn. We really started our business off the back of door knocking, which we would do eight, nine, 10 hours a day, sitting open houses, working with developers.

09:16 James Harris: Um, and really when we started was at the beginning of time when LA uh, was just having its moment and developers were buying up land and they were building extraordinary homes and we built our business off of working with a lot of extraordinary developers that we stuck with through the build and the construction and ended up listing those houses on the back end. And one thing led to another and we just built our pipeline and built our pipeline and we turned it into a really excellent business.

09:50 Jim Beach: And where are you finding new customers now? Are they existing Los Angeles or are they Los Angeles? What are they, what how do you call, who do you call people who live in Los Angeles?

10:04 James Harris: Yeah, local, Angelenos, Angelenos. All over.

10:07 Jim Beach: Okay, people trying to park money? Are we still seeing Arab countries and things like that? Just parking money as a place to put it? Is it a long investment?

10:17 James Harris: All of the above, I think you can’t forget the Silicon Valley wealth. Um, you know, Northern California, SF, Palo Alto. A lot of the tech money is coming to Southern California. I think you got a lot of people coming from the east coast, west. Of course, you’ve got the, the Europeans that buy here, Asian money that buys here, people that park money here. Again, I think now is actually one of the best times to be buying just because of value for money.

10:49 James Harris: I mean, you can buy really great deals at the moment. So I think people see that and they know LA will ultimately come back stronger and better than ever. And so yes, it’s still a store of wealth, a store of capital, and we’re seeing everyone from people in the entertainment industry, to the tech industry, to people that are parking money and everything in between.

11:14 Jim Beach: So I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of crazy stories. I want to share my craziest real estate story and see if you’ve ever had one this just mind boggling. We bought a house and it was not on the market. We put a note in the mailbox and said, we would love to buy your house. They called us an hour later, and 20 minutes later, we had a deal. And no agents just happened like that.

11:43 Jim Beach: And so we, you know, got attorneys and got a closing date in mind and all of that. And we kept driving by the house, James, and looking at it and they weren’t doing anything. You could just tell they weren’t doing anything, you know? There weren’t boxes, just nothing. And so we went to the closing and we were like, okay, we’d like the keys. And they were like, well, if we give you the keys, how do we get in the house? And I, what do you mean? How do you get it?

12:18 Jim Beach: You don’t go back to the house now and they’re like, oh, we, where are we going to go? And I was like, what do you mean? Where do you go? That’s not you’re supposed to move out so we can move in. And I had cleaners and a moving van circling the neighborhood, you know, ready to get in. I was living with my parents and me and my kids and family were living with my parents. And you imagine how bad we were. Um, They hadn’t started to move out yet.

12:53 Jim Beach: They hadn’t had a… They had no idea that they actually had to leave. That was incomprehensible to them. So they were planned on just taking a month or 2 to slowly, you know, make it possible and they didn’t know. So we compromised on a week, but it drove me crazy. Have you ever heard of that?

13:14 James Harris: Know what? You know what I learned from that story, Jim? You needed a real estate agent. You did it without one and that’s what happened.

13:24 James Harris: No, listen, there’s um, there’s certain things that we put in the contract when the property transacts and it actually records that the seller has to be out by recardation and there’s a reason for that because sellers think that they can just take their time and certainly in California, if that happens, the seller has so many laws and it becomes such a nightmare to actually vacate them, uh, which is exactly why we use escrow and title companies here to try and avoid those type of problems.

13:56 James Harris: But I’m glad it was only a week. You got them out and you were able to move in and hopefully love the house.

14:05 Jim Beach: Yes, then we were stealing stuff from their moving van that they forgot that they had given us and stuff like that. It was a nightmare.

14:16 James Harris: Sounds like it. Sorry to hear that. Hope the next transaction smoother for you.

14:21 Jim Beach: Why is real estate in need of a new platform? What’s the problem you’re going to solve?

14:21 Jim Beach: Why is real estate in need of a new platform? What’s the problem you’re going to solve?

14:27 James Harris: Yeah, so I go breezy, which is really the intelligence layer for residential. I just, as an agent of 26 years, saw how incredibly fragmented our industry was, and sort of backward looking in my opinion, where agents were using 10, 15 different apps to achieve one task. And so we have built essentially an operating system for real estate agents so that they can run their business from end to end.

14:54 James Harris: And with AI today and data today, we’re able to really help agents save time so that they can go out and do a better job at what they do. But again, if you are an agent in America and you’re not using Breezy, then you’re kind of working in an old school way of how you transact.

15:15 James Harris: So we’ve already got 22,000 agents on the platform and Breezy’s bringing all the sort of data together with AI to help agents understand not only what a property is worth today with comps, but what it could become tomorrow. And so we’re able to tell a consumer how underbuilt their property is, what the future potential is, and we’re able to take all of that sort of zoning, development potential, comps, market data, and actually show people what future value could look like as well.

15:48 James Harris: So it’s really exciting, and I’m loving every single second of it.

15:52 Jim Beach: Wow, 22,000 agents. That is very impressive. So, how’d you get the idea? What did you do first? Did you go raise a bunch of money to do this? Tell us a little history of the entrepreneurship piece, James.

16:08 James Harris: Yeah, so the idea was born at my home, just sitting here for weeks and months on end of looking at our industry and understanding how fragmented it is and thinking about how could I make it a better, more streamlined process as agents, a juggling so many different things at once. I definitely didn’t go and raise a dollar until I had the outline in the business plan, sort of packaged up and making all the sense in the world.

16:38 James Harris: I then were seeded, went and made 3 key hires, a designer, an engineer, and a head of product, and started building out the idea and actually testing it and designing wire frames and prototypes, and really leaning in with the problem that we solved here, which is how do we save agents time? How do we give them back time so they can go out and be in front of their clients or be at the meetings that actually make them money?

17:08 James Harris: Um, and once I got to a place that I felt 150% confident with what we had and the data sets that we inherited, that was when I went out, raised a proper round, um, and started building Breezy, and it took me about a year and a half to get to where I needed to be, where I could release it to the market, and that was April 21st of this year.

17:36 Jim Beach: And 22,000 people have signed up in just 5 months.

17:39 James Harris: Yeah, 22,000, over 22,000 as that was last week. Um, and now we’ve got a really incredibly exciting sort of vision ahead, uh, where you’ll be able to look at any property across America and Breezy’s going to be able to help you really understand what exists today, what could be built there and how any area is evolving and what that property could potentially be worth in the future. And if you look at rates in America today. A lot of people aren’t moving.

18:12 James Harris: They’re just saying, I’m going to add an ADU or I’m going to remodel my own home or I’m going to add a guesthouse or I’m going to rebuild. And so to be able to show someone not just what today’s value is, but what it could be worth in the future is very, very important data for any consumer to lean in on and have. So that’s really what we’re building, and it will go far beyond the real estate agent and direct to consumer as well. So it’s really exciting.

18:46 James Harris: If you imagine Google Maps, meets Bloomberg for real estate, that’s kind of what we’re building right now.

18:52 Jim Beach: Oh, there’s a great tagline for you.

18:55 James Harris: Yeah.

18:56 Jim Beach: That’s good one.

18:56 James Harris: Yes.

18:57 Jim Beach: So, I have a house right now that I’m trying to sell, and it’s either needs to be rehabbed and flipped or torn down and put a $1 million house there. They’re down the street, they’re putting up $1 million houses. This is 300,000 and if you flip it, it might be worth 500,000. Um, Well, Breezy, tell me what to do.

19:21 James Harris: That’s exactly correct. So what Breezy’s able to do is you would actually put in that address. We would run all of the zoning and the setbacks and the height restrictions and the bonuses and we would be able to give you an underbuilt score. So that score is telling you from our extracted data, what you’re legally allowed to build on that lot. Then it will show you what you can build as a max square footage, but Breezy will then also show you ROI.

19:53 James Harris: So we’ll show you the best house size that you should build for the maximum return on investment. And then Breezy will take your local market, show you all the hard costs, all the soft costs, all the built-in costs, so that you can really knuckle down, figure out and understand. Okay, I’m in it for X. It’s going to be worthwhile, and here’s how I turn it and make the highest profit.

20:19 James Harris: So we’ll take you through that entire process from start to finish in a very simplistic format so that you as a consumer, understand it, inside out and back to front.

20:31 Jim Beach: That’s awesome. I like that. So plug in 3000 Wilsons. Tell me what it says today.

20:37 James Harris: I mean, I’m on my phone on this right now. I’m delighted that you’re willing to give everybody your address, but what’s the address?

20:46 Jim Beach: The model, the financial model. How do you make money from that? Is it a monthly sign up, a monthly fee or what?

20:55 James Harris: That’s something that we’re still internalizing, but if you want to give me the address. I’m happy to tell you how underbuilt the property is right now.

21:05 Jim Beach: Well, 3000 Wilson Road in Decatur, Georgia.

21:08 James Harris: Now, if we’re live in Decatur, Georgia, then I’ll be able to tell you that exact square footage. So we’re running through right now. We’re looking at environmentals and setbacks and historical data. According to underbuilt, this property is 94% underbuilt. And you can actually build an extremely large property on that lot. $1 million houses, they’re building all around us or, you know, 6000 square feet. Well, I will send you this shortly, but I can see here your lots 27,007 square feet. You can build to a 35 foot height restriction.

21:42 James Harris: You’ve got a 30 foot setback from the street, 7.5 feet from your neighbor and you’ve got to be 40 feet from the neighbor behind. I can see your base zoning setbacks, your parking requirements, your accessory accessory dwelling unit, your zoned R 75. So there’s a lot of data here that I can see and you could build as large as God. 18,000 square feet, but of course, you never would in that area. And so that’s where the magic source comes in.

22:14 James Harris: We show you exactly what you should build based on homes in the area and based on the data so that you can have the highest ROI.

22:24 Jim Beach: What a great idea.

22:26 James Harris: It’s very cool. Look, I think for agents to be able to show up in a meeting and be able to give a customer more than just the comps is extremely valuable. I think agents today need to show up so much smarter and more prepared as AI becomes more and more rampant. I think agents need to be more than agents. We need to be advisors, trusted advisors.

22:51 James Harris: And so if you’re able to show up in a room and provide data to your client that they can’t get on their own, then you’ve immediately created value. The same way if you’re a consumer, and you are thinking about remodeling or tearing down or even looking at a new home to build, how fantastic to be able to gather this data before you even go on the journey of thinking whether or not you should buy it or buy the next one.

23:23 Jim Beach: I love it.

23:24 James Harris: Really exciting. And then, of course, Breezy is an operating system for agents, you can pull comps, you can build listing presentations. We have an AI assistant that’s connected to every agent across America’s MLS so that you have live data. And of course, you’ve got your note taker, your pipeline tools. So it’s really designed breezy today as an operating system for agents.

23:48 Jim Beach: Have we finished building the one in these 100,000 square foot houses that are just inappropriate for anybody for anything. Are we going to do that again? Have we learned?

23:59 James Harris: I think that ship has sailed. For now, um, I think developers across the world, not even just in America or LA always believed that bigger was better and let’s max it out and we’ve seen homes hit the market for 100, 200, 300, $400 million. Um, I would say at least in Los Angeles today, the cost of construction, the cost of debt has just become very expensive. And so today building those type of homes don’t necessarily pencil out.

24:29 James Harris: And so I think right now there’s a pause on those crazy size homes until obviously we start to see interest rates come down and a little more stability in the city.

24:41 Jim Beach: The coolest thing I’ve seen out of LA, and I don’t know the right pronunciation, I’m going to butcher this, Ardie Tavangarian.

24:49 James Harris: Ardie Tavangarian?

24:50 Jim Beach: Yes, that’s it. Yes. I think what he’s doing is unbelievable. Housing at the next level. What are your thoughts?

24:57 James Harris: He’s an incredible developer and he’s actually a lovely guy. He’s built some of the most incredible homes this city has ever seen. Every single one of his homes have traded for record-breaking prices. He has one on the market right now that I walked during construction and once it was complete and his homes don’t just deliver a home, but that guy puts everything from the coffee maker to the knives, the forks, the champagne flutes, the you can move your suitcase and toothbrush in the next day.

25:30 James Harris: And I think people at that level are buying into a lifestyle. And I think done correctly, which he does. It’s a phenomenal business model. And so, again, I think there’s very few people that can replicate what he does, and I’ve seen many, many fail, but he does a fantastic job of delivering the perfect product, in my opinion.

25:52 Jim Beach: Doesn’t his, doesn’t he have a vintage of his own as well? He produces a wine that is in the wine cellar when you buy the house? Am I?

26:03 James Harris: Yes. I think he does. Yes. He absolutely does. And that’s all part of the creation of the turnkey product down to his own wine that he makes, produces and then delivers with the sale of the property. The guy’s excellent. I mean, forget why that guy’s delivering your coffee cups and your coffee pods as well. He literally thinks of every single thing a homeowner could want in their property. He’s excellent.

26:31 Jim Beach: I love it. James, I think this is going to be a big hit for you. You might become the billionaire out of all of those guys on that TV show, you know? So that would be cool if you’re the rich one out of everyone and you can hire one of them to buy a house for you.

26:52 James Harris: I’m heads down. I’m building and I’m very excited about the future.

26:57 Jim Beach: Well, Breezy looks like a great idea and those numbers, I should be making a lot of money really soon. So how do you want us to follow you? Figure out more, all that.

27:10 James Harris: You can follow us on Instagram, breezy. AI. You can follow me at jamesbondst. And you can also go and keep up to date with everything we’re doing at breezy.com. And if you’re a consumer and you want to understand the build potential of your own home, we do have reports direct to consumer at underbuilt.com. So feel free to check out any of those and really appreciate your time today.

27:36 Jim Beach: Likewise. James, thanks a lot. We’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

27:42 James Harris: Thank you so much and great chatting with you.

27:44 Jim Beach: And we will be right back.

STATION BUMPER

27:47 Unidentified Promo Voice: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually.

27:52 Unidentified Promo Voice: Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this.

27:59 Unidentified Promo Voice: Thank you, Jim.

28:01 Unidentified Promo Voice: Wow, that’s awesome. A great one.

28:06 Unidentified Promo Voice: You know, that is a phenomenal question.

28:11 Unidentified Promo Voice: That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer.

28:19 Unidentified Promo Voice: That’s a great question.

28:21 Unidentified Promo Voice: Oh, that is such a loaded question.

28:27 Unidentified Promo Voice: Yeah, that’s actually a really good question.

28:31 Station Announcer: School for startups radio.

28:35 Jim Beach: We are back in again. Thank you so very much for being with us. You know, in real estate, I love it because it’s so simple. It all boils down to 3 things in real estate. And if you have these 3 things. You’re going to be in great shape. Those 3 things are location, location, and location. And in entrepreneurship is the exact same thing. We need one thing in entrepreneurship. It’s funding and funding and funding. And that would make a damn good URL. Please welcome Michael Praver to the show.

29:15 Jim Beach: He is the founding CEO of funding, funding, funding, which you can find at fundingfundingfunding.com. Michael is an expert on Can you guess, raising money and business credit for businesses? He really focuses on making sure people understand the reasons and understand why things are happening the way that they do with him. He’s very obsessed with education. Michael, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

INTERVIEW 2 — MICHAEL PRAVER | FUNDING FUNDING FUNDING

29:44 Michael Praver: I am wonderful, Jim. Are you?

29:46 Jim Beach: I am well. Thank you. So damn good. URL. What was the, uh, light bulb moment to come up with that?

29:54 Michael Praver: It’s exactly what you think it was. I used to be in commercial real estate and I worked nationally, so I sort of, you know, bucked the trend of location, location, location, and enjoyed that. Um, and so I went from, um, from real estate to the funding part. That’s the part that really attracted me. And, um, years later, I just, just for fun, looked for that uh, URL that it was available and I grabbed it.

30:21 Michael Praver: And so it’s funding, funding, funding, which to me is even those in real estate need to start off with funding. If you’re flipping houses or what, I’ve been working with 2 brothers in flipping houses with me. For 15 years and they have 49 doors and they had 0 when I met them.

30:41 Jim Beach: So very impressive. Yeah, I love this. And I mean, that’s a, that’s a story. You know, I, I, Michael, let’s walk through the different levels of funding and finance, right? We’re a young entrepreneurial company. What should we do first? Let’s assume that we’re, you know, sort of piddling along bootstrapping it, but we need some money to grow. We have proven our niche. Uh, everyone loves our uh, gizzards. We have the best fried gizzard anywhere. And we have a guarantee it will soak through 2 paper bags in under 30 minutes.

31:15 Jim Beach: And so…

31:17 Michael Praver: Now you’re making me hungry.

31:18 Jim Beach: There you go. There you go. What are we going to do for funding? We want to expand, you know, and what should we do first? Walk us through the levels.

31:29 Michael Praver: I can walk you through the levels, but I’ll tell you, I have the solution. The solution is that our consultations are absolutely free. So, you know, you go from not knowing what your options are and being nervous about the concept of finance to understanding your options, which some people have 10 options. Some people have only one or 2 Um, usually within 30 minutes or or an hour. So, um, you know, to me, not using a free consultation is is the biggest mistake.

32:01 Michael Praver: And from there, yes, we have many levels of, or types of funding, personal business, SBA, equipment financing and investment real estate. Those are really the core, but the truth is, we offer more than 20 types of funding. And um, so that’s why it’s too many to, to go through all of that.

32:21 Jim Beach: And is…

32:21 Michael Praver: Banks. 0 of them.

32:23 Jim Beach: I, I, my friend…

32:24 Michael Praver: No, thanks for all of them, honestly. We are, actually, the URL that I found available and didn’t take was how to beat the bank, but that’s really what we’re doing here. Is we’re teaching people. How to use the existing system. A lot of things that they didn’t know that existed. Um, like today, almost every, almost all of my clients are doing uh, shelf corporations.

32:47 Michael Praver: So they’re buying, you know, 15, 18, 19 year old companies and attaching their personal credit to those companies and we’re getting them funded off of those 19 year old shelves that really have never operated a day in their lives.

33:02 Jim Beach: I mean, totally lost now, Michael. I’ve never heard of this before. Walk us through from the very beginning with this idea.

33:10 Michael Praver: Well, okay, I just jumped you into the deep end.

33:14 Jim Beach: Okay, that’s the deep end. That’s okay. The show’s been on for a while. We’ve had finance discussions before, so let’s go for it.

33:23 Michael Praver: Okay, well, you’ve probably heard of, um, business credit card stacking. Are you familiar with those terms?

33:29 Jim Beach: Yes.

33:30 Michael Praver: Oh okay. I’m gonna just literally 10x that. Okay? Instead of thinking about business credit card stacking and for anyone who doesn’t understand what that is, Jim, it’s going after, let’s say, 6 to 10 business credit cards all at the same time. Uh, that don’t show up on personal credit. That’s it. That’s the whole game, but it didn’t hurt your personal credit. So that’s that’s business credit card stacking. You’re comfortable with that one, right?

33:58 Jim Beach: Okay.

33:58 Michael Praver: Imagine what we’re doing now is, I’m gonna, I’m just making up terms here because there is no name exactly. I call it for people that understand business credit card stacking. Think of it as business bank stacking. So we’re going to stack 25 banks 30 banks over 6 months for you. We’re going to buy you 2 shelf corporations.

34:20 Michael Praver: Those are corporations that have never, ever opened, been used, had a bank account, had an EIN number, nothing, and we build those up with your information, address, phone number, history, history that we add on to them. And now we’re talking about, you know, instead of getting people 75,000, we’re talking about $750,000 each for a couple of shelves. It’s a different game, different world.

34:44 Jim Beach: What an amazing concept. Where do these 18 year old companies come from that have never done a single thing?

34:51 Michael Praver: Well, it’s a great question.

34:54 Jim Beach: Okay.

34:54 Michael Praver: There are many companies, and and probably every law firm in the country has 5 or 10 or 15 shelf corporations to be used for their clients, if their clients need an aged corporation. We use one company in particular. Um, I think all of the shelves are coming out of Montana. The reason they’re coming out of Montana is that every state and every state secretary of state has different rules, a year to maintain a corporation that you never did anything with in Montana, it might be $50 a month.

35:28 Michael Praver: I mean, $50 a year. So we have a client who has a couple of 1000 for us and we haven’t run out yet.

35:36 Jim Beach: Interesting. Okay.

35:36 Michael Praver: Yep. And then we, and then we, and then we foreign file them in one of the best states for funding, which would be. California, Texas, Colorado. Florida, or New York. And they can be moved as a foreign filing. We might even do 2 rounds of funding in one state and then move it to another state and then do more funding. Um, So I’m, you know, I, I, again, I jumped you into the deep end, but uh, we do, we still do business credit card stacking.

36:09 Michael Praver: But if you could get $75,000 in business credit cards or $750,000 with the same qualification, which would you do? And now you understand why I’m so busy.

36:19 Jim Beach: Yes. And I assume a lot of your business is word of mouth.

36:24 Michael Praver: It’s word of mouth and LinkedIn. I’m a big LinkedIn guy. It’s just the only product that I use. Um, and uh, I’ve started doing some, um, accepting some podcast guesting. And so that’s how we met, actually, is is basically the podcast guest thing. So um, I’m fairly popular as a podcast guest, as you can imagine. I mean. It’s so universal. Name a company or someone who wants to open a company or somebody wants to buy a company that couldn’t use more money. There’s just no such thing.

36:57 Michael Praver: You know, and there are some basic qualifications, I’ll give you those for this particular product. Um, You need to be a U.S. Citizen with US credit, uh, with no bankruptcy for 7 years, and you basically need good credit. Now, we do have credit experts and credit kind of, um, How shall I say? Companies that can… No, but companies they can fill, let’s say you had very thin credit. They could boost your file. So it’s kind of 2 different things. One is removing the negative and one is boosting the positive.

37:30 Michael Praver: But that takes time, and that takes, ooh, much worse. That takes money up front. So, we try not to do that. We do that as little as possible. So if I could give an example, I’ve got a client, that’s 5 people that own a company. For them are guys, and one of them is a woman, the woman is, has the best credit you’ve ever seen.

37:55 Michael Praver: She she owns, I think, 8 homes, and um, She had, because she has great credit, we were able to start with her without putting out a dollar.

38:06 Jim Beach: Now, did you say that I have a date with her next week?

38:11 Michael Praver: You can if you want to. I’m pretty sure she’s single, but oh, no, no, she’s dating. Not single. She’s single but dating.

38:19 Jim Beach: Well, break that up. Michael is in send her my way. I’m sure I could be whatever she wants.

38:26 Michael Praver: But the idea here is that she, once she gets funded. So the first Probably $100,000 of the funding that we did for her, she didn’t even use to buy the shelf. She just used it for her company. Their company was at a inflection point. They needed the money. But the next funding we do will be to pay for the shelves. Shell buy some shelves. She’ll get funded once she gets funded, she’ll help the other 4 people in her company.

38:55 Michael Praver: I’ve got the same thing going on with a family where there’s 5 people. One has good credit. We do the good credit person first. They can help the others. If that makes sense.

39:09 Jim Beach: Yes, it does.

39:09 Michael Praver: Great. So, um, I love this stuff. If you can’t tell. I mean, this is my favorite thing to do.

39:17 Jim Beach: Let’s assume back to our gizzard company, five, except make it a dentist. Um, recurring revenue, all of that doing really well, just brought in a second partner, um, growing market. Um, What kind of, yeah, what are we going to do for that?

39:32 Michael Praver: We offer so many things. I’m going to give you the gambit here. For that particular client. If we offer 20 types of funding, the dentist is probably, uh, good for all 20 or 15 of the 20. In other words, we can do an SBA loan. We can do an SBA loan that includes buying the building underneath because they have both tax returns and recurring revenue. We have, we could do the program you and I just talked about, but probably, they don’t want to spend 6 months doing anything a dentist.

40:07 Michael Praver: They want it immediately. We could do equipment financing so they could, uh, furnish a second office and buy all the x-ray machines and the furniture, the signs outside and do it on a business lease and they could write it off. In other words, the example you just gave me is the anything goes client. There’s no product I couldn’t do with that client.

40:30 Jim Beach: Recurring revenue, just the dream for you to hear.

40:34 Michael Praver: Yes, but I mean, there’s exceptions to everything, Gem. I’ll give you an example. I have recurring revenue with business owners. And then I say, how do you pay yourself? And the answer is, 3 times a year, randomly, I go to my business checkbook and write myself a big check.

40:52 Jim Beach: Okay?

40:53 Michael Praver: Well, that ain’t going to work for most banks because it’s it’s not a payroll check. It’s not on a regular schedule. They had a great thing going and they stepped on it. And that happens and it’s no big deal for us because we have so many types of funding. But, you know, they just went from 15 types of funding they could do to 3 types of funding they could do with us. So they limited themselves.

41:21 Michael Praver: I have the same thing going on with people that make lots of money, but don’t pay taxes. Well, you could make lots of money if you own a company and pay little to no taxes, but when you go to borrow money, You’ve told the banks you make no money. So I don’t care how much money you’re hiding. You’re not going to get a bank loan because you told the bank you don’t make anything. And you can’t prove you do because your tax returns say you made a loss.

41:54 Jim Beach: See, to see the.. Encountered that problem myself. And when you first realize that you’re like, you’re so smart. I’m saving so much money by working the tax system as a business owner and then you 2 or 3 later years later, you want a loan or something and you go, oh my gosh, I screwed myself by doing this, you know? I thought I was winning, but now that was a really hard realization to face, Michael, that the system, You actually had to play the system to win.

42:26 Jim Beach: And I was like, damn it, I don’t want to play the system to win. But it’s funny that accountants and bookkeepers, to me, will never, ever, ever bring that up. They just, you know, they don’t understand they’re part of a system. They’re not just there for a single purpose. They, they should be there to say, what is, what, what do you need? Do you need loans next year or the year after? Oh, well then we should probably pay you a salary. We should probably not.

42:59 Jim Beach: We don’t have to hide all the money. We could just kind of hide part of the money. And when you when I say hide, I’m not talking about illegal. I’m talking about using all the legal techniques that they come up with. You know, but they don’t ask you what you need. They just do it for you. And that’s not part of a team. You know, that’s my experience. With accountants and bookkeepers, not all of them, but a lot of them.

43:29 Michael Praver: I would certainly agree with that, that.

43:32 Jim Beach: Oh, I would agree with that very much.

43:34 Michael Praver: So you understand. It just limits, it just cuts, it handcuffs us to to smaller amounts of money, to more expensive amounts of money, you know, more expensive types of funding. It just limits all the options where the dentist you brought up before with recurring revenue. I mean, they just, that’s, that’s every dream in one.

43:55 Jim Beach: Yes. Yes. Does the Indus, are the… The macro economy affect you and your business.

44:01 Michael Praver: Yes and no. Um, As I see it, it really doesn’t.

44:05 Jim Beach: Okay?

44:05 Michael Praver: Like SBA loans might be might go up or might go down, okay? The SBA could close tomorrow. I wouldn’t care because we have so many other options. But because we are problem solvers, the worst the economy gets, the more people have to call us. So to me, I just don’t care about where the economy goes up or down. I’m fine either way. My phone doesn’t stop ringing. And when I say phone, I’m 100% zoom. I just, I’m saying the word phone, but really, that’s funny. That saying like Kleenex, you know.

44:39 Michael Praver: But, but I’m, I’m literally 100% Zoom. I don’t, we don’t talk on the phone. Don’t text, we don’t do anything. It’s all Zoom.

44:48 Jim Beach: And are you using their other suite of products that they’re advertising on TV right now?

44:54 Michael Praver: Which suites are we talking about?

44:56 Jim Beach: I don’t know. Zoom everything, I think, is the tagline or everything, Zoom, or their point is you can do your entire business on Zoom.

45:05 Michael Praver: Yeah, I I’ve not. I probably just don’t know how to use half of that stuff, but like Zoom now offers telephone numbers, but when we do shelf corporations, We need an actual, uh, a SIM in in a phone. So literally, we will buy you a phone, an Android phone or 2 and send them to you pre-programmed. So if a bank wants to text you or even call you, it’s registered to your corporation, it shows up as your corporation. It’s a real phone.

45:36 Michael Praver: It’s kind of a pain to have 3 phones, but, you know, I have 3 phones. 2 of them don’t do anything and they just sit there. Um, but if I’m on the phone with a bank and a bank wants to text me. A verification number. It comes to my business phone. And it can’t be a soft phone, which is what you get with. You know, Zoom and all those others. So you could do a lot. You just can’t do it. Yeah, you can’t be answered by robot.

46:09 Michael Praver: It can’t be answered electronically. It has to be a SIM card that they can verify. They know where the technology is so sophisticated. They know when you’re home. I only work with my clients when they’re home. They have to be at their homes to do an application, in their home network, on their home computers, everything has to be. As easy for the banks to identify as possible. Because if not, the alarm bells go off and you don’t get funded.

46:39 Jim Beach: I saw one of the AI doom things, and one of the points they made is that the, an AI was talking to someone and said, you’re in the bedroom now, and the user was like, how do you know that? And the AIs have figured out by how close you are to your router or something router based that they can figure out what room you are in now, which is, you know. So creepy.

47:06 Michael Praver: It is creepy. I, I, I, yeah, I heard a, I heard a similar one that really is going off topic, but uh, literally that the, they’re, they’re experimenting with, uh, No pricing in the grocery store. But what happens is when you, when, when the cart sees that you put hot dogs in your basket, the buns go up in price.

47:29 Michael Praver: So if you’re, if you, if you and your wife had 2 different baskets, your, your, your wife could go buy the buns and you could go buy the hot dogs, but if you bought the hot dogs by the time you got to the buns, it would probably be ¢4 more.

47:47 Jim Beach: That is so creepy.

47:49 Michael Praver: It is.

47:49 Jim Beach: Who wouldn’t even think of such a thing? Well, have you seen the airline fight videos, all of these fights that are happening on airlines? If imagine if everyone on the plane had a big sign on them that said what they paid for their seat and the differences and the amount of fights that would happen then, you know?

48:12 Michael Praver: Oh, yeah.

48:12 Jim Beach: Because the business traveler probably paid $4000 for his seat.

48:17 Michael Praver: Yeah.

48:17 Jim Beach: And nobody knows that. Somebody, you know, somebody got a free upgrade to first class and the guy you’re sitting next to paid $4000 because he didn’t make the reservation till the night before. And yeah, people would go nuts.

48:31 Michael Praver: That’s funny.

48:32 Jim Beach: Oh my god, if that was, that seriously, that would, there’d be a brawl going on in an airline. I love it.

48:39 Michael Praver: I love it, Jim.

48:41 Jim Beach: Saturday Night Live skit or something like that.

48:44 Michael Praver: It would be.

48:45 Jim Beach: Same thing in any company too. I mean, you know, what everybody gets paid is a big secret. And then one day somebody posts in the, in the, in the break room, everybody’s salary and all hell breaks loose.

49:00 Michael Praver: Yes.

49:00 Jim Beach: I was a professor at Georgia State with a small pee, not a PhD professor, like a, you know, a lecturer, I guess they call it. And all of our salaries were online, including all the secretaries and all of the, you know, professors and everybody’s fair, like, data openness law or something like that. And the students just loved bringing that out and saying, you know, your class is 3 times better than this guy, and he’s getting paid 4 times what you are, and it was always fun to play those little games.

49:34 Michael Praver: That’s funny, Jim.

49:35 Jim Beach: Do you believe in transparency? You know, your whole thing is knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, do you believe in transparency for salaries?

49:43 Michael Praver: I do. I absolutely do. But, when I do, you know, I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for 16 years, since I owned 296 mortgages and lost them all in the crash of 2008. So since the crash of 2008, I’ve been doing nothing but what I do now, and I love what I do. I love helping people. And and strategizing, you know, the growth of a company. It’s not just a one time thing. It’s what are you going to need next year? What do you need the year after?

50:16 Michael Praver: Where are you going with this?

50:18 Jim Beach: You have to tell us that story. Right. The 200 crash with 300 mortgages. Tell that story.

50:24 Michael Praver: Sure. Well, it’s just what it sounds like. I, I’m a former investment banker and I left that business to buy broken mortgages. So I bought defaulted mortgages from the banks. The banks are great at making at writing a mortgage, but if it’s not being paid, they don’t know what to do. And so I would buy 10, 30, 50, 80, 100 mortgages at a time from the banks and fix them. That was my job. So my job was to contact the owners of those properties and work something out.

50:57 Michael Praver: Are you, uh, you know, just squatting for a while until you, are you moving to another state or are you, what’s the problem? How can we solve it? And I did that for years. And then I shifted to second mortgages before the 2008 crash, which I shouldn’t have. So I owned a lot of second mortgages and that is the kiss of death when the values drop because when the values drop. My second mortgages were worth very little. And so I lost 296 mortgages, essentially a day.

51:30 Michael Praver: Um, and it only took me about 3 months to figure out this business that I’m in now. But I’m still serving people. I’m figuring out what they need. I’m educating them. I spent hours teaching my clients and the big joke with my clients is, you know, I might have the most bored clients, but I certainly have the most educated clients. And we’re, we’re really mapping out, you know, well, you’re gonna buy a business, or you’re gonna build a business, but what kind of financing are you going to need next year?

52:04 Michael Praver: Are you are you going to open a second office? You’re going to open a third office? Are you bringing in partners? What is the strategy? It’s not just a, you know. Uh, it’s not a one time shop with me. I mean, it can be. There’s no contractual obligation, but my clients know that they could reach me anytime.

52:26 Michael Praver: It’s, it could take a day or 2 to get on my calendar, and then we have a face to face and it costs to nothing, and sometimes it’s a strategy session and sometimes it’s a strategy session that ends up in financing. That’s the way we do it.

52:44 Jim Beach: How do we find out more? Follow you online, see you on LinkedIn, get in touch.

52:50 Michael Praver: Uh, again, I’m 100% Zoom. You go to, you know, I would love to have a connection in LinkedIn, but if you go to LinkedIn or you go to my website, which is fundingfundingfunding.com. There’s a button that says schedule an appointment, and that’s it. That’s all it takes and there’s no fee. I mean, that’s the deal I make with the public. I talk to people sometimes over a 2 or 3 year period and all of a sudden one day they call me up and say, I’m ready to go.

53:22 Michael Praver: I need to go, yeah.

53:25 Jim Beach: I love it. Michael, thank you so much for being with us. We’d love to have you back. Great, great, great information, and thanks a lot.

53:34 Michael Praver: Jim, thank you so much for all the great questions, and I look forward to working with you again.

53:41 Jim Beach: Me too. We are out of time for today, but you know what we do? Right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care and go make a million dollars. Bye now.