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From Stuck to Scalable & What Changed Everything · From Stuck to Scaled: Growth Strategies for SMBs

• Julio Gonzalez: Welcome to From Stuck to Scaled Growth Strategies for Small and Midsized Businesses. Your guide to navigating growth, transformation, and success in today's ever-changing business landscape. Each week, we'll dive into proven strategies, real-world case studies, and actionable insights designed to help small and mid-sized business owners scale smart, lead stronger, and grow faster. Let's get you unstuck and on the path to sustainable, scalable success. Now your host, Julio Gonzalez. Welcome back to From Stuck to Skill Podcast, where we focus on the operations and strategies that help small to mid-sized businesses grow effectively. Today we'll explore practical insights on hiring delegation and building a strong company culture aimed at enhancing the client experience. Our guest is Eddie DeAngelis, the founder and CEO of Qualify. With over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, Eddie began his journey selling perfume on the streets of Philadelphia and has since built multiple successful businesses. Driven by a passion for making small business financing accessible and affordable, he shares his insights on hiring, delegation, and the importance of focusing on client experience. Join us as we explore what really takes to scale a business effectively. Let's help welcome Eddie to the show. Welcome, Eddie. Wow, Julia, thank you so much. That's probably the best introduction I think I've ever had. I'm humbled and I'm thankful to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. It's a It's a pleasure to have you here. And and just based on our initial conversation, I think this is gonna be great. ⁓ but let's start at the beginning. You had a you know, you've had a couple of businesses. Your your most recent one prior to to qualify was ⁓ your ⁓ apparel business. The apparel business, sorry to interrupt you, it was prior to getting into the finance. So I've been through this is my fourth company in the business finance space. Okay, so you've you've had a couple more. Between. So let's start with the apparel business. So tell us about that. How did you get started? And more importantly, how you grew that? Great question. So the as you know, as you mentioned in the intro, I did start ⁓ on the street corners outside of welfare office in Philadelphia just selling ⁓ knockoff perfumes like Imitation Perfume in Cologne and shortly thereafter built that into ⁓ a little storefront, right? Eventually got into general merchandise, watches, clothing, apparel. ⁓ built that business up to over a million dollars in revenue fairly quickly. the apparel side of the business transitioned me into the screen printing and print ⁓ transitioned me into the screen printing and embroidery business where I spent 17 years and that was my first real family business that we we developed and built up into, you know, got it up to close to about a two million in sales consistently year over year, build a nice little business. ⁓ at age forty-six, ⁓ I just felt like I had a higher calling or I I wasn't really fully content. We were doing well. It was a good family business. ⁓ no complaints, but I just felt like there was something else. And an opportunity opened up for me from two very good friends of mine that got into the they they left the consumer financing space to get into the business financing space back in twenty thirteen. ⁓ offered me a a position as president and partner to come in and pretty much learn the business from a closet, start it from scratch and and learn the whole company, the whole business finance industry, build that up. And ⁓ you know, so I made I made that transition. Was a little scary, ⁓ honestly, at 46 with ⁓ a wife, three daughters and two dogs, going back to, you know, starting from the ground up, you know, into a total unknown industry. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't scary, but I I dove in, I took the risk. I'm naturally ⁓ my entrepreneurial and risk taking instincts. I I do take a lot of risk. ⁓ so we jumped in and and I made it work. ⁓ thankfully built the business and started learning. It took me like a good six to twelve months to really get my feet under my way. ⁓ my t-shirt business was eventually shortly thereafter acquired by a local competitor. So I moved on from Apparel officially into finance in about 2013. ⁓ was with a company called BizLender. They were a broker in the space at the time. And we built that company up ⁓ and after three years I just decided that my time came to where I wanted to do it on my own again and and start my own company. So I left in December of twenty fifteen. ⁓ yeah, twenty fifteen, right around Christmas time. And three years later I launched my own little brokerage firm, Amurify. ⁓ starting all over again from zero customers, couple of reps stayed with me that that that were with me with through the journey. They followed with me. And we built that up short, you know, it was like three to five person company in the beginning. ⁓ with In two and a half short years, we built it up to about 15 or so employees. ⁓ built the business up and the revenues up pretty quickly. We did fairly well. We were profitable after six or seven months. And we were extremely fortunate back in like late October 19, right before the coronavirus pandemic, we got acquired from a large corporate firm out of Utah called Nav Technologies or Nav Inc. ⁓ They're a hundred and fifty to two hundred and employee company. They're backed by Goldman and Experian, they're lead investors. that whole experience in itself was really eye-opening to me just to see because I've always been on the smaller side of businesses, small business. So just to get that exposure on the corporate side to see how things are running with so many employees and all the different departments and management heads and just to see how they're connected. And, you know, I I just took so many learnings from, you know. those all all the past journeys in companies. But as you may know, that we've learned I've learned so much more from all the failures than I did from what went well. And that's how we we learn and just continue to grow. And I spent three years there at NAV, ⁓ head of finance operations. Eventually three years into NAV was time to part ways. And then I said one more time, I'm gonna do this myself. I have to do this myself. So I left parted ways in on good terms. They were nice enough and kind enough to let me out of my non compete clause. And then we launched Qualify in early 2021. And that's was another scary venture. ⁓ starting over again. Now I'm what, 50 something years old. And it's been I I said we're I always said when we open qualify, we're gonna, you know, myself and my management team, we're gonna we're gonna build a hundred million dollar company, right? Now we're not there yet, but we're gonna take all the learnings from all the prior companies and put it into this company and really build something special. And as of yesterday, it just went public that I'm proud to to say that we made the Inc. five thousand list and we were number five twenty eight ⁓ for twenty twenty six ⁓ Inc. five thousand ⁓ for fastest growing companies. So I'm gonna pause there because I know I'm I talk pretty quickly and that's a lot of information, but that's kind of like my journey from the street corners to the t shirt business to business finance to where we are today talking to you and your fine podcast. Congratulations on the on the ink rating. That ⁓ that's fantastic. what would you say, and and I wanna come back in a couple of minutes to kind of the beginnings, but what would you say is common across all of those organizations that was a challenge and maybe that you know you've done differently? So Great question. ⁓ a challenge. So just me working in a corporate structure as an entrepreneur who is extremely high energy, very hyper, like to take risk. And if I see something I want to do it, I'll I'll jump on it immediately. And and I'm a very action driven person, sometimes to my own fault, maybe moving too quickly, right? We learn our lessons and we learn from our mistakes. But I think taking action is one of my biggest attributes. I think where from when talking to young entrepreneurs and trying to help and mentor them like I like I know you do on your podcast, a lot of people they're they they hold themselves back from fear, right? What if I fail? What if it doesn't work out? What if this? And I don't I I've never maybe because I I don't have a college degree and I've never had that intellectual background as far as like financial planning and I need this big elaborate business plan. And if I want to sell an item, I'm gonna go buy it and sell it and I'm gonna figure out how to get my first customer and just keep going. So my my advice there is You know, if you're think if you're a young entrepreneur and you're thinking about starting a company, you don't need to have a million dollars to get it going. You'd I I've started all my companies with literally nothing and just didn't have any financing, didn't even know what business financing was back then. so just take action and and build your concept. If you have a product and a service, start start just jump in and do it and build your proof of concept and then everything will organically start flowing for your for your business. And then the bigger opportunities come about with growth. But I'd say one of the biggest lessons from a from a from what I've learned on the corporate side is it's critically important to the success of the company that the different department heads have to be in sync with the same company goal. I've seen so many different departments where they're all battling for their own needs, whether it's the marketing channel, whether it's the product team, and then the the ⁓ the sales team. And if they're not in sync, it success is going to be really challenging. Like that's a boat that's rowing in 10 different directions and the goal's this way. So that that's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned that I truly believe that I took that learning into qualify and I build a management team around myself, which as I told you, I struggle with delgation my entire life. I felt like I've always had to do everything. I was the cook in the kitchen. I had to talk to every big client, had to close every big deal, had to make sure everything got ordered right. Unfortunately, that head trash, right, that I've learned now, that was head trash that held me back for literally 30 years, no joke. Still struggle with a little bit today, but I've gotten much better. And I would not have been been where I built qualify today if it wasn't for learning how to let go and learning how to hire good people and how to trust good people to take that initiative and autonomy to learn just like I've learned and let them get their bumps and bruises because six or seven or eight heads. are are at operating at even if seventy five percent of what I think I could do is way better than if one founder burned out overwhelmed at a hundred and twenty percent. Yeah, very much so. And and I'm glad that that that was your learning that everyone has to be on the same page 'cause funny enough, I mentioned earlier, ⁓ I think on the pre call, ⁓ the podcast episode that released this week. And that is exactly one of the things that that we talked about. Cause I've you I I came up through the corporate world and You know, I was an intrapreneur my entire life. So I you know, I ran my divisions, you know, as my own business. So you can relate. I absolutely. And and the challenge was exactly that. You had your budget, I had mine, and the two shall never meet. And it's like that's it can't work that way. Now there has to be a common goal. And you know, maybe, you know, for twenty twenty seven, you know, Eddie, I I need a couple of extra bucks in my budget because we gotta do X and you know, you sacrifice in in in twenty seven and then I sacrifice in twenty eight and, you know, give some money to to somebody else. But that's part of having a solid objective that everyone has bought into, and not just, you know, you do your thing, I do mine. Cause that at the end of the day, it's too much of a battle between, you know, the different leaders in the organization. And and it all comes down to ego, right? And we have to we have to put our egos aside and work together for the common goal of the organization. Yeah. And on my side, in addition to like budgeting, I was even more referencing things like, you know, in corporate world, you know, in as an entrepreneur, if I wanna let's say I find a new lender that has a great product and a value service that I know is gonna win a lot of business for us and it's gonna be great to offer to my clients, I'll sign them up in one hour today. Right. I'll get the Esther Agreement. I'll have my attorney review it. Boom. Sign. Next thing you know, we're on board it with a new product. As you know, in corporate world, it's I have to go through ten different meetings to get to a decision. And sometimes you can't even get to a decision. Why do we need that lender? What do they offer? What's the value prop? And it has to get approved. And it's just, you know, and again, I get it, right? You're operating on a much bigger scale. You can't just do what you want to do, Eddie. Up Eddie the entrepreneur. Right. But that's where I feel like it really held me back because I have so much experience and I I I've I feel like those action steps and being able to move and operate quickly led to a lot of the success that I've had. So I think it's the, it's, it's the ⁓ it's the budgeting, like you said. It's the the restraints and the restrictions. ⁓ and one of the biggest, greatest ⁓ things that I that I that I've learned and experienced is that now that I have a management team, I can't tell you, and and listen, I like to talk into meetings as much as everybody and Obviously I like to get my way, but I've really learned to not monopolize the meeting with Eddie's way, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. I've gained so much insight just from allowing my team to share feedback and what they're seeing on the front ends. Like every employee in this company, when we have our company meetings every Wednesday, even the sales reps and everyone, I want that feedback. Like what's not working, because we've learned so much, not only from my managers, but also from the people on the front lines that are dealing with clients every day and are our systems and our processes and all this new tech that we're implementing. So the greatest learnings come from being an open minded entrepreneur and being open to that feedback and everybody's rowing in the same direction. When people feel heard, they feel like they have value in the company. They feel a part of something big. And you can't even explain what that does for the culture. Like a lot of people talk about culture, but we really build a really good culture. ⁓ we have about thirty, thirty-three employees currently and I feel like everybody loves it here. I truly do and I believe that in my heart. And that's what we're trying to promote. Like the like you said, ego. And we try to eliminate that in the hiring process. And like we don't want to hire somebody that's not going to be coachable, trainable, and a good leader for others. I I'm glad you brought up culture because that's what I was hearing when you mentioned about bringing on that that new vendor. ⁓ someone gave me a definition of culture that completely threw me for a loop and that was that culture is standardized and and I'm mutilating the the quote here but it's standardized and known decision making so it's how you make your decisions in the organization but that everybody knows that right so if if everyone knows you know your parameters as as the founder of the organization, you know, that you're looking for these types of of partners and you know these types of you know fundings and whatever Yeah. Others should be able to to make that decision knowing that it's following your parameters. You know, that's that's the standard that you've set. ⁓ so that that ⁓ lack of ego and and and the listening and the collaborating, you know, all goes to that culture. And it really grows. Like you really grow from that. Like that's where all the growth is found because everybody feels like they're part of the process, you know, they have their own value and they're bringing value to the table. You know, if if ⁓ John and Cam or our sales managers and Rob, if they come in here and say, hey, we really have to let this one go, I'm not going to go against them. I'm going to give my side of it. But I I make sure that I don't overrule the team and be like, it's got to be my way. We're doing this or we're doing that, or we're not hiring that person, right? Because at the end of the day, they're responsible for their numbers. Right. I I I transitioned and have them doing all the interviews now. So now, you know, we talked about hiring, you know, that's one of the biggest things. I talked about that. on one of my spe one of my public speaking events about hiring slow and firing fast. So my idea of hiring someone is, hey, you look like you know this business. You know, when can you start? You know, and and I would hire anybody back in the day. now it's a completely different story. We want we want to get to know who the applicants are. We want to understand what their goals are, what kind of company they're looking to be a part of. We want to make sure it works for them as much as with us, because if not, it's not going to work out anyway. So we do group interviews, ⁓ John, Cam, Rob, all three. Sometimes I'll sit in on them. We'll bring people back, maybe twice or three times if we really like them, and just to get to know them and really dive in and try to make sure that it's going to be a good fit. Not selfishly for us, but for both sides. And ⁓ when we talk about the feedback, right, you can't even imagine ⁓ the value of getting what a second and third set of eyes sees. Like, right? It's like three people see the same car accident. And you get three different stories, right? So something that I may not see in that interview, Cam or John or Rob is bringing in more valuable data with, hey, well, I'm not sure the person has this skill set or you know what I mean? Like all that collaboration has so much value. It's incredible. Yeah, I ⁓ I worked for a large transportation company and one of the things I loved about them was they wouldn't bring ⁓ leaders, you know, specifically in this case, just from within the transportation industry. We had a chief HR ⁓ officer that came from Pepsi. We had a ch a chief financial officer that came from GE. ⁓ you know, so you have all of these different industries, you know, coming together because you you get a certain level of blindness, right, when everyone comes from from the same piece of cloth, right? And I I've learned that I used to truly I didn't mean to cut you off, I'm so sorry, but I just want to say something real quick. I used to believe that the ideal salesperson that's going to be really good had to have my same outgoing gift a gab personality. And can I tell you, some of our absolute greatest sales reps are introverts, where I would have never even imagined that. But they're so soft spoken, people like working with them, natural tone, kind people. So, you know, it's just more head trash that I had just because I grew up as a good salesperson. I have a little bit of the gift and I felt like that was the ideal profile, but I could have been more wrong. Yeah, we all have our personal biases because, you know, it's it's the things that we're familiar with, but when we, you know, take a pause to listen, you know, to those around us, it it really is surprising the things ⁓ that we learn about them, their capabilities, and and things that can positively impact business, right? 'Cause how much have you gotten from, you know, the people around you ⁓ in each of your businesses that have have really, you know, helped drive the business's success? Hundred percent. Yeah. So one of things I want to touch on is, you know, because you've been, you know, pretty much a serial entrepreneur and and so many entrepreneurs just don't know what they're doing, right? And and it's it's not a dig at them. It's it's, you know, we're not trained as entrepreneurs. And now we have some entre entrepreneurial programs. ⁓ but a lot of times you have someone who is an expert in their field and says, I'm done with the corporate world, I'm gonna go start my own business. ⁓ and then when they figure out how much they have to do and and how hard they have to work, then it's kind of a ⁓ shit moment. And how many hats they have to wear. They're now the bookkeeper, the AR department, the AP department, the HR department, you name it. And and you know, it it's it's a lot and a lot of business owners, like you said, they're tradesmen, they're great at their craft, and then next thing you know, they open up their own business and they're like, Wow, what do I do now? And and you mentioned the challenge that you have of you having to be involved in everything and and make, you know, the decision. ⁓ you know, so I'm glad that you've mostly worked out of that. And sometimes we just need that little reminder. But ⁓ what was the you know, big aha moment when you said, you know, I can't keep doing this? This being being in business. Being in business over 30 years now, multiple businesses, I I've never been able to scale any company of my own beyond like two million in revenue. And, you know, in my 50s, which is only a few years ago, Is when I actually learned this lesson is that I was holding myself back by trying to do it all. And and and this business qualify has really grown rapidly. And it literally forced me to get better if I wanted to continue to grow, right? I couldn't do it all myself, even if I wanted to. And we're fortunate enough that we, you know, I've learned and you know, we do a lot of sandler training. ⁓ and I know you provide a lot of value on that consulting side as well. So things of that nature. those lessons started really sinking in. And from all the failures that I've had in the past, in addition to the successes, it's like those little lessons. you know, the biggest aha moment is the delegation piece is one of them. ⁓ that just made all the difference in the world, just letting go and giving people the autonomy to work at their best and and also trying to put the right town in the right seat, right? Based on their gift. And everyone has a gift. Everyone has a good skill set, things that they're really good at. And comes natural to them. If you could align that gift with the right role, you're setting that person up for not only physical success, but mental success because they're gonna love what they do. And when you love what you do, you're gonna get much better results. So I'd say that that's one piece of it. ⁓ one thing I'd like to touch on that you also mentioned is about the importance of hiring and and and hiring slow. Cause I would usually, you know, if I lost a rep back in the day. ⁓ I'd hire somebody in in a week and just I'd interview three and hire two and and just like that. No formal training, you know, no formal you needed them out on the street selling. Or you throw them off on the phones and start giving them leads and let them learn as they go, right? And obviously that's a low success plan. ⁓ for all the business owners out there and all your listeners, ⁓ this is something I've literally learned from experience and failure. The difference between two good hires and two bad hires. is literally the difference of success and failure. I've seen me hire at my old company Amerify two new younger, doesn't always have to be younger, but two new young minds that came into my company and literally sparked my ⁓ energy up and and literally changed our entire company, one on sales and one on tech, and just like their ambition. And not only that, but even on the sales side, I'm going to give you an example. And this is something that I talked about on on my speaking event. To give you a a just to put it in perspective, like two really good, we'll call them A players in our company could bring in, you know, combined about a quarter of a million dollars a quarter, you know, roughly maybe 70, 60 to 80,000 a month in revenue. Two really good A players, right? Quarter of a million dollars a year. Two of the average Joes, or maybe someone's are below that line. We all have them, right? Nope. Everybody doesn't have perfect 10 in sales reps, right? You have your 8020 rule. And the ones at the bottom could bring in maybe 10, 10,000 apiece, maybe another fifty, sixty thousand dollars a quarter. You know, there's like a two hundred, sometimes a quarter of a million dollar difference per quarter in revenue, straight revenue. And at the end of the year, that's close to a million dollars. So if I said to your listeners, how would you like to add another million dollars or half a million dollars to your bottom line without spending another penny? You literally can do that by taking your time. And thoroughly vetting and making sure to the best of your ability, of course, no one's bulletproof on interviews, but hiring two good players, two good people versus two maybe where you're going to take a chance. And I used to take a chance on everybody. So that that that hiring the right people and having a hiring process more formalized where you have your interview questions and different options, but keeping it laid back. That that's that's been a critical game changer for us. We we just had John and Cam hire. five new funding managers, which are sales reps for our company about two and a half months ago. And I'm telling you, ⁓ we wanted to hire them really quickly, like Jay and I, because we had so many leads and we're growing rapidly. But it took them nearly three months to get five that they actually liked and can agree on. And we were rushing them, but they're saying they they kept asking please, please, a little bit more time. We have a lot of clients identified that we like. They wanted to bring it back for another interview. They wanted us to meet them. And they really, really took their time and and and we I appreciate as much as I was pushing against that. Because we needed it, I know the value ⁓ of of taking your time and what it creates. Because a wrong hire, you know, not only are you losing the money that you you're losing all that lost revenue from all the opportunities that they couldn't close. You c it's almost unmeasurable, you know. So you're listening to from Stuck to Scale, then we're speaking with Eddie DeAngelis on his actual scaling challenges over the years and right now specifically on hiring. ⁓ and Eddie, you know, i statistically it is much harder to take a C to a B than it is a B to an A. So the the hire slow ⁓ i is something that that really ⁓ should you know get a lot of people's attention because the the reaction is to just hire quickly. ⁓ and I think you've given us plenty of evidence there on why hiring slow is is so important. talk to us a little bit about your growth challenges from an operational perspective. ⁓ you know, that that's where, you know, my business focuses. That that's an area that a lot of business owners take for granted because it's it's how it's what we do, right? You know, how do you not know what we're doing? So we must be doing a great job. ⁓ and then, you know, they'll call in a finance professional and, you know, not realize that they're having a margin issue because of what's happening in their product delivery. ⁓ D have you run into any issues on the operation side that have limited your scalability. You see you see me laughing, right? ⁓ I get a lot of gray hairs from it, ⁓ hundreds of them every day, literally, and still to this day. ⁓ really quickly, if I could just take a quick step back, you mentioned something that it's so ironic that you just mentioned it's ⁓ you think it's hard to go from a C to a B or a C to an A than it is a B to an A. I literally sent myself an email. yesterday or the day before for a podcast idea for me to talk about in my thought leader videos where I'm actually starting to try to think and and we have so much training and ongoing support after they come out of our six week training. And I'm starting to realize that it's it's like I don't even know if it's possible to take a C player into a B and A. Like I I'm starting to think that and and I know that's harsh to say, like, but I'm starting to think that it might not It's it maybe it can, but I'm not seeing it because the C players, they lack some of the qualities. Whether it's, you know, if it's business acumen, that's one thing they can't help, but a lot of times it's lack of effort. It's sitting on their cell phones, they're looking at social media, they don't have that work ethic and that ambition and drive that those A and B players have. So I'm starting to realize that they we may be wasting our time and all of our resources that we put in trying to keep coaching them up, coaching them up, coaching them up, all of our management meetings we're spending, hey. Let's work on these three guys this month, and their numbers are down, and we're wasting all these resources. And I've really never seen anyone go from a C to a B or a C to an A, like you said. So I just wanted to touch on that a little bit. It's ironic that you just mentioned that. It really hits home well. And it just wants makes you want to focus more on the hiring A B players, drive your business. They really do. And the C and D weigh it down. That's where all the struggles and strains and extra, extra resources get utilized. So I just want to touch on that before we go into the pushback on the systems and stuff. A lot of that is is very much on the on the individual. I'm working with ⁓ a young guy right now, doesn't have, you know, some of the skills necessary, doesn't have, doesn't have, but what he has is this incredible hunger. So he he's somebody that I know is going to be an A player and he's he's working in that direction. He's doing all the right work. So so to your point on effort, absolutely, for the ones that that are willing to put in the effort. That I think goes a lot further than even skills sometimes. You hit it right on the bullseye. If they have the effort and the ambition, and and we have a few that are like that that are brand new, that have such hunger that, you know, you see you wish everybody had that, that, that factor where you know they're gonna make it work and they have the business instrument to back it up. It's a recipe for success. And we'll put all our resources. That's the one that we want to put our resources into, not the ones that are sitting on social media. ⁓ But you asked about the, you know, are we experiencing any operation challenges? And one thing I could tell you that never stops is all of the, you know, there's a saying, what got you here won't get you there, right? And we've doubled revenues. We've been fortunate enough, God willing, over the last three years to continue doubling revenues. And we've been it organically pushes you in so many ways, just as your roles change. My role as a CEO changed from being on top of deals and Doing podcasts and looking at different marketing and you know, brand building and things for the business. But all of our management team is getting stretched and pushed. And I have I used to do all the trainings for new hires. Now John and Cam and Rob are doing those trainings together and they've learned and they're actually making it better because they have more time available than I did as a CEO trying to rush through it sometimes. ⁓ but yes, the systems and the processes really get stretched and the next word is tech, right? We have so many different tech. Things. Now you have AI into the equation and it gets overwhelming and it's very, very expensive. And that's where someone like yourself could come in and help evaluate and streamline and bring efficiency to that process. ⁓ so the answer is yes. We're stretched and pushed every day and we're learning and growing, and it all leads to that. The success is when you get out of your comfort zone, and we don't have a choice. We we are being pushed out of our comfort zone, and that's a good thing. But it's also a learning experience for all of us. We're learning and growing. And there's a saying we're fixing the plane as we're flying it, right? Every day, trying to get optimized one percent better. Yeah, and and a lot of business owners don't realize that the entire business requires continuous improvement. Because the moment that you stop, that you say, This is good enough, this works, that's when the business starts dying. Right. So you have to continually be looking at all of your processes, all of your people, you know, all of your customers to make sure that everyone, you know, is evolving with the times. You mentioned AI, making sure that, you know, the company's adopting AI, your employees are adopting AI. You know, where is the business going and what do you need to do? Yeah, it's it it's it's ⁓ so crazy how in sync you are to everything that was part of my previous speaking event. It's literally identical. ⁓ and you just mentioned something that is probably on the top three of my biggest life lessons over all the years. You know, obviously delegation is one. ⁓ while I was at NAV, I was fortunate enough to work under an amazing CEO. His name was Greg Ott. Every day he used to come into our big all hands meetings with hundred plus employees and all he would talk about is the client experience. To me, I never even thought about those words or what it even meant, right? Until I finally started really listening because it was he used to hit home. When you we solve for the client experience, the money is just a byproduct. And to your point, what you just said is one of my biggest life lessons is you have to look at every single part of your business, right? From the client experience, from before leaving, enters your system and comes into your ecosystem from the time it's a closed deal, no matter what industry you're in, even before that, starting with the recruiting and the hiring process to the what's it look like when a lead enters our system, right? What kind of email goes out, what kind of message is going out, what kind of calls are going out. ⁓ what does our submission process look like for us? It's our our our packaging of the application and our analyzation of the deal. We have APIs with all our lenders. So looking at each part of the business all the way through from start to finish as its own business. And if you take the time to do that, it's easier said than done. But if you take a little bit of time, like for example, we worked on our our our recruiting and hiring process. We had a little process. Then we worked on the actual interview process. And my daughter G was amazing. putting all that together and having all interview questions. We have a post-interview survey that goes out to all the managers that were in the interview. Was the client dressed properly? How did they present themselves? Did was there any signs, any red flags? Like a little process with a bunch of questions because when you're doing a lot of interviews, you that mind's fresh, you know, the information is fresh in your mind. So without going too far off subject, all those processes, it took us time to implement and build them and they're still not perfect, trust me. We have our own issues. Like you said, we're still building it and fixing it. but that 1% better every day and constantly going back to each one of those and learning as you go, like John and Cam and Rob are are actually in in enhancing the training process and manual that I built and updating it with things that they're bringing in it that they're finding more value and live exercises and things like that to make it more interactive. And that you hit it on the head, it's it's treating every part of the business as its own little business. And if you do that, you now have a well-oiled machine. You know that everything's flowing through. the best they could and constantly reevaluating as time goes on. And and it's a bit counterintuitive, but when you are in the habit of continuous improvement, you lower the cost of the improvement because you're not going from, you know, zero to a hundred, you're going from zero to one, which is, you know, little cost. Every increment is a lower cost than, you know, we need to completely revamp everything and and kind of start from scratch. And And a lot of ⁓ a lot of business owners don't get it. Absolutely. And and I never got it either. So I I get it. You're thinking, you know, when you're in your craft and you're just selling, you're just thinking, sell, sell, sell, sell. And then as as the bit and I tell all my managers too, we're we're all being pushed and stretched to your point, the operations to get out of your comfort zone. Your business is is good and and a lot of a lot of young entrepreneurs will ask, Well, how do I know when is the right time? And I say, Trust me, your business is gonna organically push you. to where you have to hire someone. And that's a good thing. That means you have enough sales now to be able to hire your next sales rep or your first manager, depending on where you are in revenue and how everything builds. But as you know, the business organically pushes you to make those decisions. Eddie, so for our listeners who, you know, might be struggling with cash flow or, you know, they want to expand and they don't have the capital for that, ⁓ explain to them what you do f with through qualify and how they can benefit from funding in general. Absolutely. So as you know, I'm the founder and CEO of Qualify. We help ⁓ clients that are maybe not getting much love from their local bank. ⁓ as you know, conventional banking is, you know, it has a lot of minimum requirements like three years of profitable tax returns, seven hundred plus personal credit, two years, three years time in business. They want everything for the most part to be to be collateralized by assets and a lot of younger, smaller. newer businesses just unfortunately don't meet that criteria. So we service that market with we have so many different solutions on the business side and even some on the personal side if the business doesn't qualify. From business lines of credit to SBA loans to multi-year term loans, equipment financing, you name it, we can do it all. ⁓ We help clients that are newer or starting businesses out. But we also help clients even from small to mid market that May have a great company, it's a successful business, they're doing big revenues, 5 million, 10 million, and they're growing rapidly and they're outgrowing their bank and they're undercollateralized. The bank is not giving them the amount of capital that's needed and necessary to support that growth. It's too risky for banks in many cases. So we have large lines of credit that are fully subordinated to the bank debt. We don't force you to pay off your existing line. We give you additional lines that are going to sit right alongside your bank to help you continue that growth pass without without a hiccup. So we you know, we we help any business that's looking for financing that's unable to obtain or maxed out on their current bank line of credit. And do you see any ⁓ recurring patterns of things that businesses are doing wrong that they could do better in terms of getting financing or ⁓ Yeah. So our our biggest goal when a client comes to us, ⁓ we we kind of meet them where they are, right? Every business is in a different ecosystem of where they are on the financial ladder, right? Like I said, some are already in bank financing, great credible companies, preferred borrowers. That's a perfect client for us to just add and support with additional capital to continue their growth. ⁓ some clients come to us in dire need. They're they're they didn't plan, they don't have a line of credit in place, they didn't business was may have been good and all of a sudden they had a horrible month or something happened in their industry or one of their biggest clients didn't pay them and now they're scrambling last minute to try to get money for payroll. You know, that client comes in almost in a desperate scenario. ⁓ they're not going to see the most favorable rates in terms. So we try to teach and educate our clients to the best time to apply for business finance when you don't need it. That's what the banks say too, right? That's when they want to approve you when you don't need the finance. That's when you're going to see the best rates, the best terms, the most amount of money offered to you. So secure your line now and don't wait for a bad quarter or a bad month or a bad circumstance because I've been around multiple industries and I've seen it happen even in the finance space. I've seen it happen to fifty, sixty, seventy million dollar companies where they had an issue from one of their largest ⁓ clients that that couldn't pay them and stretched their accounts receivable. It broke their covenants with their bank line, their bank line got hauled. So no business is free from from that, you know, the bump in the road. We're all gonna hit it sooner or later. ⁓ One mistake that I see clients do make and we try to educate them and help them is because it's so, you know, we can fund fairly quickly and like sometimes same day, next day, it's easy capital. And sometimes business owners get like addicted and just come back for more and more and more. And they're getting the money in that's helping the problem, but they don't solve the actual thing that they're doing wrong that got them into that problem. So we do our best to coach ⁓ and tell them where they need to be to What I said our our goal was to graduate them into the next best tier of financing from where they are. We meet them where they are and we let them know and educate them. Hey, if you want to get into this line of credit with these interest rates, they want to see minimum bank balances of five thousand dollars, you know, they wanna see minimum six fifty personal credit. We'll give them all the requirements and and help them get there and and and coach them along the way until they're actually ready. Yeah, that. That planning component is so overlooked sometimes, especially in the smaller businesses, once they hit a certain threshold, you know, they they tend tend to to plan a little bit more. Yeah. But the but the smaller businesses, you know, fly by the seat of their pants. And, you know, that's a conversation that I have with them all the time. If I can briefly, one of the one more one another thing I just want to throw out there is because the f business finance world isn't very regulated as of yet. ⁓ on like the consumer side is there's only a few states that started implementing requirements for licenses and registration and we're we're registered in every state that we're able to. ⁓ our industry's very messy. There's a lot of unethical players in the space and and and business owners are being lied to and they're being misled by ⁓ unscrupulous brokers. And I we hear it from our current clients every day where they said, ⁓ I was promised ⁓ this line of credit at six percent if I took this thirty five thousand dollar thirty five percent you know, short-term daily payment, expensive loan. And and then, you know, two months later or 30 days later, that person's not there to answer the phone. So the a lot of business owners have their guards up when they talk to us. so for whatever it's worth, if you are out there and you are shopping and and and could use affordable financing, ⁓ make sure you vet, make sure you look at their their online pre make sure they have an online presence. ⁓ you know, if you're in a specific state, say if they're licensed in your state. Just make sure they have good reviews. Be careful who you're sending your financial, sensitive financial information to and tax returns and stuff like that. you know, we're we're one of the ethical players in the space. We we never lie to a client, we never mislead a client. We do what we say. We're here to educate and help and, you know, just promote business in a good way with smart affordable financing options. We've seen already so much fraud, you know, with AI. You really do have to vet. know who you're speaking with, even if you know, you're watching them on the screen. Yes, We had a we had a real estate transaction here in South Florida about a year, year and a half ago, and it was all virtual people trying to scam this poor old lady out of her problem. That's hard. And yeah, it's scary. You do have to do your homework and make sure that you're speaking with with reputable individuals. ⁓ Eddie, so where can our listeners find you? ⁓ our website is goqualify.com and that's qualify within I. So it's G-O-Q-U-A-L-I-F-I dot com. ⁓ that's our that's our website. I also have I'm on LinkedIn as Edward DeAngelis, qualify L L C. And for those of you that like to reach out directly, my phone number is two one five six six nine zero eight two seven. And we'll have all of that in the show notes. So if they're driving, that we don't want them trying to write this stuff down. Uh-huh. But Eddie, thank you so much for for coming on the podcast today. I think that this conversation, you know, besides being, you know, very exciting because, you know, we we absolutely have ⁓ very similar experiences and ⁓ and perspectives on things. But ⁓ I think that there was a lot of great information for that's because we're both old. I really truly enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me. I I truly thoroughly enjoyed this one of my favorite podcasts of all. ⁓ it's my pleasure to have you here. ⁓ so thank you all for listening to this episode of the From Stuck to Scale podcast. And thanks again to Eddie DeAngelis for sharing his journey from selling perfume on a street corner to founding Qualify. Eddie's insights into hiring delegation and client experience are invaluable for anyone looking to scale their business. Remember focusing on small improvements and the needs of your clients can lead to significant growth. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe and share with others who might benefit from it. Until next time, keep pushing forward as you work to scale your business. See you all next week. You've been listening to From Stuck to Scaled, Growth Strategies for Small and Midsized Businesses, produced by Opticution LLC. For more information tools and resources, check out our website. www.opticution.com slash podcast.