Oz: Hey everyone. Oz here with Merchant Cash Advance Success Blueprint. I have one of my members, Lawrence, here for, I guess, take two or volume number two. He did the first interview. I interview him about maybe a month and a half ago. Is that, how long has it been Lawrence?
Lawrence: Yeah, it’s probably been about a month or a month and a half, yeah, I would say.
Oz: Yeah, about a month and a half and he’s been having great progress. He told us his story. If you haven’t watched that, I suggest you go back and check it out so you get to know him a little more. And I heard that he’s been killing it, so I wanted to bring him on and you guys can see the progress of where this business can go in a really short amount of time in our lifespan when you think about it.
Oz: But I’m not going to [inaudible 00:00:45] talking about. I want him to go through what’s been happening. And then honestly, I don’t know a lot of the stuff that’s been going through, so I’m as curious as you guys are as to what’s happening.Oz:Hey Lawrence, great to have you buddy one more time. Thanks for your time.
Lawrence: It’s great to be back. I was appreciative to see an email from you guys just kind of wanting to catch up with me and see how I’m doing. I appreciate it that you wanted to stay in touch and follow up and make sure things are going well. That’s phenomenal on your behalf to do that for the people that trust you with what you’re offering. It was a great thing to find this email, because it was sent to my personal email, which I rarely have time to look at. And I was happy to see that you guys wanted to reconnect. I’m thrilled that we made the time to do it today.
Oz:Oh yeah. I feel like we’re connected, and after what you’ve been through and what you accomplished, I always want to hear back from people like yourself because you have everything it takes to succeed. So it’s always my pleasure to see you guys do better and better.
Oz:So let’s jump right into it. Last time you and I, we did the interview, you had a period in your life which put you in a lot of stress, right? Financially, emotionally, all around. Then you came in, and at the time, you were like three weeks into the program, and you were telling me that you already funded a bunch of deals and your commission was over $14,000. But you were saying that after that, you have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline and it could be a lot more than that.
Oz:So we left it at that point. So if you can pick up where we left off and kind of walk us through what’s bee happening since then, that would be awesome.
Lawrence: Yeah. Wow. Since that time, a lot has changed. I’ve stayed the course and continued to follow the blueprint of marketing and reaching out and creating a pipeline. Networking is a key thing as well that I learned through your program as far as what you ultimately want to get out of the program itself. If you’re a person that wants to, as you cited on your documentation and your videos, if you want to work 15 to 20 hours a week, you could do some pretty good things in this industry. But if you want to take it to a certain level where you want to scale, you want to build something bigger, you want to ultimately expand and grow, there’s quite a bit that you have in store for you to do that. You have to be ready to take on that challenge, because it certainly is a challenge.
Lawrence:So where I found myself since we spoke, I wrapped up the month, I was definitely north of $20,000 in revenue for that month. When we had spoken, I think we were between $12,000 and $14,000, somewhere in that range if I remember right.
Oz:Yeah.
Lawrence:Basically I was a one man show. I had a landing page. I wanted to start a website. I wanted to create a bigger presence and grow and scale this thing. But ultimately I realized that it takes a lot of different things. In my position, I was really good at being a technician. So I was really good at the cold calling and the cultivating the relationship part. But if you’re going to start a company and you intend for it to be more than a one man show and you actually want to scale, you have to wear 10, 12, 15 hats. You have to be a marketing guy. You have to be an entrepreneur. You have to be great technically, and then you have to have 15 other things that you’re ready to take care of and manage your expenses and hire people.
Lawrence:That’s what I embarked on since we last spoke, because I felt very confident. I felt very happy, but I still was missing something. I still wanted more. I wanted to take the company and make it something larger. And as luck would have it, I went ahead and I worked with a bunch of the lending companies that you had on the PDF that you had put out there, and then you put out a second one.
Lawrence:On the second one, I met a guy through another company. Long story short, we partnered up. I brought him on as a partner of the company, and he brought on three individuals that were under him. They’re not even here. They’re not in New York. They’re located, one’s in Georgia, one’s in Baton Rouge. We’re spread across the country and here we are scaling a company and now we have an official website. We offer multiple products. We do email marketing campaigns. We’ve got a whole analytics system and stuff like that.
Lawrence:And we’ve built a substantial revenue base and we’ve got clients coming in towards us using the capture forms on our site and our email marketing responses get them inbound lead, as far as an inbound lead generation, which it’s been phenomenal. It’s been amazing.
Oz:Wow. So just to recap, it looks like a lot has happened, as you mentioned. So when we had the conversation, I think you were around $14,000 and I know you told me it’s going to be over $20,000, and you actually did finish with more than $20,000. But since then, and this happens with a bunch of my students, either you will make the decision to stay as a one person shop and keep it at $20K, $25K, which a lot of people are okay with, or you can take the further entrepreneurial route and build, establish a corporation, an actual lending institution.
Oz:It was like that’s the route that you’ve taken. You’ve built further partnerships with the lenders and people connected to that. And you guys established a company right now, so you’re generating a ton of leads through inbound, from email marketing and things like that. And you have actually more team members, not just you anymore right?
Lawrence:Yeah. So we’ve got my partner, who his specialty was actually the opposite of merchant cash advance and business funding. It was more towards the real estate side. So he was a perfect compliment to what I was missing [crosstalk 00:06:10] background as well on how to structure the business. He’s 58 years old. And then we brought in a team of folks that he’s familiar with that he’s brought on to our staff. And then we have our screen share and we have our weekly training or biweekly training on cold calling and things of that nature. So now we’re training a team under us on basically how to do this business and how to cultivate new relationships with clients, whether it be cold calling or marketing.
Lawrence:And now we’re building something. It’s bigger that just me doing my own thing here, doing it, getting in and out with my landing page, doing a couple deals here and there. It’s [crosstalk 00:06:47] tangible and real and it’s a whole system, I would say, to bring in people that have no sales experience prior, these three individuals, but our goal was to get them to each make $100,000 within the first year working. And we want to create a system and develop it and track the progress and document everything and quiz them along the way to say hey, we have a system proven here where if you come into this with the right frame of mind, we can show you a method. Here it is, so to speak, with this and these are our prototypical first three [inaudible 00:07:17] but they’re eager, they’re ready.
Lawrence:And if we can do it the way we think we will, we can show incoming applicants, incoming employees or perspective employees like hey, here’s a blueprint for we can make you $100,000 if you follow this system. And we’re in the process of documenting that live now, you know what I mean? So it’s been great.
Oz:That’s amazing. It’s funny that they might, it’s not necessarily a require that they need to have the skills to be the sales person. As long as they have the willpower to succeed at that level or they’re willing to learn, they’re coachable, yeah, you can take anyone pretty much and mold them into something, as long as they have the confidence. It looks like that’s what you guys have been doing. Because many companies, merchant cash advance companies, they’re always looking for the best sales person to hire. And my response to them, why don’t you create one? Why don’t you hire someone who can be that?
Oz:Because as you know, when you hire a sales person who comes from traditional teachings other companies, they have a ton of unlearning to do.
Lawrence:That’s exactly right.
Oz:Because they automatically assume, hey Lawrence, I know it better than you do man. I’ve been doing this. Then there is this barrier to learning, mental block. But where you just, would you agree that’s what’s happening?
Lawrence:My partner and I have had this conversation, not me specifically, when we were starting to conduct that bringing in process. It was strictly hey, if they have prior experience in the MCA world, maybe they can be a referral or an affiliate. That’s kind of to say we need some more approvals and better lenders. We’ll just send you some files and we’ll keep that distance. But as far as bringing them into train and bringing them in to cultivate them as a, our company is Woodbury Wealth Enterprises.
Lawrence:So as a member of Woodbury Wealth Enterprises and under that umbrella, it must be a brand new, brand new, and we would prefer no sales experience because you just nailed it. It’s so much unlearning, so many habits and especially you know it, I’m probably sure you know it just as well as I do. There’s an ego behind sales and [crosstalk 00:09:09] behind sales. So if I’m going to go work for someone, I’m going to go in there and they’re going to teach me how to do something but I think I’m already the best at it, it’s going to be this and it’s not going to work out.
Lawrence:So yes, exactly right. There’s so much undoing and unlearning and reversing when you have somebody who you bring in who has that prior experience or has a heavy background in sales. So what we actually opt to do is show you hey, we don’t care if you were a waiter, we don’t care if you’re a teacher, Uber driver. We don’t care what you’re doing, if you have this, if you can follow this blueprint, and a lot of it we can provide to you, but most of it is also, most of it hinges of what you are made of, if you can do it, you can make $100,000. You can succeed no matter what your background is. You’re not going tog be a product of that and we can prove it, you know what I mean? That’s kind of where we’re going.
Oz:Absolutely. And this kind of answers, thank you for bringing this up. This kind of answers a question that I get all the time. People ask yeah, it looks good, but I’ve never been in sales before. It looks good, but I don’t want to be the sales person. I don’t want to be telemarketing, cold calling. Honestly, I prefer those people over the other ones.
Lawrence:I know, me [crosstalk 00:10:09].
Oz:As long as they have a strong enough why, they’re going to be open to learning a proven system and I think you guys are doing a great job emphasizing more on the system than just bring in people who already now about it. I think that’s the problems industry has right now, all the MCA owners complain that their best sales person takes off. And my response to it, how much time have you invested in that person? Probably not.
Lawrence:[crosstalk 00:10:32] do it.
Oz:It’s stolen from someone else and someone else will steal them from it. This is how it works. What goes around comes around type of thing. So that’s awesome. I’m glad we covered that.Oz:
Let’s talk about the specifics of what’s been happening. So when you were by yourself, you were funding a couple of profitable deals and still making a good living. Right now with the team, so what’s been happening? How many deals are you guys funding? If you can kind of break that down that would be awesome.
Lawrence:Sure. So we have a centralized CRM system now. We’ve partnered up with HubSpot, which is definitely worth the expense. It was a solid expense back when I was beginning and I was like ugh, I just don’t want to be paying this every month by myself. And now that we have a team, you look at it now, we’re going through the expenses, it’s all worthwhile and helps just to centralize all our pipeline, our deal, everything, every deal, all our marketing templates and all these campaigns. Everything’s kind of centralized.
Lawrence:So just before we jumped on, we’ve got right now 14, I mean actively live deals. So they’re in the stage of, we consider them active or live deals as in they’re either A, been submitted to lenders or B, when they’re submitted to lenders for an approval, would be client decision. And then secondly, if we have an approval on the table, they’re also considered live and active. So as of right now, we’ve got 14 deals in that stage. We’ve got, this month alone, we’ve funded probably well over 12 or 13 deals.
Lawrence:And we’ve partnered up with some really great new partners that we had before, and the commissions, I don’t know what it is, things go in a certain way. I thought the commissions were great prior with some of our other funding partners. We’ve got partners now that are letting us really up the ante and we’re sitting here with a $25,000 funding approval and you look at a commission of $3,750, it’s nearly 15% of it, or it is 15%, or something along those lines. The commission is just, it just shows you that they’re out there. You don’t have to go get a million dollar cash advance or a million dollar [crosstalk 00:12:29], $25,000 loan for nearly $4,000 in your pocket and these companies are now, they’re sending out commission ACHs to us the same time they’re sending out funding.
Lawrence:So I’ll be telling my, or we’ll be telling our clients like hey, listen, congratulations. We know that they’re going to fund you now. We just got the confirmation. They’re counting on their money coming in and the next morning we have ours. It’s that quick.
Lawrence:So we’re funding definitely over 10 units a month over the last two months since we spoke. We’re definitely funding towards probably $400,000, if you accumulate those numbers up. And then we’ve got a substantial amount in the pipeline now and more just continuing to come through. And we’ve kind of automated a lot of the process because if we didn’t, I’m the back office. I’m the back end of this. It’s not [crosstalk 00:13:12] the engine behind it and getting seven files at once where I have to short through them and make sure all the documentation is right, it can drive you nuts. So we created an automated touch and we’re getting better at that to make life a lot easier for most of the processing to happen automatically. And the last piece of it is hey, everything’s organized, everything’s already situated automatically. I’ll just say okay, I know this funding company or this lender works best with this type of client. I’m just going to go that route. So [crosstalk 00:13:38].
Oz:All right, so let me break it down for those who might not be from the industry, so they might not be familiar with what the number. To me, those are fantastic numbers, especially pulling 15 points. And I know what it is. What it is is the leverage. You have more leverage now and the lenders do see that you can bring a ton of deals on the table. So of course they’re going to, the game kind of reverses itself. They start chasing you and offer to pay you more because you know how to read a file before you submit it. You’re not going to send them bullshit files, right? So when you send something, they know that it’s going to get an offer on the table.
Oz:So you’re saying, when I met you, it was a couple of deals. Now it is 14 deals or so and we’re only a little more than half of the month. So you still have another eight to 10 days to the month. And the funding amount is what, close to half a million by now?
Lawrence:In the pipeline live now, we have 14 that are live in the pipeline. I want to say as far as how many we’ve funded this month, we’re definitely north of 10 already. And then maybe out of all those combined, you have a couple B clients or either they’re over leveraged, they [crosstalk 00:14:48] balances or something they don’t tell me, which is like oh, by the way, yes, he has defaulted in the merchant cash advance industry before, which I don’t know until I get [crosstalk 00:14:57].
Oz:Yeah, that’s going to happen.
Lawrence:Exactly.
Oz:So then you have 14 live, and again, you’re keep adding more every single day. It’s not like you’re going to stop at this point, right? So it can be a month with 20, 25 funded deals, who knows? We still have a ton of time. So you might be in a position to break a million dollars in funding. I’m sure that’s the goal at this point, right?
Lawrence:That’s right. You want to keep going. You want to keep reaching for it. We’re never going to be satisfied. My guys here, so my partner and the team below him that he’s brought on here, they believe in me. They believe in my drive and they’ve [crosstalk 00:15:36] along for the ride as well, just as you guys have been along for the ride. They know my beginning. I’ve been very open with them. They know every single step along the way and who I am. I’ve been very transparent with them and I’ll continue to do that so they believe in me.
Lawrence:And ultimately, we’ve got a process and a system here that we’re building. We’re not looking to scale, like I can’t hire 100,000 people tomorrow because that’s going to [inaudible 00:15:56], it’s going to really suffer. I’ve learned how to see it now and it’s been a lot of long nights, but ultimately I’ve been able to grow this thing into a successful individual business to now a expanding every single day kind of scaling system that’s actually controlled. I have the right people on board. They believe in me. They see the results. They see the funding, they see the approvals. They see it happening, and ultimately we all have a vision and a goal for the down the line kind of thing that we’ve worked towards as a team every few days on our calls and we have the goals set, revenue goals individually and things like that. We’ve set the bar, and we continue to raise that bar.
Oz:Nice. I mean, yeah. I have no doubt that you’re going to kill it. You already are, because as you can see, once I first released the first video, you’ve been an inspiration to many people on YouTube. People are commenting and they’re reaching out our support. Actually it was last week I did my first mastermind in New York City with 10 individuals from the blueprint. You probably haven’t heard of that because your email didn’t go through I believe. And at that mastermind, someone was like where’s Lawrence? Do you know if he’s coming? I’m like I honestly don’t. It sucks on my end so I’ve got to find out where this dude is and we’ve got to stay connected. I came back from that mastermind and I told my team, figure out a way to find this guy.
Lawrence:That’s cool. I gave them my updated email, that way they can reach me directly and my phone number as well to reach me because I never use the personal email. I don’t even have time to check it, you know?
Oz:Yeah, I mean, you’ve built up a company right now. I didn’t know that, so I’m glad we got the email. Of course we’re going to stay connected moving forward. But this has been amazing. This month and next month, and of course at the end of the year, you guys are going to keep growing and growing. So what’s the end goal? When you guys fast forward a year, I’m sure you guys talk about this all the time, where are you guys taking this company to?
Lawrence:We’ve discussed quite a few things. I, over time, was not very confident before I started this whole thing, because I was kind of on the outs. I just wanted to get to a place where I can some sort of stability. I didn’t want financial freedom, freedom where I can go on vacations every week or every month-
Oz:[crosstalk 00:18:12] have that. You could’ve just stayed by yourself and still made $25,000 and be a happy dude.
Lawrence:Right. And when I got to that point where I saw that okay, wait a minute, I can do this on my own, then I met the right person. Now we have a partnership. Now we have an idea and a vision. They say the sky is the limit, that’s a cliché but here’s my ultimate end goal for this company. And the end goal doesn’t mean the company’s sold or the assets are sold because I know of entrepreneurs and people who create companies and great companies, and then their goal is to just ultimately sell it, the assets and start something new.
Lawrence:This is something that I’ve cultivated, not just as an entrepreneurial vision, it was more so at just such a hard time in my life, I was done. I was mentally, physically just about ready to give up. I was lucky enough, and I preach to my team, I was lucky enough to find your program on July 4th. I mean, it was only a few months ago when i really reached out to you and spoke, the introduction phone call. And to see what we’ve done, I’m fairly confident and I kind of came to a decision on what I ultimately want us to do. And because of my background, I’m not allowed to participate in the stock industry anymore. I had a lot of bad luck, a lot of bad things happened to me in that industry. So I can’t really…
Lawrence:I was really good to my clients. My clients still call me to this day to ask for advice because I didn’t just make them money, I made them a lot of money. A lot of [crosstalk 00:19:30] put the work in and I was kind of treated a certain way because I did well without there being anything to say hey, you’re a fraud, you did this wrong. So ultimately I had it taken away from me. So now my ultimate comeback is to get Woodbury Wealth Enterprises publicly traded. So I want to be on MSNBC one day. I want to sit down, I want to have Woodbury Wealth Enterprises Incorporated being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Lawrence:I know the requirements, the revenue requirements are steep, but we’ve got people are driven. And the person at the top is the most driven of all to make that happen. So I [crosstalk 00:20:03] we’re going to get to. It might not be tomorrow. It’s not going to be anytime soon, but now I’m going to be 31 next month. I’ve got a lot of time. So we’re going to lay it down, we’re going to get [crosstalk 00:20:12].
Oz:And you’re only 31. Yeah, that’s fantastic man. And you know it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it starts from the top and you’re that guy and you’re inspiring the entire team and setting that goal up so far out. Like I always mention, you’ve got to have three goals, the bare minimum, the objective where you want to go, and the stretch. Stretch should be something out there and you’re like I have no idea how am I going to get there, but I know [crosstalk 00:20:40].
Lawrence:I think that people look at you [inaudible 00:20:41] you got to be crazy for that.
Oz:Yeah. So it looks like your guy’s already structured. You have your live deals and you know your bare minimum, your objective and your stretch. That’s why I wanted to ask. I thought you were going to say something like we want to start syndication but yours was way beyond that.
Lawrence:We have that in mind short term. We’ve got an idea of how to structure it to where as we’re teaching our new employees and our new agents the role here as a school of some sort to learn this, when we feel like they get to a qualified position or a certain position where they have regular consistent production, they’re knowledgeable of all the products and everything like that, we want them to be able to participate in syndication. We’ve already established the account for that. We’ve already established a separate company. We’re funding the funding company. I didn’t mention, but we’ve established Woodbury Wealth Funding for the sole purpose of syndication because that’s ultimately a game changer when it [crosstalk 00:21:32].
Oz:Oh a game changer.
Lawrence:How you can invest your money and if you look at what you earn in a savings account these days or what I was making guys in the stock market was 7% or 8%, 8% or 9% in a year and they wanted to give me a child, one of their first born. But in this, you can syndicate a deal and you can earn 40%, 50% of your money in a three month span on a payback that’s astronomical. But yeah, that is a goal of ours short term to participate, to have our individual reps participate in it with us. We’ve already begun that.
Oz:That’s amazing man. Yeah, for those who might not know what syndication is, pretty much you get to a level in your business that you start funding partially your own deals. So instead of making 10, 15 points on a deal, you can be making three, four times more than that and determine your own rate. You get to that place, and the ROI you’re getting, I mean I don’t know if there’s anything else that’s going to pay you that much at that level. I mean, you’re from the stock exchange, you used to be a stockbroker, and I’m a real estate investor. So I don’t know any other way of making that much money other than syndication.
Lawrence:No, and a lot of the funding companies that we have as lenders, they’re also willing to front you the syndication commission.
Oz:Yeah, they are
Lawrence:[crosstalk 00:22:39] broker. So you’re at this broker, getting that deal to that funding company, but then if you say I want to kick in $10,000, they’re going to say okay, well, we’re going to charge this particular merchant or customer, I don’t know, 49% on this money. So we’ll give you 4,900 upfront as well. So your real risk of default is there if the guy defaults, but you’re minimal compared to what it would be. You’re not risking $10,000 if you implement $10,000. You’re really risking maybe half of that. But then you’ve also got the broker commission upfront. Could be 10%.
Lawrence:So it all kind of gets [crosstalk 00:23:07] sitting there putting up 10% and taking right away a deposit into your bank account of 7,000 and letting 3,000 ride as they pay you back on that money. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable.
Oz:Yeah, those are really advanced level strategies and I’m going to definitely be teaching it in my next mastermind to those who are certain levels and definitely would love to have you in that one too.
Lawrence:[inaudible 00:23:28].
Oz:Maybe not as a student, maybe as a guest at that point that you can definitely share your experience, you’ve been contributing quite a bit. A lot of people are inspired. Yeah, I’m glad that we got a chance to get connected again. I’d like to stop by and check out your company one day and meet you guys, the entire team in person.
Lawrence:You’re more than welcome. You have my email, you have my contact again.
Oz:I do.
Lawrence:We can stay in touch. If you’re in New York or you’re in the neighborhood or anything like that, just reach out. I’ll always make the time to because I appreciate what you guys have done. I’ll never forget my start and how come my company that looks up to me now, why we’re all here, why we’re all gathered, why we have a meeting today, a 6:00 meeting tonight, just overall tutorials. I presented them with a script on cold calling, one that I would classify as a basic outline. And all of this is responsible because of you and your Merchant Cash Advance Blueprint.
Lawrence:I had no doubts coming into your program, just listening to you talk. That’s why I reached out to you, because I could hear, my ear’s trained. My ear’s trained. I mean, I’ve spoken to guys on the phone. I know someone who’s dishonest or someone who I can trust. And I believe in your company and I believe in you and kind of put all I could with you and it’s paid off to this and it’s only been July. Now we’re August, September, October, we’re three months and change and it’s just astronomical the-
Oz:It’s mind boggling.
Lawrence:I just appreciate everything that you guys have given me, and again, Woodbury Wealth Enterprises is my company. But we wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you and your company, so [crosstalk 00:24:54].
Oz:Oh thank you.
Lawrence:I’ll always be willing to speak to your legitimacy and just who you are as a person and what you’ve done. I really appreciate it.
Oz:Thank you man. It’s very humbling to hear that from you. I remember that at that point when we had the conversation, I made it very uncomfortable for you, but that was for a reason. Because we’re not who we are when we’re stressed out too much. We don’t make the right decisions usually. It’s like a downward spiral and sometimes it takes another person to shake that person up and remind them who they are because you had it in you. I don’t sell anyone. I just remind them who they are and what they are capable of.
Oz:Some people see it, some people don’t see it. You saw it immediately. You jumped on it. You already had it. I didn’t do much on that end. It’s just from that point on, it was just I guess you had to hit the bottom to skyrocket to the top, right?
Lawrence:You see very clearly when you’re at the bottom. When you’re at the top sometimes when I was doing really well, I didn’t see things a certain way and that’s how come it all happened at once to me. So on my way trying to find and grasp at straws to find a way, coming across you YouTube video on July 4th, I scheduled a consultation, or I scheduled a call to get the link for it or whatever. You actually called me on July 4th, the actual holiday, which I didn’t expect from you. And I was like you know, I’ve got a schedule here for 2:00 on July 4th. I’m wondering if it’s just an automatic thing, it’s okay if he doesn’t call. And he didn’t, and I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget it.
Lawrence:I’ll always owe you a debt of gratitude for that and your company. And I’ll always be willing to attend anything you have here in New York and again, stay in constant contact and update you as we go just to show you that if it wasn’t for you and your company, my company wouldn’t be the company that’s going to eventually be publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oz:Amazing to hear that. Thank you so much. It’s very humbling to get that from you. So I don’t want to keep you long. You’re managing a large team right now. Anything, any last thoughts to wrap up for those who are listening or watching rather?
Lawrence:Yeah, I do. If you’re going to go the route that I went initially, which was you’re a one man show and you’re going to fund deals and you’re going to be comfortable with that level, just always give 100%. Never really give up on anything. And don’t waste your time would be something I’d like to say because there’s only so many minutes in every day that you get to talk to a qualified candidate. A lot of the people that we have as inbound leads, especially this capacity, a lot of them are not qualified. They’re the people that if I send their file, the one lender, they’ll be like oh man, this guy, we know this guy very well. He’s been submitted 20 times this week.
Lawrence:So ultimately when you’re on the phone with someone or if you’re going out there cultivating on the phone a new relationship with a prospect, try to get the qualifications of that prospect out of the way as early as you possibly can as far as what they’re looking for, how much money they’re looking for, what their bank statements look, which is one of those things that they base their decisions on since it’s a revenue based industry. Because if you’re talking to someone for 15 minutes or 20 minutes and then you ask them how much money were you looking for anyway? Well, $4,000 or $5,000 or they say something astronomical like $400,000, it sounds great. What was your business doing in revenues last year? Last year we did $40,000.
Lawrence:And all of a sudden you realize 25 minutes have passed and that is a killer. So I would say qualify your candidates as you speak to them. And if you do opt to go the route that I’ve opted to go as far as branching and scaling, be patient. Be willing to spend a lot of long nights. And remember, this is my baby. My heart and soul is in this. So I’m watching it grow and just be patient. You’re going to want to do 97 things at once. You’re going to come up with some creative ideas for your company. Calm it down, take priorities in your hand. And also delegate responsibility and leverage the team members and things like that because you can trust them. If you train them, you can trust them to do things as good as you, if not better than you.
Lawrence:So that’s pretty much my advice to anyone. Just stay the course and that’s it. That’s really all I can say.
Oz:Yeah, stay the course, automate it, rinse and repeat, right?
Lawrence:Automation is such a crucial piece of this puzzle because if I had to sit here and manage all the incoming applications all the way through from beginning to end and then audit them and make sure everything is there that I need or they didn’t miss a signature spot, man, I’d lose every follicle I have left up top and then I literally, your business would just slow down and implode because I wouldn’t have enough time in the day and I’d lose my mind. And I don’t want anyone to do that so offload, leverage, automate and just stay the course because this is such an amazing industry to partake in. It seems to be relatively new still in regards to other industries.
Lawrence:It’s relatively unknown to some people, and if you can offer multiple, multiple products to your customers opposed to just merchant cash advance where you say you need a truck? Maybe we can offer you equipment financing. If you have an equipment financing partner, you may fill someone’s need way better than getting them a truck with a cash advance for $60,000 where they’re going to pay back such a high amount of money in a short period of time, they may opt to say wait, you can do equipment financing? And you can, with certain FICO scores as low as 500 pretty much. And [crosstalk 00:29:51] a six year term or a three year term. And they look at you like holy crap, this guy.
Lawrence:So be a consultant. Listen to the customers and give them what they want as opposed to trying to force a square into a circle so to speak. You know what I mean?
Oz:Yeah. And plus you can’t really be a consultant if you only have one product because you’re pushing that product because that’s all you have. Becoming a consultant becomes realistic when you have an arsenal of products that you can offer them. Hey, my professional opinion is you should go with this. But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And then that’s when you cross the border of being unethical because you don’t have much of a choice left. Either you’re going to let that deal go and not make money or push it knowing that it’s not going to work for them anyways.Oz:Many people in this industry make that mistake. That’s why we’re dealing with the problems that some of the people in the industry who see this as oh, I’m a loan shark anyways. They even bring themselves down, which is really not the case, which amazes me. Just like you said, this is, to me, almost a brand new industry. I know it’s not technically but almost is. There’s many people doing it wrong. You’re not there pushing merchant cash advance. If you’ll listen to someone attentively, but that’s what you did all day long, right? So you ask questions because one thing that we know, we don’t know how much of that we have left this time. You can’t just freely just give it out to everyone because you don’t know what’s happening. At the end of the day, you feel like you’ve done some busy work but it wasn’t productive, wouldn’t you agree?
Lawrence:That’s exactly right, yeah. Motion and activity doesn’t equate to production. You can take those calls from those folks that are looking for 4,000 or the guys that submit their files across the whole country. And you can take 25 minutes with them because they’re interested and they’re receptive. But go and fight for something that’s harder and to your point, the merchant cash advance industry as a whole, yeah. I mean, this whole alternative financing this is relatively new. But as far as I’m, yeah, you agree. I think more likely, and most times in this industry, people kind of get lazy. Any merchant cash advance company I even have been familiar with, including the one that I actually worked for, it was just a must be a cash advance client and don’t spend so much time sending a nice email. Don’t spend so much time making it a fillable PDF. You’re putting too much time into it. Just send them that hard copy, let them print it and fill it out.
Lawrence:I just kept thinking of more and more things that I could implement that are just unheard of like a DocuSign patch for these guys because [crosstalk 00:32:14] they’re on the road. So we have a subscription to that which makes, part of our selling point is hey, this is the easiest process because you can complete a DocuSign package on your phone. And also, in the DocuSign package, we allow you to attach the required [inaudible 00:32:26] required bank statements, the required everything into your package. And when you complete it, it comes right to me. Now when it gets to me it’s already fully, everything that we need and require is in there, including the package. Just little things like that to make [crosstalk 00:32:38].
Lawrence:But it took a lot of time. It took money, it took effort. It takes creativity to design it. But ultimately if this is my baby and this is something that I’m going to cultivate, I’m going to give it the best I can from the very bottom starting point all the way through. And my name’s on it, again, at the end of the day. So we want our company to [crosstalk 00:32:54].
Oz:That’s it.
Lawrence:[crosstalk 00:32:54] integrity in a certain deal in this industry. And so far, we’ve gotten it with the lenders. We’ve been invited to two of the bank’s conferences for different lenders. We were invited to Miami, I think it was last weekend.
Oz:Nice.
Lawrence:There was one earlier in October. I just forget where that was. I don’t remember. I think it was in California. We were invited, we just haven’t had the time to do that. But we will be getting out there. These lenders are inviting us because of the production that we’ve done [crosstalk 00:33:18]. So we’re building that rapport.
Oz:It’s going to get more and more attractive. Again, Lawrence, again, it’s been a pleasure to see you again buddy. You’re always an inspiration. So we’ll definitely stay in touch. Maybe we’ll do a volume three in a couple of months and see where you are in your organization. Maybe we should do it at the office so we can get to know the team and things like that. I think that would be awesome. But again, I’m definitely thankful for your time and I’m sure people will appreciate seeing your face again.
Lawrence:Yeah, I’m happy that you had me. I’m happy to be speaking with you guys again. I look forward to the next time. And yeah, just stay in contact. I look forward to staying in contact with you guys. Thank you.
Oz:All right, take care buddy.
Lawrence:Take care.