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Inspiration
For more than 20 years, I've worked as an independent commercial lending advisor. As a solo business owner, I wear every hat—business development, sales, deal structuring, processing, compliance, and administration.
I realized I wasn't losing business because I couldn't structure financing. I was losing time to what I call "200 Tiny Clicks"—hundreds of repetitive administrative tasks that stole time from serving clients and growing my business.
Commercial lending has no standardized operating process. Every commercial broker creates their own system using spreadsheets, emails, PDFs, handwritten worksheets, and memory. The result is inconsistent workflows, duplicated effort, and too much time spent on low-value tasks.
I also discovered I was making an expensive business mistake. I waited until the end of the transaction to send my broker agreement—after I had already invested hours analyzing and structuring a deal. There was nothing protecting my work.
The biggest lesson wasn't technical—it was operational.
I realized every discovery call started differently. Sometimes I jumped into underwriting. Sometimes I talked financing. Sometimes I started collecting documents. I wasn't consistently positioning myself, setting expectations, defining the engagement, or establishing how I work.
I didn't need another CRM or Loan Origination System.
I needed a Front Door.
I built VLOS to standardize the commercial lending process from the very first client conversation.
My goal wasn't to replace professional judgment.
My goal was to give an independent commercial lending advisor the operating leverage of a much larger team.
What it does
VLOS is an AI-powered commercial lending platform built specifically for independent commercial lending professionals.
Instead of forcing brokers to piece together spreadsheets, paper worksheets, emails, and PDFs, VLOS guides every opportunity through a repeatable workflow.
Front Door Every discovery call follows the same structured process, helping establish expectations, define the engagement, capture critical information, and position the advisor before discussing financing.
Deal Structuring VLOS replaces multiple handwritten deal worksheets with a digital workspace that captures the information needed to analyze financing strategies and reuse it throughout the transaction.
Client Commitment At the end of the discovery call, VLOS generates the broker agreement and application with a single click using information already collected, allowing the engagement to begin before additional work is performed.
The platform continues managing borrower documents, lender submissions, lender communications, conditions, and transaction progress through closing.
How I built it
VLOS began as a browser-based application. As it grew, storing application data inside Chrome became unreliable and eventually caused frequent crashes.
Migrating the platform to SQLite dramatically improved stability and transformed VLOS into software I now use every day with live commercial lending opportunities.
The platform combines AI with structured workflows to reduce repetitive administrative work while preserving the experience and judgment that commercial lending professionals bring to every transaction.
Challenges I ran into
The hardest challenge wasn't writing software.
It was standardizing an industry that has never been standardized.
Commercial lending is often called the "Wild West." Every lender has different applications, requirements, documentation, and underwriting guidelines. Every broker develops their own habits and workflow.
The challenge became identifying which parts of the process should become standardized while preserving the flexibility needed to structure complex commercial transactions.
Accomplishments I'm proud of
- Created a standardized Front Door discovery process.
- Eliminated multiple handwritten deal worksheets.
- Automated broker agreements and client applications.
- Reduced hundreds of repetitive administrative tasks.
- Built a workflow I use in my own commercial lending business every day.
- Created operating leverage for a solo commercial lending advisor.
What I learned
I started by trying to build software.
I ended up documenting and standardizing more than two decades of commercial lending experience.
The biggest lesson is that AI delivers the most value when it removes administrative work—not professional judgment.
Every repetitive task I eliminate gives me more time to advise clients, structure better financing solutions, build relationships, and grow my business.
What's next for VLOS
The long-term vision is to create the first standardized AI platform for independent commercial lending professionals.
The roadmap includes:
- AI underwriting worksheets (DSCR, Loan-to-Cost, Loan-to-Value, Debt Yield, Sources & Uses)
- Global cash flow analysis
- Tax return cash flow analysis
- Personal financial statement analysis
- Commercial lender intelligence library
- AI deal intelligence and lender matching
- Compliance management
- Automated borrower document collection
- Executive dashboards
- AI sales coaching
- Continued elimination of the "200 Tiny Clicks" that prevent independent professionals from operating at their highest level.
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