Buy Money at a Discount: Surplus Proceeds Explained (Christopher Craig)

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Host (Paul Alex): Welcome to the Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Alex. I went from being a cop to an eight-figure entrepreneur that helps average people like you and me make money every single day. I created this podcast to help you get motivated and to crush your goals. Let's win together. Remember, I have your six. Get ready to level up right now.

Host (Paul Alex): Hey, guys, and welcome back to Level Up Podcast. This is Paul Alex, and today we have a phenomenal guest. He goes by the name of Christopher Craig. Christopher Craig is a good friend of mine, and he's going to be speaking at Swipe to Freedom in Dallas on September 6th.

Host (Paul Alex): What's very unique about Chris is the way he figured out how to make some good money in 2025. Guys, just imagine this picture. Imagine you had a neighbor and they just foreclosed on their house. They lost everything. You've been neighbors with them for the past 10 years and they don't have a single dollar to their name. But what if you knew one strategy that you can actually help them get back on their feet, put some money in their pocket, and in exchange, you get paid as well? Sounds pretty interesting, right?

Host (Paul Alex): Chris is going to break that down on this interview. He's also a military veteran. Thank you for your service, Chris. Chris, welcome to the show, brother.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me.

Host (Paul Alex): Dude, it's a pleasure. I'm excited for this talk because we've been talking behind the scenes for a while now. We met at the charity event about a month ago, right? The Paul Hutchison charity. Swipe to Freedom.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah. And the book launch.

Host (Paul Alex): Yeah, his book launch. It was great. Very small, like 40, 50 people, if that. Very intimate, but it was impactful. Very impactful.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah, it was, man.

Host (Paul Alex): So Chris, for the viewers that don't know you, who is Chris Craig?

Guest (Christopher Craig): I'm just an everyday average Joe. Got out of high school, straight A student, but college wasn't for me. So I enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18. Off I went to boot camp. I was an open contract kid, so I didn't get to choose my job. I became a communicator. From San Diego to 29 Palms, then to Lackland Air Force Base because I graduated number two in my class. I got to go to carry-on school. My duty station after that was Guantanamo Bay. I spent a year down there during the Cuban and Haitian migrant crisis in '94, '95.

Guest (Christopher Craig): After that, I was on a few Coast Guard cutters chasing counter-drug interdiction. Marines are the gunslingers, not so much the Coast Guard.

Host (Paul Alex): Put in some good work?

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah, put in some work. After Guantanamo Bay, Camp Lejeune, then finished my active duty and a couple years in the reserves, then into civilian life. I worked for Pacific Bell. I've had a lot of different jobs, a lot of different experiences, from blue collar to white collar. I've also had my trials and tribulations.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I was a tech worker coming out of the Marine Corps in 1997. That was the dot-com boom, the mid-'90s. Amazon was just coming on when their stock price was like $4 or $5 a share. Microsoft was only like $20-something a share. It was the Internet age. Then we had the dot-com crash of 2000. I don't think I had a job longer than eight months because companies were knocking. If you were a tech worker, they'd say, "Come work for us. We'll give you stock options. We'll double your salary." When you're 22, 23 years old, I was making $100,000 a year in my 20s.

Host (Paul Alex): So you were getting paid.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Paid. I had three jobs one time paying me over $80,000 a year.

Host (Paul Alex): What year was that?

Guest (Christopher Craig): This would have been '97, '98, '99, 2000.

Host (Paul Alex): Dude, you were balling. And you were a single guy.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Single guy. Crushing it. Going from $14,000 a year in the Marine Corps.

Host (Paul Alex): I can only imagine.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I was going to be a cop initially. CHP tested out all over because that's the natural progression from military to law enforcement. One department said they'd pay me $22,000 a year to start. The phone company was offering me $60,000 to start. Where am I going to go?

Host (Paul Alex): Exactly.

Guest (Christopher Craig): So I went back to California and worked for Pacific Bell in San Mateo, South Bay. I got fired from that job because my boss told me I had to go on spikes. I was a little bit of a hardhead. He wanted me to climb up on a pole spike and splice a 2,000-pair cable in the rain. I said, "I got a bucket truck. I got equipment. I'll just drive it through the mud." Well, it got stuck in the mud. So they fired me for that.

Host (Paul Alex): Yeah.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Getting fired on my first job out of the military was probably one of the greatest things ever.

Host (Paul Alex): Why is that?

Guest (Christopher Craig): Because then I got a better job.

Host (Paul Alex): Was it because of the military that you had that level of confidence? You had a chip on your shoulder like, "I can do it all"?

Guest (Christopher Craig): You learn how to adapt and overcome. You say, "I've got tools in my bucket and I'm going to use them. You can't tell me not to use a tool that I have." I had this bucket truck and it made it down there. I got the job done, but on the way out it got stuck 30 feet from the road. They got mad because I utilized the tools around me. There was a guy with a tractor down below, another contractor building a house. I said, "Hey, can you help me pull this truck out?" He did, but it bent the front fender a little bit. I drove the truck back to the yard and they asked, "Why is the fender bent?" I said, "Because I got stuck and I had some other guy pull me out with a chain. Big deal. It's an old truck." They didn't like that.

Guest (Christopher Craig): In the union, if you worked with efficiency and you were fast, they didn't like that. They wanted you to work slow to preserve the status quo. The union back then was not for me. It only protected the lazy. Where it's at today, I don't know, because I've been out of that job thing for 30 years.

Host (Paul Alex): Oh yeah.

Guest (Christopher Craig): In 2000, the dot-com bubble hit. I was out of work. Tech workers were a dime a dozen. I went into real estate.

Host (Paul Alex): What made you go into real estate at that time?

Guest (Christopher Craig): It was a friend of a friend. He said, "I've got to introduce you to this guy named Douglas McCabe out of Portland, Oregon. He needs a database built for foreclosures." I'm not a coder or a programmer, but I knew them. I called my other buddy and said, "What would you charge me to build this database?" He said, "10 to 20 grand." I said, "Perfect." So I went down to McCabe and said, "80,000 bucks." He said, "I think it'd cost me 10 to 20." I said, "You're right. It will cost you 10 to 20. I'm just trying to make a few bucks too." He liked that I was transparent and honest with him. He said, "Why don't you come work for me? I'll teach you foreclosures. I'll teach you the mortgage business. I'll teach you everything I know about real estate." He called himself the foreclosure guru. He'd been doing foreclosures since 1986. Now he's pushing 80, in his 70s. We're still good friends. We still have a business together.

Guest (Christopher Craig): At the end of the day, it's about building your relationships. That's what life's about. Building meaningful relationships.

Host (Paul Alex): Absolutely. Your network is your net worth. I'm a big believer in that as well, man.

Guest (Christopher Craig): That's where I started learning about pre-foreclosures and the wholesale business back in 2000, 2001. Doug taught me the mortgage business, but I had to go get trained by a different mortgage company for five or six weeks. He said, "Let them train you, then come work for my mortgage company." It was all about learning how money works and the flow of money, how it hits the real estate market. I got my education in that sense. We were probably doing three, four, five deals a week.

Guest (Christopher Craig): The foreclosure market landscape is much different today than it was 20 years ago. We didn't have internet data available to track foreclosures. You literally had to go down to the county recorder and look at microfiche and search for the notice of defaults and notice of trustee sales. Then you would go knock on the door and try to negotiate with the homeowner, try to help them or buy their house. There were only about five guys in Portland, Oregon that did this in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you've got 300, 400 people in one market chasing the same off-market or on-market property list. It's armies out there today. The competitive environment is much harder.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Fast forward to 2004, 2005. The market started to tank. It ran up for a couple years. 9-11 happened. When 9-11 happened, that was the first time we saw interest rates drop from 7 and 3 quarters down to below 6%. No one had ever seen that in the history of mortgages. It was funny because I was a loan officer. People who had refinanced six months prior to 9-11 would ask, "Can we refi again and get that lower rate?" I said, "Absolutely." Back then you'd make a point and a half for their loan amount.

Guest (Christopher Craig): But what we've got to look at today is that a house 20 years ago was only $200,000, $250,000. Now today, that same house is like $700,000, $750,000.

Host (Paul Alex): Dude, it's closer to probably a million, depending on the market.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah. Now we're back up to those interest rates. Same house, higher value, nobody can afford it. Or they'll qualify them with some sort of 2-1 buy-down rate. They had a low interest rate a couple years ago. Now it's 7%. They can't afford the payment. Foreclosures are up 28% to 32% in most jurisdictions across the U.S. The storm is coming. It's in its infancy. Give it another six months, I think we'll see foreclosures double again.

Host (Paul Alex): And it's technology. AI is growing faster than we can blink. It's already replacing jobs.

Guest (Christopher Craig): It is.

Host (Paul Alex): So let's get to the part of your story where you learned how to make money with foreclosures and how you were able to build over a million with foreclosure surplus proceeds.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Collectively over the lifetime of the proceeds cases or claims that I've done. Here's how it works. If you owe the bank $100,000 and your house is worth $300,000, in today's foreclosure market, there's going to be an auction. It's a judicial sale, meaning a court-ordered sale, or a non-judicial where they file paperwork saying, "Here's your auction date." It's in the county recorder or the public register's office. Then they'll have a public auction at the county courthouse, literally on the courthouse steps. If it's not a rainy day, it's outside. If it's a rainy day, it's inside. There'll be a crier who works for the foreclosing trustee. The trustee will say, "Open the bid up at $100,000."

Guest (Christopher Craig): In today's market, it's mostly hedge funds buying foreclosures. It's hard for a guy like me to go buy foreclosures and make money because they're bidding them up to 90% to 95% of current market value. If you're a small guy with half a million bucks in cash, you're going to make $30,000 on a huge half a million dollar risk. Or you buy the house for $250,000, it's worth $300,000. After sales costs, you're going to make $20,000.

Guest (Christopher Craig): The surplus is the difference between what they owe the bank and what it sold for at auction. If the bank takes it back, there's no surplus. If it goes to a third party, meaning an investor bought it at the auction, that's called a third party sale. There's surplus. Most of the time, yes, but it depends on the property. I've seen in the last two, three weeks, surplus cases above $200,000.

Guest (Christopher Craig): The homeowner themselves does not know about that surplus because it's like an esoteric secret market. By the time they lose their house, within 10 days, the deed transferring the house from the bank to the investor from the trustee's sale takes about 10 days. Once that's recorded, the eviction process starts. Depending on the jurisdiction, you could be on the street in 15 days after that. It goes pretty quick. Most of the time, it takes about 30 days.

Guest (Christopher Craig): People are dealing with their mental health at that point. They're stressed. They have depression, drugs, alcohol, divorce, death. All those different factors of why they're in the position they're at. All the legal mail comes in. They're going to get a letter from an attorney's office that they're most likely going to throw away, telling them they might have surplus proceeds to claim. They never tell you how much. Most people open the letter, don't know what it is, and throw it away. So the guy's got $150,000 of surplus coming and he has no clue.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I would sit at the auction and listen to the sales data. I go physically to the auction. It usually only lasts 30 to 40 minutes from 10 AM to maybe 11 AM, depending on where you're at. I'd listen for the opening bid and see who bought. If there was a surplus, I'd immediately go knock on that person's door the day of the sale. I'd leave them a handwritten note, sometimes a typed general thing with some numbers. "Your house opening bid was this, sold for that. You're entitled to this much money. Call me if you'd be interested in an advance on these funds."

Guest (Christopher Craig): I don't think I've ever had anybody not call me because they're broke. They're going to get evicted. They have no money for first, last, and deposit. They might not have a car. Offering them cash for their surplus funds at a discount, literally buying money at a discount, guaranteed money at a discount, changes their whole scope in life. Now they can move on. Most of the time, it's a negotiation with whatever you're going to give them, whatever they're going to take. The process to get it released in the court system could be 60 days. It could be nine months. Somebody with no money is happy to take whatever they can get in the next week. Now they've got food on their table. They're moving on with their life. Whatever bad chapter they just went through, they want to forget about it and move forward. That's what the surplus proceeds opportunity is about. Helping people, putting money in their pocket, changing lives, and making money yourself.

Host (Paul Alex): That's amazing, man. And you learned about this what year?

Guest (Christopher Craig): 2004.

Host (Paul Alex): So since 2004, you've been doing this for almost 21, 22 years now.

Guest (Christopher Craig): There's been a lag because when the market's doing well, there's not a lot of foreclosures, so there won't be a lot of surplus. From about 2006, which was when the crash started, everybody owed more on their house than what it was worth. You saw no surplus cases. The market didn't start going back on its feet until about 2012 to 2014. But because the market was doing so well from 2012 to 2014, equity was still building up. The economy was generally doing well. You won't see a lot of foreclosures. Now, people have equity, their heads in the sand, and we have a lot of foreclosures. We have the perfect mix to jump back in the game. The gold rush for this is now, moving forward for probably the next two or three years.

Host (Paul Alex): Wow. So what would you say to somebody? My audience has about 4 million downloads a month currently. We just got ranked top four in all categories. Very thankful for you guys watching this. Chris, a majority of our viewers and listeners are actually beginners. This almost sounds like it's too good to be true. It really does, man, because it's like buying money at a discount. Most people are like, "So what's the actual work?" Obviously there's more to it than just offering somebody, "We're going to pay you this much to obtain this much of your money." If someone wanted to get advice from you, what would be a good amount for them to have saved up before starting a venture like this? We're talking about somebody who's a blue-collar worker, like myself coming from law enforcement, and I have $10,000 saved up. Is $10,000 worth investing into something like this?

Guest (Christopher Craig): $10,000 could be a good start. But better yet, you could partner with me and you don't even have to use your own money. You could make money off my money just by bringing me the lead. I'm going to coach you through the entire process.

Host (Paul Alex): Oh, okay. So people are able to partner up with you, which is what you do now. You partner up with people interested in learning this concept. They scout for deals at these auctions, and you leverage your money and partner up on the deals.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Correct.

Host (Paul Alex): Wow. That's amazing. So they earn a fee immediately up front?

Guest (Christopher Craig): Now, I have to wait because you have to go litigate some of this stuff. It's going to get released through a court process. That could take a couple of months. It could take many months. It depends. There are a lot of factors. But it's more about leveraging my knowledge because I've been doing this. I had to figure this out on my own.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I used to do it in a manner where I would go knock on the person's door and say, "I know where there's a pot of money for you, but I'm not going to tell you unless you sign a contract and give me 10%, 15%, or 30% of the funds." I used to do it that way. In California, Nevada, Arizona, and other states, they pretty much outlawed that. They said you can take a fee for telling them about it, but it's limited to like $1,500 to $2,500 per case. I had to go litigate those. We got stung on one in Nevada, Las Vegas where I live, and we didn't get any money at all. It cost me $15,000 in attorney's fees 20 years ago, and we rolled a donut on that.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I went back to the attorneys. I said, "Guys, we have to come up with a better system." The attorneys I had at the time were the largest foreclosing attorneys on the West Coast. They represented Countrywide Bank, Bank of America, U.S. Bank. They were the firm. I said, "I better have these guys on my payroll and have them work for me because they're tied directly to the bank. That means they're holding the funds." They said, "Listen, the statutes are not favorable for you to just get a percentage of their money because what did you really do? You didn't pay any consideration. You just told them about something. This contract lacks consideration." They said, "Give us a few weeks and we'll draft you a series of documents, contracts, where you're going to buy the right to the claim."

Guest (Christopher Craig): They're owed $100,000. Maybe we give them $20,000 today. It's a contractual right. It's a property right. At that point, we bought the claim. After we did that, I think we had one challenge and we won that one in court. Then the game was on. In '04, '05, surplus proceeds, we did millions of dollars in surplus. One claim we paid like $83,000, $84,000 for $353,000. It took nine months to get the money because there were multiple claim holders. By buying the guy's claim, it changed the landscape. The judges had no problem with it. The foreclosing trustee didn't have an issue with it. The guy already got his money. He already left. We couldn't even get a hold of him.

Guest (Christopher Craig): When we say buying real money at a discount, we know there's real money there because there's an overbid, an excess, a surplus of the amount that was owed in excess of what the bank was owed. Being able to buy that at a discount and negotiate it was a game changer. Instead of trying to go buy houses and raise investment capital to fix them up and flip them, which is heavy capital intensive, we just buy the money and have no competition. There is very little competition in this process. There are very few people that know how to do it. Most people I know doing surplus proceeds in other states are still doing it the old way, taking a percentage. I talk to their attorneys. I say, "Just buy the claim." They say, "How do we do that?" It's not rocket science. If I can figure it out, you're the attorney. You should be able to figure it out. But not all attorneys are created equal.

Host (Paul Alex): What would be a good amount of profit that a beginner can see from doing their first deal? Let's say they wanted to partner up with you. What do you typically see on average?

Guest (Christopher Craig): It's all dependent upon the size of the claim. You've got litigation costs. There are additional trustees fees. The trustee tries to bill the case three to $10,000 just for filing what they call a complaint for interpleader. An interpleader means we have no interest in the funds. We don't care who gets them, but they get to draft their little lawsuit, give the money to the clerk of the court, and then they get to take their fees for doing that. That's another little business model that the trustees have. I've seen some trustees sit on the money and not interplead it. They'll bill against it through skip tracing and hiring PIs and more legal review. They'll do that in some states until the three-year escheat laws, where they have to turn over the money to the government if nobody claims it. They'll hold it in their trust account and bill against it for three years, more revenue for the firm, until somebody claims it or they have to turn it over to the court. Then if they have to turn it over to the court, they get to bill again for that. There's a little bit of a game now. In some states, like South Carolina, if you don't make a claim to the money in 30 days, you lose it. Different states, different laws.

Host (Paul Alex): Correct. Let's say the beginner comes to you and it's their first deal. Majority of Americans want an average. Let's say we get a $100,000 claim.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Fair enough.

Host (Paul Alex): They're probably going to make $10,000 to $20,000 just working with you?

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yes.

Host (Paul Alex): Okay, cool. So $10,000 to $20,000, guys, if the claim's about $100,000 working with Christopher Craig. There you have it. We'll come back to this, man. This is a very interesting portion of your story. But I want to get into the entrepreneurship mindset. As you know, the Level Up Podcast, the reason why I believe we became number one very fast is because we help people with their mindset. It's all about mindset.

Guest (Christopher Craig): All about mindset.

Host (Paul Alex): So what would you say made you want to be an entrepreneur?

Guest (Christopher Craig): I had really good jobs. But when the tech bubble hit in 2000, I didn't have a job. I was a worker that was a dime a dozen. There was no other job. So I had to figure out something I could do. Thank God I was introduced to my mentor, mentee, good friend today, Douglas McCabe. He gave me the trajectory, but he said, "You've got to put in the work. If you don't go knock the doors and you don't make the phone calls, you're not going to make any money."

Guest (Christopher Craig): The spark was that the sky is the limit. Whatever I put into it, I'm going to get the direct proactive reaction out of it, which is dollars in my pocket. I worked seven days a week. When you're young in your 20s, you can do that if you don't have a family. You've got the energy. It's something new. You're learning. I was constantly reading books on the craft itself, real estate, foreclosures. I'm not telling everybody to go into real estate and foreclosures today because it's a very fragmented market.

Host (Paul Alex): Unless they go with you.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right. And I've got 25 years of experience of all the tricks in the trade, from business bankruptcies on real estate to surplus proceeds, A to Z. I've done it all.

Host (Paul Alex): And you're also a professional with tax advising as well.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah.

Host (Paul Alex): So you know your shit, dude. That's why we're here. When we were at the charity event, you were explaining your concept to me and I said, "Dude, you broke that down pretty simple, but I know it's not that simple." You said, "Oh, it is pretty simple." I said, "It's simple for you, but it's not simple for the majority of people watching this." Majority of people are still trying to figure out how they're going to make their bills every day.

Guest (Christopher Craig): That's true.

Host (Paul Alex): So with that being said, this is why we're here. We bring great guests like Chris who are experts in their niche, which is foreclosure, real estate, and even taxes. You're able to break it down on a simple formula. You wanted to become an entrepreneur because you knew that the hard work you put in, the energy you had at that time, you would get the reward. How did that make you feel? Did you feel good? Did you feel powerful?

Host (Paul Alex): Did you feel like, "Dude, I can accomplish anything"? Think about this. Take a yard project, right? The honey-do list. "Hey, I want you to build a waterfall or something." When you were a kid, anytime you built something on your own, after it was done, you felt really good about it because you accomplished it. That was the direct work you did with your own hands. Men were built to work. That's the bottom line.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Even today, I might detract from doing paperwork and thinking from the neck above. I still get my hands dirty. I've done general contracting. I was out there running heavy equipment yesterday at one of my house flips in Henderson, Nevada. Well, it's not a house flip, it's a house rental, but I had to remodel it. I got one of those extend-the-lift extreme lift things. I pulled the air conditioner off the damn roof by myself because I didn't have any guys to help me. They were two hours out and I'm like, "I got to get this done now." So I just strapped it up, put it on a hook, lifted it off, moved it around, maneuvered it. I know how to operate heavy equipment.

Host (Paul Alex): Perfect action, man. You're not going to wait for anybody. Just go get it done. The HVAC guy calls, "Hey, what am I doing?" It's like, "I'm paying you money to go out and figure the job out so I don't have to do it."

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right.

Host (Paul Alex): You're resourceful, man. Not a lot of people are resourceful. You have to leverage your relationships and your network. Call that your resources. The worst thing someone can tell you is no.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah. Then move on to the next one and the next one. Somebody's going to say yes. It's a numbers game. It's no different than marketing and social media and digital marketing today. You've got to go through 100,000 impressions to get 50 good qualified customers. The growing pains, brother.

Host (Paul Alex): Right. Everything can relate, whether it's the industry or not, it's still the same key concepts. You got to have grit. You got to have the ability to adapt and overcome. You're going to get knocked down just like I've been knocked down. I've leveled up three, four steps and got knocked down five or six and had to start all over again. Not once, not twice, three or four times in my life, maybe five.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah.

Host (Paul Alex): But you cannot let it—the mindset is believe in yourself because other people believe in you.

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Host (Paul Alex): So, Chris, what would you say is your why now? When you were in your 20s, it seems like you were just a go-getter. You probably didn't even need a why. A lot of these youngsters nowadays don't need a why. They just have the energy, the ambition, and they want to get paid. But right now, at your age, you've been an entrepreneur for more than 20 years now. What is your why?

Guest (Christopher Craig): My why is, look, I've been through the ringer. I've done it. I've failed. I've succeeded. If I had that person, if I had somebody like me today, I could learn it all a lot faster instead of years. We could speed that process up into months, maybe even weeks, depending on how quick of a learner somebody is. Having that mentor relationship—20 years ago, you just didn't see coaching programs. Not at all. You would be afraid to ask somebody, "Hey, could you mentor me?" It just wasn't part of the culture.

Host (Paul Alex): The culture.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah. It was, "Go figure it out. Nobody's going to teach you." Now we have coaching, we have programs, people will teach you. So it's more of my give back. Remember, I always say our network, our net worth is our network. If I can expand this and help other people put a few extra bucks in their pot, it doesn't even have to be a full-time thing. It could be a part-time deal. If you could make an extra $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a month part-time, for some people, that might be all you need to do.

Host (Paul Alex): Right. Right.

Guest (Christopher Craig): It's quality of life, spending more time with your children, your family, doing the things you like to do. But I've always liked to do things that I find interesting and are new. Once I accomplish something, I've done this thing a few times, I got to find something more challenging.

Host (Paul Alex): No, absolutely. You're a visionary guy then.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I'm a visionary guy, man.

Host (Paul Alex): This is the type of guys that we are. We're the type of guys that even though we might be super busy, we might have three, four things going on, we would be like, "Let's go start another fire. Let's go ahead and start something else." Just because that's the way your mind is. That's the way you have been at it for years. I have a very similar background because you're military, I'm law enforcement. I was very proactive as a cop. That mentality from law enforcement of always wanting to find work, wanting to stay busy, wanting to earn it—I brought that into entrepreneurship. So for you, it's very similar. When we go out and earn something, we feel good about earning it.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Correct.

Host (Paul Alex): When we go out and take something, we don't feel good about it.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Correct.

Host (Paul Alex): So your mindset is feel good about earning your keep. I do a lot of coaching and I'm very liberal with my time. People say, "I need somebody to set up an LLC for me." And I say, "Why don't we just jump on a Zoom? It'll take 10 minutes and I'll show you how to do it yourself."

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah. Some people like that because it's going to save them $500 of paying somebody else to do it. Today, setting up your own business only takes about 15 minutes. But you have other companies—they're brokers. They're going to charge you a thousand bucks to do the same thing. I have clients that say, "Chris, just set it up for us. We're happy to pay your fee." I say, "Are you sure? You don't want to do it yourself?" I'm the kind of guy, I want to know how to do everything.

Host (Paul Alex): You're right, man. But the thing is now, in this day and age of social media ever since COVID—correct me if I'm wrong—I feel like everybody has gotten almost trained to want instant gratification even more. It's because of these applications. Just think about it. We ordered some healthy food here in Miami, but we used an application to get it. We didn't have to physically drive to the location. We didn't have to physically order it anymore.

Guest (Christopher Craig): No.

Host (Paul Alex): Everything's on the touch of your phone. DoorDash. It reprograms your mind to want to go through what I like to call the path of least resistance.

Guest (Christopher Craig): True.

Host (Paul Alex): So I think as a society, it's just going to get worse and worse. It's not to say it's a bad thing because I think that's going to open a lot of more opportunities for the entrepreneurs.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Yeah, for the entrepreneurs. The people that are smart, the people that are thinkers just like yourself and me.

Host (Paul Alex): For you guys who are listening and watching, I had a guest yesterday. He's a former PD and he said most people want to be entrepreneurs, but they're only putting in 5% of energy to accomplish what they want. Imagine if you were to triple that, you'd be at 15%. Imagine if you gave 50%. Imagine if you were at 100%, how much you would get done on a daily basis. For people that really want to achieve what they want, you have to take perfect action. You're hearing Chris's story. Chris came from the military. They didn't know much. A mentor. That's what I would consider.

Guest (Christopher Craig): The person that told me about it. Took me under his wing.

Host (Paul Alex): Took you under his wing, dude. I had a ton of mentors. I just didn't call them mentors.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right. I didn't know.

Host (Paul Alex): We wouldn't call him a coach or a mentor.

Guest (Christopher Craig): No, we wouldn't. Without even understanding what the person was showing you.

Host (Paul Alex): Exactly.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Doug McCabe showed me a different way. That's really where I became an entrepreneur. In real estate, I was wholesaling. I was knocking on pre-foreclosure doors and buying people's houses at a discount. If I'd get one locked up under contract, I would take my contract and assign it to McCabe and he would pay me 10% of the profit. That's what he would pay me because I had no skin in the game other than my own two feet, my door knockers, my fist, and my mouth. That's what made me money. Sometimes I was making $20,000 a week back then when I was 24, 25, 26.

Host (Paul Alex): Which is insane.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right. Think about it. Now, it's much more difficult today because of the competitive environment. We have technology. There's five other people to that same door. But not so much in surplus proceeds. Surplus proceeds is the new vehicle, essentially. It's the new window of opportunity right now in 2025 and beyond.

Host (Paul Alex): So let's get back into the foreclosure surplus proceeds. Your method that you're creating—I know you're coming out with this new community. It's a free general community where you're going to be teaching people on a weekly basis how to do this.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right. We'll hold weekly Zooms.

Host (Paul Alex): And you're also speaking at Swipe to Freedom, which is my event for one of my portfolio companies, CashSwipe. As you guys know, we do credit card processing. Christopher Craig is going to be speaking to over 400 entrepreneurs there about surplus proceeds. I know there's going to be a lot of people interested in that. Another thing you're doing is almost like a done-with-you, done-for-you concept with the surplus proceeds. You're going to help people find the actual auctions where all they have to do is essentially just show up to the auction and be ready to make some deals. Then partner up with you. Some people don't even need to have the money to do that. They just need to do the work and follow your advice.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Right. We just need somebody to go out and make contact so that we can make a deal with the homeowner. The homeowner makes money, you make money, I make money. We all make money together. We grow the network. Collaboration is key. Instead of competition, why compete? Collaborate. We can grow faster and cover more ground and maybe reach more lives, help more people.

Host (Paul Alex): What state, Chris, would you say right now is really thriving with this opportunity with the surplus proceeds?

Guest (Christopher Craig): Let's see. Certain parts of Texas. Las Vegas is the number one foreclosure spot in the U.S. right now. That depends on what news source we get. But Florida's getting hit pretty hard right now. What's happening in the foreclosure market or distressed property is during the pandemic, during COVID, you saw the biggest run-up in housing prices, which was Florida, your red states which didn't have restrictions, grew like crazy. Now there's a correction. At the same time, Spirit Airlines just filed bankruptcy again yesterday. There are economic factors as well. Interest rates are high. Some of these people that got COVID relief in their houses got a forbearance on the mortgage. A forbearance says, "Okay, you're behind 12 payments. We'll push them out four or five years or three years," depending on what agreement they got with their lender or servicer. Now all these things are coming due. People that got adjustable rate mortgages a couple of years ago where they got a low 3% introductory, then it went 4, then 5, then 6, and then 7—they can't afford it at 7. They could afford it at 3, 4, 5, but not 6 and 7. So you're seeing these types of properties foreclose. You've got divorce, alcohol, drugs, depression, and other mental factors—that's relevant always. But the economic impact right now, companies are closing, big businesses filing bankruptcy. People have wage stagflation. Your wages aren't going up when inflation is outpacing your wages. With those factors, foreclosures are up nationwide. There's a service—it's like $99 a year, maybe $200 a year—called Resi Club that gives some of the best analytical data on the residential real estate market nationally. It lists out where all the top foreclosure cities are right now. Those are the cities you go pick. 25 foreclosure cities. I team up with anybody listening here. If we had one or two people in each of these counties, these jurisdictions, we can cover a lot of ground with a lot of people. If you go, "Hey man, I got some extra money I want to invest," we'll pull our money together, buy these claims together, profit together.

Host (Paul Alex): That's amazing. So Chris, where can they find you?

Guest (Christopher Craig): On Instagram, it's Christopher Craig Official. On LinkedIn, it's the same thing.

Host (Paul Alex): And you have a website.

Guest (Christopher Craig): We have a website called surpluswithchris.com.

Host (Paul Alex): Nice catchy name. So Chris, what would you tell everyone right now that are interested in actually making money with foreclosure surplus proceeds? I feel like this is such a great opportunity. I'm even thinking of investing into this as well. But what would you say to the beginner entrepreneur right now, possibly people in the military, possibly people in law enforcement, first responders that are looking to get into entrepreneurship? What are some words of advice for the audience, brother?

Guest (Christopher Craig): The very first step is getting your entity structure set up. Going into business with that new LLC. You don't necessarily need to have an LLC in the state you reside. You want a friendly LLC like Nevada, New Mexico, Texas. You want states that don't tax you on your profits. Florida's a good one. There's a lot of states. I can help you walk through it. We can go on the Secretary of State's website and literally incorporate or organize your LLC in 10 to 15 minutes. I will coach you how to do that so you can save a few bucks. It's going to empower you to learn. So it's proper entity structure and tax structure. You might have your W-2. You make extra money, it's getting taxed too. But how do you minimize that? There's ways to do that. As an enrolled agent licensed to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, plus I have a Master's of Laws in Taxation, I have a couple of graduate degrees as well. I call it tax efficiency. I will guide you and coach you. If you have children, simple things like paying your kids can reduce your taxes. Not really the subject of what we're talking today, but when you work with me, you get all this knowledge built in—25 years and a lot of graduate education. I've got an MBA, a JD, and an LLM.

Host (Paul Alex): That's amazing, man. That's four, two and two—eight years of graduate education. I love that, brother. So you guys will be teaming up with the best of the best when it comes to this industry. Chris, anything else? Any words of motivation or anything else you want to leave with the audience?

Guest (Christopher Craig): It all comes down to action, guys. You have to be willing to take the step. On my own personal journey, I was about 280 pounds about five months ago. May 31st, we went to Mexico. I take my kids, my wife. My wife's from Mexico. Her parents still live there in their 80s, so they don't travel so well. We go for five weeks to Puerto Vallarta every year. I had a hard time doing 20 push-ups. I'm a Marine that usually could knock out 50 push-ups any given day, no matter how bad a shape I was in. I could always knock out 50 push-ups. It just might take me a few minutes to do it. But when I struggled with 20 push-ups and I had this fat belly, I was like, "Okay, I got to take action." I was like, "I got to be healthy for my family because I might stroke out or have a heart attack." I'm getting up there in that age where it's going to be common. So be willing to take action. Be willing to learn. Be willing to accept constructive criticism.

Host (Paul Alex): Oh, yeah.

Guest (Christopher Craig): I'm always willing. What can somebody tell me that can help make me better? Because we can't see it in ourselves half the time.

Host (Paul Alex): We can't.

Guest (Christopher Craig): People are a better judge of you than you are yourself. Just like we criticize, "If you change this, change that." It's just being willing to accept it. Take it in and build the thing that you want. But you've got to start somewhere. We crawl before we walk.

Host (Paul Alex): That's right.

Guest (Christopher Craig): Once you get a little confidence, once you do a deal or two or a transaction, you get a little bit more confident. Knowledge and education is power. Remember this. The more you learn, nobody can ever take that from you unless you get a head injury.

Host (Paul Alex): Absolutely, brother. I thought you were about to say the more that you learn, the more that you earn. But I like what you said too, Chris. Guys, that is the Level Up with Christopher Craig. He is a foreclosure surplus proceeds expert and tax advisor. If you guys want to contact Chris, you can go to Christopher Craig Official on Instagram and surpluswithchris.com. This is Paul Alex with the Level Up Podcast. Leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on YouTube. Because of you guys, the four million downloads a month, we are top four in all categories and number one in business currently. With that being said, we'll catch you on the next one.

[Outro]

Host (Paul Alex): Thanks for listening up to the Level Up Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to share with a family, friend, and everyone you know who's ready to level up. Leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you tune in. It really helps spreading the word. And don't forget to check out officialpaulalex.com for more episodes and resources to kickstart your journey. Let's level up together.

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