Aaron (00:00.654)
Hello everybody and welcome to the speaking of insurance podcast. My name is Aaron Bollinger.

Brian Bollinger (00:04.718)
And I'm Brian Bollinger.

Aaron (00:06.328)
Today we're gonna be talking about bonding dad. I feel like we have a very good bond and I feel like these contractors who are doing all this construction in our neighborhoods also have some pretty good bonds. Is that is that fair to assume?

Brian Bollinger (00:17.69)
Yeah, I think they should have a great bond. you know, some of those big high rise buildings and projects, the banks wanna be paid or they want that building completed. So the they usually get lots of bonds on stuff like that. Plus lots of insurance in general.

Aaron (00:32.652)
Yeah, so let's talk about the requirements for these projects. I mean, obviously you'd mentioned the insurance aspect, but the bond is sort of like a surety. It's sort of like a mortgage, right? You have to leverage assets against it. And it can get tricky to get eligible if you have, you know, poor FICO scores or poor credit history and things like that.

Brian Bollinger (00:50.318)
Yeah, I think that's true. I think the way I would think of it is it's like a line of credit from a bank. it's the bonding company. and it depends on your contract, but basically the bonding company will step in to make good on whatever contract or promises you made. And so because of that, they do have to make sure you have enough assets, personal assets, corporate assets to cover that, a track record of actually completing projects like that. And very importantly, too, no bankruptcies in your history, a great perform, you know, payment history, and and obviously a high-fike.

FICO score are things that can be very beneficial. There's also done in Bradstreets that can come into these things sometimes. But again, a lot of contractors that are starting out struggle to even get a bond for the state licensing board if they have low FICO scores or have payment history issues or bankruptcies in their past.

Aaron (01:39.694)
Can you talk about that initial eligibility a little bit more for those people who are starting out as contractors? I mean, obviously everybody who's a contractor now probably started off that way. So, you know, for people who are interested in the the trade business, could you tell us a little bit that?

Brian Bollinger (01:53.742)
Yeah, they California, they've upped the requirements over time from, you know, a couple thousand, five thousand to ten thousand, fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand. You know, that'll probably be fifty or a hundred by the time people keep listening to these podcasts. So it's kind of a big target. But essentially what that bond does

Is that bond with the state of California, CSLB, contracting state licensing board? what that does is it says, hey, if a customer feels like you didn't do a good job or you took their money and you didn't finish the job properly, it gives them a little bit of a recourse against you to you know get that 25 grand back to you know kind of have some level of make good on the project. It's not 100% like insurance. A bond is not insurance.

All it is is basically a guarantee that you will do what you said you were going to do, but only up to that bonding amount. So that $25,000. If you don't have that $25,000, nobody wants to give the state California $25,000 and just sit in a bank account somewhere and do nothing. So we typically use these bonds. They start at about $100 to $200 a year for most individuals. Sometimes we get a two to three year, even five-year deal for some of our clients where you kind of lock in that cost and you don't have to really think about it.

so we do kind of recommend that to a lot of people 'cause one less thing and one less thing you have to think about, one less check you have to rent or write every, you know.

year. So but the flip side is if you have a low FICO score, you have some kind of payment history problem, getting you qualified can be challenging. There are some companies that can do it, but they do tend to charge more. So you could be seeing, I think we've seen one person I think at the six to nine hundred dollar a year rate because they recently tried to refinance a car loan. That didn't get done right, the bank didn't get paid off. They thought they were getting paid off and they got to wait to pay the payments. Any rate, long story short,

Brian Bollinger (03:42.776)
You know, their their FICO suffered, they had a bad payment history, and their bond basically cost shot up dramatically.

Aaron (03:51.917)
Yeah, well that that does sound tricky. I mean, that initial eligibility phase obviously is also a little bit tricky because it it sounds like these companies, these bonding companies, are taking on a big risk. I mean, I I think of it as like lending a friend some money, like, you know, twenty five K, putting up twenty five K for a friend and them saying, you know, we'll we'll pay you back, we'll do the project right. It does sound risky. And so I I think

How how much do you think those usually go for? I mean, obviously it depends, but just just the starting off at like the twenty five K bond range.

Brian Bollinger (04:22.862)
Yeah, it's like in the 150 range a year, typically give or take a little bit, depending on the company. and again, it's usually not a big cost driver for most people. the thing too to remember is these contractors have spent you know time in school to get their license. they don't want to get their license, you know, canceled. you know, they they really want to stay, you know, licensed contractors, and this is what they do as a profession. So I don't think the pain the the performance of most contractors, I don't think, is really the issue for those bonds.

It's just the problem being that they have to qualify for them from a financial capacity arena, right? 'Cause kinda like a bond, I mean a bank loan. They have to actually, you know, think about it that way, like a line of credit. And a lot of people don't think of it that way until it's too late.

Aaron (05:09.471)
Yeah, by by too late, what do you mean by the time that, you know, they're they're not eligible anymore for bonds and they they've been, you know, playing around with it too much? Or or what do you mean by too late?

Brian Bollinger (05:19.768)
No, I just mean that there's some people out there that struggle with payment histories, right? I mean, obviously, you know, we do a a fairly large number of these. It's kind of a service we provide to contractors starting out, help them out their insurance, you know, help them out their auto. but most of the time these contractor licensing bonds are pretty easy. you know, when there's a challenge though, that

Becomes a really big issue for the contractor because, you know, they don't want to lose their license or have their license frozen, right? you want to have an active license, you want to be able to do projects in the state of California. and so that bond for some people can be a real, a real challenge. I would say the next step, though, as people grow their business, is the next step becomes even more difficult, and that's establishing a surety relationship, a bonding relationship with the larger bonding company.

for those project specific bonds for some of the larger projects they might be trying to get as they start to grow. we've had a number of people try to get in on projects that were, you know, five million to fifty million, which would be great. They'd make a ton of money on those projects. But the issue was they didn't have the financial capacity to get the bond. They didn't have a demonstrated experience of doing projects like that. So the bonding companies weren't really excited about issuing those bonds. Again, because

A bond is that promissory note from the bonding company, the person who's the bond holder, that you'll do the job correctly. And if they don't do the job, you don't do the job correctly, that bonding company is gonna go in there, hire somebody else to do the job, doesn't matter what it costs, and they're gonna send you the bill for that difference. And they're gonna come after your personal assets, your house, your corporate assets. Like they're gonna get their money. so you've got to have the money to basically pay that bond. I think that's where a lot of people start to struggle.

Aaron (07:06.22)
Yeah, I mean, I don't blame them. I mean, obviously, you think about the level of collateral that they're putting up. It's it's pretty ridiculous to be eligible for some of these projects. obviously, especially for people who don't already have that that level. and so that that comes into the relationship aspect with the bonding companies that you had just mentioned, where it's really important to have, you know, a a good bonding company behind you with a history and track record, and they they can trust and sort of believe in you and your promise. So I I wanted to talk about those bigger players.

players, those, those ones who, you know, the contractors who are doing these bigger projects. there's obviously a lot of online sort of, let me search up, get same instant, same day bonds sort of issuance. What what's the risk in doing that, going direct with these bonding companies or not going through a broker and getting that same instant, you know, quote sort of bond that I don't know, you you don't know the company of like let's talk about the the risks of that.

Brian Bollinger (08:05.53)
Yeah, I think the thing I would look at is you want a bonding company that's gonna be able to grow with you. so we do try to stick to the bigger players out there. some people have that kind of, you know, challenging situation where they don't have the experience or they don't have the financial capacity to absorb the loss that they're trying to do. when those issues come up, it is a little more challenging. And in some cases, we've had a number of people

Either have to have like a co-signer on the bond that had more financial capacity to get those issued. or we'd have to change bonding companies to get that to grow. I think one of the misconceptions that people have when they're doing these bonds is the bond is going to be easy. I don't think they fully understand that the bond is not, you know, insurance, that it's actually like a bank loan. And so they want to look at your work in progress, they want to look at your you know, how much stuff you have, similar projects in the past, how much experience.

You have, right? They really want a track record. These bonding companies want to take that, you know, one to three percent. And most of the time, basically, they they charge three percent. it they want to take that three percent and they want to just pocket it, right? They want to, you know, issue that piece of paper and they never want to have to, you know, make good on the project. They want you to complete it. They don't want to have to come after your personal assets. I mean, they want to be successful so that they're successful, and it's all tied together.

I'd say the the big thing we try to push our clients towards if they have that situation is try to ask for a percentage bond. So if the b project's a million or five million dollars, say, hey, how about a 10% bond? I mean, that's a pretty good amount. maybe a 20% bond. Sometimes they're negotiable. This but a lot of cities and counties don't let you play that game. but again, if you're starting out, you haven't already established a reasonably large bonding portfolio, it it it is challenging and you have to provide

financial s accounts. I mean, again, I think people need to understand that a bond is not insurance. A bond is a bank loan. So when you actually go and you say you need five million or ten million or whatever number it is, they want like financial statements for your company. if it's over a million dollars or two million, if it's under about a half million or a quarter million, yeah, same day, maybe some companies will do it. Pretty easy. Might be pretty straightforward. It's just when you get into a certain level of like bonding capacity where

Brian Bollinger (10:31.16)
Maybe you need you're gonna need to have like five bonds open at a time. You need to start having somebody working with you. And a lot of bonding companies want you to work with one bonding company at a time. And the reason why is they wanna know how many projects you've promised your collateral to. They don't want you having like a $10 million bond with company A, a five million dollar company bond with company B, and then a couple, you know, five or you know, one million dollars somewhere else. All of a sudden now you might have twenty or thirty thousand dollars of bonds out there.

But you might only have 10 million of of collateral, and that begins to be a problem for these, for you and for the bonding company. and so it's again, it's a establishing a partnership, a relationship, getting to the point where you start to have like a bonding capacity, like a portfolio kind of product, if that's the arena you're gonna be playing in. A lot of companies though, general contractors and subs, they decide not to go down the bonding path.

and I don't know if that's always their best idea. I wouldn't run away from a project because it requires a bid bond or performance bond, but I would start early in that bonding process and start to have that conversation with your agent or broker about how you can get pre-approved for some of this bonding capacity. So more of these projects become opportunities for you to bid on. If you don't have that bonding experience or if you're unwilling to go down that bonding path.

I mean, you could be giving up on hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in projects unnecessarily. we do tend to also see though, to be honest, some of these projects require prevailing wage, which opens up a whole nother can of worms as being a a contractor working in having to, you know, think about you know what the union rate would be and these kinds of things. It just there's certain things that you have to learn as you grow as a contractor that people don't necessarily tell you.

and one of them is this bonding kind of handshake.

Aaron (12:23.18)
Yeah, it does sound like a handshake. It sounds like I mean, obviously we've experienced insureds who they want to get to those bigger projects and it's it's really difficult because they don't have that existing relationship. and obviously you'd mentioned it cheaper isn't always the best, honestly. Like these instant same day ones when you, you know, are not able to actually create a relationship with the bonding company or use the one that you currently have and you instead go to some other thing that you know it's a cheaper price, it's sort of like insurance. I mean, it just gets really difficult.

Difficult to have you know a a level of experience in in the industry is is very important for companies to respect you. Obviously, I I wanted to talk about the the recent Ar Ardmore construction group collapse. Did you see about the insolvency in the UK? It was a 344 million pound turnover of a construction group, and they were just unable to fulfill their their contractual.

Brian Bollinger (13:09.464)
No, I didn't. Talk about it.

Aaron (13:21.9)
you know, obligations to the bonding companies. So the reinsurers lost, you know, hundreds of millions from default payouts to this one specific construction group that was supposed to be, you know, turning the corner on on their previous struggles. And that does have spillover effects into the market. Like whether people believe it or not, the UK, everything that's happening in the bonding market, people see it. So it's like if insurance claims were to skyrocket for auto insurance in Cali, that obviously has

impacts and ripple effects across the rest of the nation. It's the same thing for bonding. These these reinsurance companies are going to be, you know, more hesitant as they see more of these construction groups drop out. Like can can we talk about the risk of default for these construction companies as they get bigger and bigger?

Brian Bollinger (14:09.274)
Well that's the biggest thing I would say that most of the contractors that we work with, you know, they tend to be family owned, they tend to be kind of conservatively managed, and they tend to be kind of linear growth. over the course of time though, we have seen some people

you know, try to expand too quickly or not have backup resources, you know, maybe it's just the the husband, the wife might be more of an office, you know, manager, the husband's the guy out there, you know, running the cruise and stuff like that. And when God forbid something happens to that main, you know, person, the RME, responsible managing, you know, employee or RMO, you know, you you get to this point where the business starts to struggle.

And you have to then replace that person. We recently had somebody come close to that. I've had I've got two experiences I can tell you right here to kind of paint how I've seen these things play out. You know, one is one is the the the wife is able to step up and actually hires a person or two, people on the team step up and it it just it actually grows. The business actually grows. It's amazing. It's happened once. the other side that I'm thinking of is one where it literally imploded, it became that death star like you were talking about.

and you know, so I guess it it it can go either way. I think what the bonding companies though are thinking about, like with this British UK situation, is they're thinking about if you expand too much and you try to do too much, right? you your costs start to explode, you start to lose some of that quality control. everybody thinks if they double their business, they can keep the same payroll or something similar and they can scale and their margins will be better.

And and that's true to a point. I think what happens though, you start to get to a point where the economic cycle starts to hit. we've had some clients over the years do projects that they shouldn't have done. And and I'm thinking of one in particular, they were doing a apartment building and it was a drywall contractor and the insulation had put in, everything was fine. there was a design error on it, and the person wasn't paid, and they didn't want to have to put the drywall in.

Brian Bollinger (16:14.042)
Because they hadn't received all their payments allegedly. And there was this bickering going back and forth. And you know, apparently enough money was paid that they should have moved forward. They tried not to. Eventually they did it. and it became a concern that they'd raised during the whole process was that the ceiling wasn't properly engineered. it turned out they actually had to rip out the ceilings because the floor joists weren't sufficiently strong to so they put reinforcing in to actually secure the building better. so bad design.

it it just became this massive lawsuit, people getting pulled in on the GL, pulled in the bonds, everybody got pulled in on everything. and so I've seen it go that direction where it becomes a nightmare. and I think that the people that were involved in that a few of those companies are no longer in business. and that that's where I see the Death Star implosion kind of happen. I've seen people overexpand and and that also cause issues. I've seen people try to go into multi-states and not be ready for the

added cost of having crews in other states or not having the same level of quality control and having to do reworks. you know, things like tile spacers being, you know, the wrong the wrong, you know, five eighths instead of three eighths or or whatever, the wrong tile being put in, you had to rip up the tile. you know, so many things like that. It's i I've seen it happen, but it it's not as often, thank God.

Aaron (17:36.441)
Yeah, it was if it was more often, then obviously these bonds would be, you know, doubling, tripling in price. But there's a reason why there are such strict eligibility requirements and such strict underwriting. That's one of the other things I want to get into and as we get on the tail end of this podcast is the underwriting and understanding what actually is included in that process. We we talked about the the credit side of things. We talked about the FICO and the history and obviously the relationship with the company. But

what other factors, like what things should people be getting together if they are applying for bonds? What obviously this would be for the the more inexperienced people when they're first applying.

Brian Bollinger (18:12.132)
Yeah, the smaller yeah, the smaller bonds are pretty easy. Just keep a good FICO score and you know you get your contractor's licensing bond. That's that's not a big deal. When you start getting above about a million or two, the requirements, the underwriting requirements get more and more substantial. So at some point when you're growing, and it's probably a good thing to talk about here, it you start to become more of a professional organization. So I don't know if that number is at 10 million or 20 million, but but at some point, maybe it's even five, but at some point of gross revenue.

it's important for business owners to start to understand how they bid the project, what their projected profitability from the project was, and then also comparing that to how they actually performed on the project. What was your actual profitability? being able to like track that back and get a feel for which jobs you're making money on, which jobs you bid wrong, and obviously adjusting your bidding processes going forward. I think that's a really important thing to do. And so do the bonding companies.

the second thing the bonding companies think is important is they think auditor not be audit financials, but at least like CPA reviewed financials. So what that means is a CPA kind of looks at the thing and looks at your financials, your balance sheet, your profit and loss, and goes, you know, I see this, I see that, okay, this is good, this is bad. I like how you categorized these expenses. And they kind of dig a little bit into like, well, why did you put that number there? and so again, the bonding companies.

are trying to de-risk, right? They're trying to show that A, you know what you're doing, you're profitable when you do your jobs, that you're not underbidding the project, you're going to be able to do it profitably at that, at that, you know, contracted amount. They want to have like a level of confidence. And so having financials that say, yeah, you know, a CPA has actually looked at your tax returns and looked at your financials and said, yeah, these look pretty good. They're not fully audited. We didn't review if every meal was accounted for correctly. We didn't figure out if every mile on the mileage thing was figured out correctly. But overall,

This looks pretty good. That gives your underwriting team at the bonding company a little more, you know, I wouldn't say experience, but it gives them more confidence that you're experienced in what you do, that you're professional and that you're going in the right direction. that gives you a little more leeway because you have to realize too, these bonds, when you start getting above a couple million dollars, they actually go in for a level of like management review. Like there's actually a team of underwriters around the table and they're poking holes in the submission.

Brian Bollinger (20:36.418)
So if a bonding underwriter says, hey, I love this company, I want to give them this $10 million bond, and there's a some kind of black hole on your financials or some kind of an issue, it's highly likely that that'll come out during one of those reviews and it could really undermine your entire you know application process. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is some of these application processes can take, you know, a couple weeks to a couple months, depending on the size of the bond, the complexity of your operations, and exactly what you're asking the insurance company for.

Once you have that established relationship, you'll get like a level of like bonding capacity. So they might say it's two million or five million or ten million. And as long as your ongoing projects stay under that two million, five million, ten million number, you know, you can issue bonds and they can be open as bid bonds for a while. And then as you s transition to project bonds, they become project bonds. The big thing is they don't want you to have more than that number of bonds actually in work in progress at some time. And so that's where that relationship also comes with the bonding company.

You want them to sign off on things. You're gonna have to communicate that work in progress. they're you're you're kind of doing that dance with them. and they but they also want you to be successful, right? They want to collect your premium, even though it's like a one to three percent, you know, usually around three seems to be the typical arena. You can get down to two or one if you're doing, you know, very large jobs, lots of bonds on a continual basis without having to re-underwrite you every time you do a project, that rate does start to come down. But I'd say three percent is a typical thing to think about.

Seems like that's the industry standard right now. Maybe two and a half, depending on the size of the job, but you get the idea. but those are the things to really be thinking about. It's just to be aware that, you know, bonds are not insurance. You need to think of it like a credit, and you really need to get in your financials, your work in progress, and show that you know how to operate your business.

Aaron (22:20.322)
Yeah, and obviously this could just sound like like basic information to the more, you know, experienced contractors, but hopefully some people who who are just starting off get some some level of understanding from this, the the eligibility, the underwriting guidelines. and the thing that we always like to talk about is the sort of like false narrative on the internet. And so I feel like this false narrative is is that, you know, choosing like the lowest displayed quote for your bond. Like I feel like that honestly.

I understand it with your insurance, but with bonds, it's just so much is on the line. It's like again, it's like a mortgage. Like you're putting up your business's reputation. Like what would happen if a contractor were to choose the lowest bond then after paying, they realize, there's some additional information that's required and you know the document won't be ready when you need it. Like how how badly can that, you know, deteriorate or or destroy a business's plans for a project?

Brian Bollinger (23:13.754)
Well, what I've seen happen with some of these lower cost outfits is they tend to be, you know, offer the one year term. They tend to be pretty good initially. I haven't really seen them scale in any meaningful way. I have seen some clients have to change their bonding company a couple of times, whether for a late pay or some little wrinkle here or there. We find some of the partners to be a little more stable, where maybe you get the bond and it's done. And, you know, it it just depends. But

Again, I I don't think that it's hugely important, but I also don't think on the contractor's state licensing bond area or especially, it's a couple hundred bucks, you know, a hundred, two hundred bucks a year. It's not like it's, you know, a thousand dollars a year or ten thousand dollars a year, like some of these, you know, auto liability policies can be twenty or forty thousand, even for some clients. I mean, it you know, ten percent difference there makes a big difference. On the bond, I think it's mainly just having a surety partner that's been there for a long time that you expect to stay in the California market for the foreseeable future.

and that what can grow with you potentially. And so that's that's how we kind of approach it. And we have a few companies that do offer pretty quick approval rates on bonds. It could be, you know, same day, same minute, same hour, whatever. it's just when things don't go right or if you're fall outside of their appetite, that's when it becomes more complicated. So again, my big advice is plan on it taking longer than a couple minutes. be prepared if you have any kind of wrinkle on your history.

even you know identity theft i there's so many things that can go wrong these days for for clients you know it's cyber liability it just it it's crazy out there what these scams people are pulling so and it may not even be your fault but it might require a little more due diligence and processing time so some of the companies that we work with you know might be a little more lenient might be a little more flexible if something went wrong or sideways in the future for you that we can explain and actually call somebody and work with them. Some of these bonding companies and bonding entities

They're just full on internet, and there's no people behind them. those are kind of harder to work with. But but again, you know, we're here to help, we're here to answer questions. and most bonding companies are are pretty, you know, they they've been in the business for a while, they're gonna stay in the business, especially the bigger names out there. I did want to make sure I said one more thing again, just to reiterate a bond is not insurance. We've said that many times, hopefully you got that. but one thing too is that collateral aspect when you're doing these bigger projects, when you're starting to grow, you have to realize.

Brian Bollinger (25:34.606)
You're signing away your your business entity. You're signing away your home. You're signing away your cars. Like you're literally signing a promissory note that if your company doesn't do what they said they were going to do and the bonding company has to come back after you, you can lose everything you own. And so I've seen a lot of clients actually get to that point and go, gosh, you know, I don't mind buying insurance for five or ten million dollars, you know, and knowing that, hey, I'm risking my business. But when you actually go to that bonding company and you start to, you know, have to sign that paperwork where it says, gosh, we can take your home.

That doesn't feel like insurance anymore, right? That feels like they've they've pledged everything they have for this for this one project or this one bond. So a lot of times we find people, you know, pause at some point in the journey of of trying to get these bigger and bigger projects. and I think that's prudent. But I think that's an interesting thing for you as a is at a contractor to think about. You're gonna have, you know, people getting bids, people finding projects and saying, Hey John, hey Sue, hey Sally, you know, we wanna go and and do this twenty million dollar project.

And you're like, that'd be great. And they're like, yeah, you're gonna make a ton of money. And you go, well, but it requires a bond. And and then that gets into that whole, is it a 10% bond, 100% bond? And you just it it opens up this can of worms. But I don't think you should run away from them, but I do think you need to be educated, you need to be eyes wide open. Again, just understand that it is not insurance. A bond is actually a promissory note that you're signing. It's a bank loan if things go bad.

Aaron (27:01.814)
Yep. And that that's all the more reason why to have a good relationship with the bonding company or with bonding companies in general, and not, you know, flip flop and go, you know, to the cheapest price every single time. Obviously that is a strategy and you know, all all the power to you if you decide to go for that. But again, we I think we've emphasized enough the you know, the fact it's not insurance and that it is very important to maintain your eligibility for future projects and how, you know, these bigger projects are nice, but like you say, it it has a bunch of, you know.

background checks and things that come along with it. And it's not just like a you know, we we're able to do this project because we've got the you know the manpower or you know we got we got the ability to or the skill set. It's it's also a huge financial setup and requirement process.

Brian Bollinger (27:47.684)
Yeah, like we have that one fifty million dollar bond that we were working on, right? I mean, the people might just put up money for it. They might have one of their financial backers just, you know, put up put a promissory note up or something. But you know, it's it's things like that where you get to a certain size of a project that you're like, wow, that's really big. And one of the first things we try to do is can you get that down to ten percent? You know, can you get from fifty to

to five, right? That makes such a meaningful difference on the underwriting. And honestly, I don't know that the actual people that are, you know, requesting these bonds, like these counties and government entities, a lot of times they're paying the premium. So at some level they're like, why do you care? But the flip side is is you're still putting up that collateral. So you kind of do still care. so that's how I kind of think of it and try to pitch it clients. It's like, look, you know, you can do it this way, you can do it that way. Let's try to see if we can get them to adjust their, you know,

requirements to be, you know, reasonable, but they don't want to always do it. And again, it makes it so a lot of the smaller companies are struggling to get these bigger projects. And some of these bigger projects they can make a ton more money on, but they haven't anticipated the bonding challenges that come with those bigger projects. And I've had a lot of conversations with growing, you know, contractors that we get to a point where it becomes a a constraint, right? Where the husband has to go to the wife and say, okay, I want to do this project.

But we have to sign up our house. You know, we gotta pledge our house. Here's the promissory note. And and all of a sudden people get a little nervous. Yeah. And so again, just making sure you're aware of what it what you're signing.

Aaron (29:19.18)
Yeah, I feel I feel like I hope that we've touched on that. the level of, you know, risk that you are taking when you do sign this contract. Again, it's it's like a loan, it's like a pr promissory note, as you had said. yeah. So again, if you if you felt like this this podcast had helped you in any way, we're we're very happy to you know advise people on on this sort of thing. Obviously, we do have experience with general contractors, contractors in general, you know, all all the above, right, Deb

Brian Bollinger (29:47.15)
Yeah, doing it for twenty something years. We have, you know, hundreds of years experience on our team. that's what we do.

Aaron (29:53.312)
Yeah, this is what we do. And so yep, thank you so much for your time today, Dad, and your expertise. I I hope that some people got some some big takeaways if they're thinking about starting or if they're, you know, already established, just some some high level thoughts.

Brian Bollinger (30:05.422)
Yeah, again, we want people to be successful. We want our clients to be successful. We want you to get these bigger projects, make more money. we don't want bonding to become a gateway or a gate a gating item for you. we prefer to be the gateway to your success. but again, we do want to make sure that you're aware of what you're getting yourself into.

Aaron (30:22.179)
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time today. You as well.

Brian Bollinger (30:24.248)
Thank you too. Okay, take care. Bye bye.