Make It Count ™ with Tanya Waymire
From Engineer to Private Lender: Paul Brown on Risk, Reinvention & Building Forward
Paul Brown thought he was answering a wrong number. Instead, he was being asked to lend $89,000 in second position on a fix-and-flip—something he had never done before. That unexpected yes became the beginning of a private lending business and a new chapter he never planned. Paul began as a mechanical engineer, spent nearly three decades in global banking and financial services across the United States, Japan and Singapore, and eventually built businesses of his own. Today, he operates private lending, private credit and debt and surplus recovery businesses. In this conversation, we talk about the cost and value of a W-2 career, the risk of building from scratch, how he evaluates deals, why deal flow takes longer than people expect, and what it takes to build businesses that can operate beyond you. Paul also shares the lesson he wants people to carry with them: your mistakes are not your identity, and your worth is not determined by what you produce.
