Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Ep. 19:🏆 The $7,500+ Mistake Most Small Business Owners Make Every Year
Transcript
- Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Most ⁓ Most small business owners have no idea Stripe, Square, QuickBooks, or their own bank is quietly skimming large percentage of every single dollar they earn. Today's guest built an entire company around stopping just that. If you own a business and you're accepting cards, there is a good chance you are leaving thousands of dollars on the table every single year. Not because of bad product, not because of slow sales, but because who is processing your payments. Today's guest did more than just that. He questioned it. He built a company around fixing it. He is in the... He's an independent payment broker who sits on the owner's side of the table, brokering and managing cards and ACH payment systems for companies that are simply done being overcharged. Glovisor welcomes Trey Rush. Hey, Trey. Trey Rush: Joe, thank you so much for having me, man. I appreciate it. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: out. You're welcome. Pleasure. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Trey Rush: Yeah, me too. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Alright, so take us back to the beginning. What problem were you seeing in the market that made you launch Paycheck Plus? Trey Rush: Well, back then things were a little bit different. I got in the industry around 2013, so I've been in it ⁓ a minute, but back then I just noticed ⁓ a predatory behavior from payments companies towards their clients. It was one of the very few industries where you could, I don't wanna say not have the client's best interest, but that priority is very down the line to making money. So if you've ever seen like Wolf of Wall Street or Boiler Room, it had that kind of feel to it in my experience. And so it was very much profit over service. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Gotcha. ⁓ So, you know, one interesting thing that I saw was this tagline, get paid with Trey. Where did that come from and how does it shape the way you work with clients? Trey Rush: Well, it was purely an accident and for years I actually struggled with branding and messaging and things like that. I ⁓ just kind of set it one day in a networking event and everyone seemed to like it. And so it just kind of stuck and it was like one of those meant to be type situations. so where the reason I like it a lot is because it's very versatile, but it really kind of... ⁓ It goes to my methodology, which is like we're partners. You know what I mean? Like most situations when a business owner interacts with their payments company anymore, it's actually becoming less personal. You know, like the big pay facts like Stripe, Square, QuickBooks, and I'm not, you know, throwing shade at their direction, but it's moving more towards AI, more towards, you know, email us a problem. We'll get back to you when we can. And I've kind of went the opposite direction where I'm a lot more intimately involved with the details of their business and I know a lot more about how their internal processes work so the payment systems can better work with those processes. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: So now what segment of business size, small business owners, large business owners, and what makes their pain points different from the larger companies? Trey Rush: so I say the SMB space. So small and medium sized businesses anywhere from, you know, 25,000, up to 25 million, you know, so 25 to 25 is kind of my, you know, kind of my range that I typically work with. So, ⁓ like a lot of other fractional, you know, ⁓ industries, you get to a large enough point and they have somebody that they've hired full time in house to kind of handle. you know, this kind of thing, just like with HR or bookkeeping or anything like that. It's just the payments industry is kind of the last to the party and realizing that they need somebody to dedicate it to, you know, to pay attention to these things. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Now, I've heard that you had mentioned at one point or another that you can save some of these businesses under first year, $7,500 per client. Now walk us through how that number actually gets achieved. Trey Rush: So that came about at the time, you know, I was working with a lot more smaller businesses and I still do, but I've added in a lot more of the medium size, you know, B2B type companies and industries. And there's phases to it, but the first phase that I like to attack is the first one. And I use a program called VCS, Visa Compliance Surcharge. And there's reasons behind that, but the simple version is, What we do is my systems will add 3 % to every credit-based invoice and not add anything to debit or ACH. So what that does is it incentivizes lower cost, lower risk methods of payment. And so if a customer wants to use the rewards cards and get the miles and the cash back and the gold stars or whatever they get from their provider, they can do that. But now my client, the business owner, isn't funding their vacations anymore, essentially, because that's kind of what was happening, you know, because these banks, that's what they that's what they use to, you know, to sell their credit cards is all these flash rewards. Well, it's got to be paid for by somebody. And most of the time it's being paid for by hardworking small business owners. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Yeah, absolutely. You know, let's stay with that for a second though. ⁓ If you can explain to us, how does that work? ⁓ You started to go into it. So banks charge the vendor a percentage and then they give a certain percentage back to the consumer who uses the credit card and how do they all make money? Trey Rush: ⁓ man, it's a twisted web indeed. And in fact, there was a very viral clip that circulated about a year ago. I think it was Senator Hawley that had the executives of the major car brands in a congressional hearing and was basically like, You operate at a 50 % profit margin and yet you own like 60 % of the market. How is that not a monopoly? And it went super viral because they do operate at very large profit margin. So there's the car brands. There's the banks that issue the cards. There's a lot of hands in the cookie jar. So like, if you start, there's the card brands, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and a slew of others. But the bank that issues that card gets the lion's share, like Capital One, Samuel L. Jackson, what's in your wallet type thing. So the banks that issue the cards, the card brands, the processor does get a small piece as well, whatever processor ends up processing those payments. But usually by the time it's done, there's five or six hands in that cookie jar. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Wow. So, and that's what you're doing. You're interrupting the process. Trey Rush: I'm trying to refine it, I would say, and interrupt the methodology and the mindset behind those processes, which is, and I'll say, it's just the cost of doing business. If I could say, like, if I could call it an interruption, as you mentioned it, it would be that business owners just paying card fees is the cost of doing business, and that's just how it is. Like that, and I... dare to use the word scam, you know what I mean? Like that methodology is perpetrated by the banks that issued these cards that are making money off the business owners and off the customers that are paying 18 to 28 % interest on these cards. So they want everyone to think that it's a cost of doing business. And it's a weird scenario where as it sits right now, the traditional cost of doing business means that the card holder, right, they get all the perks. all the protections, all the rewards, they get all the convenience and benefit. Whereas the business owners taking all the risk, which I really wanna touch on at some point, and all the expense. Where else in business is that the case? Where risk does not mean the price goes up. If I sell my truck and buy a Corvette, my insurance premiums will go up because I'm now a higher risk to the processing company or to the insurance company. But when it comes to payments, for whatever reason, business owners are just meant to accept all that cost and all that risk because there is risk to taking card payments. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Absolutely. Now Paytech Plus is described as an independent payment technology company. ⁓ What does independence mean in practice and why should a small business owner really care about that distinction? Trey Rush: ⁓ it's a business model and it's everything, right? So I would say probably 80 % of people that are in the payment space, ⁓ at least from a, an acquiring perspective are, you know, either W two or commission only sales reps. So their main job is to acquire clients. It's not to service clients. Right. And in fact, the company that I worked for previously, they would reprimand or highly discourage. reps from servicing their own accounts. They would say, that's not your job to the account. Your job is to go out and hunt and kill and get new accounts, right? It let our service department handle that. And that was one of the ways that they could like separate the actual, what was happening with clients and the perception of what was happening. So perception was everything is great. We're doing the best thing for our clients, but then you find out that's not really the case. So with me, the difference is I work for the client, right? So I put them with a provider, but... You know, there's no huge commission for me upfront. I get a little bit of the revenue every month as long as my client stays happy. So it's in my best interest to put my cards on the table and say, this is how we grow together. And as they grow, I grow. So it's also in my best interest to put them with other partners and other referral partners that might help their business grow because we're really in this together. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: that makes a lot of sense. ⁓ So now you offer everything from virtual terminals to automated account receivables. How do you help business owners figure out which one do they actually need versus what sounds good on paper? Trey Rush: There's a couple ⁓ steps to that process. Initially, I have an online ⁓ action plan where people can, or business owners can answer 15 to 30 questions about how their payments journey actually works. And that gives me a lot of insight right there. And then we could jump on the call, jump on a call and have a discussion about those results. and what makes the most sense to actually focus on. So we're not wasting a lot of time on stuff that doesn't even matter. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Now, you work across a pretty wide range of industries, automotive, coaching and marketing, B2B, professional service. ⁓ Which one would you say surprised you the most in terms of how much room there was to improve their payment processing system? Trey Rush: So, ⁓ I would say, strangely enough, I would say bookkeepers. Bookkeepers had, like, because when you think of a bookkeeper, you think of a financial professional, and ⁓ obviously they are, but there's like a misconception that they're experts at things that they're not. And, you know, a lot of clients think, they know everything about my business, and it's not really their job to know everything. about the business, I've seen a lot of bookkeepers where I can not only improve their own payment situation, whether it's having their payments actually directly tie into QuickBooks to reconcile things and make their lives easier, but really doing that for their clients. I've been dealing with a lot of bookkeepers that have clients that have terrible payment system processes in place where it's like making their life miserable to reconcile all these situations where I can go in, make the bookkeeper look like the hero and save the client a ton of money. And in that process, they're... The bookkeeper is associated with that added value. So it's not like me just coming in and fixing it. They think of it as the bookkeeper helped get this in place. And so they really get a lot of the credit. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Well, so that's a lot of value you're translating to through someone else. Trey Rush: That's the idea, yes. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Yeah, makes sense. Now compliance keeps coming up on your site as the differentiator. What are the most common compliance mistakes you see in small business owners making today? Trey Rush: Two. ⁓ The first one is PCI compliance, which is a very, very complicated ⁓ system that is good in its intended purpose, but is largely ⁓ not effective in a lot of situations. So what PCI is, payment card industry, it's the card brand standards of how you handle card information. So when you go to a gas pump and it's like, you only see the last four digits of the card on the receipt, that's a PCI compliance issue, to make sure that it's truncated, people can't steal your information. But what happens a lot of times is, business owners, they get charged for noncompliance and that can be anywhere from 50, I've seen up to $500 for noncompliance. And most of them are compliant, but you have to self-report. And that's what a lot of them don't understand. You have to actually take a survey and scan your system. four times a year to make sure you don't have any breaches. And so what happens more often than not is, especially with small need of business owners, they're paying for non-compliance and they're compliant. They just didn't know that they have to self-report or how to do it. A lot of them know about it, but they still don't know how to do it. And so... That's kind of a complicated thing. The second one and more prevalent is, um, pass through compliance or what I call pass through compliance, which is businesses that have smartly, in my opinion, decided they want to start passing along the cost of taking payments. They're like, this is way too expensive. They've broken down the numbers and they're like, it's not just 3 % of my revenue. It's actually 15, 20 % of my profits, you know, that's going out the back door, not because of inventory, not because of rent, not because of payroll. or any those like major expenses just to get paid. It's just to get and send an invoice out and get it back. It's costing me like two months worth of profits a lot of times. So it's crazy. So they've decided they wanna pass that cost along as they should. But what happens is there's rules that Visa and other card brands have put out there that you have to follow to do it right. And so what's happening is they're just adding the fee onto invoices or adding the fee. you know, on top of, you know, their menu price. If it is a restaurant, which I don't usually deal with, or some other, you know, type of retail establishment. And you can't do that. certain rules. You can't do it on debit cards. It has to be on credit only. It's capped at 3%. And that's what gets a lot of them in trouble is... they just add it to everything and they don't have a system that can tell the difference between credit and debit. You have to have the right signage posted, you have to register with the card brands, like it's a process. It's not a super complicated process if you know what you're doing, but it is a process that has to be followed. And what happens is they'll get a fine. And this is like the really crazy part that I want people to understand is that what happens in a scenario where Let's say Visa finds out that you're not passing it along correctly, whether they have a secret shopper, which is a real thing, or someone disputes a transaction and it comes out that way. ⁓ What'll happen is you'll notice that you're not getting your deposits anymore. and you're like, wait a minute, where are my deposits? So you call your processor like, ⁓ you received a fine for pass through non-compliance or surcharge rule violations, what they'll call it. And they're like, but wait a minute, I didn't know anything about this. The way the process actually works is the processor or the card brand, let's say Visa, finds the processor, okay? Because that's how the relationship actually works. The processor doesn't have a relationship with the business, only the processor. So it goes from visa to the processor. But when you sign an agreement with your processor, you agree to pay any fines and penalties that's associated with your business. So they're essentially passing it along to you. So you're paying a fine or a penalty on something you didn't even know about. No one ever explained these rules or how to do it the right way. And there's no way to just go to a different processor because it's going to follow you. So there's no way around it. So the moral of story here is folks, I highly recommend passing the cost along, but work with somebody that knows what they're doing to do it the right way. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Yeah, and to know exactly what the right way is, the key is really working with the right processor. All right? Trey Rush: Mm-hmm. Yep, and what I've seen a lot and this is this is kind of infuriating so what'll happen is this is I don't make this situation too over complicated, but There's another program. I usually use surcharge because it's the most black and white. There's no gray area It's compliant or it's not well There's a lot of other programs called cash discount which a lot of people have heard of probably or dual pricing which you've seen since the 80s, gas stations have been doing the dual pricing thing where it just flips back and forth and you have two prices and that's great, that works. That's kind of like a way around it, but where the issue comes in, you'll get a sales rep or somebody that'll sell a business owner on one of these dual pricing programs. It's dual pricing, we can do 0 % processing, you can pass on 100 % of your cost to the customer. And that's the pitch, right? The problem is, is that let's say you're store owner or an auto shopper whatever and you are charging $100 for an oil change and that's what you have on the wall. Well, the sales rep comes in and says, well, our terminal says $100 cash, $104 of its card. So it gives you both prices on the terminal itself. And they're like, and that is a compliant way to do it. And they're right, mostly. The issue, the compliance issue comes because they don't coach the customer or the business owner that their shelf price or menu price or list price as they call it has to match the car price on that terminal. They have to do, there's another step to it that they really don't mention. And so what they end up doing is they keep the $100 on their wall and on their terminal, it says 100 cash, 104 card, right? So the price is going up when they go to check out and that's a surcharge. And when your price goes up when you check out, it has to follow the visa rules now, right? So you can't do 4%. It's gotta be capped at three, credit only, not debit, all that kind of stuff. So what happens is the terminal, they were right, where the terminal technically is compliant, right? It is a compliant terminal, but your shelf prices are not compliant now, and that's where they get burned. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Yeah, I see that. And I remember I had this issue in one of the states. And that's another question I have for you, ⁓ where we were pricing ⁓ our services, and we had to price it at the higher price and then offer a discount for cash payment. But we couldn't provide the price at a cash payment and then add the surcharge because in that state, we weren't allowed to do that. Or is that a national Trey Rush: Correct. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: ⁓ law. Trey Rush: That's precisely what I'm talking about. That precise situation violates visa rules. You have to, the way their rules work, which I'm not saying I necessarily agree with, by the way, but that's a different conversation. Your listed price, whatever price you advertise on your quote, on your menu, on your shelf, on your website, whatever you put out to the world as that this is our price, has to be the card price. You can't... advertise the cash price and then say, ⁓ by the way, we have a higher card price when you go to check out. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: So aside from the visa rules, you also have state laws that impact this. Trey Rush: That's very correct, yeah. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: All right, so this could be a little bit more complicated for these business owners that come to you, they have multi-state business ⁓ location. Trey Rush: So dual price for the most part is 50 state compliant. There are some states where they make it more challenging, New York being one of them where. you have to list it a specific way, which is weird. But for the most part, dual pricing is compliant. But in my opinion, dual pricing is just not the right solution for a lot of businesses, especially with super complicated pricing strategies or pricing matrixes. So like if you have 200 different. items that you sell or services that you sell or components to what you sell, why would you want to like change 200 prices? Like it makes no sense to me. You know, like whereas with with surcharge, the software does everything. You can't mess it up. The software knows where the card is coming from. So what state applies, it knows if it's credit or debit. Like you literally can't mess it up. If you send an invoice for $100 and they pay you a debit, it's going to come back. at $100. If they paid with credit, it'll come back at $103. It's that simple. Like the software literally does everything. The only thing the business owner has to do is just have the right verbiage, the right disclosure on their quote or on their website or at their front desk. That's all they really got to do. Correct. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: And you help them set that up and the right verbiage and all of that. Excellent. All right. So when a new client comes to you already locked into a contract with another processor, what does that conversation usually look like? Trey Rush: Correct. ⁓ it's becoming less and less and less relevant. ⁓ where I see it happen a lot is in industries that is not my normal, ⁓ you know, Forte like restaurants that have very expensive point of sale systems, where we're talking tens of thousands of dollars in hardware necessary to take those payments. There you get into liquidated damages and very large, you know, payouts, but with normal retail, like smaller retail spots where they might just use a normal terminal. or anything like that, the most you're really gonna see is 500 bucks. And that should never dissuade anyone from looking around because most often, especially in my case, most of the processors that I work with will pay all or the majority of that contract in order to earn their business. And if the deal makes sense, I've paid them out of my own pocket, if it makes sense, where I know this is gonna be a long-term business relationship. It makes it a no-brainer for me. I'm not gonna let something like that get in the way of saving this business $15,000 a year, right? And it's funny because you'll see that sometimes, like, ⁓ it's a cancellation fee. I'm like, Bob or Bonnie, this is gonna save you 20 grand your first year. Let's not hang this up over 500 bucks. One way or the other, we'll work it out. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Now, you've been in the industry for over a decade now. ⁓ What has changed most dramatically about how small businesses think about the payment processing system? Trey Rush: I would say the pay fact disruptors and there's been a lot of good. A lot of people in my industry will say it's all bad and that's not the case. There's a lot of good, but there is also some bad. So what happened when I first got in is that the pricing structure was so all over the place and it was so complicated that no one even knew how to read a statement from like the legacy processors, right? Like back then there was no Stripe, there was no Square. You can only go through banks or processors. and they had these super long, you know, statements that no one knew how to read. And so Square comes out and is like, look, it's expensive, but at least it's transparent, right? Like they were like the first, the first major one. And there might've been other others before them, but they're like, it's going to be 3 % or three and a half percent. It's expensive. We know you're not going to like it, but at least you know what you're getting. And it's going to be the same every month. And businesses are like, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I may not like it, but at least there's no surprises. And they were willing to pay more if it meant not getting surprised on what their bill was gonna be. So that was one of the ⁓ big changes. so now, ⁓ technology is a big part of it. And the more successful companies that are in the payment space are getting away from just saving money. and really having to come with value. They're having to come with how we help you manage these systems to make you money. Because yes, VCS that I use is like the quick, easy win that gets a huge impact, but there's also a much bigger backend, how we help B2B companies manage their AR so they don't have a ton of invoices floating out there that isn't getting paid, implementing recurring revenue. ⁓ products or services so they can stabilize their revenue and that type of thing. So they've just had to come with a lot more value than just, we're going to save you a few bucks every month. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Sure. So you explained the card processing process very well, but how about the account receivable segment of it? How can you provide value to a business owner? Trey Rush: So a recent, well I shouldn't say recent, a fairly recent client that I started working with really opened my eyes to how I could lend my experience to help in those ways. Before, earlier on in my business, probably the first half of my business, I looked at this just like an agent broker, where go in, find out what the client's needs are, really do a good job setting them up the right way. You know, they get the best systems that do that does what they needed to do. And then just be around if they need support, you know, which is, you know, in my experience been kind of a cool thing because when you take the time to set people up right, there's not a ton of back end support that's needed. You know what I mean? So you do it the right way in the beginning, it rewards you. But what I've noticed is in the B2B space, especially there's a more of an ongoing need to have an expert that knows not only the payments industry, but knows your industry, knows your business and how those things fit together. And so like one client would kind of help me come to this, you know, revelation was I noticed when we were boarding them. and I started seeing a lot of their invoices coming through, they had a ton of past due invoices. And when I asked them about it, they were like, oh, that's just kind of normal. Well, when it was all said and done, almost half of their invoices that went out every month were paid late. And not just paid a few days late, paid weeks late, sometimes months late. And it really boiled down to like, it cost them thousands and thousands of dollars. in revenue because they're essentially extending terms, like 30 terms, net 40 day terms to clients that were either abusing it or neglecting it or just forgetting about it and we'll just pay when we can type situation. And most of the businesses were like, what are we going to do? Well, there's a lot you can do. There's systems where you can put ACH on file where if the invoice is late and they don't pay it on time, you just bill their account. And so if they are going to be extended on terms, you charge a fee to be on those terms. So you're not essentially financing them for free anymore. And it saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. If you go and you look, I want to say it was like nationwide in the U.S. at least 55 % of every B2B invoice is passed due right now. And when we're talking about the speed of cash flow, how much that costs when you're getting paid late, it's way worse than what people think. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: 55%. That's a huge number. Incredible. So where's Paytech Plus headed? Trey Rush: So I'm actually heading for a rebrand right now actually and it's going to be more of a... ⁓ was the terminology that I'm looking for. Like ⁓ a personal brand is what I was looking for. It's more because my business, when I named it Paytech Plus, I just wanted something simple. You know what I mean? It's payment technology plus a lot of other systems, right? That's where that came from. And it worked, but it sounds so vanilla and so just like every one of my competition that I'm not. I'm going more towards a personal brand agency type feel because that's, I mean, that's the reality of what it is. Like all my clients know me on a first name basis. And as large as my company hopefully grows, that won't ever change. You know I mean? Like I, you know, we'll have team members that help out, but most of my clients will probably still know me on a first name basis and be able to text me, call me, email me if they have an issue because, you know, again, I am. working a little bit more actually inside their business, making sure their payment systems are working for their current business model or just like what you just mentioned, maybe where their business is headed. You know I mean? And that's kind of a gap, right? It's great, mean, just setting up a business the way that their business operates now is a huge positive step that a lot of them don't get, but almost no one talks about where is your business gonna be in a year from now, two years from now. And putting something in place that can grow with them, right, that we're not having to switch everything out again in 24 months. So that's where I've kind of started calling myself a fractional payments officer, because I really kind of am, you know, a lot of, a lot of times I'm, you know, working with clients where there's a weekly check-in, you know, sometimes more depending on what their scenario is. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Sure. So what's one piece of advice that you would give a small business owner who has never questioned a PIM processing system? Trey Rush: So I would say just understanding that it's not a Friday afternoon problem, that payments is a Monday morning problem, right? So I call payment systems the jugular vein of the business, right? When you think of vital systems, you think the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver, all those kind of things. But if that jugular gets severed, you got problems, right? Quick problems. And just like in payments, No matter what else is going on in your business, if you can't get paid, if something happens where your account gets shut down, and in some industries like marketing and coaching, we're seeing a lot of that right now, where their payment systems are just being closed due to risk issues, ⁓ you got problems. So ⁓ just understanding that you should pay attention to it, right? So... ⁓ The mistake a lot of business owners make is like, it's only 3 % of my revenue. It's not a big deal. I'll deal with it. It's important, but it's not like super important right now. But when you peel back the layers, you realize it's not 3 % revenue. When you peel back the layers and you look at it for what it is, that 3 % could mean two grand a month, four grand a month, five grand a month in real dollars. that could mean a salary or a marketing budget that you didn't know you had. a lot of times that amounts to 20,000 a year, 30,000 a year. I work with the clients $100,000 a year as a quick unlock. Like overnight, we were essentially able to unlock that profit margin for them. And again, when you peel it back, you realize that without showing you my calculator, It boils down to most businesses and the smaller the profit margin, the worse it is. They're in business for at least one month, sometimes two months out of the year, just to make enough revenue to make the profit necessary to cover those payment costs. Right? So to at least a month out of the year. So your December is gone or your January is gone. Right. That money that you made during that month goes just to processing payments. Again, not rent, not payroll, not inventory, not any of the big expenses that you think that's just to get paid. So it is a much bigger impact on your profit margin than what you realize. If I could leave anybody with something, it would be that. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: That's great. ⁓ Now, who should be contacting you? Trey Rush: I mean, really anybody that takes card payments that just wants to have a better understanding of how much it's actually costing them and how they should be molding that payment system to better fit what they're to do with their business or where they want their business to go. So service-based businesses, if we want specific verticals, You know, I do a lot of professional services, lawyers, bookkeepers, CPAs, coaches, marketers, but that can be also trades, foundation companies, concrete companies, ⁓ auto shops, mean, a lot of auto shops, transmission, anything that's really service based. have dog groomers. mean, if it's a service and you get paid, I pretty much have some sort of solution for you. or inside it, at the very least. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: How about someone who's just starting their business? Trey Rush: ⁓ that depends on what their goals are, you know, in 12 to 24 months, right? If you're bootstrapping it, you know, and kind of what, what I would say almost with a sense of pride is what I try, you know, separates me as, you know, I'm not the best fit for everybody. You know, one of the big red flags that I tell people a lot of times when I'm asked this question is, well, how do we know who to work with? If they just say no matter what, we will work with you. That's kind of a red flag. You know what I mean? There are some small business situations where I may not be the best fit. You know, that's just I may not be. So ⁓ I do have an online assessment, free merchants score dot com. And the cool thing about that is they can answer 15 to 20 questions about how their business operates and it'll give them an actual action plan. Here's where your holes are. Here's where you you might be bleeding revenue. Here's where you might be bleeding profits. Here are some strategies that you might be able to implement to help unlock some of those profits right away. And so there's a section there based on revenue where it'll give them ⁓ a response where it may or may not make sense to work with an agent. ⁓ But if you are starting with venture capital or you expect to be at $100,000 or more in revenue very quickly or even $50,000 revenue very quickly, it definitely still could be worth the conversation. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: So in working with listeners connect with you and learn more about Paytech Plus and continue this conversation. Trey Rush: So ⁓ I'm all over LinkedIn, just ⁓ Trey Rush, and you can find me currently. at Paytech Plus on LinkedIn as well. I mean, anybody that has even a remote, you know, inkling that this might be something that they should kind of pay attention to or put some effort into would be that free merchants score.com. It's really cool. I mean, I did put a whole lot of time into it. And the biggest thing that designing this is that I wanted people I follow what I call the credit karma model, which is like credit karma is known for like their their big Value or their free value offer is we're gonna help you check your credit for free, right? And then later they sell you credit cards and that's cool But their value offer their free value offer was so good that that's what they're known for and that's kind of what I was trying to do with free merchants score comm is Even if you never talked to me, even if you never work with me, it's still gonna give you a report that's gonna give you some awesome things to work on that's really gonna really impact your business right away. So, but if it's something where they wanna have a conversation, it will absolutely give them a link to get on my calendar and we can definitely have a strategy call and we can talk about their business. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: ⁓ We're definitely going to put your link on the description for the video and for the sound bites on the other channels. Trey, thank you so much for the conversation. Trey Rush: Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate it and I really enjoyed it. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Likewise, thank you. Till the next time.