When entrepreneurs think about financing growth, they often focus on banks, private equity, or venture capital. Yet one of the most overlooked sectors in finance—surety bonds—can play a critical role in helping businesses win larger contracts, manage risk, and scale with confidence. In this episode of Build It to Billions, Brett Swarts sits down with Gary Eastman, founder of SwiftBonds, to explore how surety bonds have become an essential tool for contractors, business owners, and professionals looking to expand their opportunities while protecting all parties involved.
Gary shares his journey from practicing law to building one of the nation’s leading surety bond firms, offering valuable insights into risk management, entrepreneurship, and the future of the bonding industry. The conversation covers how technology and AI are transforming a traditionally conservative industry, why specialization creates a competitive advantage, and what business owners need to know before pursuing larger projects. Whether you’re a contractor, investor, or entrepreneur seeking sustainable growth, this episode delivers practical strategies for building a business on a stronger financial foundation.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I would invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward, scale to billions, and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support, it’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Build to Billions podcast. We got successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with a mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to be scale and compound your wealth and life, so you can give more all the way to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swarts. Each and every episode, we’re joined by the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires, or billionaires, and they share their secrets and insights with us, and we can all level up and make a bigger impact. I’m excited about our next guest. He is an attorney turned entrepreneur who built a national surety bond brokerage in one of the most overlooked sectors of finance as a founder and president of Axios, Surety, and Swift Bonds, he has helped process over a billion dollars in bonds for more than20,000 clients across the United States, transforming a niche financial instrument into a powerful growth lever for contractors and business owners, and so much more. Please welcome the show with me, Mr. Gary Eastman. Gary, how you doing?
Gary
Doing great, thank you so much for having me on today. I really appreciate it.
Brett
Excellent. And our listeners get to know for the first time, would you give us a little more about your story and your current focus?
Gary
No, absolutely. So, just to give you a quick background, I am an attorney by trade, so went to law school, you know, worked at the huge law firms, was a general counsel of some, you know, public companies, and then ended up by accident starting the surety bond business. So, what happened was I started doing some estate planning for folks, you know, just trying to meet more people instead of huge, doing these huge files. As I met with those people, you know, you know, you had some probate that happened, you know, when people pass away, there’s something called a probate bond out there, so I started, you know, getting those. I said, “Well, why don’t just get them for myself? And then after I did that, I had a bunch of friends say, “Hey, get me these bonds as well. So, I started expanding that, and then we said, “Hey, if we’re doing this, we might as well actually turn it into a business, and started doing it, you know, for like other contractors and things like this. And then suddenly, boom, you know, 18 years later, I’ve got this business that I never planned on wasn’t my focus in life, and certainly, you know, Shorty Bods is nobody’s focus in life and turned it into something that actually that works. So, we’ve been super, super lucky and blessed.
Brett
Hey, fantastic. People want more to go, Swift bonds.com Swift bonds.com So when most people think about bonds, you know, I think about, like, bailing your buddy outright, who got in some trouble. But walk us through the basics of this, because I don’t think everyone knows. And then, second, you know what’s kind of the investing side, I guess, of it, which is, which is kind of interesting too.
Gary
Okay, yeah. So, let’s start with the basics. So, what a surety bond is, is a three-party contract, so between the obligor, the obligation, and the surety. Now, we don’t do bail bonds, but it’s that has a similar concept. Basically, we do for mostly construction companies, so a company goes into, you know, let’s say, to build a school. So, the obligor is the contractor, the obligation is the school, and the surety is the person that guarantees that the contractor is going to get the done on time, pursuant to the terms of the contract, and then make sure that everybody gets paid, you know, vendors, material, you know, material vendors, or subcontractors, that way you know the school gets done on time, which is pretty important when you, you know, you’re building for schools, because they have a specific time frame or roads, same thing, as well as making sure that there’s no liens out there, and those types of things. So that’s the very basics of bonding. Now you know more than most people.
Brett
Excellent. So, how do you make money as an investor?
Gary
Yeah, so for investors, where this really comes into play is using bonds as a tool for your projects, right? So, a lot of investors, you know, when they are doing some sort of real estate or construction or any sort of project, they have this massive tail risk, right? So, for example, we have a lot of people that go out and say, ‘Hey, I want to build this building to be able to rent it out and you know, start receiving returns, you know, because I’m renting it out to, let’s say, construction companies, or line companies, or you know, all these different, different ideas. The risk is, if that thing doesn’t get done on time, then they’re missing out on months and months and months of opportunities, right? That that cash flow that you, that they desperately need. So you use a bond out there, which you know makes it, you know, you increase the cost a little bit, but it, you know, basically eliminates, if not massively mitigates, any sort of risk that this thing’s not going to be done on time, you’re not going to have clients that can’t get into the building when they need it, those types of things, that’s the great tool that it is. Is it’s to guarantee that you know everything else that you’re doing gets done on,
Brett
so, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
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About Gary Eastman
Gary Eastman is the Founder and President of SwiftBonds, one of the nation’s leading surety bond brokerages, helping contractors, businesses, and professionals secure the bonds they need to win projects and grow with confidence. With a background as an attorney and decades of experience in law, risk management, and financial services, Gary has built SwiftBonds into a trusted nationwide provider known for simplifying the bonding process through exceptional service, deep industry expertise, and innovative technology.
Passionate about entrepreneurship and continuous improvement, Gary is also a strong advocate for leveraging AI and automation to modernize the traditionally conservative surety industry. His unique perspective on business growth, risk mitigation, and scaling specialized service companies has made him a respected voice among entrepreneurs, contractors, and financial professionals seeking practical strategies for long-term success.
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