Why We Teach Entrepreneurs How to Make Money by Lending Money

You want to learn how to make money by lending money! You’re fed up spending hours and days with “google search” to determine if payday loan lending, car title loan lending, and installment loan lending are profitable!

YOU can profit by lending money to the 156 million consumers in the USA who beg for small-dollar loans. It’s not rocket science.

Yep, it’s hard to fathom but true: 156 million U.S. residents are considered underbanked or unbanked. Bankrate.com determined that 62% of Americans have no savings for a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair. Google Consumer Survey determined that 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, and 21% don’t even have a savings account.

Jer and the team at Trihouse have taught thousands of entrepreneurs the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, finance, turn-around, and operate payday loan, car title loan, and installment loan businesses; the business of making money by lending money. Some people think we’re nuts for doing this, but the truth is that we’re far from crazy.

We make money doing it, and so can YOU.

Since 1998, everyone  – and I mean EVERYONE – has invested in our Manuals, “Bibles,” consulting assignments, and phone consultations. This includes mom-and-pop startups, hedge funds, VCs, tribes, franchises, and every vendor serving the small-dollar credit industry.

This is NOT B.S.

Everyone in the small-dollar credit industry knows our CEO, “Jer,” and the Trihouse Team. And, we can honestly say the only complaints we’ve ever heard is that sometimes we don’t respond fast enough, and Jer can be too blunt and direct [like using the term “loan shark”]. We are NOT sorry, folks! We are BURIED!! The business of making money by lending money is fast-paced, ever-changing, and when done correctly, HIGHLY profitable!

[Note: here’s a link to Jer quoted in The Wall Street Journal and in Bloomberg.]

We learn too

Imagine how great it is to receive daily phone calls from payday loan operators, installment lenders, car title lenders, and vendors who want to talk about their successes, failures, challenges, industry, fears, profits… It’s AMAZING how much we continue to learn every day about the business of lending money by simply talking with folks already in the business!

We are not trying to own every payday loan, car title loan, or installment loan company in America

For those of you who think that we should want to buy all the loan companies ourselves, I think we can prove the insanity of that concept with some simple math. The payday loan industry generates roughly $50 billion dollars per year in revenue and between $4B and $6B in fees. WE DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES TO OWN THIS MARKET.

It’s estimated that 40+ million U.S. residents get a small-dollar loan each year. Several publicly traded small-dollar credit lenders have hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. [Disclosure: We own stock shares in several, including ENOVA and CURO.] There are roughly 18,000 brick-n-mortar lenders in the USA. We have equity in some stores, a few Internet portfolios, and stock positions in Enova and others.

Hitting ownership of 100 stores would be a miracle, a GIANT pain in the ass, not a practical goal, and would ruin my lifestyle. [Anyone who has ever called me knows that half the time, I’m kayaking around the harbor in Newport Beach, Calif., or goofing off at some exotic location at one of the industry conventions.] We are happy with our holdings but equally happy for everyone else who enters the small-dollar credit space. There is more than enough to go around.

By training others on how to run and value payday, installment, and car title businesses, we spare ourselves from idiots who ruin the market.

93% of the small-dollar credit lenders out there are good folks running legitimate operations and treating their customers fairly. Then, there are the idiots who make our lives miserable. They abuse our customers. They attempt to avoid paying taxes. They push the envelope and bring unwarranted regulatory attention to all of us. This doesn’t have to be the situation, but it occurs in all industries.

Every time I hear about some payday loan borrower paying $2000 in fees on their payday loan and still owing them $500 principal, it infuriates me! Why do this? IT’S GREEDY! And this creates havoc in our industry.

The media loves this stuff! How many more times will I have to read about some greedy payday loan or car title lender taking advantage of a borrower? How many more CFPB fines will be levied against an Internet lender? [Of course, we all know these lenders often settle out of court simply because it’s cheaper than fighting the government even when the charges are unfair. But that’s the subject of another Post.]

We all know about Scott Tucker and the $1.2B clawbacks the FEDs pursued against him. This situation is the exception, not the norm. A payday or car title lender who operates within the rules can still make serious money. And this opportunity will continue to be the reality. Average folks NEED MONEY! Someone has to lend it to them. Lacking this, we’ll live in a very nasty environment.

If our government makes it unprofitable to lend money to consumers and businesses, Armageddon will occur. The rest of us will have to try and solve the mess created by these idiots. We want people to know how to correctly start and improve small-dollar credit companies for our own selfish reasons.

We Teach You How to Make Money Lending Money.

We receive inbound phone calls and emails DAILY, enabling us to tap into a huge knowledge base about what is and isn’t working in the small-dollar credit space. It’s like being on the front lines, in the trenches all over the USA, Canada, and AU… hearing firsthand about new strategies, tactics, legislation, lending products, and vendor offerings BEFORE anyone else. This is a HUGE advantage for our clients and us.

We make money with this knowledge and share it with our clients.

Vendors offering ACH, same-day funding, I[IWV] Instant Wage Verification, [IBV] instant bank verification, AI-powered collection platforms operating 24/7/365 w/o your collection employees having to lift a finger, Image Cash Letters (ICL), debit card programs, call center services, direct mail programs, loan management software, collection solutions, marketing programs, etc. come to us FIRST! Why? Because they know we’re at the top of the food chain. We have an email list of thousands of payday loan and car title loan enthusiasts. We have our hand on the pulse of the lending industry. Vendors want to bounce ideas off us. Do you have a new solution for lenders? How do you get the word out? Buy a booth at one of the annual industry conventions? That’s a once-per-year opportunity and very expensive. Instead, pitch it to us! If it flies, we can introduce it to the ENTIRE INDUSTRY IN ONE FELL SWOOP! IMMEDIATELY!!

It’s our hobby, and we enjoy it.

When we started writing and talking about the business of lending money, it was back in an era when there were no books on the topic. We had great fun writing about what we did all day, and it gave us not only pleasure but was also a form of therapy. It was, in many ways, like keeping a diary. Over time, the books, courses, and boot camps became our hobby, and the folks who invested in them became like members of our family. Many of the guys and gals we’ve worked with over the past decade still keep in touch. One friend with stores in Canada calls me every year from Mexico, where he spends his winters running his payday and car title loan stores via the Internet!

Many of those we train bring us deals.

Another HUGE side benefit to teaching, training, and providing a marketplace for payday loan, installment loan, and car title loan operators is that people we train often bring us deals and opportunities. This has been a source of great deals for our portfolio and a way for these individuals to make a lot of money. This is a win/win that is a direct result of our teaching hobby.

Conclusion.

While our day “job” will always revolve around managing and adding to our portfolio of payday loans, car title loans, installment loans, and whatever the next iteration of lending products appear [Fintech, merchant cash advances…], our night job of writing and teaching about the small-dollar lending industry has been equally enjoyable. We find this to be a great hobby and have no plans to ever scale back on it.

Comments WELCOMED! TrihouseConsulting@Gmail.com 702-208-6736