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A post from Scott Trench, CEO of BiggerPockets, crossed my feed recently and I couldn't stop thinking about it. He was describing a type of real estate investor most people in this space would look at and call successful. Good-sized portfolio. Using cost segregation every year to accelerate depreciation. Running the tax playbook the way you're supposed to. His point was that underneath the surface, the picture is a lot more complicated than it looks. When I read it, I immedia

WHY I'M NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER Hey [First Name], I was scrolling LinkedIn last week and saw a guy I know posting five times a day. Motivational quotes. Market hot takes. Carousel posts about the seven secrets to wealth. He is crushing it on social media. 150K followers. Thousands of likes on every post. My first thought was: when does he actually run his business? So I checked his track record. Three deals closed. Total. Meanwhile, the operators I know who have done 50

WHY WE DON'T TAKE INSTITUTIONAL CAPITAL I get asked this question a lot. "Devon, why don't you take institutional capital? You could scale faster. Fund more deals. Grow the loan book quicker." The answer is simple: all money is not good money. Let me explain. THE TWO MODELS IN PRIVATE LENDING There are two ways to build a private lending business. Model 1 is institutional capital — banks, funds, credit lines from Wall Street. It gives you access to cheap capital at 7 to 9%, l

What the Aspire Tour reminded me about building wealth the IRS can never touch. Last week I was at the Aspire Tour — a wealth creation event that brought together some of the sharpest minds in personal finance, tax strategy, and alternative investing. I wasn't there to be inspired. I was there to learn something I could apply. I walked away with one thought that I haven't been able to shake: Most people spend their entire lives optimizing what they earn. Almost nobody optimiz

PHOENIX MARKET SHIFT I am seeing something in the Phoenix fix-and-flip market worth your attention. Over the past 90 days, the average loan size at 42 Solutions jumped from $470K to $725K. That is a 54% increase in a single quarter. This is not random. It reflects a fundamental shift in how experienced operators are responding to current market conditions — and it tells you something important about where risk and opportunity sit right now in Arizona real estate. THE COMPRESS

Here is a math problem. Option A: Invest $100K at 10% annual return for 10 years. Option B: Invest $100K at 15% annual return, but pull it out and redeploy into a new deal every 3 years. Which one ends up worth more? Most people pick Option B. Higher return wins, right? Wrong. Option A — 10% compounding for 10 years: $259,374 Option B — 15% for 3 years, redeployed 3 times: $242,950 The lower return wins by $16,424. Why? Because Option B never actually compounds. Every time yo

NFL LESSONS I spent 9 years in the NFL as a linebacker. Giants. Lions. Cardinals. 144 games. Thousands of reps. Millions of dollars earned. But the most valuable thing I took away had nothing to do with football. It was how to think under pressure. The NFL gives you a decision-making framework that translates directly to investing. Most people never see the connection. Let me show you. Lesson 1: Know Your Assignment In football, every player has an assignment on every play. L

SYNDICATION LESSONS Between 2015 and 2022, I invested in 50+ real estate syndications. Apartment buildings. Self-storage. Mobile home parks. Office conversions. Opportunity Zone funds. Some crushed it. Most were fine. A few were disasters. Looking back, I can see exactly which ones would succeed and which would struggle before I ever wrote the check. Here is what I learned the expensive way. THE PATTERN I MISSED AT FIRST Early on, I thought diversification meant spreading cap

I looked at a friend's portfolio last week. Smart guy. Seven-figure net worth. Diverse holdings. Stocks. A rental property. Three syndication deals. A small PE fund position. I asked him one question: "How much monthly cash flow does this generate?" He paused. "Well... the rental brings in some. The syndications will distribute eventually. The stocks pay dividends quarterly, I think?" Translation: almost none. His entire portfolio was built for growth, not income. Everything

What the Structure Actually Offers — and Where It Falls Short Most people assume IRAs are limited to stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. That assumption is understandable. It is also incorrect. Self-directed IRAs allow you to hold private lending investments inside a tax-advantaged retirement account. The same favorable tax treatment you get with public markets. But instead of owning a stake in a ticker symbol, you are holding collateral-backed debt secured by real property. I c

Hey [First Name], This week, I was officially voted onto the Board of Directors of the Arizona Private Lender Association (APLA). APLA is a licensed 501(c)(3) industry organization representing private money lenders in Arizona. Its mission is to promote responsible private capital in real estate and hold lenders to a high standard of conduct. Every member is licensed and regulated by the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions, and the board includes attorneys and long-t

Why Operations Drive Returns Most investors believe capital allocation is about finding good deals. And it is. But good deals cannot outperform weak operations. That is one of the clearest lessons I’ve learned transitioning from placing capital to operating a private lending business. Recently, I sat down with Cody Barton, an Arizona entrepreneur who has built multiple real estate companies by focusing on systems, execution, and operational scale. On the Scale With Pros podca

The “Better” Strategy Depends on Capital Stack — and Lender Fit There’s a strong narrative right now that new development is more profitable than fix & flips. From a distance, that can look true. Larger spreads. Bigger projects. More upside. But as a capital allocator, I don’t evaluate deals based on headline profit. I evaluate them based on: * Risk-adjusted return * Capital velocity * Structural complexity * Financeability Because even a “great” deal becomes mediocre if: * C

A $10.8M Year — No Foreclosures, No Defaults The 2025 Private Lending Review When I launched 42 Solutions, the goal was never volume for the sake of volume.It was execution. In 2025, that focus showed up in measurable ways: * $10.8M in private loans funded * 23 total loans * Zero foreclosures * Zero defaults * Average loan term: 8 months * Over $3M in profit created for our borrowers Year-over-year growth: * Balance sheet: +156.7% * Gross revenue: +168.2% * Net income: +163.7

Why Loan Structure Matters More Than Rate One of the most common questions I get from borrowers and capital partners is about rate. That makes sense. Rate is visible and easy to compare. What often gets overlooked is that rate is rarely the most important variable in a loan. In practice, loan structure plays a much bigger role in risk, predictability, and long-term outcomes. Rate Is Easy to See. Structure Does the Real Work.Two loans can both be priced at 12 percent and behav

WHY BORROWER QUALITY MATTERS MORE THAN DEAL VOLUME One of the clearest lessons reinforced in 2025 was this: not all deal flow is created equal. You can fund a high volume of loans and still introduce unnecessary risk. Or you can fund fewer loans with the right borrowers and build a far more durable lending business. At 42 Solutions, we have made a very intentional shift toward the latter. Volume alone is not the goal. Quality execution is. Fewer Loans, Stronger BorrowersOver

Why Reserves Matter More Than Yield in 2026In private lending, rates and speed get all the attention. But if 2026 proves anything, it’ll be this: the best returns won’t come from swinging harder — they’ll come from staying liquid and disciplined. At 42 Solutions, we’re not building our business around aggressive loan volume. We’re building around a foundation that lasts. That starts with one underappreciated advantage: reserves. Why Liquidity Trumps LeverageWhen markets tight

One of the most common questions I get is some version of: “Is growth the main goal for 42 Solutions?” The honest answer is: no. Growth is a byproduct of doing the fundamentals well — not the objective itself. In 2025, 42 Solutions LLC had: * 0 defaults * 0 foreclosures That matters more to me than any single revenue or loan volume number. Here’s why. In Private Lending, Survival Is the GamePrivate lending isn’t about chasing the highest yield. It’s about not losing money whe

As we turn the page into 2026, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2025 and share a high-level update on how 42 Solutions LLC performed over the past year. 2025 was the strongest year in the history of the business — not just in terms of growth, but in how we operated, underwrote, and protected capital while scaling. Below is a transparent snapshot of what we accomplished and, more importantly, how we did it. 2025 at a Glance — Key Results* $10.823M in total loan volume f

Most people think business success comes from scaling up — bigger teams, bigger offices, bigger everything. But in today’s world, one of the most underrated flexes is staying lean and highly adaptable. At 42 Solutions, I built my private lending business around low overhead and high flexibility — by design. Not because I wanted to “bootstrap,” but because I wanted to stay dangerous. Here’s what I mean: * With the speed of AI, new tech, and remote capabilities, the way we buil