Latest / The ROAR Podcast / The ROAR Podcast: Everett Sands, Lendistry
Transcript
- Caroline Valvardi: Welcome to the Roar Podcast. I'm your host, Caroline Valbardi. And with me today is Everett Sands, founder and CEO of Lendistry. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Carolina. Yes. Great. Likewise, super excited to have you on the show to kind of talk about a little bit different angle than maybe what some of the listeners are used to the Roar podcast. So we can jump right in with one of the questions that we typically kind of start with. So can you tell us a bit about your career journey and how you ended up where you are now? Brice Clinton: Capital is like oxygen. Try to live without it. That's how Everett Sands frames the stakes for small businesses. It's a useful frame for what we get into in today's episode. Everett is the founder and CEO of Lindustry, a mission-driven capital deployer that has become one of the most active partners to small businesses in the country. They work with Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Visa, and Walmart, and most recently helped deploy disaster recovery funds in the wake of the LA wildfires. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Thanks, Carolyn. Happy to be here. Brice Clinton: Over the last few years, Lindistree has also done something that might not look obvious for a CDFI line lender. They've gone deep into women's sports: the LA Sparks, Gotham FC, the Chicago Sky, the Atlanta Dream. In this conversation, Caroline sits down with Everett to unpack the strategy behind those partnerships. Everett compares the WMBA today to Formula One before Drive to Survive. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah, so I started DC, where I'm from and went to boarding school in New Hampshire, ended up going to Penn in Philadelphia, and really got fascinated with finance and with money and partly because I didn't have it and partly because it just seemed like that's what made the world go around. ended up working for a couple of different banks, one a minority bank, one a large national player, and then founded Lindistry because saw I'll just say the landscape changing. Caroline Valvardi: Yeah, so Brice Clinton: He breaks down how the industry uses data, down to the hour of small business owners uploading loan documents at night after kids are in bed to decide where to show up. And he makes the case for why women's sports isn't a marketing checkbox, it's a thesis. One built on $85 trillion in baby boomer wealth set to transfer, 70% of which is projected land with women, and on the conviction that you go where the puck is going. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: In terms of access to capital, you know, not to get too much in the weeds, but was a moment after the great financial crisis where banks were allowed to say what was operationally efficient. And the way to think about that is every business says, hey, this client is too large, too small, different things like that. But when banking industry or the financial sector starts to say that, that's a little bit dangerous, because we've always told people have good credit, have good income, you can get a loan. Brice Clinton: For the Roar podcast, where sports, real estate, and revenue converge, this interview hits a vein we don't always cover directly. The financing layer that makes sports and entertainment districts actually accessible to the businesses they're supposed to serve. Everett gets into how mixed-use developments around stadiums and arenas can be designed so independent operators can compete inside them, not just exist beside them. There's also a lot in here on leadership, on how the short window for athletes have to build long-term wealth. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: If you were to have an 800 credit score and you'd have great income, but you walked into a bank and they didn't offer that loan amount, that could be fairly discouraging. and so Landistry was started to help solve for that problem. One to support the banks in terms of their operational efficiency, and two to the communities in terms of lending. but the answer to your question is through a variety of different financial institutions and and and a nerd about you know access to capital. Brice Clinton: I'm Bryce Clinton and this is the Roar Podcast. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: in finance brought me to where I'm at today. Caroline Valvardi: Amazing. Thank you. And so yeah, the connection to sports, we'll get there. ⁓ is I think super powerful and fascinating and why I wanted to bring you on the show. But ⁓ before we jump in, can you just talk a little bit just to give kind of grounding for the audience of what does Lindustry do? Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. Sure. So Lendistry, we have roughly about 300 team members, six across the US. ⁓ we're a capital deployer. So we partner with banks and financial so think of insurance companies and non-bank lenders, to deploy capital. we partner with governments to deploy capital, and then we partner with Fortune 500s. So to give you some examples, there's programs like Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business, 10,000 women. ⁓ Goldman Sachs is an investment bank. So that business might come to Goldman and say, hey, I just learned at 10,000 small business and I'd like to borrow a million dollars. well, Linnershoe is one of their partners, and you might come to us, or you'd have an opportunity to come to us to be able to borrow that million or a hundred thousand or some other number. Let's say the government to deploy money. So a lot of times what's a little bit more familiar to us is disaster recovery. So I'll bring up a recent one, LA wildfires. ⁓ we supported the county of Los Angeles in terms of distributing grants to those who had lost their home. We also supported the Los Angeles Chamber Commerce that wanted to support small businesses that lost their business or their businesses were impacted by the fire. And then when you think about Fortune 500s, we have partners like Visa, we have partners like Amazon, we have partners like Walmart. So if get a package to your home that is a small business likely delivering you that that package. Well, that business needs access to capital. And we built Amazon community lending support some of the small businesses on Amazon's ⁓ network. Caroline Valvardi: Awesome. Cool. And now is where we kind of take it into this shift of how does this all connect to women's sports? So Lendistry has made some notable moves in women's sports partnerships over the, I don't know, you can tell us however many years, but something I was following very closely. just seeing this opportunity to connect more the sports and community development and small business, all all of those kind of elements. And so Can you just walk us through how those partnerships came about or kind of where the origins of, you know, why partnering with in women's sports? Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah, sure. So ⁓ every decision we make when it comes to marketing, it's part mission and part business. We'll go mission first and then we'll go into the business because probably we can we can get carried away in the business side of it. but the mission is because we help underserved communities and because we're trying to think about how to provide access to capital, the are a little daunting, but as you can imagine, women are not getting the access to capital that ⁓ comparable to men. And so when we look at that in totality, and you can insert any type of capital, VC capital, private credit, SBA loans, whatever you want to do, at as a category, we feel like we could be part of the solution to that. ⁓ when we think about part being part of the solution in terms access to capital, we also have to think about are we part of the problem? So where are we spending our marketing dollars? Where are we spending our resources? Where are we having our company outings? and and so Is where the WNBA and also women's soccer came into play where we started to say, okay, we need to think about this with a little bit more intentionality. And then the last part of the mission, maybe not the last, but one of the other major parts equal pay and and other things, right? So somewhat cyclical, right? ⁓ you want to loan someone money, then you gotta make sure they can pay you back. And and to help them pay you back, you spend the money, right? And then it comes full circle because if we spend the money. hopefully we can become a trailblazer leader for other institutions to spend the money and then revenue grows. And when revenue grows, compensation grows and everything else along with it. That's the mission side of it. on the business side, ⁓ when we started to think about women's sports, we really started to pay attention to a couple of different factors. One, probably the most obvious, which is the popularity of the players. So whether that be their social media views, ⁓ the amount of context they have, different things like that. two, we started to pay attention to the business overall. where is it going? How It so this could be everything from the valuations of the WNBA teams to the T V deals and different things like that. then three, we started to pay attention to the market forces. So the way I tend to think of if you take the WNBA for an example, I equate it to Formula One before the Netflix Drive to Survive special. And if you actually pay attention to, you know, Formula One, what happened after Drive to Survive, you know, it it really went through the roof. And I think the same thing is is happening and will happen. I think we'll look back five, ten years from now at the WNBA and I think not us, but a lot of companies are gonna say should have, would have, could have. you know, it will it'll be what it is. Caroline Valvardi: Yes. Yeah, there's so many elements of that that are yeah, are so interesting. And I mean, one, I think just the parallels of women's sports and we talk about underinvested communities, it's that, you know, switching the mindset from philanthropy charity to investment that, you know, these you know, people are worth investing in. It doesn't it it it's I think it kind of reframes the whole thing and a lot of times in sports it's you know, there's a lot of talk about community impact, but it's often this kind of more philanthropic charitable mindset. And there's just this whole world of you know looking at it more as an investment that I think is so much more powerful and creates real change that is good for everyone. and so so yeah it's cool to hear about that. and can you talk about so w where was the origins of like your first partnership in women's sports and because now you have a bunch so if you can just talk through some of them and yeah where is that something that you ⁓ Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. Caroline Valvardi: came up with or either team or, you know, how how did you go about kind of thinking about Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: I I wish I was that smart. no. I I the my my genius isn't hiring the smart people to figure this type of stuff out. But it started with the LA Sparks. ⁓ we wanted to start at home for a variety of different reasons. One, it allowed us to be more present. two, ⁓ when started to think about the you know, call it the the development of the partnership, whether we needed to show up in a high quality way, whether we need to think about the businesses that we were going to ⁓ represent or present at the the halftime shows or different things like that and just really connecting with the organization, the Sparks organization. We wanted it to be fairly close. So the office ⁓ that I sit in and some of the senior leaders sit in literally the ⁓ Live is about two miles away. So we were like, okay, this is gonna be close. We can we can learn a lot. And then as you can imagine, it started to develop from there. Second partnership was FC Gotham. And that was really a couple of different things. one, Similar to the WNBA. we have started studying the numbers of FIFA. And gonna mess this that up. So please put the asterisk or whatever you need to do. But I five million people watch the Super Bowl, and I think it's 500 million people watch the World Cup championship. So it's because it's worldly, obviously. So and and when you start to think about that hundred X or 10X or whatever the number is, ⁓ you know, taking back that investment mindset, ⁓ you start say, where are the places that we want? Be. I'll mix that a little bit in a bit some more business. Majority of transactions happen within six states: New York, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and California. So we started to map out where do we want our strategic partnerships. Not that we won't partner in other states, we obviously do, but we really want to be very intentional as we started to think about our kind of first partnerships. And so FC was just amazing because they actually won the soccer championship the first year we were partners. ⁓ so whether it be their version of the terrible Tau, or just being in that New York, New Jersey, you know, market, which is an amazing market, ⁓ it had a lot of benefits for us. so hopefully answers your question. But yeah. Caroline Valvardi: Yes, All right, so now transitioning a bit. Surge, we're focused on developing and investing in large scale sports and entertainment districts around stadiums and arenas. And so that's you know, all the different types of mixes of uses. So it's hospitality, housing. retail, all of these things, and there are so many opportunities you know, for new businesses to come in. but of course, when you're building these sports and entertainment districts, it's not always easy for you know smaller independent businesses and historically financially underserved businesses to take advantage of those opportunities. And so can you a little bit about I don't know, advice that you would give as sports teams and other partners are planning out these districts and ways to make them more inclusive and making sure there's more equitable economic opportunity for, you know, small businesses and local businesses that are already existing, ⁓ kind of in those areas to be able to benefit. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. Sure. So I I'll start from the the perspective of the business and then I'll come to, you know, kind of the larger institution like a surgeon, how you can help. the perspective of the business should be the the most successful generally businesses, not by size and not necessarily by revenue, but just in terms of percentage of success are franchises. And the reason why they're successful are one, there's a blueprint, and two, they're attached to what we call an anchor institution. So if you were to buy a franchise, you know, generally there's a big name attached to it or something like that. think the the small business should think about it as get benefit of being attached to the anchor institution. And so what does that mean? That means there's already customer flow. So less marketing needs to be done. There's already an attachment to a a sports So you can really kind of calendar whether it be your events, your happy hours, or different things like that. and then I think the third thing is that you're already attached to something that the local municipality, city, whatever, ⁓ cares about, right? And I think that's really, really important because now you have the people, you've got the government, and then again, you've got one of your largest expenses in terms of marketing kind of cover for you. Now moving over to the larger sports development, you know, companies, et cetera, I think they should do a couple of different things. One, they should recognize that they're gonna have this small business that's gonna wanna participate in the transaction. And so whether they think about things like tax credits, whether they think about discounted rent, whether they think about opportunities that they might get as part of a ⁓ what I call a government solicitation exercise. So whether that be from the bonding to obviously the the the financial structuring, I think they should consider those small businesses. And we've seen things like this. We've seen ⁓ businesses get a discount or grant. we've seen them get a variety of different things ⁓ in effort to ramp up. insert two years, three years, or however long it might take them to get started. rent is is a is a tricky thing, but one of the things that we've seen be successful is a revenue play versus a rent play. And what does that mean? That means as opposed to saying look there's this fixed costs that you're going to have as this new business owner, I'm going to give you a variable ⁓ I'm going to give you a fixed cost. So there's some portion it's rent, but I'm also going to attach myself to the variable costs of the institution. said differently, you know, if you do well, we do well. And if you have a, you know, kind of a slower time frame or day, we have a slower time frame a day. But there's a way to kind of make all those numbers work. I hope that makes sense. But we've seen this play out in, you know, our airport concessions business, some of our other sports businesses in a variety of different organizations kind of across the US. ⁓ it's a play on the franchise model. and so that's why I started with Caroline Valvardi: Awesome. Yeah, that's great. and then going back a bit to ⁓ of the women's sports partnerships. So this is the Roar podcast. And so Roar is our data platform. And so we acquired a company called Roar a few months back, led by Adam Grossman. And so that's kind of collecting all these data sets, customer data sets from all over the place and you know, fan data sets from teams and you know, as we think about districts, that's not just the fan data that's much broader the people that are going to be living, working, and playing there. And so Lendustry is very innovative in your you know use of AI data and and all these things. So feel free to weave that in. But when we think specifically about partnerships and we actually had the Chicago Sky on ⁓ the podcast I think last week. And so that's I think one of your more recent partners and just talked about using data to how do you establish partners and pick partners. So can you talk from your perspective of you know how do you evaluate you know, which teams that you've worked with so far, like how do you, know, evalu are and you know, do you have other targets of are you gonna continue across, you know, all of the WMBA or N W S L or, you know, what yeah, the ambitions beyond that. But but yeah, a little bit about how you use data to kind of evaluate memberships and things. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. So I'll start backwards. I mean, yes, the game plan is to take on as many partnerships as we can, both in terms of ⁓ being able to be present as well as obviously the economics associated with it. so the data says that she's running her business from nine to five, she's taking care of her home from five to nine, and then she's applying for loans or doing things that are related to the business generally later in the evening. And and how are we doing? How do we know that? Because we're tracking when she applies, when she's uploading documents, when she's communicating with us. So then you start to kind of think about that and you start to think of what is the approach that you want for that customer. This is not, hey, the office is open, come in at midnight. This is a much more soft sell non transactional moment that we need to embrace and we need to find ourselves in. So what is a soft sell non transactional moment? It's it's meeting her where she's at, where she's kind of most comfortable. And believe it or not, those sports games are a a portion of that. Now, there's literally the as actual game she's going to, there's whether or not she's watching ION or ESPN or something else in terms of, you know, kind of how she's receiving that information. But the punchline is what we're trying to do is we're trying to essentially say Linistry is a brand that you recognize, that is where you are, that, you know, when we go to the finance side is obviously a responsible deployer of capital. And so we're though that's we're leveraging the data to say, okay, when is she transacting? What's happening when she's transacting, right? What's what could possibly be in the background? Like what could she be listening to, watching? What else could she be doing? where is she showing up? Whether that be a family exercise, non family exercise, a business exercise, anything like that. And then how do we have that soft sell? And then to go further into the data, where is that happening? And so that's why we created a partnership with the Chicago Sky and Atlanta Dream this year, because again. As we start to build this out, very clear that she's in major metropolitan markets. So insert again, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, New York City, and northern New Jersey, as well as obviously Atlanta and Chicago. And then there's tangents to that too. So another tangent is we are in capital, the capital business as well. Some of the maps shows $85 trillion in the boomers. 70% of that 85 trillion will go to women. The obvious stat is women live longer than men. and so she will inherit that capital. And you start to look at what she cares about in terms of investing, impact investing becomes kind of top of mind. You can see this in several of what I'll call, you know, whether they be billionaires or 100 millionaires or millionaires and where they're spending their money. ⁓ So we're ⁓ all different of things. and if you get into that investor's mind, if she does care about impact, then obviously she's gonna care about women. small businesses. last that I'll tell you, you probably know this already, which is that women are creating more businesses than men over the last couple of years. And so naturally you kind of want to, you know, to use a sports analogy, you want to go to where the where the where the puck is going, so to speak. So if you know that women are about to be the largest segment of investors, if you know that they're about to be the largest segment of business owners, you don't want to start, you know, five years from now. You want to start now. So that you can either capture the data, build the brand, or all the different things that are important to a business like ours that wants to be able to, you know, deploy that capital. Caroline Valvardi: Yeah, and I I think the also the other of alignment with all this, which is really interesting, is just the athletes themselves and the players and how I on the men's side too, but particularly for women, you know, the shorter season and all that have, you know, really been kind of almost forced to be ⁓ very entrepreneurial and there's so many cool stories of the athletes, you know, WMBA and WSL, all of them really, you know, be being so entrepreneurial and but also need access to capital. So yeah, I just think the alignment is so strong and powerful in in what you guys are doing. and you know Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah, well if you if you j if you just, you know, kind of double click on that, there's a couple of things to think about. One, it doesn't matter gender, like athletes' career is very short. So you get this large sum of capital and then you have to live in I don't know, thirty to fifty years after it, So so you invest or think about investing like immediately, literally, right? And and and obviously with NIL, some of that money's coming a little bit earlier, right? So that's one thing. The second thing is you take something like what's happening with the new recent CBA agreement and shout out to you know the WNBA and their governing board that were able to, you know, work that through with the players association. But there's gonna be a lot of athletes that are gonna make a big chunk of money. And, you know, whether it be the lottery or whether it be you know that transition from kind of college to pro, maybe now high school to college or NIL is probably disrupting that a little bit. But the punchline is, you know, if you if you start making four X or five X amount of money. Again, you need to very quickly think about where that money's gonna go to build sustainability and investments. And then to the other point that you made, have this brand power, whether it be their followers, whether it be, you know, where their what their interests are, whether it be just the respect that they have in the community. How are they gonna leverage that, you know, beyond, you know, ⁓ pro sports? And so ⁓ is an easy way, I think, to think about how to leverage that, whether they're an investor. And they're leveraging their brand to support that investment, or they're the actual business owner. And then we're like oxygen, like capital, there's no try to live without capital, you might as well just like not try to live without oxygen, right? Especially a business. And so when you can kind of get all those things right and combine those things together, then you really see the athletes and quite the professionals who you know live abundant lives kind of pro post pro sports. and even pro their career. So we hope that we can play a role in that while, you know, the athletes are are kind of going through that transitional moment of making a lot of money, figuring out what to do with it, how to invest, and then obviously living beyond the you know, the pro career. Caroline Valvardi: Yep. Yeah. And then the other piece of it too, just the the trend towards the kind of impact investing side of it too has been kind of cool and interesting to see. And it was really where I realized just this huge intersection between sports and community development and kind of the mission driven finance and just where all those can really yeah just drive drive a lot of impact. And when we talk about the sports entertainment districts, back to that, I mean it's like mission driven financial institutions are such a powerful kind of partnership as we think about these very large scale kind of centrally real estate developments and all the different components and yeah as talked about before just making them, you know, the oper echo economic opportunities accessible and all that. but ⁓ but I wanted to ask as you're you know we've talked about a lot of about what Lendishree does and and all the things behind it, but can you talk about I don't know if you're you're probably not able to share favorite businesses or stories, but if you can just give some kind of flavor, real feel, or maybe some of the businesses that have been featured through some of these partnerships just to kind of give people just that really you know, human element of who who these people are, what what some of these businesses do. ⁓ would love to hear, yeah, a bit about, yeah, just highlights of of a few or where they're based and what they do. Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah, sure. So I mean j just to take a step back. So what we do is we give businesses an opportunity to compete in contests. these are local contests where they effectively, you know, put their name in the hat for lack of a better term. ⁓ And you know, winners are chosen on a variety of different things. Some are chosen by us, some are chosen by the teams. we give businesses an opportunity to show up generally outside the stadium. So for example, with FC Gotham, ⁓ we did a food truck night. ⁓ so food truck vendors were there. They were outside of the stadium, they were serving food, the fans came a couple of hours earlier. They had a lot of different lot of other sponsors there too. So imagine everything from games to food to, ⁓ know, other things that they could participate in pre game. and then sometimes we're actually leveraging the vendors to support in terms of some of the paraphernalia that we're associated with the teams and different things like that. So a lot of different ways that businesses participate. But specifically going to the answer to question, we've had a variety of different businesses. I'll just give you a couple of highlights. So one was actually a pie company and started pies and kind of took it to the next level kind of post ⁓ the pandemic. and this is just because of the the the growth in e commerce and different things to that ended up in Whole Foods and now is like of the the biggest distributors of pies kind of in the Right. But she happened to win. She happened to be in front of the sparks and and really got to, you know, talk about her business. was a pet place. So this is kind of ⁓ different. This is a a pet farm. ⁓ this is LA Wildfire. And, you know, so think of everything from saving the animals to then being a place where people who are in kind of a distress moment can can kind of take a step back and ⁓ have a way of kind of, ⁓ know, calming us down and cleansing us and and helping us to kind of return to norm. ⁓ and then kind of everything in between. I mean, we've had literally those who are petitions and stylists that have come forward. We've had those who are involved in in weddings and and whether that be like making the dressed or or different things like that. So ⁓ a of different winners all across the board have been able to to just you know have that moment and and and I think what's important for both the players to know and the community to know is This is all these are also businesses that might be looking for investments. These are businesses that might be looking to grow. you know, one of the things we encourage some of the players to do is you don't always have to run the business just because you like that product or you like that industry. You can actually become an investor or an influencer or other things. ⁓ that there's so many things that are out there and we're trying to connect those dots on both sides. One, the business owners sometimes they're so far ahead down, they don't think about marketing, right? Or they're not able to market. Maybe they can't afford it. So you got different factors there. And then on the other side, the players get to say, okay, I see this business. I have this interest. Maybe I'll maybe I'll try to dig a little bit deeper into that in n or kind of post career. So again, ⁓ to have that soft of non-transactional moment for everybody. and the and the audiences and the followers are are a great way to do it. Caroline Valvardi: Awesome. And so somewhat I guess along that vein, I mean what has brought you the most joy in your career and can be sports related or or not, but ⁓ but ideally something related to kind of the women's sports partnerships. But but yeah, we'd love to hear. Yeah, just kind of ⁓ Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: I mean, there's it's it's priceless to see one of those businesses present at halftime you know, during one of the commercial breaks. I mean, they are so excited. So it brings me back to like, I mean, Linnistry is is a small, big business, right? We don't we don't we're not as ⁓ scrappy as we used to be. We need to get scrappier. but you know, it it's just great. Like that moment, it's I don't know. It's like I guess your your kid opening a holiday gift ⁓ or you know, a present or something. I don't know. But it's just there's just something about the purity of it mixed with the excitement, mixed with like the, you know, seeing their name in the lights. You know, I remember the first time our name was in the lights. So think that's that's pretty exciting. I think the other thing I can't deny is seeing Lindershire logo on like Sports Center or doing ⁓ on Instagram clip. I mean that that just you know, beyond my wildest dreams. So I feel like I'm that kid now all of a sudden opening a present. Caroline Valvardi: Well that's I mean, that's what I was gonna say. ⁓ I mean, you're entrepreneur and founder of Lindisher yourself, I think. I think I f I remember first maybe it was a CFI coalition event or something that you spoke at and I was like, ⁓ wow, that's yeah, super cool just to hear your story and that was probably nineteen or something like that, I think when I started Open ⁓ Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and as you can also imagine doing something like your peers in the CDFI industry, which just for your audience is, ⁓ know, kind of non a group of non bank lenders, about fourteen hundred of them across the US that focus on responsible lending and access to capital, you know, showing them a different path too, right? It's like and and I respect obviously all the different things that we do. It's just a lender we decided that sports was a path we wanted to take. And so I I like when I get calls from other organizations saying, you know, why'd you guys do that? or tell me more about it and I think that's great. Caroline Valvardi: All right. I do and then I wanna jump into a bit ⁓ you having started Lindustry and I just have been fascinated over my own career, just kind of looking at leadership and within my, you know, my own positions that I've had and becoming a leader myself and, you know, out in the world what leadership looks like. So would love to hear from you just what you prioritize as a leader and have seen be effective or not so effective. ⁓ but yeah, if you could just talk a bit about that, 'cause that at the end of the day is what what makes the world go for for better or for worse. And makes these things possible or not. So especially business or small business. So Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. I think you have to have a North Star. and you have to be very focused on the North Star every day. So for me, it's helping small businesses, which is might come a cost a little strange 'cause the lunch actually has a mortgage company and we have an insurance company and different things like that. ⁓ I connect all the dots together. So sometimes people will say, Well, why'd you create the mortgage company? And I'm like, Well, I can give the small business the best loan, the best business loan in the world, but if they come home and there's disruption, financial disruption 'cause they got a bad mortgage, guess what? My business loan is at risk, so to speak, right? when we start to think about insurance and how people care about themselves, there's there's some stats out there about funeral expenses and how disruptive it is to underserved communities. So know, getting a term policy and having access to knowing where to get it is is just as important as insurance companies being leveraged for capital market structures and different things like that. So ⁓ I think the basic the the first answer to your question is having that north star. And then having everything involved in the day, every day, being related to the North Star. So that means choosing the right leaders. I draw I try my best to choose leaders that are smarter than me. I try to choose people that could replace me if if necessary. and it might not necessarily be replacing in the company that that's kind of the obvious one, but replacing in the subject matter expertise might be the little less obvious. I think the second thing is really trying to think about how to be transformative. Like how to get the word out and then as we talked about already in the conversation, how to leverage data and technology. I think technology is the great equalizer. I've been very, very focused on that. And the data is what brought me there, right? The data is has said to me, like, okay, like how do you meet this customer where they're at? Like, whether it be on their phone, whether it be, you know, they're applying for loans at eleven o'clock or midnight at night. Like, you know, how do you how do you make these things ⁓ Access to capital has been fairly elusive. For a long time. and that kind of perturbs me, if just being honest with you. It's kind of it's kinda like annoying. Like, why can't why can't we solve this? Like, why is it such a big problem? and so the last thing I'll just say is that I'm I'm very much I'm very competitive, So that's my own kind of sports upbringing. ⁓ And so this to capital is kind of like a like a s like a sport for me ⁓ that I feel I gotta conquer. So I think it's the North Star and having that like what what What gives you that edge or what what kind of somewhere between pisses you off and like get you gets you sparked? ⁓ I think you need that. Caroline Valvardi: Yep. Yeah. No, I love that 'cause it everyone has that drive to do something. So might as well use it for something. Yeah, positive. Yeah. ⁓ no, that's great. all right. Well we can close on that. I think we have covered quite a number of topics here and I yeah, super appreciate you coming on the show and talking about all the women's partnerships and alignment with yeah, equitable access to capital and and all of these really powerful things that I think Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Yeah. Right. Caroline Valvardi: can be infused much more kind of across the sports world and thank you for yeah setting kind of the example and and way to do these things. So yeah, super excited to see see you guys continue continued trajectory. So thank you. ⁓ Everett K. Sands | Lendistry: Thanks. Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks for the opportunity to be here.