Latest / Leaders In Payments / James Shepherd, CEO of CCSalesPro | Episode 280

Transcript

James Shepherd, CEO of CCSalesPro | Episode 280 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: As we look at the future of the payments industry, I really believe that where we have a huge opportunity is in what I call bringing these worlds together, and so what I mean by that is when you look at the payments industry today.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: There's all this innovation and it's exciting, but it's also very segmented.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: In other words, we think about we have the ISVs and we think about them very differently from the ISOs.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: We have banking as a service, right, neobanks but we think of them very different from, maybe, acquirers, right, and so you know, there's these different worlds, and then we have different types of distribution models.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: We have the 1099s, we have W2.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: And I think the real winners in the space when we look back in five years, especially in the ISO ISV world, are going to be those that bring these worlds together.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: That was James Shepherd, the CEO of CC Sales Pro, and he is my special guest on this episode, episode 280 of the Leaders in Payments podcast, and I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: James has a thriving group of companies, including CC Sales Pro, iso, amp, cc Storage and, of course, many of you know him as the co-host of the Merchant Sales podcast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: James discusses the top three trends he sees in the payments industry and how ISOs and ISVs should look at these trends.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: We also talk about his professional and personal passions, his faith and family, podcasting and much, much more.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Hi, james, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Greg.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: It's a pleasure Appreciate you having me on today.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: So let's dive right in.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: If you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live and, if you don't mind, maybe touch on how you got involved in the payments industry.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: So I grew up out near Chicago, in the suburbs there, and I grew up in a fantastic home kind of the amazing parents and have two sisters and so just a fantastic childhood, had an interest in business at a very young age.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I was one of those strange kids.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It was always starting a little side business.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Right, it could be the lemonade stand.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: For one summer I was watching the.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I was like a pet sitter, so I would use my bike and I'd go to people's houses to feed their dogs with their own vacation so always doing crazy things like that.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: When I graduated from high school, I went.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I graduated on a Friday and I went on Saturday.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: There was a Saturday morning.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: The local government building was still open to be able to register a DBA for your business.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I went down and started my first business, which was setting up saltwater fish aquariums like reef aquariums.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I worked at a pet store in high school and so that was kind of my natural first step into business.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: It was a.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I had no idea what I was doing, obviously ran it for maybe six months or so, ended up getting some wealthy clients sold it to a competitor and at the ripe old age of, I think, still 18 or maybe 19,.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I went to work at service master, the true green division, and the timing was just so perfect, reg, because I got there right as the do not call registry came out and this was like their whole business.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Right, it was telemarketing and cold calling.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So when that came out, my boss came to me and said hey, I know you're new, but I know you're entrepreneurial and we're supposed to start doing a door to door sales team.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's a terrible idea, but if you want to do it, go ahead.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And I was like let's do it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: So, long story short, I think a year and a half later we had 30 full time sales people out in the field going door to door selling lawn care and doing really well at it.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So that was kind of the launch pad for my career to be able to move up really quickly within that organization and train other branches on how to launch this new initiative.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Fast forward a few years, I started some different businesses.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: My biggest business failure was actually a real estate company that I started to buy and sell houses.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: The timing there was like right coming up to the big real estate crash and all of that and the financial crisis, so had a huge failure there, lost a ton of money, went back to service master, end up married my wife, christina.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: She's from Pennsylvania, so we came out here to Pennsylvania quite a few times.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: I love the idea of the country and all that, and so I thought, hey, let's move out here.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And like everybody in your audience I'm sure Greg, or most of them I got into payments totally by accident.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I was looking for what I call the real job and I fell into payment processing without selling it.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Quickly realized there wasn't a lot of training resources and that's kind of my forte, so started the YouTube channel, ended up starting ccsalesprocom and from there kind of.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: The rest is history, but that's how I ended up getting into the business Great.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: That's a great story and it sounds like that sales aspect is definitely in your DNA 100%.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Most people don't know about me, greg is I actually also have a real passion for computer programming and so that was also a big part of it.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I would develop things in the business and even like the website design and stuff back when it wasn't as easy.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So I kind of had these two things of sales and computer science that kind of have come together and worked pretty well for me in my career.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Nice, nice.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about some of the companies that you're involved with.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Obviously, you mentioned one, ccsalespro, but there's ISO amp, there's cc storage and, of course, you're the cohost of a podcast called merchant sales podcast.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: So maybe walk us through those businesses, tell us a little bit about what they do and kind of your role there.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: So CC SalesPro is definitely the primary.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: It's actually the parent company for the other two.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Cc SalesPro primarily exists as a publishing company it's the easiest way to describe it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: We also have under that umbrella, you know, we have the Merchant Sales podcast.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Under there, we have the blog, we have the social media profiles.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Also under that umbrella we now have the ISO Alliance which we just launched recently, which you know.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: We have ISOs coming together as kind of a mastermind.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: We also have consulting practice and then, of course, the traditional publishing business.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: You know sponsors, advertisers, you know all of that.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So that's CC SalesPro.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: And while I'm still the CEO of that company, I actually do have someone else, john Shirey, who I think even some of your listeners probably would know, but he actually runs that business for me, coo, which basically means he does all the work and I get all the credit right.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Then we have ISO AMP.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So ISO AMP, I started I actually started it as Instant Quote Tool for my seven or eight years ago, back on the developer side.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: I actually built this tool that you could instantly create a proposal.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And then my really good friend, jack Christensen, who I went to high school with.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: He and I kind of went on different paths after high school for about 17 years and we came back together.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: He's a fantastic developer, excellent IT professional.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: So we joined forces with ISO AMP to create the leader in statement analysis, full service statement analysis, meaning we're the go-to company that processors and banks will come to to white label our software and our service to say they don't want to do anything with statement analysis anymore.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: They want to upload it and be done with it, wipe their hands of it.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: So ISO AMP is where we have a lot of employees.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: There we do a lot of different things but basically we use AI and human intervention to handle any statement, no exceptions, as long as we can read it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: You know we'll do it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: We'll try to automate as much as we can.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: But we'll fill in the rest.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: On that one I'm still listed as the CEO.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Hopefully that's going to be another maybe four or five months.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I already have somebody else working at the company that I'm filling into that role and so hopefully I'll be listed as the founder of that one sooner rather than later.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: But we have ISO AMP and then CC storage is a very different business.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Most people aren't as familiar with that one, but it's property management company and specifically right now it's for self-storage property owners.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So it's an ISV, traditional ISV, and you know we built that as basically an investment, but you know we built that one with a CEO basically as soon as we wanted to launch it.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So I have a CEO for that.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: We have, you know, developers, marketing people, salespeople, those, so that's kind of just a very traditional startup business.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: That CC sales pro funds.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Okay, and then obviously you're the co-host of the Merchant Sales Podcast.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Maybe give the audience a little background for those that don't know about it.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so five years now, which is pretty crazy, yeah.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So I started out of my passion for helping merchant sales professionals and ISO succeed, and I think for me mainly it was.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I saw the changes going on and the the pace of change and I realized that the ISOs were going to have to adapt in order to survive and thrive, moving forward.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: So I started that one in collaboration with Kate at the green sheet and you know, kate reached out to me and we were like, ah, we need to do something, you know, on the publishing side.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And I was like, look, I want to start a podcast but I have to have a co-host.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: You know me personally if we're going to interview people, I would like to have a co-host so we can do different segments and stuff.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: And so she said, oh, I have the perfect person.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Patty Murphy is the senior editor at the green sheet.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So I met Patty and actually the first I think two years, we always recorded them at my studio in Pennsylvania because Patty's only a couple hours away.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And then, after COVID, and then we went to just doing those remote but yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: We mainly again, we mainly talk about how to sell more merchant accounts, whether that's as an ISV, an ISO, a processor, a choir, and then we also have different segments on there.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Patty does the insiders report, talking about industry trends, and then I do questions from the field where I try to handle really practical things from my consulting clients or conversations with sales professionals in the industry.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So it's got a little bit of a broader feel to it now.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: It's a little more of a payment processing in general, but definitely with that focus on distribution.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Well, is there a single thread that kind of ties all these businesses together?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question, I'd say.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Actually there's probably several threads, I think.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Actually the first one that might be surprising is content creation.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: So one thing people may not realize about my business is that I have quite a few employees full-time who do things like graphic design, copywriting, video editing.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: We have two different studios and so what we've realized is we have a really strong core competency in this ability to make content and like, as an example, cc Storage, we have a podcast called the Self Storage Insight I have nothing to do with that, that's the CEO of that company that does that in the interview of self storage property owners and experts.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And then we have all kinds of content going into that business.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: And so there's a core competency of content.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: And then the other thread that goes along with that is payments expertise.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: So, as an example, again, cc Storage being kind of the outlier With that one, we don't charge any software fees, we only make money on the payment processing there and we use differential pricing for that.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: So it's that payments expertise that we bring, and then also that content creation.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And then I guess another thread that you'd have to mention that ties it together is again that technical expertise of just.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: You know, we have in-house W2 full-time developers, and it's something that I'm just so passionate about.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: I spend a lot of time working with our developer team, and with Jack in particular, and so I look for things where there's a tech play, where generating content for distribution is going to be really powerful and where we can bring payments expertise to differentiate.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: In the payments and fintech industry, merchants and their customers have increased expectations around Omni-Channel commerce.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: So, in collaboration with NMI, the fully integrated payment solution built to scale, we've launched the Be Solid campaign where, in this series, we'll explore the ability to accept payments anytime, anywhere, using any device.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: We'll dive deep into mobile acceptance via contactless tap on phone, QR codes, wallets and more.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: We will hear from companies like Authvia, Canalote, Google and more.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: To listen to the latest episodes, visit leadersandpaymentscom or NMIcom.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: Slash resources, slash podcasts.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: In a world full of squares and stripes, Be solid.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Well, let's turn to the payments industry and when you look at the space that we're in and obviously since you're very in it and you have a podcast, so you're creating a ton of content what do you see as kind of the top three trends right now?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: That is a really good question.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: I think the first one I'd have to say is verticalization, which I don't think is actually a word, but I use it all the time.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows what it means, right?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so verticalization, I think, is having a massive impact on the entire industry, maybe even more than some of the companies realize.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is, as we see the rise of APIs and these integrations that are making it easier to build things that are more specialized.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: It's impacting everything.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at banking, the verticalization of banking, even, and the segmentation of that market.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: But, of course, as we look at the ISB market, that's where we're really seeing it.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: And I think this idea that, as a certain type of business, I can get a software that is specifically designed for me, that has integrations that I need, that somebody else doesn't need, that has the payment processing set up to serve my needs, everything around that vertical, that's really powerful.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: And I think it's actually one of the largest strategic disadvantages right now of the larger technology players out there the stripes and squares, and, to their credit, they're moving quickly to fill that gap.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: But this idea that you know it's gonna be very difficult in five years.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: To have a solution for small business in general, you know you have to get down to the vertical, and so I think that's really a big trend.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: It impacts everything from the marketing, the sales process.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: You know you look at a really good example of CC storage.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I believe in this trend so much that that's why I started CC storage, because I realized, okay, wait a second, we can create content specifically for stealth storage property owners.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: We can build software specifically for them.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: You know we can have service that specifically for them.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: We can do payment processing and set it up in a way that's specific to them, that has a little tweaks and things that they would need.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: That's really, really powerful.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I'm actually not at all worried about square.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: You know, competing with me in that space.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I'm really not Like that would just be extremely difficult for them to get that specialized.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So I think verticalization is massive.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Another really big trend I see right now is regulation Doesn't get a lot of attention.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I was talking to a private equity guy, greg.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I was at this Nativia conference a few weeks ago and I was talking to this guy and you know they write these big checks to buy these payments companies and so many payments companies now are built on interchange revenue and there's surprisingly little conversation about what might happen if that interchange revenue gets regulated, and so I think we're at a point where it's not necessarily a question of if, but when and how regulation will continue.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Look at the change recently where they're now looking at changing the interchange cap on debit.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So these are things that are going to have a huge impact.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Obviously, the Credit Card Competition Act, which I don't believe is going to pass in its current state, but there's just a push for that and so obviously there's political components at play, but I think, looking down the road, that's a big one.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So let's say we've got verticalization regulation.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: I guess a third one, I would say, is alternate exchange of value, and what I mean by that is you know, for a long time, I feel like the ISOs and ISVs, we were primarily looking at the external threat of people coming and stealing our portfolio, so stealing the merchant relationship, and of course we still have that threat more than ever.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: But in addition to that, we have to think about other ways that we have these external competitors that are siphoning off volume.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: So these are companies like DoorDash.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: If you're a restaurant point of sale company or restaurant, isv.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: You know DoorDash and Uber Eats and Grubhub are potentially taking 20, 30% of the volume that used to flow through your payment processing rails.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Look at Groupon, you know, look at Venmo and Cash App right that are gaining momentum.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: These other P2Ps, bitcoin and crypto that haven't gone as mainstream yet but are making some headway.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: You know kind of up and down there and I can name any others.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Fednow has come down, you know.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: So there's all these alternate forms of value exchange that I think we're going to see them have a really big impact on the industry and you know we have to look at those as strategic threats.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: In addition to losing the entire merchant account.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: If we're going to lose 50% of the volume on the account, you know that's also a pretty big threat.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think those are three amazing trends and definitely areas that all companies should be concerned about.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: But you know, obviously you work closely with a lot of ISOs and agents and ISVs, so how are you advising them around those kinds of trends?
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: What should they be thinking about?
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Well, the first thing and it sounds so obvious, Greg, but the first thing is to think about it.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah Right, so many people, just they just don't, and it's you know.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to them and say what are you doing about verticalization?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: And it's you know nothing.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: So I think the first thing would be do something about it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Right, If you're an ISO and you're currently targeting everyone, okay, that's good, but maybe it's time to create a marketing campaign that pairs with a nice point of sale system for a specific vertical.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Look at your portfolio.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Do you have any kind of specialization, or is there any group of businesses?
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe you do really good with auto repair or you do really good with service contractors.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Maybe you pull that out and say we're going to keep doing exactly what we're doing now.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: That's successful.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: But as we see this market pressure, in addition to that, we're going to go specifically after this vertical and we're going to design a campaign.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: We're going to get a technology partner.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe we're even going to acquire an ISV or build our own or something like that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And so you know, I think you have to go with that and you have to actually have an operating plan.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I don't think you have to throw everything out the window and say let's start from scratch.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's a transition, it's an iterative process, but we have to begin that transition today and start taking those, those action steps.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I think for verticalization it's about it's funny that one to me isn't complicated, right, Greg, it's just you got to think about it and you got to do something different than what you're doing now and embrace the fact that this is a reality, that business owners can get a really, really good solution tailored to them.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And you need to start thinking about that and building to that trend.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: The others, as far as regulation, you know staying in the loop.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: You know reading publications, listening to podcasts like yours as well and just understanding the trend and what's happening and then thinking about the ramifications.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: You know, Okay, let's assume that interchange gets regulated, right, what would I do about that?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Let's, you know, let's think about that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And then the same thing with these alternate forms of payment, of just thinking strategically about them and how we're going to adapt.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, with the verticalization, it's easy.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: With regulation and alternate exchange of value, it's a lot harder because, especially with alternate exchange of value, you have to balance the idea of giving the merchant and the consumer the experience that they want with bringing in a profit.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: What do you do about the fact that your merchant wants to accept Venmo?
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, what do you do?
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: You say, I mean there's no reason to tell them no.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And so I think with that, there has to be this long-term belief that if I give my merchants the best experience, I'm going to also find ways to monetize that experience.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm not purely short-term, I'm thinking more long-term there, and so there are some really interesting things out there in companies that are doing things to monetize that volume, but it's just too early to tell how that's going to work out.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Like at crypto, right, Like if you put a gun to my head and said what's going to happen in 10 years with crypto, I mean, I have no clue, Nobody does.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: So I think a lot of these things you just got to be aware, you got to think about them, be strategic, but I think verticalization is the one that you can really take strong action on today.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Well, let's turn back to you for a minute.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: What are some things you're passionate about?
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Maybe one professional passion and one personal passion.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know on the professional side, Greg, it's just so interesting to me, you know, as your career evolves and as you're blessed with success and things like that, you just start to care about different things.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Today, what I care about is in the business side, is I care about people selection and training people, developing people.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: That's the whole game.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: You know, like I said I mentioned, I have somebody right now who I'm kind of working with and to get to the point where she's ready to become CEO of ISO AMP and that's a huge thing to me.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: You know, work with people like John working with the CEO of CC Storage and then all the other employees we have in our company.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: We have a pretty big team of salary employees here, and so that's where I put my time.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: As far as the business, and that's what's most passionate about, I just love seeing people take responsibility and then coaching them and mentoring them and seeing them really just run with that and even do more than I would be able to do with it because they developed that expertise.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, people selection.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: The other thing is really it's about capital allocation.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: You know it doesn't sound sexy or whatever, but it's the truth.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, when you get to a certain point in business.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: You know it's about where are you going to put your money.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: We don't use outside capital, other than some, you know, minor debt here and there, but we don't have investors with any of these businesses, and so you know we have to be very careful.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: I think that's one of the advantages we have, but also a disadvantage.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: So we have to look at that and say, OK, we have to be really intentional about what we're going to do with our money and where we're going to put it at.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: So it's about capital allocation and people's selection and training.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: That's where I spend all my time, basically with the business, other than, you know, making content and giving back in that way.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: So I do love the payment space.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: It's kind of gotten in my blood.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Now it's 14 years and you know I just I can't stop thinking about it and I love it.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: So I think that's, you know, that's crucial.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Other things people might not know I mean I'm very much a committed Christian.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: I'm very involved in my church.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Actually, I came back from the church office today to do this recording.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: So I lead the youth group at our church right now and we have about, you know, 35 or 40 teens that come to our youth group and yeah, so I'm super involved in the church there and have had been in some way or another and really involved in that ministry work for 20 years.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: And so that's the other thing I'd say on the personal side, and of course I mean all of that is trivial compared to my family.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: You know, I have my wife, Christine, and I've been married for 16 years, madly in love with each other.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I have a, you know, fantastic relationship and then I have four kids.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I have a 13 year old, 11 year old, five year old and three year old, about to be four.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And so people are always like, hey, James, are you at that last show or are you like?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: No, I was putting my kids to bed, I was taking them to school in the morning.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So I don't travel too much at this stage of my life because I just love being around my family and my kids and my wife and I've just have a super blessed life and I'm enjoying every minute of it.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Awesome.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks for sharing that.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Well, let's pivot to something near and dear to my heart, which is podcasting.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: So I know this may be a challenging question to answer, but do you have a top, maybe two or three episodes that you've done that you could talk about?
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so since I asked you this question then when I interviewed you on my podcast, I was ready for this one, right?
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So it is a very tough question.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Actually I was looking through, you know, I have to point out, as as you did, actually I have to point out the very first episode which was setting your ISO apart.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It was five years ago and it was with my really good friend, brian Kamstra.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: At that time Brian was the president of Retriever Merchant Solutions, which they've since been acquired by Payrock and Jim Oberman there.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And so one of the other episodes I did that was really, I thought, so interesting was actually with Jim Oberman after the acquisition and we got to talk for a long time about where he sees the industry going the integrated payments.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So you know, the one with Jim Oberman is really good.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And then the other one I have to mention you brought it up one when I was interviewing you as well, but we had Obey Rawls We've had him a couple of times in the podcast and we talked about overcoming barriers to growth and payments and we just went through kind of, what are these barriers you face as the CEO of an ISO or an ISB and you know Obey's thoughts on how to overcome them.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: So there's three of them that I found to be particularly interesting and great conversations to look back on.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard, isn't it?
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I mean?
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: It really it's really hard.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, you think that that one was the best and then you say, well, wait a minute, this one was good too.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: So it's really, you know, challenging when you're sitting in the this seat of where you're just absorbing the information, and then, you know, you often connect on a personal basis with some of these people as well.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: So it does make the answer and that question a challenge.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I highly recommend that all of the listeners of my show also listen to yours.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Merchant Sales Podcast is a name.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe tell everyone how they can learn more about the show.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure they go to ccsalesprocom.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Just click on the podcast that's there.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: And of course, you can go on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, you know wherever you like to listen to podcasts, and just look for Merchant Sales Podcast and you will find it right there.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Well, James, we've covered a lot of ground so far.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Is there anything else you wanted to cover before we wrap up the show?
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Greg, one thing I was thinking about is that, as we look at the future of the payments industry, I really believe that where we have a huge opportunity is in what I call bringing these worlds together, and so what I mean by that is, when you look at the payments industry today, there's all this innovation and it's exciting, but it's also very segmented.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: In other words, we think about we have the ISVs and we think about them very differently from the ISOs.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: We have, you know, banking as a service, right, Neobanks, but we think of them very different from, maybe, acquirers, right.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And so you know, there's these different worlds.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, then we have different types of distribution models.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: We have the 1099s, we have W2.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: And I think the real winners in the space when we look back in five years, especially in the ISO ISV world, are going to be those that bring these worlds together, the companies that say you know what we're going to take our ISO that has all this distribution and we're going to build out one or more ISVs for specific verticals and we're going to figure out how to help agents sell these solutions.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: It's going to be, you know, the ISV that figures out how to make the right strategic partnerships.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It's going to be the Neobank that figures out how to also create the credit card processing side that goes together with it really well.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: So I think, as we look right now, we see so much innovation in these kind of silos and, you know, the real winners, I believe, are those that are going to look at these different innovations and figure out how to put these pieces together.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It's not easy.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: It's certainly very expensive.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I can tell you that from a personal experience.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Trying to shift gears, trying to do something different, is expensive.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It can be frustrating, but it's also the most rewarding thing as you look into the future and say what do we need to create as a company to better serve the market and to think about it from that perspective.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: So I would just encourage everybody out there in this industry you know I love this industry you know this is such a fantastic time to be in the payment space because there's so much change, which means there's so much opportunity.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, we got to be careful not to get stuck in our silo and say well, this is how we make money, this is how we service merchants, and it's time to zoom out a little bit and figure out how we can bring things together to provide the solution that I think merchants really want and need at this time.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great vision and a great way to wrap up the show.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: So, james, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks, greg, thanks for having me.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and to all your listeners out there.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpaymentscom, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.