Opportunities In The Credit Gap, With Jamie Shulman

As equity markets struggle, there’s an increased interest in the private credit market. But how can individual HNW investors participate to enjoy significant income, while mitigating their risk?

Jamie Shulman, co-founder and fund manager at Meriwether Group Capital, joins the show to discuss the private credit market, and the unique niche that his firm occupies.

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Episode Highlights

Details on Jamie’s professional background, and the founding of Meriwether Group Capital.
The “underserved niche” that Meriwether targets (and why this space has a “gap”).
Whether Jamie believes the credit markets are likely to seize up in 2023 (including a humorous answer, and a real answer).
How Jamie approaches due diligence, and why it always starts with just two questions.
The larger social benefit of private credit, and why this social benefit can be motivational for both commercial bankers, as well as LPs who invest.

Today’s Guest: Jamie Shulman, Meriwether Group Capital

About The Alternative Investment Podcast

The Alternative Investment Podcast is a leading voice in the alternatives industry, covering private equity, venture capital, and real estate. Host Andy Hagans interviews asset managers, family offices, and industry thought leaders, as they discuss the most effective strategies to grow generational wealth.

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Show Transcript

Andy: Welcome to the “Alternative investment Podcast.” I’m your host, Andy Hagans. And today we’re talking about the private credit market, a very interesting topic right now. Joining me is Jamie Shulman, co-founder and fund manager at Meriwether Group Capital. Jamie, welcome to the show.

Jamie: Thank you very much, Andy. Pleasure to be here.

Andy: Yeah. You know, I keep using the, “May you live in interesting times,” the ancient Chinese curse. And it seems like we may be entering into interesting times in the credit market. Maybe we’re not quite in the interesting times. But before we get to that macro picture, could you tell us a little bit of background on Meriwether Group?

Jamie: Sure. Well, Meriwether Group Capital was really kind of formed out of this idea that there’s a, in my opinion, an underserved niche of small businesses needing access to capital. It fit just kind of on the edges of what traditional banks and other financial institutions like to focus on. And that doesn’t make them a bad borrower by any means, but it just means that someone needs to spend a little extra attention with these kinds of companies, and they need to get paid for the risk, too. And that was kind of the genesis for what we ended up creating.

Andy: So, could we actually define small business or medium-sized business? I know the acronym SMB. What’s the technical definition if it exists?

Jamie: Yeah, it doesn’t exist. And having spent 25 plus years in banking prior to this, you know, I’d say that there’s kind of a wide range… I kind of define small businesses operating entities with revenues, maybe as low as 1 or 2 million up to maybe 75 million, and with EBITDA or cash flow of maybe at least 500,000, up to maybe 3 or 4 million. I think once you get bigger than that, now, you’re really talking real middle market types of businesses.

Andy: Got it. Okay. And so, your group, you service the small businesses, but also the lower middle market? Is that right?

Jamie: Yeah, I’m gonna say kind of emerging middle market. So these are typically profitable, EBITDA-positive growing businesses that are just looking for a little extra access to capital to accelerate their growth.

Andy: And why is it that banks, you know, don’t really serve this group of businesses? I imagine it might be a variety of reasons.

Jamie: Yeah, that’s a great question. It can be a number of things. One could be the limitations of the bank itself and its own legal lending limit. Banks also have real restrictions around their pricing models, credit models. And, you know, I’ve just seen an ability or an unwillingness to maybe think a little bit outside the box when it comes to companies that are growing at a fast rate. And my experience in banking have been, really, banks really like to see incremental growth year over year with businesses. And so, fast-growing ones who are looking to tap into new markets, new products, or expand customer relationships can struggle sometimes finding an appropriate amount of access to capital. And I think banks are great partners for these businesses but sometimes businesses just need a little bit more kind of beyond that.

Andy: Got it. It sounds like creativity or flexibility maybe is key for these kinds of deals. So, I mean, I’m just thinking in terms of, like, upside even, you know, warrants or, you know, preferred stock, common stock, option, you know, all sorts of different ways you can get paid that you can combine upside along with normal debt. I would imagine that traditional banks just have a harder time quantifying that, and just being flexible in valuating and all that kind of thing.

Jamie: Absolutely. I mean, my experience in banking, again, has been, it’s a rate and fee-driven model. There’s a credit policy and a pricing policy. And if something is maybe beyond that, banks really struggle. And that’s where companies like ours and other really commercial mezzanine lenders, which is what we’re describing, can be very creative around how we get priced to risk. And that’s a very wide spectrum. And there’s a variety of ways of doing that, both in kind of upfront yield between rate and fee, and exit fees, and maybe warrants or other types of kind of sweeteners that sometimes go along with these types of transactions.

Andy: Yeah, I mean, what you said about banks being fee-driven businesses, that rings true even as a consumer. I think everyone would say that that rings true. Well, so, the banks, they basically have certain products, certain boxes, I guess we could almost say they have certain boxes, and so if a business doesn’t neatly fit into that box, if they don’t have, you know, a neat, nice product that sort of checks off the list for everything that’s required for that product, they just don’t fit in as a client, even if they might be a profitable client, even if, you know, you can… Even if someone like you who’s more experienced with underwriting this, you can sort of see there might be a favorable risk-reward. They’re not gonna fit into that traditional mold or that very structured mold, I guess, that a bank would provide. So, could you tell us a little bit about I guess how your fund makes money? I mean, obviously, risk-reward, you know, fees and interest rate. But, you know, were there other little-known sources of revenue? Like, you talked a little bit about warrants. Like, I guess, where’s your upside beyond just the normal income that you’d have from the interest?

Jamie: Sure. So, we really focus on lending loans between 500,000 and 5 million. And that’s a really good space for us. What I have kind of observed and seen just in years of banking is that there are other commercial mezzanine lenders out there but most of which kind of start where we leave off. And, you know, I don’t feel that it’s right that if you need to borrow, let’s say $10 million, you have many choices of lenders to go to, whereas if you’re seeking 5 million or less, there’s kind of limited choices. So that’s really the niche that we’re trying to serve. And loan demand for us, frankly, is very, very strong right now, because there’s just a limited number of lenders who are doing kind of the space we are, which is not always easy to do efficiently and get paid appropriately for the risk. So, when we price our loans, we have a minimum kind of all-in yield that we’re seeking between rate and fee to get into a transaction. And then we are looking for other kind of back-end sweeteners who could be an exit fee, sometimes warrants. Although that is much more common kind of as you move up the debt level. And on smaller loans, it’s a little bit less common.

A lot of what we’re doing is really solving more of a bridge-type need, whereas we’re helping our client most often with kind of access to permanent working capital. It’s kind of our number one request. Occasionally we’ll get something for a desire to acquire another business or a management buyout. But most of the time, that’s permanent working capital to help a business take on a new product line, expand a client relationship, or get into a new geographic market. And because that’s the typical request we get, our terms are pretty short. So our average loan is about 18 months. And so we’re really maximizing kind of our economics in the upfront rate and fee. In longer transactions warrants would be much more common. And we do see those kinds of opportunities, but it’s less so because we’re doing more of a bridge type of transaction.

Andy: So, if your company is providing credit in this gap, right…? We can call it a gap, right? I mean, it’s sort of a market gap. Is this situation getting worse right now? Because, I mean, you know, the headlines I’m reading is a lot of small businesses, as you define them, the financial picture is quickly deteriorating. I mean, we know that from just the data of the leading indicators that the consumer, the wage earners’ financial situation is deteriorating, right? We can see that from savings and consumer debt levels. And in my experience, the small business arena is very tightly correlated to the consumer arena. So, is this gap getting even larger?

Jamie: Yeah. So, you know, I guess I have a couple of thoughts there. You know, first of all, again, having spent a long time in commercial lending, something that I’ve always appreciated is that very good loans can be made in the very worst of times. And conversely, really bad loans can also be made in the very best of times. So, kind of regardless of what the economic picture is going on, there’s still many companies that are doing just fine in figuring out ways to pivot and expand even when conditions aren’t great.

Andy: Could I stop you there? I just think that’s interesting, because it almost… And I’ve not worked in credit, you know, or banking. But it almost sounds like, you know, when we’re in a time of economic turbulence, maybe everyone’s more realistic about risk.

Jamie: Well, sure. And, you know, a pandemic, frankly, is a great example of this because, you know, on the onset of the early 2020, there’s definitely a sense in the banking world of kind of an economic and credit apocalypse, frankly. And this was before PPP or other government stimulus was introduced. But what I really recognized, as did others, is that businesses and entrepreneurs are very resilient in figuring out a way to pivot in the right direction to make sure that they’re sustainable regardless of what’s going on in the world around them. And I saw that time and time again. Now, what we’re seeing today is that as there’s more and more kind of economic concern, financial institutions very naturally kind of tighten and shrink their credit window. That doesn’t mean that we’re seeing, you know, less opportunities. We’re actually seeing more as conditions like this evolve. But there’s plenty of businesses who are doing just fine, who understand how to deal with customer concentrations, or supply chain issues, or things like that. And, you know, it creates more and more opportunities for companies like ours.

Andy: Got it. Okay. Well, zooming out, again, to that macro picture, I wanted to ask you about interest rates because… So now, I’m sort of coming at this from the angle of an LP, you know, from an investor who’s, you know, couple of years ago, everyone was starved for yield, right? Like, you know, I know I was invested in some municipal bond funds, like, short, medium-term funds. And the yield rather was 150 basis points or just something silly. Well, against that sort of a yield, like a 10% or 11% yield, that’s a huge spread. But now, it seems like the risk-free rate has increased somewhat, you know, depending on how you define it, maybe 200 basis points or whatever. Does that make it harder, I guess, for a fund like yours, that’s, you know, higher on that risk-return profile? Does it make it harder to provide value or do interest rates adjust so much that, you know, you’re more than compensated for that?

Jamie: Yeah. So, again, a couple of thoughts there. So, we are really structured on the fund side as an income-style fund. So we have a target returning annually of 10% to our investors. We pay a distribution every quarter. Preservation of capital is our number one priority and then paying a quarterly distribution. And we’ve exceeded our target every quarter since inception. And we will again for the fourth quarter here. So, you know, for an investor, this is a really attractive option for those who maybe have access to liquidity they don’t know what to do with, or they already have maybe some assets in fixed income, they might be more conservative. And here’s a way to say, “Okay, I’m gonna take a slice of that and more of an alternative income fund in exchange for, in my opinion, a modest degree of credit risk, and then have maybe a blended return of something greater than that.”

So, we also have a two-year lockup on any initial investments in our fund. So the most kind of comparable, risk-free investment might be like a two-year treasury. Today, that’s an, I don’t know, high threes, low fours that’s kind of fluctuated is probably, you know, who knows where that will go over time. And so, the question our investors are asking is, okay, is 3% to 4% kind of risk-free for maybe a two-year time horizon better or worse than, you know, a 10% return with some degree of credit risk? You know, I don’t know, I think the delta is still significant enough, and we’ve been able to onboard and attract enough investors that I think that the difference is worth it. Now, like any other alternative investment, I would never recommend that this is 100% of someone’s portfolio, but it’s meant to kind of augment what people already have in place. And so I think that the return opportunity is still attractive. In addition to that, depending on the duration of our loan and the risk profile, we do both fixed-rate and more frequently floating-rate loans. So, as interest rates change, our investors are reaping the upside of that alongside of us.

Andy: Interesting. Okay. Now, you know, speaking with a couple of asset managers recently, I’ve heard one theme, and it’s not universal, but the theme is that there’s just more opportunity in the credit markets right now than there are in, say, you know, real estate equity markets. And so, you know, they’re seeing some allocations with family offices with very high net worth, ultra-high net worth investors that are, you know, allocating a bit more to the private credit market. Have you seen that play out, you know, I guess from your vantage point?

Jamie: Sure. So, you know, I kind of look at both sides of our balance sheet when thinking about that question. So, on the one side, we have our borrowers and we have a good portfolio of good credit operating entities all are performing as agreed. And frankly, we have so much more loan appetite than we could possibly serve right now. So we have almost unlimited supply of investments to make in terms of loans. But the future seems pretty optimistic to me in terms of opportunities to bring in more quality borrowers who are willing to take on the pricing profile that we work with. So we have a lot of upside there. So, really, our limiter is the ability to find limited partners who are interested in investing in this type of vehicle. We started the year at zero. We were a brand new fund at the beginning of the year. Today, we just crossed over the $10 million mark. We have about 27 investors in our fund today. Kind of our average is maybe 350,000 per investor. So, we’re very, very small compared to a lot of these other bigger ones. But I think they see the value in what we’re doing. And because we’re an open-ended or evergreen-style fund, we can continue to grow in perpetuity, as long as we can continue to find quality investments in the form of loans to make. And right now, given our model, kind of limited competition, and what’s going on in banking in general, you know, I’m pretty optimistic about our upside opportunity over the next few years at least.

Andy: Yeah, interesting. So, you know, you mentioned a two-year lockup, I believe and, you know, a lot of private equity funds. You know, and I know the alternatives landscape is changing, right? So you’ll have interval funds or other kinds of intermittent liquidity products. But aside from that, you know, with a product like a Delaware statutory trust or a lot of these other illiquid alts, they have like a five-year lockup or even longer. So, how does the redemption work with your product?

Jamie: Sure. So, I think maybe I’ll answer that in a couple of ways. First of all, let me… I’ll just kind of share what we are not and then what we are. So, we’re not a growth fund. We’re never gonna have a 20% or 30% upside or downside. Because of our pricing discipline on our loans, our goal is to be 10% annually year in and year out. And if we are, you know, higher than that, our LP is sharing that upside. So we’re not an equity fund. We’re a credit fund. The reason that we have a two-year lockup and not something longer than that or shorter is because the average duration of our loans are about 18 months. Again, we’re doing a lot of kind of bridge-type purpose lending. And so, you know, we’re not highly liquid in terms of, we don’t have loans paying off every day, they create liquidity. But we have enough over the course of every quarter and year that we can manage redemptions when those occur. So we do ask for our investors to be in it for at least two years with us. Hopefully, you know, we’ve met or exceeded returns, and we’re not expecting limited partners to wanna exit at that point. But they can with I think a 90-day notification to us and they can redeem some or all of their principal distributions, in addition to that, get paid either on cash or limited partners can just add that back to their capital account. And those are available to be taken at any point in time.

Andy: Understood. Okay. You know, the product makes sense. I like how clear you are about it that, you know, what we are not, we’re not a growth fund, you know, you’re not gonna have a 30% year over year, you know, growth or anything like that, but there’s a perennial appeal of income. I mean…

Jamie: Yeah. And, you know, I’m all about, let’s keep it simple and stay in your lane. And that’s kind of been my whole career is make sure we don’t try to do things that we’re not good at. And we’re commercial lenders. That’s what we do best. We don’t take equity positions alongside of debt. We just do lending. And that allows us to stay very focused, and then also make sure that we’re matching our energies around what our limited partners are expecting in terms of return to them.

Andy: So, given your point, you know, you’re commercial lender, that’s what you’re good at. And by the way, as an aside, I wouldn’t necessarily say stay in your lane but the idea of knowing what you’re good at, and leading with your strength, and even having a niche product for my saying as an LP, I love that, you know, because every product is unique, or at least it should be. And a product that tries to be all things to all people, to me, it fails from the get-go. You know, so I love that you’re able to explain what your product is, what it isn’t with that. You know, I’d say you have like a 10-second elevator pitch. So, I’m gonna give you an A plus for that. Now, shifting to, you know, the fact that you’re a commercial lender, you know, that’s the space that you know. You’ve been there a long time. It’s what you’re good at. I think potentially you could be the canary in the coal mine. If we’re headed into a rough 2023, I think, you know, folks in your position and your industry, you might be seeing some funny stuff first, you know, maybe before some of the rest of us do. What do you think the chances are of a real, A, a blow-up of some kind or, B, just a credit market freeze? Do you think there’s any probability of that in the next four months?

Jamie: Yeah. So I’ll give you my joke answer and then my real one. The joke answer is, if I knew the answer to that, we’d probably be having this conversation on my yacht. So, I don’t know. I mean, it’s really hard to tell.But a serious answer to that is, you know, our underwriting does not stop after we book a loan. We collect financial reporting on all of our borrowers, in almost all cases, monthly. So we have a really good kind of a pulse on what’s going on with these businesses, all the way from closing through maturity. You know, I’m not seeing right now anything that would indicate a massive blowup. Again, my focus is on how are these businesses pivoting or redirecting, or refocusing their energies as things start to change. And do they have customer concentration issues or supply chain issues and have they thought through those things? And we really focus on companies that have, you know, the right answers to those questions and we stay in touch. I mean, we’re there to be kind of in their circle of trusted advisors, not just for closing the loan, but all the way through maturity and, you know, hopefully, beyond.

Andy: So, then, if you’re not seeing serious disruptions, that could be based on your ability, you know, to do good underwriting, right, to identify businesses that are less sensitive?

Jamie: Yeah, and, you know, again, we keep things really simple. And we start our analysis with two very basic questions. How do you make money and how are you gonna pay us back? And if we can understand the answers to those questions, there’s probably a path to a yes. And frankly, if we can’t understand the answers, then forget it. And I tell my borrowers, you know, “Treat me like I’m in seventh grade and help me understand what you do.” Because, you know, in a worst-case scenario, we might have to step in and operate one of these businesses. And so because of that, we tend to focus our energies around companies that are kind of loosely in manufacture, or wholesale, distribution types of industries. We tend to shy away from more kind of technology, or maybe bioscience or, you know, these kinds of companies that are under more challenging or just kind of less easy to understand trajectory. And that keeps it really simple for us. And that helps us also after we’ve closed the loan kind of understand the trends or what’s going on, all the way through, again, to maturity.

Andy: Yeah, that makes sense. And starting with those two questions, I guess, are the first two steps in a due diligence process. But could you talk a little bit about that process? You know, how long does it take? How extensive is it? Is it similar to due diligence that someone would make with an equity investment or is it different?

Jamie: Yeah. You know what? I’d say, again, we don’t do equity, but I believe that we can operate in a very fast and nimble manner. We have a very small team. I’m essentially, you know, the chief credit officer in the banking world. And so, we have a small group that makes decisions, we like to be very decisive. We have kind of both a traditional approach to credit analysis, where we’re collecting financial for reviewing key metrics, senior, and total debt to EBITDA, three and four, respectively, are kind of things that we really zero in on. But then we take a real kind of holistic view of a business that includes face-to-face meetings, we’re walking the machine shop floor, we’re sitting down with the management team. And as I learned many years ago in banking, there’s a real value in being able to sit down and just really look into the whites of the eyes of the CEO, owner, etc., you know that they’re gonna pay you back. And that’s a little bit of the art and less of the science. But I think it’s really combining those two things that allows us to make good credit decisions.

Andy: So you referenced that you have, you know, a smaller team, you know, a leaner operation, I suppose. Is that what really enables you to serve this market because I’m thinking that, you know, there’s… I’m theorizing here and you tell me if I’m going off base. There’s probably a relatively fixed amount of work that goes into a deal and goes into a due diligence process, whether we’re talking about a $10 million company or $100 million company or a $1 million loan or a $10 million loan. And so that may be, you know, some of the reason that larger institutions, banks shy away from these kinds of deals is maybe they have a higher cost structure, or, you know, these deals are just outside their sweet spot. So, is there a sweet spot, I guess, for you in terms of, you know, like a minimum deal size where a deal smaller than that, you know, you just can’t make the economics work?

Jamie: So, your theory is exactly true. You know, this isn’t just true and kind of banking and lending. But really, in any business, as the business gets bigger, there’s a tendency to kind of move up market in terms of who their client is, because they’ve added, let’s say, people or real, you know, the office space, or whatever it is, and you need to kind of be doing bigger things to operate with the same level of efficiency. So, for us, you know, we market that we do loans 500,000 to 5 million. Our average loan today is just over 1.5 million. And that’s a great loan for us. And frankly, 500,000 is a great loan for us, too. We can do those very efficiently, and make it worthwhile for borrower, investor, and ourselves.

Andy: Okay. But then there gets to a point, I don’t know if it’s $200,000 or whatever, where you basically can’t complete the due diligence process and charge a fee that’s fair for everybody that makes you money and that’s fair to them, is that basically the gist of it?

Jamie: Yeah, we’ve yet to do a loan that’s less than 500,000. That’s kind of the soft, maybe floor for us. I’d be willing to look at something like that. But that might be more energy than it is worthwhile for a company like ours.

Andy: What about the…? This maybe is a little bit of a curveball, but it strikes me that your fund, your company, are providing, like, a social benefit. You know, it’s not an ESG fund, but just the fact… Like, you know, I’d imagine that just enabling small and midsize businesses to do acquisitions, the working capital to expand, you know, what’s the most rewarding part, I guess, of doing your job, this was what I’m driving at?

Jamie: So I’m smiling, because you’re absolutely right. And I’m not an overly idealistic person in that…

Andy: Well, you’re a commercial banker, I would hope not.

Jamie: So, you know, meeting and exceeding our expectations to our investors is really important to me. And we will do everything we can to make good loans such that we can do that. Having said that, the businesses that we support, first of all, geographically are predominantly… We market Pacific Northwest. It’s mostly West Coast, but we can go anywhere. But thinking about the fact that we’re doing mostly permanent working capital, you know, we do take pride in the fact that we are supporting, you know, small business in our backyard for the most part. This is spurring economic growth in the communities that we’re in. In many cases, this does create jobs and helps kind of really local economies. And so we do feel really good about that. You know, I don’t know that we ever really lead with that. But for our investors, I mean, that’s a good thing. And, you know, I kind of think about this business versus others that can sometimes be like a zero-sum game where someone’s gotta lose for us to win. And our business is not like that.

I mean, for our borrowers, you know, as I think about their choices of growing, if they’ve kind of maxed out what they can do with their bank, you know, their choices are they could sell equity, which is very expensive and dilutive, or they could take on a little bit additional debt if they can find it. And so, we’re providing, you know, a product that’s more expensive than bank debt, but it’s worthwhile for them to be able to grow. And so, this is really a win-win for a borrower investing in ourselves, which I feel really good about, and I think our investors feel good about too.

Andy: Yeah, there’s a lot of interest even among investors for, you know, American-made, you know, American manufacturing. You know, I’ve seen it in the Opportunity Zones world, you know, investors do get excited about, you know, being part of revitalizing sectors of the economy, revitalizing geographic areas with real estate projects, you know, multifamily, manufacturing, you name it. So, I think it’s important, you know, because at the end of the day, it’s not all just about dollars and cents. And even, you know, family offices, institutional investors, they’re making decisions partly based on impact and on their goals and mission that, you know, aside from just the pure dollars and cents. But turning back to the dollars and cents, because those are important, if you had to give some advice to an LP, or to an RIA, who wanted to invest in this type of product, you know, an income product, preserving capital with, you know, a fairly high yield, what advice would you give to an RIA or an LP who wants to, you know, evaluate different funds and, you know, maybe do some due diligence of the funds themselves?

Jamie: Sure, well, you know, I think what’s really important is to understand, well, what are the underlying assets in this fund? And is it complementary to or maybe redundant with other things you have? And, you know, that’s why I really like what we do, because there’s really very few or any other debt or investment instruments out there that have a portfolio of commercial non-real estate loans to businesses that are kind of in that small business to emerging middle market category. And so, if someone’s already got really a portfolio of those, or maybe they own a small business, and this might be redundant, then that might not be a good choice. But I think, you know, it’s a little bit of a loaded response in that I’m not aware of many debt, or credit or investment instruments that kind of offer this.

And so, you know, as I think about our typical limited partner, they might have had a concentration in real estate or business venture, or like I said before, maybe excess cash or fixed income assets. And this is a really good way to diversify away from that. And, again, you know, I’m not an RIA, so I’m very thoughtful about advice I give or don’t give, but thinking about, well, what augments a portfolio and what can be maybe beneficial that maybe could be counter-cyclical to economic conditions are certainly things to be thinking about, yeah, you know, this kind of tends to fit in there nicely with many of the people we talk to.

Andy: Yeah, you know, that’s a really good point, the counter-cyclicality and just understanding the underlying assets or the assets owned by the fund, you know, because you say private credit as if it’s one thing, but probably 100 different private credit funds, 100 different, you know, types of strategies or industries that they represent or industries that they lend to.

Jamie: Yeah. One of the things I would just add that I really like about what we do is that for our investors, they know our borrowers. I mean, these are companies that are small businesses and the communities again, that we work and live in. And these are large global conglomerates, that, you know, people are getting a tiny little slice of. I mean, these are ones where they have bought their products and I think kind of feel good about that they’re helping support them. And that, you know, I think is a difference-maker for us as well.

Andy: So your investor base is mainly geographic or local, I guess, so to speak?

Jamie: Yeah, you know, the vast majority of our investors to date have been in the Pacific Northwest. Again, I’m here in Portland. You know, we’re kind of Pacific Northwest-centric. We can go anywhere but this is where, you know, we have the most kind of contacts in the community. So we’ve chosen, and in our structure, we work with accredited investors who are in the state of Washington, they need to be a qualified purchaser. Most of our investors to date have come from Oregon, Washington, but we’re open to anyone, obviously, that’s looking for something, you know, this could be a good fit for.

Andy: LPs in the Midwest need income too, right, so let’s not limit ourselves.

Jamie: I’m not limiting anyone that doesn’t need income.

Andy: So, Jamie, this has been really enlightening. First of all, thank you just for your, I guess patience and educating me about the credit market. It’s not necessarily, you know, my expertise, but I really like to explore it, you know, from that angle of an LP. So, you know, thank you for your insights there. And I also just appreciate the unique niche that your fund serves. Like I said, I think that impact on the local economy, I think that does resonate with a lot of LPs, with a lot of wealth managers, and family offices. So, that being said, where can accredited investors and financial advisors go to learn more about Meriwether Group Capital?

Jamie: Sure. So, first of all, thank you very much for having me. I mean, I love this stuff. I’ve been a lender for 27 years. You know, my golf game’s not very good. I’ve never done that. I’ve not won the Powerball. So, I’m gonna stick with this I think for a while longer because I enjoy it and we do make a positive difference. So, having said that, first of all, we are actively growing our investor base. We have significant appetite from lending. So we have a desire to continue to grow our fund. Potential investors could find us at meriwethergroupcapital.com. They can email myself at [email protected]. And we’re pretty easy to find on the internet or on LinkedIn. We’re pretty active there as well.

Andy: And I’ll be sure to link to that website in the show notes of this episode. And as a reminder to our listeners and viewers, you can always access our show notes at altsdb.com/podcast. Jamie, thanks again for coming on the show today.

Jamie: Thanks, Andy. Really appreciate it.