Took the coordination on a flipper's 7 files because I could read a draw schedule

I came at this from tools, not paperwork, so the pitch I made was narrow. A guy doing light cosmetic flips, four to six a year plus the occasional wholesale, kept blowing up on the back end because his hard money draws and his closing dates were tracked by different people, meaning him and nobody.

I offered $425 a file, seven files, on the condition that I also got the draw calendar. Not the construction management, just the dates and the document requirements for each draw and the payoff coordination at close.

How it went. Six closed, one died when the seller's title turned out to have an old lien nobody had pulled. Average file was about 11 hours for me. The draw piece added maybe 2 hours per file over a plain resale coordination, and it's the reason he hired me.

What nearly broke it: file four. His lender's payoff demand came in with an inspection fee and two months of interest he hadn't budgeted, and the escrow officer had already sent settlement figures to the buyer's side. We were 36 hours out. I'd been requesting the payoff at day 10 on every file as a habit, and on that one I'd requested at day 10 and the lender sat on it, so I had a paper trail of three requests and a phone number for someone above the loan servicer's front desk. Got a corrected demand in about six hours. If I'd requested at day 20 like the escrow officer's normal timeline, we'd have moved the closing and he'd have paid another week of interest at roughly $310 a day on that loan.

What I'd keep: request payoffs absurdly early and log every request with a timestamp. And charge for the draw calendar as part of the file rather than as a favor, because it's the piece that makes me hard to replace.

Revenue was $2,550 on six closes, which isn't a business yet. It's a proof that the narrow version sells better than the general version.