Broke or Billionaire by 2030

Shane Pierson (00:03.63) Here it goes.Welcome back to Lords of Lending, where small businesses get real, strategic, and deadly honest insights into funding, scaling, and adopting faster than their competition. I’m Shane Pearson, joined as always by the mighty Stephanie Dunn and Brian Conjullier. Good morrow to you both. Good morrow. Brian, what is fun and exciting in the life of senior conjullier?Brian Congelliere (00:28.761) youWhat’s fun and exciting? The loans, buddy. The loans are exciting.Shane Pierson (00:33.262) An excessive amount of loans in fact. It’s actually, I don’t think I’ve seen business this busy in a long time. Like the number of transactions, I think I’m up to like a $90 million pipeline of different sized loans of all different sorts. And it’s a freaking headache to grind them all out because they’re just getting more more complex. Are you seeing the same thing?Brian Congelliere (00:58.736) Yeah, ton of loans. It’s crazy. People keep asking, know, people I know keep asking, you know, is the economy affecting you or, you know, I think slowing down at all. And I’m like, it’s going crazy right now.Shane Pierson (01:01.037) I’mShane Pierson (01:14.348) Yeah, oddly enough, think, Steph, you’re going to be given a presentation next week in what is it? The funeral convention or something like that.Steph Dunn (01:21.742) Yeah, I’m speaking next week on the silver tsunami. And we’ve talked about this for years about how the baby boomers are getting older and older and older. And we’ve been talking about this for 10 years and we’re here now. And so I think that’s the wave we’re seeing. I mean, that’s what I’m seeing. It’s okay. I’m ready to retire. I’m ready for my kid to take over the business. Let’s start doing this. The succession planning that we’ve all been waiting for is here.Brian Congelliere (01:46.564) Yeah, a lot of the acquisitions that I’ve funded lately have all been older folks getting rid of the business. Kids don’t want to take it over, so they’re selling it off. And I was actually on Reddit, the Reddits this morning.Shane Pierson (02:04.046) The Reddit.Steph Dunn (02:04.838) You read it on the Reddit.Brian Congelliere (02:06.608) And someone was saying that exact thing. That actually they were saying to your point Steph, were saying this guy was asking, yeah, I would like to buy something in the next three to five years. And these people were commenting three to five years, it’s going to be done. Exactly.Shane Pierson (02:23.5) Yeah, we’ll be gone. Good luck. Get on the freaking boat now. You’re going to miss the opportunity.Steph Dunn (02:23.586) Yeah, we’ll be doing something else.Steph Dunn (02:30.906) Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting because there was a little wave there of startups after COVID. And now it’s why start something from scratch when you could just buy something that’s already been around now for a few years. Like buy that, optimize that and grow that.Shane Pierson (02:46.402) Well, that’s our biggest selling point when we go, when we’re out in the market talking to any small business owners that they are, if anything, your risk is lower and coming from banker who constantly is trying to mitigate risk, right? That’s our whole thing. But it’s easier any day of the week for to try to get somebody money to buy a business than it is for them to start one up. There’s a few, few nuances to that when you’re hyper experienced in it, but the majority of people that have this brilliant concept to try to go start something.are going to see a lot larger mountain decline from the paperwork standpoint, from proving the risk is worth taking to a bank, as opposed to just buying something that already has some cashflow and even changing it, morphing it, trying to convert it into something that’ll generate the cashflow that you want. yeah, think that’s going to be the play that any of the customers we’re talking to now can maximize their potential profits in the next three to five years. So…In fact, our storyline kind of takes us down that pathway today. And we’re going to, we’re going to set up two different types of discussions. One will be what, what 2030 will look like for the small business owner and give you an example, tell you a fun story. The AI came up with this idea of calling it Vanessa. So I don’t know why Vanessa was the name, right? being the name of the successful business owner. mean, no, no, no issues with the person with the name Vanessa, butSteph Dunn (04:03.066) Vanessa!Shane Pierson (04:10.006) On the other side, Derek was the name of the failure, failure business that we’re going to talk about. Derek makes sense. I don’t see the collaboration between, again, even that’s out there that might listen to this, go to town, meant, know, rip us a new one for it, but it’s all AI’s fault because we had them come up with a fun story after talking to it for 45 minutes. So, okay.Steph Dunn (04:15.068) don’t think it makes sense.Brian Congelliere (04:17.199) Rick.Steph Dunn (04:20.988) But thisSteph Dunn (04:30.94) Anyone by the name of Alexa can’t do anything anymore because you walk into any house and anyone who calls her by her name, the bot is responding.Shane Pierson (04:40.526) the robot in the other room starts saying, I help you? No, damn it. I love it. So, okay, so we can even change the name on it live instead of Vanessa. What should we call it? Steph, we’ll call it Stephanie. The future ready seller, the perfect business in five years and is specifically the e-commerce brand. I could say Steph, it’s good. What’s your, do you have a middle name, Steph?Steph Dunn (04:46.46) So now Vanessa needs to change her name too.Steph Dunn (04:55.676) No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,Brian Congelliere (04:57.562) The successful business.Steph Dunn (05:09.776) Dawn.Shane Pierson (05:11.234) Don? How about Don? Let’s go with Don.Steph Dunn (05:14.342) Don can be, yeah, Don Corleone, you know?Shane Pierson (05:16.514) Very sure. Okay. Dawn. So instead of saying, so if you’ve got the, if you’ve got the storyline Steph, go ahead and open it up. So big picture. When we talk about a 2030 ready business, it’s, it’s about kind of like flying cars or like metaverse stories or anything. It’s about real time awareness, the dynamic decision making and really a predictive action. So thinking about what my business is like if I’m out in the market today, buying a business or I have one existing, I’m thinking, how do I prepare for that year?Let’s tee up some of the ways that a business might be successful and like some of the great things that are happening now in the world that we predict will really change how you do business. So Steph, give us that fun storyline.Steph Dunn (05:53.5) Well, it’s that guy that told us about business planning and how to break a correct business plan. He said, think about where the market will be in five years. All right. So on that, if we think about where the, where businesses will be in five years from now and how consumers are going to spend and how companies need to operate in five years from now, we’re the technological advances are moving so rapidly now that in five years.It’s hard to fathom, but I really think that automation will probably be 80 % of all business.Shane Pierson (06:32.014) Oh, I mean, do you have, so do you have that story Steph, that the one that was sent over in the Google Drive?Steph Dunn (06:38.62) the narrative story. Vanessa runs a sustainable pet accessory. All right. Dawn runs a sustainable pet accessory e-commerce brand. She started small, built on Shopify, niche Instagram following, handmade products, but she made one crucial decision early on. Her business wouldn’t rely on her brain alone. By 2025, she built a tech stack that thinks here’s what that looks like.Shane Pierson (06:40.302) Thank you.Yeah, go ahead. Let’s read it. Go for it. But instead of Vanessa, we’re calling it Dawn.Steph Dunn (07:09.052) Her site runs multilingual by default, not with freelancers, but with AI translation that localizes content for six regions. And AI assistant scans TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube daily for emerging trends, competitor mentions, and search behavior. When hemp pep callers started trending, she already had a prototype listed within 72 hours. Genius! Customer service is handled 100 % by AI. Yes!Shane Pierson (07:31.31) That’s amazing.Steph Dunn (07:37.98) trained on her tone and brand voice, it relies instantly or replies instantly, escalates only if needed. Boy, what’s that? Lord knows we can’t train humans to do that. Inventory levels adjust automatically based on weather forecast, sales velocity, and marketing campaigns triggers. And pricing updates daily, auto-indexed against her competitors. And her AI tells her when her profit margins drop on an SKU and when her ad creative fatigues.Shane Pierson (07:48.428) No kidding.Steph Dunn (08:06.34) when her average order values start to slip. Wow. Dawn doesn’t check dashboards. She gets alerts. She doesn’t react to reviews. She preempts them. That’s the power of what we call a self-aware business. I want it.Shane Pierson (08:22.734) Yeah. I want to own that business. Makes you, makes you question what you do on a daily basis. Just based off of all of that being possible. And I mean, Brian, you’re huge in AI. You have like 17 different models open at any given time. Every time you’re over at my house, even just hanging out for the weekend, whatever. He’s the, Brian is the quintessential AI like fanatic. And I’m sure it’s become cliche. Everyone keeps talking about AI, but I really think thatBrian Congelliere (08:26.864) youShane Pierson (08:49.792) Everything that we’re talking about here is it’s on its way. It’s going to happen and businesses that are prepped are already there. So how do you see this work? Where have you already started to see it now that people could take advantage of even?Brian Congelliere (09:01.04) I think a lot of this stuff that Dawn is using in her business has been things that have been done for years now, right? By big companies, right? Pricing on airline flights, pricing on Amazon for Pete’s sake. Everything, there’s been programs that have been written to dynamically change pricing anddo all of that for you, I think with AI now, it makes it more accessible for this small business owner, for that one to two person shop that, you know, they’re just starting out. I remember I was talking to a borrower that sold a little computer and it was just him and he hired little by little, hired one person to help with fulfillment andjust grew the business steadily. And this type of scenario, this type of automation is completely accessible for someone like that nowadays. All of this stuff. It’s crazy. Everything, you know, I watch the YouTubes and everything on it. There’s constantly people coming out with new content about the latest AI chatbots that can handle all of your customer service. You teach them, train them.and they do everything for you. You don’t need people, sales agents, everything. So you can literally go from start to finish on an entire product sales process using AI only.Shane Pierson (10:35.139) Yeah.Shane Pierson (10:47.872) I mean, that’s interesting about like, think what’s, what’s stopping this from being a current reality for a small business owner today is that it’s all like currently separated from one another. So it’s like that have a little tool over here to do this, a little tool over there to do that. And it, it’s hard to, unless you know what you’re looking for, it’s really actually hard to find all of that stuff and figure out how to get all of it to talk together. So I think the convergence of all of these different functionalities into one type of essentially business operator,Brian Congelliere (10:49.657) It’s glorious.Shane Pierson (11:17.89) I mean that that term is used AI operator that that needs to happen. And I think it’s coming where someone can come in and, and really dominate every one of these elements and provide that service. mean, Microsoft has a bunch of different tools that integrate and they do, they’re great at a couple things, but everything else is kind of just, okay, right? Like options that they have, whether it’s a CRM or whatever else. And it’s hard to make a one size fits all product to every single industry because of all the different nuances of how those things operate.So they’ve done a great job just on the existing tool basis that they have and utilizing co-pilots, try to get everything to communicate across all of that. But something that functions this well for somebody who’s like an e-commerce brand or hell, even any type of retailer to be able to see current up-to-date financials at any given point. You pull it up on your phone, whatever you can ask the AI agent on your phone to tell you, like, I see that becoming normal life. Now that iPhones have AI embedded,and all the different versions of AI that are out there now, just constantly leveling up to try to one up each other and be the next hottest product. That’s right, is just going to exponentially increase the availability for this to be really plug and play. And I want to, I want, I would love to see more businesses operate with this type of functionality. Talk about the scale of the exit strategy. Once you’ve built a business like that, you can say, yep, got my business operator just rolling this. Honestly, if I had that kind of a business, I wouldn’t want to exit it.I just use that thing as a damn ATM more than anything else. Like why would you sell something that functions as clearly? I mean, there’s still inherent risks and you need to make sure you have trust in the AI to be able to live on the other end of that, to actually be able to realize that the data you’re getting is true in real time. And you got to make sure the infrastructure is in place. I feel without that, without the current framework of today’s world, not having all of these talking to each other yet is going to be thewhat stops somebody from in the next three to six months from implementing it. But we’ve got to start now. We’ve got to be reaching towards it. So what are some ways you think that a guy buying a business today, let’s use that example. We’ll say Dawn. Let’s say Dawn was out buying a business and she’s out looking at e-commerce brands. right now Amazon has not even e-commerce, let’s just say a retail business, one that has a product that they love that they’re doing.Steph Dunn (13:39.161) Shane, you’re moving out of camera.Shane Pierson (13:42.101) No, it’s not out of camera. It’s just the square of what you hear. So depending on how it records. No, I got it. I’ll try not to move around so much.Steph Dunn (13:47.593) Yeah, so let’s talk about…You need, and you know what? You need an AI camera that follows your head.Shane Pierson (13:58.414) Boom, nailed it. I think that’s my next purchase. So I want to hear, what do you guys think about the, what could be done today to turn this on? What are the opportunities to look for if you’re out buying a business today? Or you’re somebody that wants to go buy a business. I think that’s the critical component. Think about, other than just buying something that’s already producing money. think Brian, this morning you were talking about this acquisition from Reddit. That was a perfect example. Some old 80 year old dude selling a business. Tell us about that one.Brian Congelliere (14:28.056) Yeah, so it was just a quick comment. I was looking for stuff. I just peruse on there to respond to people about SBA loans usually and just chime in and because, you know, most people have literally zero clue. So when you’re out there responding to people and actually providing value, it’s like really helpful for them. And they’re like, whoa, this is amazing. And it’s just stuff that we do on the daily. So it’s not anything.Shane Pierson (14:28.298) Yes, I’m sure.Steph Dunn (14:52.668) likeBrian Congelliere (14:57.102) that we think is spectacular, but I was reading one of these comments about buying a business and about this silver tsunami. And one of the comments said, I did exactly this. I bought a nursery business. think he said he put down 70 grand, got a loan for 700 and it was an old business, like non-functional website. And he literally four X’d his profit becauseHe implemented, he just literally took it online and implemented some simple automation processes, online marketing, better branding experience, customer experience in general, and Forexed it. mean, someone asked him like, I mean, are we talking like a small amount, a tiny amount of profit? And he’s like, well, I’ll just give you an idea. My revenue is like five million bucks a year at this point. So.I mean, that’s a pretty decent return in like, I think he said he did it like a year or two ago.Shane Pierson (16:02.84) Interesting. Yeah, to see that aggressive of an increase in that short period. Good help.Brian Congelliere (16:05.679) Yeah.Steph Dunn (16:06.532) Yeah, I think if you can find, you know what we need? We need like an AI butler. And if you can find an AI butler, I know that’s what I need. I need a butler that tells me, right, if you want to buy this HVAC company, you’re going to need these, you you upload the company financials and you say, right, AI butler, what am I going to need to transform this business?12 to 24 months implementing any type of AI tools available. Cause right now, like in the morning I get TLDR AI newsletter every morning and every morning I’m scrolling through it. I’m like, my goodness, there’s 5,000 more AI apps. can’t keep up, know, but if I had a butler that told me, all right, this business you can optimize with these seven AI tools. Cause you’re right. There are, there are so many and you need one for this and one for that.this, right? So if my butler could tell me exactly what I needed for that business, each business to four times my revenue in a year, that’s what I need. And I would be on the hunt. Entrepreneurs right now, if I’m an entrepreneur, I’m perusing Reddit daily to find small businesses, legacy businesses that are for sale that haven’t yet optimized their businesses with any technology. I mean, think about the goldmine that we’re sitting on in America.Shane Pierson (17:31.874) yeah, you’ve got them, got BizBizell. Reddit, you might have a hard time. I think that tends to feed millennials and below, or like as far as age group goes, on who’s actually on Reddit. Like those are the dudes that just championed it and won the game, like Brian was saying. But yeah, you go to BizBizell, any of the web-based things that are out there, hell, you could even start just looking around for business. Google, Facebook, it makes freaking offers. You can do it.Steph Dunn (17:53.006) Look!Brian Congelliere (17:54.087) Google. Yeah.Steph Dunn (17:55.964) or your local community guys, like in your local communities, know, pay attention to the small businesses that have been the manual businesses that are for sale, that have a book of business, a local following, you know, loyal customer base that you could buy and four times it in 12 to 24 months, just with automation.Shane Pierson (18:17.496) Yeah. And it’s, I think even the tool is available now to be able to start analyzing information that way. I mean, I think about what I could use as a banker if I had the availability, but most banks still kind of need to catch up to this, to be able to take all the data that we have to analyze for a business, which is the normal due diligence stuff. We’re getting tax returns, we’re getting financials on a company where, mean, if you think about our relationship with any buyer or any borrower of a loan, SBA loan,we’re taking a 90 % of the risk on this acquisition, right? On any business they go in, we’re going to go up to 90%. And so we have the most on the line, even though, we’re not even touching the operations of the business. So we, yes, we take personal guarantees when we have, or on any of these deals, personal guarantees, and we’ll have to maybe take a lean on a home, but none of that stuff’s paying back the deal in the end. We’re losing money if we have to go take back that loan. But the way that we have to analyze it now could even be severely or very quickly automated.but the value add is creating that narrative for the customer now. Hey, on top of what you’re doing to buy this business, and we know that it makes money historically, and maybe some of these fun ideas you have, hey, here’s what we figured out this business could do from the automation perspective and actually provide that use to the customer. Like help them to see that they could functionally do that. Just knowing a couple of the metrics would be awesome to be able to upload and say, this is a business, here’s my storyline and the summary on what the business is doing.What are some great ways to automate this now and prepare it for 2030? I mean, we can just know how to generate the prompt well enough. You could actually start to get feedback on ways to integrate AI today. So I think that tool is one that everyone should use. know I talk to borrowers constantly and trying to use that to help prepare just simple business plans, not the more granular ones that might need some more thought, that projections. Anytime you have a question that you’re going to go ask the bank, you might as well just go ask Chachi PT or Grok or something.Steph Dunn (19:54.236) youShane Pierson (20:12.622) because you’ll probably get just as clear of an answer, if not a clearer one, than the bank are trying to sell you something. So that tool, that data is available to start implementing the adjustments now to be able to transition that business ahead in years to come. And B, be that dawn that was talked about in the story that can wake up and have a perfect view of your financials at any given point in time to know your profit margin on one product. Most small businesses owners, they don’t have that kind of clarity. They’re still using Excel files.Which leads me to the next storyline, Brian. This is Derek, the failing, falling behind business owner. Let’s go through that.Brian Congelliere (20:51.277) Yes.Okay, so here’s the story, here’s the scenario. Derek sells pet accessories, extremely solid stuff. He’s on Etsy, has a loyal base, built it all himself, but that’s the problem. He’s still doing everything by himself. No automation, no CRM, no email retargeting, customer service is his inbox, fulfillment done out of his garage every night while he’s watching reruns or Netflix.Shane Pierson (21:12.686) youBrian Congelliere (21:23.984) Apparently the AI is still stuck in the 90s. He refuses to use AI because he doesn’t trust bots and has no analytics. So let’s see. The issue is this, when the AI generator reviews start flooding his space, Derek didn’t know how to respond. His customers lost trust because they couldn’t tell what was real. His competitor was running influencer campaigns and product drops based on real time sentiment data.Shane Pierson (21:24.096) Yep.Brian Congelliere (21:54.48) Derek was still posting the same Insta photos from 2022. By 2030, Derek’s business is failing. It’s forgotten. You know, it’s basically dying a slow death at that point. So.Shane Pierson (22:11.106) Makes you wonder how he’s going to the hell as he’s still in business at that point. I mean, even today, I don’t even know how that business would survive, let alone flipping 2030.Steph Dunn (22:12.164) That’s depressing, That sounds…Steph Dunn (22:19.27) Well, it’s not.Brian Congelliere (22:21.294) Yeah, it’s not. It’s just the slow death. You know, they have maybe the loyal customer base that they built up, but then it gets surpassed by everything else. The brand starts to fall off and other brands emerge and take their place.Steph Dunn (22:40.646) Guys, it’s not that far off from a lot of businesses in America today. Like think about this. And even, even institutions that we all work, have worked for in the past or mid-sized companies that don’t have a CRM, don’t have email retargeting, customer service is an actual person that gets an inbox, that has an inbox and has to manually respond. I mean,I would say the financial services industry is probably pretty much to a T what I just described. Client services in inbox, there’s no automation, very little CRM, and there’s no AI built into any of it.Shane Pierson (23:27.202) And people are I think are still scared that they don’t trust the bots. That’s that’s essentially it I’m gonna have And I get the banking world is going to has plenty of regulations and they’re slow to adopt and always have been slow to adopt And I know that from government regulation side that has a big impact. Hence why within our industry the SBA world The previous administration had tried to open up for like fintechs And you know great idea to try to see if we can get some innovation into a very staticSteph Dunn (23:32.4) Don’t, that’s it.Shane Pierson (23:56.654) slow growth market. But I mean, that came with its own problems. And there’s a shake up in our industry and what’s happening in the lending world. But I think that it is inevitably coming and regardless of what framework or, I’d say, old school way of thinking still bars it, those companies are very quickly going to get left in the dust. The bank’s going to get left in the dust and translating right back to our customers. The same thing. If we’re not seeing this, I think this might become a normal part of our underwriting.for the bank. Think about it. Like what tools of operation, like automation do you have in this business? What have you built into it? That should be a discussion we have right now on ways that we know when somebody’s going to take this over that they’re thinking ahead. They’re not just thinking, how do I keep the status quo with this business? I’m probably going to incorporate that one. I’m going to start to ask and talk to me about how the hell you’re going to automate this business, which relies a lot more on the business plans that we have to collect from people that are going in to buy it or even people just applying for a loan for heaven’s sake.Steph Dunn (24:42.62) youSteph Dunn (24:55.58) Well, we need to apply this to our business as well. It has to be reciprocal, right? So when we’re talking to our small business owners and entrepreneurs across the country and we’re asking them, okay, the business you’re buying, talk me through the automation that exists now and what your plans are for the future. And what CRM is in there now and what’s the plan for the future. And then client experience, what kind of digital tools do you have today? What’s the plan for the future? And oh, by the way, here’s how we do it on our end.Shane Pierson (24:55.704) So I think that.Shane Pierson (25:10.702) Mm-hmm.Steph Dunn (25:25.946) Like we have to be able to lead by example, right? In the financial services industry, we need to lead by example with all those questions. We almost need a checklist for ourselves and for the client that asked these questions. And it should be incorporated in the business plan. There’s an ours guys.Shane Pierson (25:43.416) No, that’s brilliant. it’s, yeah, that’s, if we’re going to go out and sell it, we’ve got to be, we got to have moral authority to do it. That’s the phrase like back 20 years ago, something like that.Steph Dunn (25:51.194) Well, yeah.Steph Dunn (25:55.6) Yeah, we can’t sell cars. We can’t sell cars and show up at the dealership on a bicycle.Shane Pierson (26:01.26) No, that’s exactly it. It really work. It’s like, you really don’t know what this car is like to just selling me garbage. Like that’s, that’s the whole, whole concept of it. Now there’s one point I want to pull back to Brian that was in this story. it’s one that we’ve talked about, the not understanding what the market is. And we had this conversation earlier today and understanding where customers are, like how to find the customers and how to like be able to approach them the right way and kind of an existing shift that’s happening that I thinkAnybody buying a business now needs to understand the way that their customers thinking and how to how to keep them retain them and build more the shift from from relying on typical advertisements to More social and cultural influence on the decisions we make so from the influencer model to theto the, not necessarily the review base, but these subgroups like you, like you’re spending time on Reddit, Brian, and there’s Discord and YouTube has ways to create, create a narrative of understanding around product decisions when you’re making purchases. I think especially in the more expensive product market, right? So we get into the a hundred plus or the service base. It’s a hundred, more than a hundred dollars that somebody’s going to make a little bit more expensive decision. How can somebody begin to adapt?to what the current world is doing now so that they don’t miss that pendulum swing back towards kind of an authentic approach to purchasing items. Does that make sense? What I’m asking there? So where do you see, and this is leading away from some of the chats that we had built into this, but what are some areas, what’s a way that a customer might be able to…Nope, let me ask this question again. What’s a way that a customer, nope, one more time. What’s a way that a business owner can adapt their sales approach to be focused on the way customers are going to look for information about products today? Does that make sense?Brian Congelliere (27:59.792) I a lot of it, so people when they buy, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, when you buy something, first thing you do, if it’s a decently sized priced product, you’re gonna ask other people, right? Other people that you know and trust. And I think those types of communities where you can access that because reviews now,Shane Pierson (28:05.838) youBrian Congelliere (28:29.346) Every time I see a company that has 4.5 star reviews and higher and like 300 plus reviews on Google, first thing that goes through my mind is, they paid for those reviews and they filtered out the bad ones. So it’s not really like you’re saying. There’s not really an authentic way for people to actually tell. And I thinkNow, sadly, those who are not as informed or technically savvy probably look at that and go, great reviews. Awesome. I’m to go to that business. And so it probably will continue to work to some degree. But I think that more people, there’s a shift more towards just finding trusted community voices, you know, talking to a mutual friend of ours who worked in marketing.he was mentioning to me that a lot of folks in their research now, when they’re looking at things before they buy, they are going to places like Reddit, Discord, community groups, Facebook groups, places where they know that there’s people in there who are chiming in based on actual experience, as opposed to some paid bot or before bots it was…someone in a foreign country leaving fake reviews, right?Shane Pierson (29:55.98) makes me think of, so I’m a big dude, if anyone hasn’t figured that out yet, relatively wide. wear a… Well, all of the above. I got a large melon. I mean, I classify myself as reconfiguration of a rhino. In fact, I need to show you my…Steph Dunn (30:01.028) Like as in here or?Steph Dunn (30:12.102) tall and large store.Shane Pierson (30:18.722) my representation of what I feel I look like internally. is, this is, this is my rhino. This is very, very beautiful spirit animal, but this is generally how I feel about my stature whenever I think about myself. and when I go shop for clothing in any given point in time, I I’ve got to go shop in the big size. And if you go on Amazon and you try to buy a piece of clothing off Amazon, I’m not sure if anyone’s ever had this experience before. It doesn’t matter what size they put on there. It still feels like you’re putting on a small.Steph Dunn (30:25.296) That’s your spirit animal.Steph Dunn (30:46.908) HaShane Pierson (30:47.662) Just think about like a just just trying to sleeve the sausage a little bit too tight and it was supposed to be a double xl Doesn’t work very well, right? So I Naturally have to go look on reddit and go to youtube and I search all over the place anywhere But the the reviews to try to find something that fits me So I might be considered a unique customer to the natural clothing retailer of today but I think How does that guy find me?Steph Dunn (31:14.159) to the chart.Shane Pierson (31:17.006) How does that business owner find this guy who’s shopping all over the place? And if he’s just focusing in on that one element, how sticky is that in the next three to five years? Are they going to still be around? They got to change their strategy. They got to find a different way to get the big rhino guy and get the right clothes on him, not sell him a small size pretending to be in the double XL. what do we do? How do we change the minds of the business owner to make this a priority? knowIt’s worth having a conversation even when we’re underwriting them. But what nuggets of wisdom could we hand down to these people?Steph Dunn (31:53.052) And that’s where automation comes in for sure. so I sit here and I chuckle listening to you guys who just discovered the social network of the women, the moms reviews. This has been going on for hundreds of years, guys. Just so everybody knows, women for hundreds of years have been exchanging Intel on goods and services for hundreds of years. So when I’m online shopping for some Spanx,Shane Pierson (32:09.07) HaThat’s brilliant.Steph Dunn (32:23.086) I’m not looking at Reddit reviews. Yeah, let me see if that random stranger liked those Spanx. I’m texting my girlfriends and saying, Hey, has anyone bought these Spanx lately? How do they feel? And are they true to size? Like that’s what we’re doing. We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. So finally, you know what has happened? There has been that silver tsunami you talked about where the transfer of wealth has has been happening and is going to happen even more.Women influence 80 % of all purchasing in the world. And we’re talking big and small, right? So women now are doing the buying and have the purse strings and women have this social network of trusted advisors that share Intel. So if I’m a small business, how do we tap into that? Well, we’re tapping into that with AI and technology and automation because we can see people’s buying patterns. And before I even know I need a new pair of jeans,I’m getting an alert on Amazon saying, the jeans you bought last time are on sale. Do you want another pair? And I’m like, ooh, that’s nice. Sure. I’ll take another pair of those.Shane Pierson (33:27.372) Me up.makes you think that if you’re not taking advantage of the tools that do exist in that market, like it’s, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity now, but you’re going to be completely off the boat. Like your ability to scrap up sales down the road is basically gone. mean, that’s the fear that I have for most businesses that aren’t preparing today. So, okay. think that’s probably good lengthwise. I’m going to jump into the outro here, but any points you want point out.Steph Dunn (33:54.107) Yeah.I think that’s good. Look, I say we shoot more and more and more of this and have more frequency. It’s all about the frequency, Perfect.Brian Congelliere (34:06.256) 20 to 30 minute segments.Shane Pierson (34:08.718) We’re going to keep it short. So I’ll do a quick outro in the end here that just kind of wraps it up. So.There’s an interesting point that kind of that where it says segment four wraps with embedded capital. Do see that section? So I’m going to, it’s, if you scroll down before the outro, this look at this Intuit, Stripe and Shopify are already embedding capital into their ecosystems. That part, which I think is going to be a topic on its own. Like if you, if you’re banking with any of these guys, or if you’re using any of these, get ready, you’re going to start seeing stuff utilizing this the correct way is the difference between you getting a loan or not. Right. So.Um, yeah, embedded capital. All right. So let me, let me, okay. So here’s what’s wild is that banks might not even be a part of the picture in about five years. This is an interesting, like interesting way of thinking about our future. There’s, there’s companies like Intuit, Stripe, and some of like Shopify, and all of them already have like embedded capital built into their ecosystem. If you’re, if you’re on Amazon, you probably get, if you’re doing well on Amazon, you’re getting hit constantly with their advertisements telling you toSteph Dunn (34:46.63) There you go. Well, there’s the line you just said it, Shane. That was perfectly said.Shane Pierson (35:16.59) Get a loan so you can buy more inventory, put more SKUs on. They know because you have a good conversion rate because all of that data is readily available to them. So how you use these systems is a doorway into new capital that you may not have had before. So you won’t just apply for that money. You’re really going to be offered it based on those numbers in real time. that alone shows you that’s where the money is, not just going around and talking to Bob behind the…the bank stand saying, yes, I’ll take your money. Let me go talk for 45 minutes to an hour and we’ll wait three and a half months to get all your paperwork and maybe get you a loan down the road. It’s going to be instantaneous because I know over the last three months, me being into it, that you have been cash flowing like a beast and I’m hooked into your bank account. So I know all of your numbers and how much profit you’re putting out. Sure. I’ll give you $300,000. Here’s clicks in. There’s the money. And I know I’m going to get it back because I’m going to set it up on autopay to just auto withdraw out of your account. This is already happening.So there is capital in those environments being controlled and how you, step into them and making sure you’re organized will be the difference between you have an access to it or not. So the story here with Dawn and Derek, it’s, it’s just isn’t fiction really. It’s just really early in that process. So the businesses that win aren’t faster, they’re smarter. The being ready for that, that five year period, hell being ready for 12 months from now is the key to your business’s success.and finding ways to access the knowledge like we’re spitting out here of AI integration and ways that banks are trying to get you money is critical. You’re actually succeeding the way that you know your business can. Just get prepared, be ready for it. So this is Lords of Lending. Make sure to push the subscribe button. This is where the future isn’t something that we actually fear. It’s just something that we fund. See you next time.We did it guys, we did it.