Latest / Receivables Podcast | Discussions About Debt Collection / 300 Episodes of Receivables Podcast | Adam Parks with Mark Naiman

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300 Episodes of Receivables Podcast | Adam Parks with Mark Naiman · Receivables Podcast | Discussions About Debt Collection

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, you have not reached the wrong show.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today is a very special opportunity.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Adam has once again in 300 episodes asked me to host the epic 300 Receivables podcast episode here.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so role reversals here.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Going back 200 episodes, episode number 100.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually fortunate enough to be across the desk from Adam there in Florida as a riding mower, of course, entered the background.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Production values were certainly a little bit different, but that's some of the things we're going to go into today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of you know both Adam and I, and so introductions will not be necessary, but I thought it would be a nice treat as Adam is typically focused primarily on industry-related things.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to do a little bit more of a deep dive into some of Adam's personal things here, not just in regards to Receivables Podcast, but as some of the video clips that we're going to dig into the archives for will demonstrate, uh, a little bit of humor is always good to kind of brighten up the day.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so with that being said, Adam, thank you again for allowing me to host uh episode 300.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's what I've got for an intro.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hope uh I hope you're ready.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird to sit in the other seat when you spend so much time hosting, but at 300 episodes, I I feel like it's at least worth talking about some of this.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And within the time period of those same 300 episodes, it's funny because I was on a flight earlier today and I was looking at my phone and you know, with the little uh face notifications or the little uh how it groups by a person's face, and I happened to look at Mark and went back to some of our earlier photos and just kind of scrolled through some of the adventures that we have had through the years, both traveling professionally, the conferences and all of the other things.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I I can't wait to see what you got cooked up for today, Mark.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that, Adam.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna get right back into it, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's roll back to episode number one.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: What at that time made you think that the receivables industry needed its own podcast?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of following up with that, did you think that you'd still be doing this 300 episodes later?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't even know it was a podcast when we started.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize it was a podcast until somebody stopped me at a conference and said, I really like your podcast.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I should probably start distributing this through podcast channels.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it like it was the beginning of COVID, and we went to the conference in February.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: By 30 days later, the world had shut down, and I needed to find ways to stay connected to the industry, stay connected to my clients, stay connected to future opportunities.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And as COVID got started, people were a lot more comfortable coming on camera, maybe not at first, and it has taken some time, but pretty much everybody's got you know Zoom or you know, some other networking tool on their phone and every other machine they use.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we saw people that were starting to get a little bit more comfortable with it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought it was a great opportunity.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, it was just let's record some Zoom conversations and we'll put them out on YouTube and see what happens.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I I thought we were able to start creating some pretty good content early on, but it clearly has evolved significantly since that's a great thing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I uh I look back to those to those times where you know the the aversion of people to speak on camera was changed drastically after COVID in that hybrid work environment.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you capitalized on it at the perfect time.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So let's do a little role play here, Adam.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you could call yourself right before you hit record on the very first episode, what would you tell Adam future Adam?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I you know, I um so if I would invest in the production quality and value, I think I missed some opportunities there.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I slow started this, I think I could have grown at a much faster pace, and we'd be further along the path at this point.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: The production quality, bringing other people in to help me, not making it just the Adam Park show, but now there's a whole team of people that touch every podcast.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's six departments now that all touch a podcast, and there's one guy who just focuses on scheduling, and somebody else who's just doing this piece and just doing that piece.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And our preparation has gotten significantly better.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when we first started, it was get on, have a couple of conversations, and it was um less researched and prepared.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now I find myself uh doing a lot more preparation and research before reaching out to any of these or like starting any of these episodes.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, those are really the two things that I would focus on doing probably a little bit differently uh in order to accelerate our growth and our visibility.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things I want to mention here, and we're gonna run a clip here in just one second here.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Adam, tell me about did you learn any lessons about wearing your stylistic black Adam Parks t-shirt on the background of a black chair?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we might be able to identify a couple of these floating head episodes potentially.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I I can remember the floating head episode quite clearly.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what's funny is it was at a time where I was not even um I wasn't even wearing black t-shirts all that often.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like it wasn't part of like the brand staple look yet.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't part of the brand yet.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in the early episodes, I was wearing like a different color polo shirt all the time, but honestly, it started to take too much effort and forethought.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it wasn't really worth really good.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and what when is what being published?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And is it gonna be two of the same colors in a row?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, silly stuff like that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the black head on a black shirt, this goes back to production quality, right?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: This goes back to looking at how are you gonna be recording, what are you gonna be recording, what tools do you have, and how are you going to manage it in post-production?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like now I'm standing on a black t-shirt with a white background by design, but I didn't put that much forethought into it initially.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I had.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, clearly.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh floating heads and all.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, in those, in those 300 episodes, Adam, you've sat across from hundreds of different people from diverse backgrounds within the receivables management space.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is there one conversation in that time that you can look back on and say that really shifted how you thought about a particular aspect of the business?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I've talked about this one a couple of times.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for me, it was the John Noakes episode.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: The first episode that I did with John Noakes on the Receivables podcast was something that changed my mind frame.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was anti-artificial intelligence in a big way.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had even put out a memo to my organization that you could be terminated for using artificial intelligence to create content.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm hiring and paying creatives.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have an expectation of the creative output, and I didn't want to start seeing AI slop in shortcuts.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to avoid going down that path, and so I had put a block to it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then I get on the podcast with John Noakes, and John starts talking, not in grandiose, I'm gonna replace all my people terms, but he started talking about those small incremental improvements and tests that he was running across an organization, how he was measuring the impact, what it was starting to look like.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think maybe the most important thing to me was that he admitted some defeats and some failures.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: There was things that didn't work.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he didn't just come on a podcast and tell me about all the things that make him and his organization great.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: He was very honest about it, and that got me thinking quite a lot about the use of artificial intelligence and how I should be looking at it or leveraging it across my own organization.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And well, that sent me down the rabbit hole of 350 hours of learning how to prompt engineer and building my own prompts and trying to figure out how to do things repetitively and to actually be able to use these tools in a business context.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that what if you can't do it consistently, it's not a process, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hobby.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I needed to be able to do things in a consistent way.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I definitely don't need any other hobbies.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, I do enough.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about some of these early shows, Adam.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we could walk back to, let's say, the first 10 or 20 episodes, is there is there a stance or or a concept?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I know you mentioned the AI briefly, but I know in in talks we've had, there there's some other, probably more notable uh items that that stood out as kind of a walkback, or like something like, hey, initially I hadn't you know considered this or I hadn't utilized it to its full potential outside of that AI bubble.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So in the in the early days, I was pushing back against having my team offshore and really BPO and offshoring in general was not something that I was a huge fan of.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't something that I um you know really believed in.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then I met Alt Syed and started to kind of go through that learning and education process.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started to develop a friendship.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I had sold Complyarm to Pravana.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was over in Delhi, uh kind of finalizing uh the pieces of that transaction.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Al got me to go over to uh to Mumbai, spend some time there, get to see it, get to feel it, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Really start to embrace it a little bit more, and then got me to start with a small test.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then the small test grew into more people and more people and more people, and you know, starting with five and now being somewhere in the range of 30 at the marketing company, with the majority of that being offshore, uh, has really been a very impactful thing for me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a stance that I had been pushing back against, it wasn't something that I was comfortable with.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I started using offshoring, I wasn't talking about it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I sure wasn't gonna bring it up, not just like I wasn't gonna bring it up on a podcast or really start to push it out there.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've seen how it's transformed my life, it's transformed my business, and I feel a lot differently about it today.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so after this many episodes, Adam, with some of the smartest people in receivables management, where do you think that the industry is still not kind of talking about something enough?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I know we've got a clip to support this and and and something that you and I have talked uh a great deal about.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I would quote this as Adam quote number one that collections is actually an e-commerce platform, a business versus kind of this people-driven manual process thing.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can you expand on that a little bit?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the the quote is that in the next 10 years we become an e-commerce business.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't believe that AI bots are going to replace all the people on the phones, just like I don't believe that all that self-service is gonna manage a hundred percent of our accounts at any point in time.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: But we are an e-commerce business right now, whether we want to believe it or not.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're spending tons of money on digital outreach and digital channels, and you know, we're putting that connection and content out to the consumers, but we're not learning from the digital exhaust.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're not leveraging all of those e-commerce behavioral things that humans are going to do because that's what humans are used to doing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to do the same things over and over again.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at how uh we evolved into accepting two-day shipping from Amazon, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that becoming a norm.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: But prior to you know, the mid 2000s called 2010, we probably still would have drove to the store to get it today.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we learned these new behaviors through e-commerce, such as delayed satisfaction in a delivery.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's those kinds of things where I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to learn from marketing businesses, from customer service businesses, and to find some of those opportunities to really improve our digital workflows, improve our ability to collect and to communicate because we are using the tools the right way.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think a lot of people don't want to talk about it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when I first went on stage and said that debt collection is going to be an e-commerce business, I thought people were gonna start hissing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm pretty sure, and I'm pretty sure a few people did.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's tough, especially you know, in in the context of, and and again, shout out to a good friend of ours that worked for a very large online auction house uh in you know in the world.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um it fascinates me because so many of those conversations really were driven from the human component and the tracking of every click, every page, you know, every page touched, uh, every item looked at, um, and being able to aggregate that data at scale, I think it was pretty unavoidable, you know, it was unavailable for the vast majority of people out there.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: We were aware of these things taking place, but I think the volumes just didn't support that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of in that same vein.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you I want to shift over to AI.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I appreciate you from keeping the vast majority of the conversation outside of the realm of AI currently, but I know you've been covering this for quite a while.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and between you and I doing sessions at conferences, um where do you think the industry as a whole is versus where the vendor decks actually say we are?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, the vendor decks um I there's a handful of them that probably have some truth in them, but I think more of them are bullshit than are actual reality.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that some of the claims are realistic.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would need to not only see a case study that they're publishing, but I would need to talk to that customer or somebody that I trust that's using that tool before I'm truly going to believe it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I might be more skeptical than others, and I think that's because of my visibility on LinkedIn, because every kid that has a dream of AI bots is starting to think about the debt collection industry in the United States, and they're all calling me off of LinkedIn to talk to me about how they can enter the U.S.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: marketplace.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I always start with the same first two questions, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Who's your lawyer?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Who's running compliance?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that tells me right then and there whether or not there is a question answered satisfactorily.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one in 20.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I that's a fair, fair and I think.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: One in twenty, and I'll I'll generally direct them to one of my tech-friendly lawyers that I've used and had success with, and I'll point them to um a compliance team that I think is capable of helping them build the training materials that are going to be necessary and other things.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I do try to point them in the right direction.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I'm not against these folks trying to build something, but I don't know that they truly understand the breadth of the requirements themselves, what kind of uh push is needed.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that when they're raising money that they have realistic expectations of what they're going to be able to value themselves at over a five or ten year period.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have heard some wild numbers.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Look, you you've heard me say this time and time again.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: We work in an industry of exceptions, and and I think we both understand how important it is to um to accurately gauge utilization and and future looking, making sure you don't get left behind, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you know a lot of the uh people in the space still I don't want to say struggle to adapt to, but when you're dealing with larger organizations, I think it becomes more difficult, especially from an age perspective.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something you and I talk about quite a bit.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um in in in most discussions that we have over this, um you know, can you provide some clarity on the on the four identity, you know, on the four levels that that you kind of have always approached AI from?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it interesting question, and this is this is ongoing and probably not the same way you're gonna hear it from others, but I had to simplify this for myself, and so I'll share it that way.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think about artificial intelligence in four layers of deployment and capability.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about the use cases, it's more about how are we engaging and interacting with these tools and how can we use them.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the first layer is prompting.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where the majority of the industry lives today, is at the prompting level itself.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can go in, you can talk to the chat, it's gonna give you things back, you're gonna go back and forth, similar to the exercises that you and I conducted at the RMAI Executive Summit this year for the crowd in that workshop.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of prompt engineering even still falls into that prompting level.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go up a level and you start thinking about skill building.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that I actually first really got interested in at CRS this year when I did the session with Nama Bloom, and she was talking about skill building.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, ho ho, like what do you let's talk about these things and like what does that really mean?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And skill building is that ability to build a file or a series of files that are able to provide consistent instruction time and time again.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, as an example, I built a trip planning skill that basically will take a look at all of the travel itinerary information, build me a plan, and gives me a document.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And with as much as I travel, it's actually pretty helpful.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, there's that layer, and that means that you can now do something consistently every time, and you can package it and make it portable so you can give it to the person next to you so that they can do it too, and it doesn't just rely on you.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: But now you end up in in order to conduct a business process, you may require multiple skills.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can't stuff everything into one, and this is the third layer of automation.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Being able to tie those skills together into a process that can happen automatically.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a trigger, there's an output, but each one of those skills carries through.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't really get to that level until you've really perfected the input and output of each of your skills.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have that, then you can move it to automation.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And now the layer that I'm starting to explore myself now, which really had my Uber driver laughing this morning as I was talking to my chief of staff bot who was communicating to Calendar bot and travel bot verbally.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so this guy definitely thinks I'm a little bit crazy.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that next layer is bots.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And think about bots in this.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: When we think about an automation, a bot is that capability of making that automation better each time it's run.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if we've got an automation and now we can start bringing it back into this loop and actually having it conduct that activity, now we are having some success.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: But you still have to keep those things, I'm gonna call it somewhat um isolated or somewhat small context windows.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so a different bot and a different skill focusing on small things.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And as I was talking about the skills from a uh trip planning standpoint, it's not just one skill.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a trip planning skill, there is a trip format document skill, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's a series of those skills that allow you to actually execute that flawlessly each time.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you try and just like when you ask Chat GPT or whatever your favorite model is to do too much, same thing.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you ask for it to do too much, it can't do anything well.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to keep it small and incremental.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hearing you talk about the Adam Travel Agent bot, uh, you know, kind of makes me remember our trip to India.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh when we went to India a couple years back, you spent probably a couple hours, an afternoon on Google, uh kind of creating a trip from start to finish.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was every minute of every day, where we were going, what things we were going next, where the transportation was.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I know since we were on the phone during it, that it was repeated Google searches, it's repeated uh you know, online research.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that you could have kind of call it, let's call it codified that then to create the travel agent you're creating now, uh, kind of prevents that, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of Adam doing 47 Google searches, all of a sudden the bot does it, and the bot does it in what amount of time?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Minutes?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: It does usually take a couple of minutes, depending on how many different locations.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you where it's failing right now is it doesn't know whether to book a trip as points or dollars.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's still trying to learn the calculations of how to do that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, look, having a travel bot is a first world problem, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I use it in a lot of third world countries to keep me safe because it helps me stay organized and it helps me avoid standing on a street corner by myself in random countries.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fair.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the classic mark name and crystal ball question.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I realize nobody has one, but uh, I want to do a little forward looking here.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: 300 episodes in.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are you just getting started here, Adam?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh or is there a version of this that looks completely different at episode 400?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going anywhere.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love what I do.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is my job.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is I I I'm privileged and blessed to have the opportunity to be able to create this type of content for an industry that wants to hear it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blessed to be able to do it from anywhere in the world that I happen to be.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we've filmed episodes from three countries to this point, and I have a feeling I'm gonna push it a little bit further.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe we'll try and throw Chile in there on my next trip to South America, um, or maybe a Nicaragua episode.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: You never know what you might see next.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um Maybe maybe maybe something from Manus.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You never know what you might what you may see.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I think that it's gonna continue to evolve though, too, because I'm also realizing that I'm not just a podcast.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a network.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've got multiple hosts now.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at different topics.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've got some co-hosts that I can help facilitate some of those conversations with others, like the applying AI series I do with Mike Walsh.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think there's a lot of those types of opportunities that we're gonna continue to see, but Receivables Podcast is my flagship.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it does a couple of different things.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the same reason that I started Receivables Info is to give our industry a voice.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're seeing more powerful folks from around the space that are willing to engage in these conversations that would not have even a year ago.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that our ability to create that type of an environment where all of the different disciplines of debt collection can have a conversation together is important.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think each of the trade associations does a fantastic job of focusing on their specific discipline.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: But when something major is happening, sometimes we need that location where we can have some open discussions in a public forum.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to hide this behind webinar paywalls or any of that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want this to be out there, available on YouTube, because I know when somebody joins this industry, and I've been stopped so many times at conferences by folks that are new to the business, and they say, Thank you so much for creating all of these episodes.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is a great way for me to be able to learn because most organizations, especially small debt buyers, law firms, agencies, they don't have these super detailed training programs on what the industry is.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're more focused on the job tasks in front of the individuals.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that there's that much content out there that kind of focuses on that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we're rebuilding the receivablesinfo.com website for version 2.0, which I'm very excited about, I want to start building more, not necessarily more content, but more ways for people to be able to use the content because 300 episodes is intimidating.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's hundreds of hours of content.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that somebody new to the industry can sit through all of that and digest it.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, can I help them find the right path through the content to help them prepare for whatever their role in the industry is going to be?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've said it to you a hundred times before.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the conversational aspect of it is what's most important.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've said it to you uh probably as recent as the last few weeks, where conversations that you and I have had on the phone have been far more engaging than some of the content that I've sat through in 20 plus years in the industry.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that it's about having those perspectives and uh and supporting it.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've done a fantastic job of doing that.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um so this is pretty much from a professional perspective.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want to shift over to some more, let's call it a little more personal things.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that people know Adam and know Conference Adam, but I want to focus in on some of those personal aspects that perhaps people are not as aware of.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I'll start out with you know, you've spent the 300 episodes asking other people pretty challenging questions.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're a dad.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's the one thing about parenthood that absolutely nobody warned you about, Adam?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Volume control.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody warned me about volume control.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is that 18-month to 24-month window where they're finding their voice, but they don't know how to manage or control it yet.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you can hear her screaming in the other room right now or not, but having a directional microphone is one of those production quality pieces that was very much worth the investment.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's been great.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I miss having my wife on the road with me, and I know a lot of you have met Amanda through the years.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: She attended 36 or 32 conferences um, you know, over the last couple of years.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it's a great opportunity.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, that's why we're spending so much time in South America now and going down to Brazil for six months of the year, because I want my daughter to have some of those opportunities.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And does anybody really care where I am?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: As long as I make it to the conferences, as long as I'm still conducting my business and executing and I'm providing the service for my clients.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Does anybody care?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And before we left last year to go down to Brazil for six months, I called a couple of those key clients, those people that I really trust and respect, because you can't look at everything through um a siloed lens.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, nobody cares.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: That leads into my next question quite nicely.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, interestingly enough, you you spend about half your half your year in another country.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, does being in another country change your perspective at all regarding the receivables management?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's drastically different here in the United States than it is anywhere else in the world.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Does that start creeping in on the on the outskirts at all, Adam?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, though, as soon as I got down there, the first thing I started looking for was like Power Sports portfolios and what's the auto loans look like down here, and you know, what's the license plate camera situation?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's the technology available down here?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: How are the systems of record working?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's been really interesting because Brazil is a completely different payment structure.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that, number one, they're you know, we lend 127% on average for a used car, they lend maybe 40%.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the loan-to-value ratios are never you know in the same ballpark, which I think is interesting.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And in 2025, they have a um a government-funded payment platform that's based on mobile devices tied to your bank account, and you're using similar to the I believe it's the OPC in um India, uh, the QR codes and you scan it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're gonna buy a 50 cent coconut water, you scan the little QR code, you send the money, nobody uses cash.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not really the they exceeded in 2025 the number the credit card transaction volume through their PICs platform.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: So Brazil has moved the majority of that into another area.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's becoming harder and harder to compare the United States to other economies in terms of how those consumers are behaving and what you can learn.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I am seeing people functioning in different ways, right?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: The way that they're using WhatsApp versus text messaging, the communication channels are different.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: How are they tying those together?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it does continue to give me some interesting perspectives.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: I continue to meet some really incredible people.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've been blessed to get access to all kinds of folks down there, and everybody is willing to talk to me, just like they are in the collections industry and teach me what I don't know.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I really do ever on every trip, I try and find a couple of things that I'm going to concentrate on that I'm going to learn while I'm down there.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what it's going to be this coming year, but um last year I learned a lot.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely no doubt, Adam.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So look, in the span of 300 episodes, you got married, you became a dad, you live half your life in a completely separate country.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Did you plan any of this, or did this just happen while you were busy recording 300 episodes?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I I I very little in my life has been planned lately.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the none of this was something that I thought would start.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, when I started episode one, I was in a different marriage.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was living a very different life.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as coming out the the tail end of that, I continued to record and do what I did.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I never expected it to go this way.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I didn't know if anyone was ever really going to engage with it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew I could get people to watch the content.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: The question was more about am I ever going to get people to share real information, real conversations?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And are we ever going to be able to make interesting content that brings people back time and time again?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at our podcast download numbers and our YouTube numbers and our LinkedIn engagement and all of that, when I start looking at the stats, I mean, it becomes quite clear what we have accomplished over this time period.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that we can stay on that trajectory into the future.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Although I realize that this market is only so big and there's only so many people in the debt collection space.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I am trying to create more content that focuses on the creditors' perspective, more content specific to credit unions and others, because I think it's an important part of the conversation.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'd like to start creating some consumer content in the not too distant future as well, because I think so much of the content and the influencers that they're seeing on Instagram and uh TikTok and whatever are gonna get them sued.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh honestly, they sued.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: They say can they can say whatever crazy stuff they want, but I think No, I don't mean the influencers gonna get sued information.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, the they're giving the consumer that's my point is that the consumer is being given bad information, and when the consumer's being given bad information, there it's some of the advice is putting the collector in a position, or a lot of the advice is putting the collector in a position where they're going to have to litigate.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And even from uh uh I guess all the platforms, you start looking at some of what they're saying there, and that they're they're quoting laws, and you know, we all know what happened with the uh with the free ATM hack, right?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where uh you know people were drawing more money, not realizing it was just you know fraud.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but beside that, you're you're right in a lot of regards, Adam.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Social media is a blessing and a curse in many ways.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Touching on something you just said here, I I know we're kind of short on time.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I want to keep this as tight as possible.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Adam, you were whether it's traveling, whether it's at a conference, um, there are very few situations where I feel like Adam is not just prepared, but if I may dare say, a bit over prepared, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two is one and one is none.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've traveled with you.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know how that goes.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that being said, I want to play a quick clip.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then when we get back, I'm gonna ask you the question about that clip.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Damon here reporting live from New Delhi, joined by both Mr.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Monkey Bite Parks and his lovely wife Amanda.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hi guys.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Adam is self-administering his second rabies vaccination dose after his monkey girlfriend gave him a monkey hickey in the monkey temple in Jaipur.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stand by for real-time video of Adam injecting himself with questionable rabies vaccine at the best.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we're back.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, Adam, at what point during this interaction did you feel like you had this situation under control?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the whole time.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't honestly, I didn't even know I got bit until you were like, you just get bit bit bit by a monkey and started calling me patient zero.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so call a rose a rose, Adam.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh, you know.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, but at what point did I hesitate or was I not prepared to continue?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: I at no part.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we continue to work our way through it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: We made it to the pharmacy, or as I like to call it, two road signs leaned against a tree, and got that vaccine and got to you know protect myself from rabies and uh tetanus.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's good.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: A heck of a deal, if I might add.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh heck of the superpowers as a result, you or your daughter?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, we tested all above.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't hang any better.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's yeah, none of that worked.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was hoping for the best.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like this really did not work out in my favor.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: All I did was get bit.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I I do have a follow-up question and clip for this exact item here.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's watch our final clip of the episode here.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Roll the episode clip.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Post rabies vaccination dose number two.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Adam, what do you have to say?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have a sore arm in a few hours.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get bitten by a monkey.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get bitten by monkeys.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's a bad idea.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: What part of the industry's compliance framework specifically covers the self-administration of questionable vaccines in a pharmacy in the middle of New Delhi?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, in that particular instance, right after the bite, I called uh my my partner Brat's wife, who's an emergency room doctor, and I said, Hey, what do you do if you get bit by a monkey?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Adam, whatever you do, don't touch the monkeys.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can look at them, you can give them bananas.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've passed that.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: We've passed that Vent Horizon, unfortunately.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I my response to her was, let's pretend I'm not a good listener and I've already been bit on the neck by a monkey.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you do?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And her suggestion was, and I gave her my vaccine list and the timelines, and you know, she said, I think you need to go get a rabies series, three shots, super fun, and a tetanus shot.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that it's even in our policies and procedures, and I'm wondering now if I need to add it or not.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hoping nobody else, I don't know that anybody else in my company would be willing to give themselves a shot on the side of the road.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fair statement.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not sure we need a policy.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: We probably just need to keep me more under control.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have it, it's always there.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: With that being said, I want to thank everybody for tuning in to this very special 300th episode of the Receivables Podcast.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any recommendations for episode 400, please leave your comments in the links below.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh reach out via email to Adam or I.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to uh hear some of your feedback.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: And with that being said, I have to humbly pass the microphone back over to Adam Parks to close out his 300th episode.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions or comments you'd like to ask, you can leave those in the comments below.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss, you can leave those in the comments below as well.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully I'll get Mark back here at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: But until next time, everyone, thank you for your time and your attention.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I will see you all again soon.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Bye, everyone.