Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 122 - Myths About Small Biz Funding | With Levi King

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Ep. 122 - Myths About Small Biz Funding | With Levi King · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The best place to get capital is is from your customers.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I always when when you hear like, oh, most businesses fail because they they couldn't get access to financing, I'm like, no, most businesses fail because they didn't have enough revenues to cover their costs and turn a profit.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's the real reason.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you go get a loan as a band-aid.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's sometimes it's not a band-aid.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's an opportunity to expand.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: So, no, this is another episode of Big Talk about small business.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we've got a guest today.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: We do.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited to hear from our guests today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: Me too.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, after uh, you know, reading up about them quite a bit, I mean, I think there's gonna be a tremendous amount of value that uh that Levi is gonna bring to us and our listeners, especially those small businesses and the newly formed founders that I'm sure Levi has had a plenty of experiences in talking with and seeing some of the uh the goods, the bads, the uglies, the pros, the cons on capital raising and and other types of things.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a big topic.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: We talk about it a lot.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the time we talk about how we don't want to raise any capital if we can avoid it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the best path if you get enough profit from customers.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, we yeah, that's a good point, Levi.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, it's always the best capital that you can raise is from your clients, right?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, truly is.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that gives you the greatest value.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: You don't exchange equity, you have no debt.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's all kinds of great things.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_04: Not to mention the fact that just being able to demonstrate that you can perform, you're gonna get a better deal later from anybody who puts any money in.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna get less, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: 100%.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: But uh, but anyway, it is a big deal for a lot of businesses.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: They say the number one reason for failure is inadequate capitalization.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: This is Levi King, and he is in Las Vegas, baby.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, moved here, uh moved here a little less than a year ago.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Taxes just got too miserable in the California, otherwise love the Bay Area and all of California.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I uh take, like to joke, I took the blue colour path to uh Silicon Valley.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I when I was 21 or 22, I started an electric science servicing company, booster out my way into installation, then into manufacturing, sold that company when I was thinking 25, something like that, had a couple million in revenues, and all of our customers were also small businesses.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, custom manufacturing is a very difficult business, and so I've always viewed technology as a lot simpler.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: No inventory, uh, no, no liability with the boom truck out on some job and somebody maybe being hung over that's on the job.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but that was the first of five small businesses I started in my 20s.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: It were all Main Street companies, all successful.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, sold them all.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: They were all in different industry verticals, which is not a normal small business path.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Usually if you if you start a manufacturing company and you sell it, you say, okay, what's another manufacturing company?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: But uh instead I bought a hotel.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there was just very different things I did.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And credit financing was always very difficult to understand.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And once I had it all figured out as a manufacturer, which is a low-risk industry, you know, that bought a hotel and I'm in a high-risk industry.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know what that meant.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything changes based on the industry you're in, uh, your time of business, the geography, of course, your all the data around your you and your business.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: But then after that, I got into technology.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So my first uh tech company is called Lendio, late-stage profitable tech company that uh is a business loan platform where small business owners can apply once and get access to a hundred different loans, over a hundred different loans with 70 plus lenders.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it just kind of simplifies the process uh so your credit doesn't get banged up and stuff like that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And at Lendio, you know, really solve that.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: What what financing can I get today?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the problem that gets solved.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I just had this desire, having had been that small business owner, just and I was inspired by Credit Karma, frankly, in the consumer space, say, hey, there's got to be something like this for small business.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so once I felt like we were out of the woods at Lendio, uh I left and started NAB between the two companies, a couple hundred million dollars of venture capital raised at NAB.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're also late stage, profitable.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Got about a million uh users on the platform.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Historically, we've had over two and a half million across time.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, we really educate you on your data.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So these third parties that are going to make risk-based decisions on your business, like lenders, like your insurer, like your payments processor, uh like the trade credit ecosystem, which is much larger than the lending ecosystem, you know, so you can understand what are the scores they're looking at, how are those scores constructed, what are the mistakes you're making, how can you make smarter decisions so that your your your scores and your overall credit financial health improves over time.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you can go from either you don't qualify for anything to you get something subprime or you can get something subprime, and now you can get into B paper or alt-A paper type financing, and eventually into you know traditional bank financing, SBA financing, which is kind of the holy grail, lowest cost, usually the friendliest terms, things like that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's in a nutshell the the journey.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's very interesting.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um, do you provide like individual counseling or do you do this through information on your site and and training available through the site itself?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: We do have a uh a coaching uh tier in our subscription, software subscription, but by and large, like there's no salespeople.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: People just find us online, they they sign up, our product's digital.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's dynamic because we built our software around a data layer.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're a plumber with three years in business and your credits banged up, or you're a bakery with six months in business and your credits clean, the the software wraps around the data and all the insights that we drive are based on the data.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it just feels customized for you know, doesn't matter where you're at in your journey because it wraps around that data layer and makes everything relevant from there.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a digital product.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've got an app, you've got the web app, you got a iOS, Android, you know, the typical lineup of products.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I've heard of it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: I I didn't put that together when we signed Levi up, but I have heard of the platform.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_04: Because I've um just like a lot of other small business owners, I got one that's always looking for money.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, but I never got on there because I knew we weren't credit worthy enough to get any borrow um any money.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: So we struck sticky with equity.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: But but to Levi's point, though, this app is is perfect to go in there to understand how you can improve your own your company's credit score.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's basically it's it's the same thing you would do with with with consumer-based.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: How do I improve my credit score?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then but it's all about business, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Does it give you like guidance and trick or not tricks, but tips and actions to go take care of, like get a DNS number or whatever else, right, to to improve it?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, all that stuff.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: You it's not just business credit because sometimes it's your how you're managing your cash flows that holds you back.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you bounce two or three checks a month, then you're you're not gonna get any a paper type financing.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it's not the business credit holding you back.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: It oftentimes is.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes it's the way you're managing your cash, other times it's your personal credit.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if your personal credit is still gonna come into most financing situations for any favorable type of business credit card or loan.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's that comprehensive view of all the data that the third party is going to look collect, look at to say, are we gonna do business with this small business?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, what's how are we gonna price it?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: We we've got one business we're involved in that has 700,000 in debt, but there's no way the business would ever get that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm talking bank debt.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but simply by guaranteeing it personally, they um based it entirely on our our personal um financial statements.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: And the uh the business stuff just basically went out the door.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um you see that often?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot of BS online uh about what business credit could do for you.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I have perfect business credit and you can get you know$700,000 line of credit with no personal guarantee.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's BS.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you want access to cash, your personal credit's always gonna come into the calculation and a PG is gonna be in place until you have like you're so rock solid, you've got a rock solid balance sheet.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So your assets are you know three or four X what the debt is, and you have audited financials.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Almost no small business owners get there before very late in their journey as a small business owner.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And by that time, they're usually done borrowing money.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I went through that.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it probably was in business for 10 years before I got any out of all personal guarantees.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: But um, yeah, I always also teach entrepreneurship here, Levi, at the Walton College, which is um part of the University of Arkansas.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I always tell my students that um even you know you're borrowing this, and even though you've got your LLC or your S Corp or whatever, um, and you think you have uh a liability protection and and and you're not personally um liable for this stuff, even if you didn't have to sign for it, they're still gonna come after you personally if you don't pay.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um small companies that have one owner or two owners.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't that your experience?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that's right.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's how the system works.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's exceptions.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are kind of very subprime products that don't require a personal guarantee, um, but that they come with very, very high costs.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh really, if you want to get away from personal guarantees, you got to go kind of flex into the trade credit ecosystem.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's about a trillion dollars lent each year to small businesses in the form of loans and credit cards.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's another four to five trillion dollars lent from business to business.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of Home Depot, they've got a business credit card.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just as hard to qualify for as an Amex Blue for business card, but they've also got in-store credit.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you take your business card, you can spend it at lows.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Most small business owners aren't qualified for that card, or you can in-store line of credit and and you can, you know,$60,000 line of credit, you can get your lumber, you can get all the stuff you need to work on a job, but it's captive credit.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's the biggest form of credit, and that credit is a lot easier to get without a personal guarantee because it's inherently less risky and give it somewhat cash.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: A contractor isn't gonna go in and buy wood unless they have a job, they've got a down payment.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's inherently less risky to extend credit to a business in the form of services or or goods.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um captive.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm sorry, Levi, you said you said captive credit.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, is that what that means?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like a the Home Depot.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: When you say captive, can you define that?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it just means you you can only spend that credit at the the issuer, and the issuer is a business.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that can I give a big example, Home Depot, but even small business owners like when I had my electric sign company, I would get 50% down and I had 10 to 15% margin on a job, and a job could be several months between manufacturing, installation, billing.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times to even get the job, I had to give net 60 or net 90 terms on that final payment.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm it's a funny relationship where the second they cut me a check, they're a creditor to me, right?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: They took a risk on me and gave me half of the money, and and and then the second that I'm over halfway in costs into the job, now I'm a creditor to them.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's this weird situation where halfway through it flips, but I'm taking a risk on their ability to pay for the rest of the job.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that was captive credit.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I'm giving them, you know, that that other 50% is basically credit that I'm extending them.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: They can't go spend it at a competitor.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's captive to my business and and the job at hand.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: This is such a valuable conversation because I I believe that like you mentioned it, Mark, it took a long time for you to start understanding this.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, a lot of young new entrepreneurs, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: They they have a an expectation in their mind, number one, that somebody's out there to really help them and cheer them on, which is not reality, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but even more so you you distance that, oh well banks will lend money to yeah, on my business plan.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's yes.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: I just have a great business plan forecasting.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the bank's gonna in the SBA is just there to grant out money to me, and I got all this support, and you don't.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like you do not.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's like that's one thing I keep harping on is like when I hear this exaggeration of this flamboyant life as an entrepreneur being preached and and all this stuff.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like, like you know, young entrepreneur or entrepreneur, don't fool yourself for a second.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: This is not a smooth, fun ride.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: This is a bloodbath, high-risk stakes game that you're playing, right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's gonna take all of you, and and no one's there to help you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, but I do go ahead.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: No, I was just gonna say banks can't take any risk.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: No, that's the thing.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: They can't take any risk at all.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so you their underwriting standards are gonna be way too high.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: Unless you got some big assets to give them as collateral.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've I spent way too much energy in the early days being upset or self-introspecting or thinking something was wrong with my plan or my connections, and I wasted so much time.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Levi, you busted the myth right out of the gate, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's not how the system works.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: But then the captive credit, which I would call like vendors.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: You call it vendor credit.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, vendor credit.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was a very important thing.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: We love that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's critical.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's easier, you don't, you know, I mean, and everybody's on the same page.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's really insightful.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Good myth busting.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, there was there was no way I could have built that electric sign manufacturing company without trade credit because I with the bank, I had a$5,000 business credit card, and that was after a while.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was after a year or two.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm running$30,000,$200,000, eventually were more through the bank a month, and they could only give me a$5,000 business credit card.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually I got like a$20,000 line of credit that they collateralized like a quarter million dollars of assets with a blanket UCC filing.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: But but I had 10 or 12 vendor credit accounts with my steel supplier, plastic supplier, paint supplier, concrete uh brook supplier, uh, equipment rental place that I got, you know, because you can't own all the equipment you're gonna need.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So without all those different accounts, I would have been toast.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a couple hundred thousand in credit I had access to that was, you know, 60%, maybe more of the cost of a job.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it's a lot easier to manage cash flow because you did get that 50% down, you know, and and so it it really made it a lot easier to expand the business.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Another good thing about trade credit like that is the interest rates are usually don't exist.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's yeah, once you go beyond the terms, maybe they try to get then people don't even pay that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: And and they they would rather extend you more credit and get an AO accounts receivable than you know, I mean it's good for their books, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's they're in the business because they have to to be competitive because if if they don't offer credit, someone else will, and that's where you'll do business.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you're right, if you had net 30 and your your customer was paying slow, just took a phone call and there was some provision like a percent or two per month, and you just call them and say, Hey, look, my customer hasn't paid me yet, they say no problem.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in the vast majority of the time, they wouldn't even charge you for that extension for another 30 or 60 days because they don't want to lose you and they know you're a good customer and you're gonna keep back, come back, and buy more steel or whatever it is you're buying.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: I I was a general contractor and uh small, you know, five to ten million a year in one of my businesses, and people always say, Well, the cash flow is terrible.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_04: I always had positive cash flow.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, because like you said, I mean, like my building supply company, I could buy a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff from them.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: I would charge my client at the end of the week.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: And if I I might have 60 days to pay that$100,000, I got$100,000 worth of cash.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: I've I'm gonna mark up to my clients, and then I got$120.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, I'm always ahead cash flow-wise.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: So vendor credit's critical.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: Let me ask you about one thing.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: This is really may seem off the subject, uh um, but vendor statements.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_04: Have you ever used those?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: What a vendor statement is is you send out something to all of your um suppliers and you ask him, you say, look, it looks like for 2026 we're gonna buy$400,000 worth of whatever from you.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_04: What kind of terms will you give me?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what kind of discount will you give for early payment, whatever?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: And you send that out to all your suppliers.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: And and the presumption that they have is that you're now bid making suppliers bid against each other.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_04: You may only send it to them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_04: And they actually have to bid against themselves.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, to give you the best deal.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_04: Have you ever heard of that or used that tactic, Levi?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not as formally as the way you describe it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's certainly something that gets easier the more scale you have, the more buying power you have, and especially based on how meaningful you are to that specific supplier.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: If it's Home Depot, they're probably gonna say, okay, you're gonna spend a hundred grand.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Great, you're one of a million customers.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Sure, yeah, they're nothing to them.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it it happens also informally for with the vendors pushing you for stuff like that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like back when I had my sign company, there was only two electrical wholesalers, right?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of things you got to buy that are very specific to electric signs, and there was Denko sales and sun supply in Boise, Idaho.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: They would usually bring that up.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, how much of you know what type of wallet share am I getting?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes, like, even if I had a preferred one, the other one, the preferred one's out of inventory, I got to go to the other one.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were always angling for how do I get more wallet share out of you?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't run it as formally as the way you just described.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was young and probably not in the business long enough to figure it out, but I did see that dynamic oftentimes brought by them.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: What do I need to do to get more of your of your wallet?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_04: So back on Lendio, are you still part of this?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_04: Is it still your thing or what's the deal?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I left a long time ago.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was on the board the first couple of years.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at nav, we have uh we make financing recommendations.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some of that is through a partnership with Lendio.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we we do have a two-way partnership where they push customers to us, we push it to them.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh once once we'd launched, I had a non-compete for two years.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for the first two years, it was just education, no recommendations.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I left the board once we started making recommendations.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we've we focused on solving exclusively digitally in-house, which is usually gonna be a loan not bigger than 50,000, usually gonna be a line of credit, maybe a term loan.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so anything that's more complex, a person's got to get involved.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like as far as long as we are in technology, you know, uh inventory financing, equipment financing, there's so many types of financing that are they're they're complex.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so a person still has to get involved.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh we we send that traffic to Lendio to for to help our customers get that type of financing.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I was just gonna get more clarity on nav's yeah, so um nav will give recommendations about the the credit building, like we talked about before, correct?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: But then it also will it will also be a lender to businesses, potentially.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is that am I understanding that correctly?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, we don't take balance sheet risk, it's but we have the vast majority of the data that a lender is going to use to underwrite risk on your business, or we we do a lot with trade credit recommendations as well.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're a super efficient source of traffic.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So with American Express, for example, we're their only source of traffic where we're referring to people that at a pretty close level, they they they fit the underwriting box based on personal credit, business credit, time of business, industry, all of the different things that are.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Taken into consideration.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: So because we're it's not a one-time view of the data, we stay tied directly into the data sources.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're not relying on what the business owner says their cash flows are or what their personal credit score is.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: We we know their data integrity because they're they're all direct connections.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that the recommendations in our in our product for business credit cards, business loans, trade credit, things like that, they're always real time.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So this month, maybe you see, hey, I'm pre-qualified for this loan, and a tax lien hits your business credit next month, you're not gonna see you're qualified for that loan.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're not gonna recommend it to you.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll say, we'll say, here's what's holding you back.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: You got to go, you've got a tax lien from your county, and that's gonna prevent you from getting almost any type of favorable financing, including business credit cards.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like a small example of the of the type of just automated device that we give to the business owner.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they just they stay buttoned up.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: So so you do refer them to specific sources of credit based on your live, continuously updated data from them.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: What do you charge for this service?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just curious.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a free version of our product that's probably the most valuable free software any small business owner could get in in any direction.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: We give you insights around your personal credit.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: On the business credit, we show you a letter grade instead of the actual score, and then a summary business credit report, and you get the cash flow insights for free.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a very robust free product.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you want to upgrade, we'll give you the actual business credit scores, we'll give you the full reports, we'll give you the FICO SBSS score, which is what's used as I mentioned earlier, uh kind of in the pregame before we got started.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the score used uh to get insurance on SBA loans, so lenders use that score.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um in one of the tiers, we'll we'll give you business credit coaching so we can help you understand how to build up your business credit so you rely on your personal credit less and less and take advantage of trade credit and other types of financing that that look at business credit more.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of the difference between free and paid.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you upgrade, you go from free cash flow insights to bookkeeping, so then you can just manage your your full books through an av.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm not a I hate product tricks.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: You guys have probably seen those where it's like you get something for free and it's like then you eventually get to a spot you're stuck, you're like, ah, goddamn it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now I need this, I gotta pay for it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I hate those.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: So our free products, very robust.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: So do you guys get kickbacks from the lenders on any of these um referrals?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just curious.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yep.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all disclosed on our product.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: So we uh that's how you make your money basically, then more than subscription, I would guess, is it not?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it that's what people think from the outside looking in, but it it's not.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: We make more on our software revenues than we do on marketplace.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: On marketplace, we you know, for example, with our embedded relationship with Funbox, we have a best rate guarantee.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we're giving up economics in that relationship just to make sure our customer can't get a better deal anywhere else.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so we see marketplaces, you know, of financing options.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's an intermittent need that you have, whereas staying on top of your credit financial health, that's something that you should always stay on top of.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we have a relationship we get paid.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: We don't make our recommendations based on how much we get paid.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: We make our recommendations based on what's the cheapest uh type of capital.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you say, like, well, actually, I need something tomorrow, that capital's never gonna be cheap.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's a decision you're gonna make with your eyes wide open.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've been there before.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I think that it's even more valuable for NAV, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: To to have your revenue coming from your subscribers directly.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: That you know, that just that good software subscription revenue is extremely valuable.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: We love it's good to sell the company.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: We love Eric loves that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: He's asked companies.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: He knows what that's all about.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I do love the model, you know, and it's and it's great.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think that uh, you know, I guess quick question, you know, Levi coming from the sign manufacturing hotel.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I wish we had, you know, had plenty of time to talk about that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's intriguing that you got into the hotel business.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: But but obviously with being in the Bay Area, is that kind of how you got introduced to to the software side of things with Lindio and Nav?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, is and was that a catalyst for that?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, I uh at the time I was actually in Denver when I started Lindio.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: My co-founder was in Salt Lake, and that's how it at some point we flipped a coin once we felt like we were onto something, and uh, I moved to Salt Lake with anybody who was willing to move uh from Denver to Salt Lake.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is in the late 2000s, there was not nearly the remote type work that there is today, and so that's how I got started in software.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Denver, then moved to Salt Lake, and then it was tough back then to raise venture capital out of Salt Lake.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was on the map a little bit from an enterprise SaaS perspective, but not yet fintech.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think Lindio was the first fintech to ever raise venture capital out of Utah, and Nav was the second, but it was still difficult.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I moved to the Bay Area so I could fill in talent gaps because Utah is an enterprise uh SaaS market at the time, didn't have a lot of direct to consumer, and we're very much direct to small business uh versus like the traditional SaaS go-to-market motion.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I moved to Bay Area just to make it easier on partnerships, raising venture capital, things like that, and it worked.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And now I don't think that matters if you're in Salt Lake and you're fintech, you can raise money as easily as someone from New York or or the Bay Area.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, isn't it interesting?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: The I mean, I think it's a good way to start transitioning to the discussion of raising capital.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, the dynamics have changed so much in the last decade where you have to be to get access to capital and all the different vehicles that are available now.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, man, with all your experience now, Levi, with with nav, Lindio, with you raised$200 million in capital, which I'm assuming that$200 million that you've raised in BC capital has been related with with Nav and owned entities?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's correct.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Lindio's raised$100 and NAV, we've raised$105 million.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's I mean, that's awesome.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, a lot of great experience there to like what what do you see?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I guess number one, what's what's probably the smartest way in general that a small business should go about capitalization, whether it's financing, whether it's trade credit started out, or do you go straight for the VC?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what do you what are you seeing as probably the best path at this point?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, most small businesses are not in a category that a VC would invest.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: We touched on it briefly in the intro.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: The best place to get capital is is from your customers.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I always when when you hear like, oh, most businesses fail because they they couldn't get access to financing.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, most businesses fail because they didn't have enough revenues to cover their costs and turn a profit.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the real reason.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you go get a loan as a band-aid.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's sometimes it's not a bad-aid.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's an opportunity to expand.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I would certainly say, you know, use your personal resources.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not willing to tap your retirement accounts, leverage your personal credit.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like you probably don't have any business being in business.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going to make it through tough times if you're not willing to start out with your own money and put your your own livelihood at risk.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's friends, family, and fools.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm usually not a fan because they don't know what you're they don't understand.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're just a fan of you.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's you borrow money, you got to pay it back, you're going to struggle to pay it back.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to ruin friendships and relationships.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, that's a last ditch effort.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or give them equity.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't know how to value equity.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're probably going to get a bad deal.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it's it's bootstrap slash use of personal resources, bring in a business partner if you don't have enough resources, right size the economics.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can have a part-time business partner in your full-time and just get into the position you can start to leverage credit.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you're only going to do that if you stay on top of your personal credit, start to build business credit and manage your cash flows well.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you can raise venture capital, like even it at Lendio and Nav, we bootstrapped at first with with my money and my co-founder's money at Lendio to get in business, get some revenues so we could get a higher valuation and get less dilution over time.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and even at nav, because probably because of my my small business roots, I hated burning money.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: I hated every bit of it.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: We burned$87 million before we turned a profit, and I hated every minute of burning that money.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I always think bootstrap companies are better managed because they have no resources.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: They've got to pay closer attention to the cash flow.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you see these people start out with huge pots of money and they don't develop the discipline that they need.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um be successful later.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it was good what you were talking about with friends and family.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um, one of the things that I've seen is a lot of confusion.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, a lot of people don't understand the difference in debt and equity.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: And then are these small business owners?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_04: And then when they get their family members involved, maybe the family member thinks they're buying a piece of the business and the and the business owner thinks they're lending, borrowing money from them.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: And and so that get crosswise.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's so many ways it goes wrong, as you said.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's a very slippery slope, um, undoubtedly.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's rarely papered right, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like the documentation's poor and it's just usually a mess.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean if if you have the the ability to document it correctly, usually that would mean that you're savvy enough to be going to more professional institutions than friends and family do get capital, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: If you know how to do that.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no kidding.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, makes sense.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I mean, it it's uh and I and I appreciate that too, because I've rarely ever seen any kind of friends and family deal that works out really, really great.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like everyone's super optimistic and it causes so much pain, and everybody changes when money gets involved.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care who they are, what they're and how close they are to you.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you owe me 20 grand and you doesn't seem like you're working that hard on your business and you're not sweating more than me.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm sort of getting kind of twisted.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_04: I lent a guy three grand once who was the guy I dealt with at the Firestone store.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: He's the manager.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: And he gave me a hard luck story, and I, you know, I gave him the three grand.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_04: I said to my wife, I'm like, you know what?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_04: We may never get this back.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_04: I had him, I papered up.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: It was an interest-free loan of like two or three years.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_04: I was just trying to help the guy out, you know.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: And anyway, so of course, the time came.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: He didn't pay me.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: Then I'm starting hearing about like he bought a new house.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_04: Then he got like a giant TV, you know, and I'm like, dude, you gotta pay me back.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: Now you're getting twisted.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm getting messed up.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: I want my three grand.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's so true.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'll never forget, I never borrowed any money from my mom and dad.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: I always tell this story.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: When I moved to Boston, it was my fourth house, and I was moving from Texas.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_04: There was a real estate recession there.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: I think I cleared$1,100 in equity on my third house that I owned when I moved out of DFW to Boston.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: So I bought the sec, the second cheapest house in Natick, Massachusetts.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: It was lime green, asbestos shingles, chain link around the whole yard, and the yard was asphalt.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_04: It was like an industrial company.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, so I had to gut the house to move in and and uh you know do a bunch of work good.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_04: I borrowed five grand from my mom.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: I papered it up.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: I said, I'll pay you 1% interest on it, paid her her$500 a month or whatever it was consistently every time.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_04: But so I'm let's say I'm like halfway through this and I'm talking to my 12 months.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_04: Only time I borrowed any money from them, and I'm talking to my mom, she's like, What are you doing?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we're telling her, what are you doing for dinner tonight?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we're getting pizza.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, You're getting pizza?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you can afford that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, my mom would have like made the dough, you know, probably smashed up the tomatoes for the sauce to her.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_04: It was like a tremendous win.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I am now being judged for taking up, I will never put myself in that freaking position again.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_04: Can't even order.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean, you know, that's what happens, isn't it?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's stuff like that.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh friends and family are very dangerous, but it is a big source.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_04: Let me ask you about another source of borrowing that I think a lot of people with small businesses are unaware of, and that is borrowing from your credit card processor.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what do you know about that?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: What do you tell people about that?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: In other words, let's say I've got a business and I take in$100,000 a month from um people buying stuff from me.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: I can borrow money on that from my credit card processor, and then it's paid off as the money comes in next month.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I get a new loan from them, and then I do that again.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_04: I've done that several times.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_04: Sonia discovered that years ago when you and I were at Came Back to Swag and White, yeah, that we could borrow based for on American Express, on our American Express payments every month.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: We can borrow on that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: What's your experience with that?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh brief history on that.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the first company in the U.S., I believe, to start doing that was called Advance America.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then they were capital access network, and now they're just called Canned Capital.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And back when that type of financing was invented, it wasn't the processors themselves that invented that time of type of financing.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was people who got set up as a processor because they realized to mitigate risk, I'll give you a loan against those receivables, but you got to process your credit card payments through me.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: So then I control the flow of payments.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that that space got big, it got got big fast.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: PayPal was the first, they did a study internally to say, like, why are we losing our best merchants?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they found it was because of these types of loans.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so PayPal uh rolled out the working capital loan with way better terms, way better terms than what the other folks were offering.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you had to process through, you had to already be a PayPal customer.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then of course, Square replicated that model, Intuits replicated that model.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so so that's kind of how it evolved.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: So depending on in a lot of independent lenders now, they still advance based on your credit card revenues, but they don't control the flow of payments back.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they're just taking it out of your checking account um versus making you switch to process through them.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually an expensive type of financing, uh, unless you're super buttoned up and you have leverage to say, like, look, I got tons of cash flows and my credit's great, and this is just easy and convenient.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm gonna use this, but I'm not gonna pay ridiculous costs.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that used to be daily repayment.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: So a portion of daily revenue is kind of evolved to there's still daily ones, there's weekly, but most of them realize like it's so miserable for a small business owner to figure out that product that now they're just usually monthly repayment.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a great type of financing and it's inherently lower risk as you're purchasing, it's usually structured as they're purchasing purchasing future receivables so they can skirt all the regulations on small business lending.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's a great form of capital, but that's kind of how it's evolved.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're if you're processing through Square or PayPal or one of the big players, get their loan.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a heck of a lot cheaper than going to an independent uh lender that lends based on that data source.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of people are unaware that that's available as a source of credit.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_04: I certainly was until my wife pointed it out.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's also evolved a little bit more than that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of the independent lenders now, they look at all the cash flows because when that loan product was invented, there was no such thing as open banking.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there wasn't an easy way to look at your cash receipts or the checks you're putting in your check-in account as well.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so almost every single lender in that space now, they're gonna look holistically at your cash flows.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: The payments are a piece of that, and you'll get a better, you'll get access to more money than someone like PayPal that's looking exclusively at how much are you processing through this platform.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Makes sense.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Levi, earlier you gave us the gave our listeners the uh the the best case scenario, which is basically driving or for capitalization, which is your client market base, right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: What would be the second?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like what what do you what would you say to somebody that is starting to get that, but they are trying to make investments and grow their business, they see opportunities or um you know they're wanting to scale up a little bit more.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what what would you say is the next probably uh best way to go for them?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the answer varies highly based on how buttoned up they are on their credit financial health, because you know, business credit cards are a great way to grow your business.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you get three business credit cards that have a 12-month 0% interest, and you know, all that interest is going to get tapped on if you don't pay them off of those 12 months.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: But even a even a product that simple is a great product and probably underutilized, because I think most small business owners just seek up a business credit card versus thinking, oh, I could get three or four and then have access to a lot more credit.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's usually a good answer for someone that's got less than two years in business that has really good personal credit and not in a restricted industry.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's one that's underutilized, is getting more than one business credit card.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, if you're if your credit's buttoned up, there's there's bank financing.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're a lot more likely to get some type of a bank loan.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, before you have too many years in business and like multiple years of profitability, you got a better chance with a local bank or credit union where they're they're very focused on understanding the local community.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: They've already heard about you, they're going to the chamber of commerce, they see you there, they see a sponsor, a kids' sports team.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds old school, but in in small banks and in credit unions, the relationship still matters.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not Wills Fargo, Bank of America, you know, those bankers come and go that are sitting in the booth, and the relationship just doesn't matter.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very form and they have to at the scale they operate.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_04: What the industry is.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you'll get a better deal from a bank, but there's there's you know, factoring is a very old type of loan product that now there's modern versions of it.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's still a good type of financing.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in my mind, I've always been agnostic to the like is the cost of financing good or bad, like ethically.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: The sales practices of the lender are can be good or bad, that's an ethical question.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: The collections practices, that's an ethical question.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the cost of financing is does it pencil out to the project you're working on?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you if you've got, you know, like it in my electric sign company, a lot of times you had repeat customers.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I had the chance to win a job and the only way I could win the job is if I took some unfavorable financing and I was only going to break even on the job, I would still do it, or maybe even lose a little money on the job just to win that customer for future jobs.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the you know we we talk about the best type of financing.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: The best type of financing is are you qualified for it?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And does it pencil out based on the project of what you're using the money for?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's the pencil out is more important than the cost of financing because you you can borrow money for a project that you know it's smoke at rates, and if the project doesn't pencil out, you're still screwed.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really that for me, I always say the best type of financing is the type you can get that also pencils out with the project that you're working on.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's good.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I also like the idea, like I don't know, I've been notorious.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: I get I get laughed at by my wife and and people I'll go out and have lunch with because when it's time to pay the bill, I'll pull up my wallet and say it's usually about a three-inch thick wallet stacked full of credit cards.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: And and I've been doing I only have one.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: I got I got 20.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: I got at least 20 things.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: I got I got a lot, and they're all for different entities, different, you know, and multiple credit cards personally.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean that's something I had since the early days.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: You relied on those credit cards.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like to your point, I'd be out for lunch and I'd be buying I'd be investing in a client lunch.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: You can't afford it, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I'd use that credit in the sales process, buy that lunch, but a lot of Times that credit card will be maxed out, and so I'd have to have a backup with me so I didn't embarrass myself to death net beating.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: And oh I no problem.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I just you know it I forgot that one's been canceled.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um but uh coming to your point though, you know, having I I always took the theory of having multiple options at all times of how I'm accessing capital.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, Levi, you brought up a good like what's that project?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: What's it for?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I've used either a trade credit for the, you know, I've used partially for trade credit for this, I'd use a credit credit card for that, and then I've used, and I'd even go as far as using like overdraft protection in the bank for the weekend and that zero percent, baby.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_04: As we said many times, the goal is survive long enough until something good happens.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, 100%.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's so true.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Just keep driving and then then, you know, and read in in kind of evening out all these risk scenarios to where one particular lender could basically um catastrophe across my business if they're like it's true, but I wouldn't allow that to happen.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I've I'm on the board of a company that you just you know, Bank of America called their line of credit.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: They got the what do they call that, the letter of um there's a term for it.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's not non-compliance.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, um they they had violated a uh a covenant on their line of credit, and and Bank of America just calls their line of credit and just says, basically, go find a new bank.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like you said, that's their entire credit facility.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_04: Is that Bank of America, you know?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh story.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Stuff like that can happen through no fault of your own.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: It could be a regulator that looks at the entire book of business and says, we don't like how this is balanced.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so they got to call it and they can.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: They have the right to call it at any time, covenants but damned.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes that happens, you know, out of your control.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: It happened to me once during the financial crisis with American Express.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had a hundred and fifty thousand dollar limit on my business credit card.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: It it got chopped to fifteen hundred bucks overnight.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I my business was fine during the financial crisis.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, they were just doing that in general as a policy practice to tighten it up.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_04: Let me ask you a very specific question about credit.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: I got a four new vehicles for a business.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um lease them from let's say Ford.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, do you think we're gonna have to sign for those personally, those leases?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: It it really depends on your revenue and profitability.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're doing four at once, probably a lot.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess, yeah, what are the what are the high-level financials of the business?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_04: 14-year-old company lost a whole bunch of money last year, but has a bunch of cash in the bank.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um it balance sheet.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's gonna be an argument.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one thing that I mean, that's a good tip for small business owners, is a lot of times they don't know they can negotiate.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so on an equipment lease, your your business credit is gonna be important.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be done on Brad Street, but also Equifax, which is a lesser-known fax, they acquired the Bureau of PayNet and kind of the fourth credit bureau that was the leasing and equipment financing bureau.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so if those if those reports are robust enough and and your personal credit, the price is still gonna check it, check your personal credit, check the finances.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: If if those are robust enough, the lender is almost always gonna ask for a personal guarantee.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Equipment leases are it is one category of financing that you can get out of uh personal guarantees, um, not all the time, but if you're if your business credit's strong enough, but you almost always have to negotiate it because they're not gonna offer it up.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you can get a personal guarantee on every type of financing, why not?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's just another layer of protection.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the other thing you got to look out for in that scenario is on an equipment lease, they should just put a lien on the piece of equipment, but sometimes it'll be tricky and they'll put a blanket lien on the entire business.
• 43:53
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• 44:01
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• 44:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's interesting.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, they wouldn't it wouldn't fly because the SBA's got that already, and they're not gonna want that.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um they wouldn't allow anybody unless they're subordinated, I guess, to the SBA.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And but why not try to get that?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why not be second in position?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, you're exactly right.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's another tricky thing a lot of people, and I learned the hard way uh as a small business owner, exactly how UCC filings work, and it's it's the same in every state.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: So once you figure out how it works, then you're in good shape.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that is something to look out for.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like my$20,000 line of credit collateral collateralized with a quarter million in assets.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was just naive.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand how that worked until I went to get a piece of an equipment lease, and they're like, we can't give this to you unless they'll sub, they'll do a carve out, and this piece of equipment has a UCC just on it, which they did, but that was an argument with the bank as well.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because why do they want to give up ground on the protections they already have?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, makes total sense.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: Levi, do you feel like that a lot of founders or entrepreneurs, business owners have a a uh an incorrect view about what financing is?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, like look like coming out of the gate, especially new ones, right?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like we we are trained from day one as young adults or young kids going through school, never ever take debt.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: Debt's bad.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: Debts, you know, well, our parents are old too.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, let's be honest.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, I mean, everybody's chilling.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_04: 100%.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so you grow it you go in, you go, and then now you're gonna start a business, right?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of a bad start from a perspective.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: What's your perspective about debt financing?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was I was raised the same way.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was raised on a farm in rural Idaho, and my dad had to get a farm loan each year.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in a bad year, he'd have to carve out five acres of his farm and sell it with a building permit on it just to pay off the debt.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was raised, debt's bad, debt's bad.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started my first company, I was a ghost to the credit bureaus, and so it was I was drinking from a fire hose, learning about personal credit, business credit, everything else because his his thing was just pay cash for everything.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was proud of that in the early days, uh, until my electric science suppliers like, hey, look, man, we're not really set up to take checks in person.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Can we just give you credit?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I initially learned about trade credit, and uh, but I think the problem is lots of consumers don't understand consumer financing, and consumer financing is very simple compared to business financing.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a handful of ways we use our personal credit.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's three credit bureaus, the data is substantially similar bureau to bureau.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: So your score is going to be pretty close bureau to bureau.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of the big thing you're gonna get a credit card or you know, auto loan, they're gonna look at your income and things like that.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they don't even verify it.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you go from that simple world.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's just a few ways to use your credit, and lenders underwrite substantially similar in auto and these different categories.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get into small business, there's dozens of types of loan products, they're all different.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And to further complicate it, each lender may do it their own way, even though it's the same type of loan.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they may look at different data, like one's pulling down a browsery, one's pulling experience business credit.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just so I would say, yeah, that they're very undereducated on business financing.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's usually because they didn't even figure out how consumer financing worked.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't understand consumer financing, which is way easier, you got a really steep climb to understand all the different business financing options that are out there.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like even you asking me the question, get a loan from your merchant processor.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: They may not even understand know the phrase merchant processor.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: They just know I got this machine, I swipe cards or I got my PayPal account or whatever.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's a it's a steep learning curve.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: And entrepreneurs should see financing as a positive thing, right?
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like, you know, kind of like our discussion, having like I I don't know about you guys, but as an entrepreneur, I hate feeling vulnerable to like we're constantly vulnerable anyway.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: But the goal is how do you minim minimize you get the credit before you need it?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's how you do it.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody knows that 100%.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, another example.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna get it.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: My wife's in a completely different realm than me.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, like when we you know, we sold the company and stuff and we got out of the debt, and but then I was like, I got more credit cards immediately.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you never know.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: Eventually, I can get more credit right now.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a gold nine.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean she's like, you know, chop them up, you know, get rid of them.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, wait, man, I'm keeping my stack.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, I think that my stack as the uh the business owner, if you are starting a business, you do need to go out and get see like I love I love your company, Levi.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I do too.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna what a tremendous resource this is.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm gonna totally sign up for myself and check myself out because I have no idea how people it just gives you insight to to know like how how you can negotiate.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: And to your point, they're all operating in different ways.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so I could actually go to a lender and say, hey, here's the positive things about my business.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I'm looking for from a loan standpoint, and this is why like it gives you that negotiation power, I would imagine, doesn't it?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: The the more you know about your own situation, the harder it is for someone to take advantage of you.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it'll to be clear, it was it was absolute misery to build this business.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: No one else had done it.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, unlike the consumer space where there was already credit karma, no one had convinced the commercial bureaus, hey, we want to we want to build an education-based company and use your data to educate the small business owner.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the the FCRA doesn't apply to business credit.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the FCRA kind of forced the consumer bureaus to become more consumer friendly, more transparent.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was all legislative pressure.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't exist in the small business world.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even the FICO SBSS, for example, I'd I'd gotten two SBA loans when I was a small business owner, but I've been turned out for them before as well.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and so it's this this score nobody knows exists.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's the FICO's version of a business score.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: It takes in the personal credit, the business credit, and the cash flow.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a holistic score on the business.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: I pitched Will Lansing in person, the CEO of FICO, and I thought, I'm never gonna get to meet this guy again.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is my chance.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: I tried like hell to close him, one one time close to convince him.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let us make this transparent to small business owners.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: You still can't go to FICO and get transported to the score.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: They point people at us, and uh, I didn't close him, but I did later find out that it impressed it impressed him how hard he tried, which I'm lucky that could have gone either way.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, now there's there's transparency into your FICO SBSS and what you need to do to get above the minimum requirements to get an SBA loan.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we were trailblazing all along the way from a technology perspective with the bureaus, and and it took a long time to bring some of them along.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and even it to be for us to be able to structure our data costs in a way that we could actually be profitable in my B round that Experian led, uh, I had a negative gross margin.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like a small business owner, that's not you can only have a negative gross margin if you're raising venture capital.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so those investors were taking no and so those investors were taking a big leap of faith that I would be able to, you know, continue to develop my relationship with the bureaus to get to a point I could have a sustainable model.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: It helped that Xperian led that round.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Xperian then had an interest in making sure, at least as it relates to their data, that we could be in that position.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: But this was a brutal, brutal company to build, which is true.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Every company, my manufacturing company was brutal to build, but but it's it's satisfying.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, our our customer testimonials now are countless.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: You're a you're a very solid guy, obviously, and no uh no BS coming from you.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: And um, I'm sure that get you got that across to these people, and and that always helps if you can communicate effectively and 100%.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know to well to that point, to that point, right?
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_03: If you're gonna start a business, the business idea has to be solid.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: Your planning, your perspective, your sales, you gotta have a lot of things.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of it comes down to who you are as a person.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it does.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: Because people do lend a lot on trust, right?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and uh I do appreciate your comment earlier about the small banks, small hometown banks.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean relationships always go to them 100% first, always.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: You should be building banking relationships instantaneous.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know the founder or the chairman of the bank personally.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's how I'm gonna do it.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to know I want to know everybody in between too.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I want to be able to get to people.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, but there's there's so much about that, about you know, uh, about you as an individual, do you just live up to your words?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: Really at the end of the day, Levi, correct me if I'm wrong.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is the way I see banks.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like they just want to get paid back their money.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: They can't afford to take the risk.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's how they run their entire business.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: Very small margin.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: People that don't pay back are risky for them like they're trying to decide should I allow that to happen?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: And and if you aren't have that character and that track record, you're you're on your way.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's definitely one of the four C's of credit, as they say.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_04: Character.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_04: But Levi, so if anybody wants to get more into nav, we're we're really out of time.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_04: What is the uh wet best way to uh find you and and nav?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Search for us in the app store or just go to nav.com, Nav.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's implicit as navigation.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna help you navigate the life of being a small business owner.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: So one syllable, three digit uh.com.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you gotta remember, nav.com.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: Bro, when hey, real quick question When did you get that domain?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was a couple years in, and uh, we were Credit Terra.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we were bootstrapped.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a thousand bucks on the domain, like oh, it's the era credit.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put no thought into it.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we hated the name.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: No one could spell it, no one could remember it.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Credit Tiara, like all these versions.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then Cortera, which at the time was a bit an independent business credit bureau later acquired by Moody's, uh, gate put me on notice that they were uh gonna sue the patent office to invalidate our trademark.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Talked to an attorney, he's like, You're you're gonna lose.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're the patent office is gonna lose.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I called Jim Swift, the CEO of the bureau, and I said, dude, I hate this name.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Can you just give me six months so I don't make the same stupid mistake?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so then we we went on a search to find a domain, and I lucked out because the the person that owned NAP.com was the widow of a guy who started Navigator Communications.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was a small business.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: He died, she had to wind the business down, and she said to me within 30 seconds of being on the phone, if you're a domain broker, we can end the conversation.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking to sell this to someone who will honor my husband's small business legacy.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was uh it was intersection of luck and hustle because we hustled like hundreds of domain names that we'd like before that.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: So so we got it for a long time.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: Nav, you got nav.com.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: That is that's epic, man.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's like I've I've been in this business for many years.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's that's like a gold mine.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well done.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well done.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: Well done.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: Good hustle.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's been great talking with you, Levi.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we can do it again sometime because I think there's a lot of different things we could talk about that would be very helpful.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, maybe we could get some questions from listeners and build up a little list and then get back with Levi and simply ask those questions of Levi.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like it.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: And until then, I'm gonna be a subscriber here real soon.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna go check it out, man.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think it's valuable.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Very valuable.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_04: So all right, Levi.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thanks a lot.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: And um, we better wrap it up now, Eric.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, sounds good.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's been another great episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.