An Army of Normal Folks - Travis Moody: Outcompeting Payday Lenders (Pt 2)

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

In the state of Tennessee, payday lenders can charge interest rates upwards of 459%. Travis Moody and his nonprofit Forward Memphis are on a mission to outcompete them, charging only 10%. In only 20 months, they’ve helped 600 families save a total of $800k!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with An Army Normal, folks. We continue now with part two of our conversation with Travis Moody right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. I've got 140 employees. Okay, and I have some guys that work in the office, but I'm in the manufacturing business. 95% of the people I employ are outside. And it's 20 degrees outside right now. All right? They're outside in that working.

And in Memphis, when it gets 110 and it's 86% humidity, they're outside in that working too. Right. They're working around loud, greasy, dusty equipment. They're on forklifts, they're pulling lumber, they're getting splinters in their hand. If they're over by the kills, those things heat up to 160 degrees and spit out Speme if they're at the boiler same thing. It's hard work, right? and I appreciate the people work for me and I really do try to do the best I can bomb but

the inconvenient reality is this of a business Profits are a necessary measure of any business to success and without profits you ain't gonna have a business You're not having any of those jobs, right? So you might want to pay people a whole lot more money, but you can't because your business has got to be profitable to sustain you yourself your employees and everything else and so I else. And so I want to pay people more if I can. But you know, if the market for forklift driver is $14.50, I might can pay a really good one 15 or 16. But I can't pay him a whole lot

more than that. Because if I did, I can't compete with my competitors, right. So the reality is there are blue collar workers and always will be. But they work hard. And any man or woman that shows up and works 40 hours a week, in any job should not live in poverty. So I want to make sure that I'm always paying my people, even the newest lowest paid person works for me will not make a dollar figure that at the end of the year, if they work their 40 every week for 52 weeks, they're going to get two weeks vacation, they're going to get insurance and they're going to get an income that is at least above the federal poverty level.

I think I have a responsibility as a business owner to provide that atmosphere. And I do and sometimes to my own personal detriment financially, but I do. And then they get a flat tire and they have to decide what do I do to get this $300 tire? Because if I don't get that tire fixed, I can't get my car and go to work. If I don't go to work, I can't keep the lights on or then they get a sick baby or then they get in trouble with something when their lights go out. And I do like most businesses offer to help my employees with loans. I don't charge them a dime interest, but I cannot allow them to have more than their

next week's net paycheck amount and then allow them to pay it off $10, $20 a week, right? I do that. And I think most businesses try to do that also. But what happens if they need more than that? They don't have an outlet. And so they go to payday loans, title loans, cars for cash, all this other mess. Anything says, now pay cash, advance, title, any of those are bad. So that's my perspective and I can't tell you how many times in the last 20 years

I've had people come to me in tears that they were tore up and in trouble. So I'm gonna let you tell our listeners How this day pay payday lending title stuff is both predatory, how it crushes people, how it puts them in a place they can never get out of, and how typically these are not ragged folks. These are hardworking blue collar people, nurses, police officers, that end up literally facing losing their homes

because of these places. So I set it up for you, you go. So for the listeners who do not understand what a payday loan is, it means that this person didn't have enough money, they couldn't get a loan so they are at the normal bank so they go to a non-traditional place. And they can charge in Tennessee up to 459%.

So say that again. 459%. 459% and the state says that's legal. State says that's legal. These payday loans must have really strong lobbies. Yes, so actually the lobbyists for payday loans, they spend more money in Nashville than FedEx. And you know FedEx is the largest company.

Are you kidding me? So they spend a lot of money making sure that these laws stay in existence. That's a whole nother story. That's almost illegal. That feels that. And I think what we're doing is creating a pathway, an alternative to that. Because don't even give me the pathway yet. Please let my listeners understand. Tell me some stories of folks. an alternative to that because don't even give me the pathway yet please let

my listeners understand tell me some stories of folks tell us what these these lenders do and how it cripples folks so so I'll give you one that came this morning before I got here cuz kidding this there was a teacher who borrowed $3,000. This teacher is paying back $433 a month in fees. So over a year, they're gonna pay $5,000 in fees. They still owe $3,000. The principal's not even touched? Unless they pay over $433, they're just paying back fees.

That comes out to be about 700% interest. How is that even legal? It shouldn't be. But it's... So she goes and gets a $3,000 loan to get out of... And what's a teacher in Memphis schools make, 50, 60? Yeah, about $5,000 a month. Okay, $6000 a year a living a decent living. She gets in trouble needs three grand. What is it a title loan or what kind of loan signature loan? This is a payday. So it's paid every two weeks. So every paycheck, every paycheck she has to go back and basically you restart it every two weeks. And so she's paying how much money? 433 a month.

And not touching the principal. So you never get out of it. And this is a hardworking person, obviously educated because they are her teacher, but think of how it's gonna affect her. How effective can she be as a teacher if she's worried about whether she's gonna lose her, how effective can she be as a teacher if she's worried about whether she's going to lose her, her place to live?

Uh, we had a, uh, and we see a lot of teachers, a lot of the people who come go to petty loans, they're normal people. There are people there again, like you mentioned, nurses, they work at FedEx or they're, um, forklift driver or they're a police officer. Um, but a great number of my teachers, we get probably one out of four or five people that we serve are teachers. What's a title loan?

So a title loan is typically based off of a car. So if they own a car outright, they basically go to a title loan place and say I wanna borrow money on this car, maybe $2,000. The car is worth 8,000 and they give them a loan of 2000. Uh, but they're charging them an interest rate of maybe 275%. So they hold the title? Yes. So if I got it, if I got it paid for, uh, 2007, 17, Altimaima that's worth 10 grand, right?

I go to a title store and I hand you my title. I say, now I'm signing my title over to U.S. Collateral. You're giving me $2,000. And I'm going to pay you how much? I'm going to pay you $3 or $400 a month? So we had a lady who works in a school in, in north Memphis. Uh, and she's, she's worked as part of the administration. She had a car, someone in her family passed away.

Her mom convinced her to get a title loan on her car for $2,000. Her mom was going to pay it off. Paid it. Well, her mom wasn't making the payments. And so they told they, they took the car. They came in and into our house while payments. And so they took the car. They came into her house while she was asleep and they picked the car up. Now she can't get to work. She owes them $2,000.

And we went to- How much has she been paying on it? She was paying, well, she wasn't paying it. She was, her mom was supposed to pay it. But it never did. Yeah, the fee was 179 every two weeks. So that's $350 a month. And you ain't touching the principal.

And so we just thought we needed to do something so that this lady can get to work. And she had all good intentions. So we gave her, we, we went and bought her title back, you know, these places that say, get your title back, they're not your friend and we had to help. Most of the people come to us. It's typically an emergency. It's their cars being repossessed, they're being evicted or their lights been cut off it's they don't come to us because they need to go on vacation. It's typically an emergency Okay, so

You're standing in the parking lot of the church saying these people go in here to pray They come outside to get prayed on and you're mad Because you see four of these establishments literally from the parking lot of the church in Hickory Hill. Right. And two of the best churches in Memphis. And my heart was just out for them. And so we created this collaboration.

We were able to partner with churches who outsource their benevolence to us, partner with banks who provide funding that allows us to provide the capital to people. We can do up to $5,000 to people in need and nonprofit organizations that help us throughout the whole process. We're like the emergency room. If somebody gets sick, you know, they wanna go to the doctor, but if they're about to die,

they go to the emergency room. And that's what we are. We'll be right back. So, what Ford Memphis does now is you teach financial literacy and you also provide a backboard for folks who are struggling at a reasonable interest rate. So what we do is again, we're the emergency room doctor. We go in and quickly assess their situation. We want, we, we understand, you know, okay, you make $4,000 a month, but you're spending 6,500.

Even if we paid you a rent this month, next month, you're in the same situation. So we come up with a sustainable plan that they can make it without us. And, uh, and it could be, and we, we require that this, this always, what we call skin in the game, like what can the client do to help? And this is part of the, the teaching process and product part of the, the learning is if we just gave people money, it would not fix the situation. And so it could be as simple as there was a teacher

who we coached, she was making 5,000 a month, her rent was 2,000, her cardinal was 900. She was not gonna make it. It doesn't matter, you know, she was behind, they were about to repossess the car and she couldn't afford it. So what we offer is how do we help you get a reliable safe transportation,

a cash car for $2,500. You know, now it's up to the client that was up to the teacher to say, uh, I'm willing to make that change. Do you find it first people are resistant? Why am I going to give up my nice car, my nice house to do all this? Yes there's a lot of resistance and I think people have to the what I tell talk to my team about is we have to embrace the pain. The pain of the person situation is our friend and sometimes people aren't. Now that's interesting because you can remind them do you want this nice shiny car or how's the

or you want freedom? What is the freedom? The freedom is not having to worry about how you're going to whether you're going to be able to live in this place or not. And we want and again, we do become a slave to the death. Yes. And that scripture, the scripture tells you the borrower becomes slave to the lender. And again, our role is to offer a way out, a pathway. Quite honestly, not everybody takes it. And that's

okay. Not everybody's ready for freedom. Our job is to provide a pathway, then help those who want to be helped. I read somewhere that there are more payday lending places in Memphis than any other city is that right? Yes so Memphis is the payday loan capital of the world. Oh well there's some I guess we need to put that on billboards. Are you kidding? There are more payday loan stores in Memphis per capital than any other city and so this is a place where it's, you know, there's a heavy emphasis on these predatory lenders. Well if that's the case then

it's also the place where help is probably needed the most. Yes, yes. And I think it's the reason why, I mean, this movement is working. We've, in the last, we've been open 20 months and we've helped over 600 families and saved over $800,000. What? In 20 months. What do you mean save? You mean cut out $800,000 in fees and interest? The person who was gonna be paying $5,000 for us, interest would, on a $2,500500 loan is $100 a year. So instead of paying $5,000, they only pay $200. So what we're doing is bottom line,

helping people to get out of a difficult financial situation. All right, you said in 20 months, how many families? We've helped 660 families And you've saved over eight hundred thousand dollars That is $1200 in fees and interest per family you've wiped out Yes, I just did the math. That's why I'm asking those numbers. That's phenomenal in fees and interest per family you've wiped out. Yes. I just did the math.

That's why I'm asking those numbers. That's phenomenal. That's a hundred dollars a month for a family. That's a whole lot of money for folks that live week to week. Right. And again, most of our clients, they have about $2, and on average and payday

loans So we're able to help people take steps out of that But if you got two thousand dollars in payday loans that that doesn't sound like that big amount of money But what's the big amount of money is a 350 a month you're paying to service it. We ain't even touching the principal That's right. That's right. These people that do this are actually preying on the weakest among us. Right, right. Well, when you're in financial distress, you're not thinking about the interest.

You're thinking about how do I pay my rent? How do I get the lights on? How do I get the lights on? How do I get my car fixed so I get to work? And so the fact that this thousand dollars is gonna cost you $4,500 is not on the top of your mind. It's not even communicated to you.

You're just thinking, okay, this is, and many people go to payday loans. They think this is the answer. They think this is a savior. And really we're trying to help people understand this is crippling you. If I walked into a payday loan place when I leave here today, which I'm actually thinking about doing, I'm probably going to take off my Ole Miss stuff and wear a ragged shirt. I'm dead serious because I got a work truck I drive around in and it doesn't look like much.

If I roll in there, am I going to be greeted like, hey, how are you? How can we help you? Are they, are they like happy or what was it like Guido back there? No, actually they have great customer service. I bet. And we went into one and the, there was a lady who was a teacher, uh, coming out. She was getting a loan and they knew, they knew her by name. They asked about her, her children.

And when she left, they said, we'll see, see you in two weeks. And I thought that is sad. And she, this lady had done everything right. She had gone to college, gotten a degree. She was working. This particular lady had gone through a divorce and just, you know, that impacted her life. So now she's trying to live a life by herself and that was not helped for her. All right.

Begs the question. Why not just go to a bank? Why not get a credit card? Good question. So the problem is the average FICO score in Memphis is 633. The median, that means half of the people are above that and half of the people below.

You can't get a bank loan for under 670. So half of the people in Memphis can't get a bank loan for under $670. So half of the people in Memphis can't get a bank loan. Do you think that's true in Detroit and Chicago and Philly and Baltimore? There was this article in this, oh gosh, I don't remember the name of this survey, but they surveyed and assessed the top 66 largest metropolitan areas and ranked them as for how they manage money. Well, Memphis was the number 66. So I think we have the bigger opportunity here in Memphis.

What was, do you remember 50 and the other ones? All I'm saying is what you're doing has got to be scalable in other places. I would think Little Rock, Birmingham, some other places are similar. Yeah, I think what we're doing here, we're going to replicate in other places. The Lake and prove it out in the hardest place. You're out of it out of Greece everywhere. Well, and our plan is to scale this up through this whole state of Tennessee.

So at some point we became, again, we have to go to Nashville and convince Nashville that this is where this is a good avenue, a good pathway. So you previously shared with me that there's not really a program like your guys's across the country. No, uh, there are different initiatives, but we have a uniqueness. There's a great initiative in Arkansas, but ironically in the state of Arkansas, payday loans are illegal. So there are some states who have outlawed it. I think that's the future for us.

I wonder if you get people from West Memphis, Arkansas, coming to Memphis to go to payday loans since they came to Arkansas. I guarantee you we do. So this hub is pre praying on a region, not just to say, I would say the mitts out. So, okay. So we see the problem. The stories are real. I love your line about people go in to get to pray and come out to get prayed on. about people go in to get to pray and come out to get prayed on. So 20 months ago you decided to start Ford Memphis. How do people find you? How do they come to you? How do you reach out to them?

How does all that work? So initially we did a lot of marketing, social media, local news media. What we found is that there's not a shortage of clients. The first, first month we had like 200 people contact us. You didn't know what to do. Probably. We realized we needed to build a team of, of, of, of money coaches. Is that what you call them? Money coaches.

We call them money coaches. I love that. Yeah. So, uh, so again, we learned a lot because we were just starting. Fortunately, we were able to partner with some great people. The banks have been great partners, First Horizon Bank and Truist Bank and Pinnacle. They have come alongside to help us create this model. We've landed on a really good model. Are these money coaches volunteers?

No, no, they're staff. They're staff, you're staff. We started with, we thought we can do volunteers, but we quickly realized that that model didn't work. We had to build a team. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So how does Four Together get its funding? It's not making money, is it? No, our funding is through, again, our partners. We've been funded through banks, foundations, local foundations, and also through our partnership with churches. So the churches that outsource their benevolence to us, they pay a fee.

So we're a non-profit organization. 80% of our funding has come through foundations that partners who say, you know, this is a cause that we believe in and we could not have done it without them. But we also with our church partners or anyone United Way, anyone who receives someone coming to them asking for money, basically what they are, they're not equipped to provide coaching. And so that's the service that we provide. So we charge them a fee for that, which supports our organization. I'm a member of second, second press. Yeah.

I remember hearing a little bit about this before I even knew who you were. I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago. Okay. So if someone comes to the church and says, I'm struggling, they will forward them to you. Yes Yes, because many times organizations the church or nonprofit organization who have who people are coming to they aren't equipped to Dig into what the sit what the situation is. So yeah, it's one thing to say, okay Here's 200 bucks to get your lights back on but it may not even be help It may not be the right thing to do.

And so what we do- Talk about that. What we do is, again, we operate quickly because the people who come to us, typically they don't have months to figure this out. It's days. And so we respond within 24 hours. No kidding. Yeah.

We assign a coach. The coach, they provide their bank statements, their check stubs. And so we quickly assess how much they make and where the money is going. And it just sounds like basic budgeting to me. It is. Uh, but again, most people don't operate in with basic money management. And, uh, especially now, a lot, there are a lot of issues with, most people don't operate with basic money management.

And especially now, there are a lot of issues with, there's so many ways to spend money. There's all of these after pay programs where you get the service and then you pay later. These quad pay, a firm pay, this cash after, so many ways of spending money that it has actually made it more difficult for people to understand how much is coming in and where it's going. It's down to education, financial literacy, access, understanding, all of it. Yeah.

And growing in mindset, a lot of what we're doing is helping people to see money in a different way, different options. Because the teacher who had the $900 car payment, that was normal for her. She didn't see there was another option. You know, having to pay $2,000 in rent was normal for her. And she said, well, where am I gonna live? And I explained, I said, well, I have three of my adult kids live in Memphis,

in homes that they've purchased. And if I added all of their mortgages up, it would not equal $2,000. And these are places that I wouldn't have my family living in places I wouldn't feel I wouldn't put my have my family living in places I wouldn't feel safe my grandkids live there and Just helping them to see that that's a different mindset. What about savings? Do we talk about savings too? Oh, yeah. So again in the emergency room, there's no savings, right?

I get it. So we want to get them there But the initial thing is how do we how do we patch the hole so they don't die? And then you stick with them long-term about a long-term deal. We partner with other organizations who coach long-term. So we partner with Rise Foundation and Operation Hope and Greater Memphis Financial Empowerment to do... Again, we're like passing them off to the primary doctor. I get it.

We're just the emergency room. We typically deal with clients for about a week. And you get them over the hump, try to get them straightened out and then you patch them onto somebody who did the long haul stuff. So we have partners that can help them with savings. Rise has a great match savings program and, uh, Operation Hope has a program for home ownership. There's lots of different places that we can,

we pass them off to, but again, when they're in our place, we just wanna make sure they can get to work, they have a place to live, the lights are cut on, and they have food to eat. So, we've heard disaster stories. Tell us how this works. Give me a story of a family that you've recently helped and what it's translated to.

Yeah, so so the the young lady who had gotten the title loan. So we we got the title and gave her a loan. She's been paying it back instead of $179 every two weeks. Her payment to us is like $68 a month. But she's done well and we stayed in contact with her. She actually moved into another apartment and she's doing fine. She had saved over $1,000. She's doing great. Did she get all of that from y'all? Did she get that plan? She had saved over a thousand dollars. She's doing great. And she- Did she get all of that from y'all? Did she get that plan? Yes, we gave her a plan and she,

it's been a relationship, you know, when it's interesting enough, when she had to miss work once, being, you know, terrible situation, she was, she had gotten robbed and had gotten shot. Oh gosh. At a gas station. It was on the news. I didn't know about it, but she contacted, well, we didn't get our payment.

I just thought, oh, we always get a payment from her. She contacted us and said, listen, I've been in rehab. I'm going back to work. Here's my next payment. And she values our partnership. I was gonna ask you about that. How do you have collateral for the money you put up? What do you do to ensure that you do get paid back? So we have a high default rate.

Again, the people that we're helping, it's higher than normal. That's the reason why, you know, the banks can't typically serve them. So what is the default rate? Our default rate is 30, around 30%. All right. And a bank's default rate is probably one. Oh yeah, it's definitely single digits.

Yeah. And, but what we've, what we've built into this is a plan. Cause again, um, a family who contacted us yesterday, we had help, they defaulted and now they need help again. So I don't think it's stuck with them the first time. So again, that's the, that's the, the, the motivation is. So what do you do with that? That's interesting. You helped a family, they didn't pay you back.

Now they're in trouble again, which means they didn't take your advice the first time. They didn't pay you back the first time. I would say, see that makes me a little angry. I would say, what gives them the gall to come back and ask for more when they didn't even meet you halfway the first time? Right. So what do you, what do you do with that?

What we do is they, we take them back to the process. Let's see, really, let's look and see what happens. Let's see. You don't get mad at that. Obviously we get mad a lot, but that doesn't help the situation. Well, we, we want to do is we want to help people move forward. And, um, and so people can come back to us. Doesn't mean that we're going to give them money again, but we are still a resource. We still, we are still the emergency room. If you're, if you need the emergency room, you come back as many times as you need it.

So even if someone is defaulted, not met you halfway done the, yes, we're going to do it, we're going to do it, and then not. They're still welcome back in for your counseling. And if maybe they make up on the thing they defaulted on, you might. Every situation is different. Again, we're here to make sure people don't die financially. And anybody who's struggling, we want them to feel that they have an advocate. And one of my friends, uh, and I think you, you met him.

He, I think he was on one of your shows. Uh, uh, Joe Carson, you remember Dr. Joe Carson, but when we went, yeah, when he, uh, he told me when I went into, he said, Travis, he said, uh, I'm going to tell you what told me, if you're expecting to be a bridge over the gap here in Memphis, you better be expecting to be walked on. Then you're not going to win them all. Some people, sometimes you're going to be abused. You got to be okay with that.

You're going to lose some of them. So we're again, that prepared us with the mentality of our goal is a lot like baseball versus basketball. If you got a 300 batting average, you're the all-star. That's how we- If you're shooting 30% from the field, you're on the bench. You're on the bench. We're baseball. Love it. That's true. And we're not going to win them all. Again, that's not the nature of the people that we serve.

We got to be okay with a 300% and feel like we're doing with superstars. Well the truth is, even if you had a 50% default rate, it's the 50% you helped that would not have had help. Yeah. We think now that we've learned, we think that we can have a default rate under. 15%. That would be incredible. We think we can. We mean, you're dealing with the most at high risk, when Linde's on the face of

the planet, you're going to have a higher default rate. Yeah. We we've learned some things. The first year, again, we were bombarded with so many people and we didn't have the data to say, you know, to determine whether they would repay. We didn't have the data. Now that we've had 20 months, we've learned a lot, got a better process. And I think we can think we have something, we've landed on a good model that we think

could change how money is distributed for help in Tennessee. We'll be right back. Do you look at yourself in the mirror sometimes and think Georgia Tech, Duke, Seattle, and it all led to my own awakening about money and here I am in my back, back at home in my city, trying to teach folks from my own lessons. Absolutely. I think all of that added to where we are, where I am now. And again, I told you, I think Andy Young was, was, was molding me the whole time, but I remember one of my, like one of my

favorite Dr. King quotes was, and I may be tearing it up, but it was, he said, true compassion is not just flipping a coin to a beggar, but it comes to, to, to believe that the edifice, which would produces beggars needs restructuring. And to me, I think what we're doing is not just feeling sorry for people who are in bad situation, but how do we change Memphis? The systems that are causing or creating poverty, how do we change that? I think that's what we're doing here.

You know, I have this argument, not this argument, I have this thing I say that I think we are called as just human beings. When we are blessed by some level of success to try to help elevate the most needy among us. I do believe that with every fiber of my being. But let's just say, you don't subscribe to that level of idealism, because there are people that don't. Okay. So let's talk pragmatically. tax paying citizens contributing to your community, what happens when you have more people in a situation that they cannot contribute to the tax base. Listen, most cities get their revenue from property taxes and maybe a little sales tax, but the vast majority is property tax. Well, if you don't have people financially literate enough to buy homes, to build businesses, and to pay into that tax base pragmatically what happens to

that municipality what happens to its police department its fire department its city services its ability to provide basic necessities for citizenry I'll tell you what happens it looks like Gary Indiana I'm not familiar with Gary and well, Indiana is where the water got everybody sick because they ran out of money. Okay it that's There's a there's definitely an ideal side to this that I subscribe to and believe in And anybody listen to the show knows that because that's why I do the show. Okay, but there's also a pragmatic thing here that if we don't do better for the people who don't

understand how to manage money and get them out of these predatory places, if this thing continues to snowball, you end up not having enough revenue in your municipality to even operate. The thing about poverty, it impacts everybody. Yes sir, it does. So, I mean, FedEx and your company, you want to have people at work. Well, if people are struggling financially, it's going to affect your ability to get people to work. Poverty impacts education. It impacts crime.

Poverty doesn't know that you live in cartel. It impacts the cost of health. Right. So it, it's, it's really something upon all of us to figure out how do we improve the financial health of our city. So Forward Memphis is about helping the teacher, the family who don't have the financial literacy and have fallen victim to predatory lending, but it's also a spoke in the wheel of a greater approach toward improving the entire city's health. Yes. And we just have one part.

We understand that. We're filling one gap. We're the emergency room for people who need emergency financial assistance. That's our place. That was the gap that we saw while people went to predatory lending. That's our part to play in this. I bet the predatory lending people hate you, bro. If not now, they will. I love that.

I hope they do. I hope they hate your guts. What's next? Well, part of what we have to do is to scale this up across the whole state. That's right now we've been just in Shelby Shelby County and there's still opportunities to grow here in Shelby County. Right now we have 27 coaching partners, churches, United Way, agape, nonprofit organizations. We think we're going to scale up.

We want to partner with the schools, Shelby County schools. I swear I was going to say, why couldn't we teach a basic financial economics class in school so kids get it before they even get their hands on money? Well, that and really when I say partner is we don't want teachers struggling to pay their bills. And again, well, if teachers know they'll teach kids, I guess, right. And their parents, we want to partner. And when, again, if the teachers are struggling financially, which many of them are, especially the ones who are single, we want to have, we want to be

a resource for them. Uh, so that's what we mean by partner and letting parents know in their schools that again, there, if you're being evicted, cars being repossessed, your lights been cut off, there's a resource for you. And so that's what's next was we want to grow. We think we can grow to probably double our partners this year here in Memphis, and then what Nashville next? Yeah, we'll, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll go across the state.

And then if it keeps going, could you not be regional or national? I mean, it seems like it's scalable for every municipality. Yeah, so our coaching is virtual. So we have one of our coaches lives in Chattanooga. So we think this is something we'll have to scale across the whole state. Eventually we'll probably have an office in Nashville and have a plan to communicate with our legislation on value, what we do.

Here's something nationally. This is obviously not just a Memphis problem. There's 23,000 payday lenders in the U S twice the number of McDonald's and Starbucks locations. So it's not just a Memphis problem. We might have the highest concentration here. There's 23,000. There's twice the number of payday loan places in the United States than there is McDonald's. And Starbucks combined. McDonald's and Starbucks.

Holy smokes. There's a lot of McDonald's and Starbucks. But just think about it. You literally see a McDonald's and Starbucks on almost every block that you are in any municipality and there's two times as many payday loans. The things is the place I hang out with, I see the McDonald's and Starbucks, but I don't see the payday loans. Right, because they're concentrated.

They're concentrated in the most distressed parts of the community. Which is probably largely African American and Latino, I would say. In nephesy, yes, African American and Latino. Wow. Wow, you're doing God's work, man. You are fighting an evil foe. You really are, aren't you?

Yeah, what we're doing is, again, like the quote from Dr. King is, we're fighting a system. But this isn't a governmental system. And this is- No, it's not a governmental system. And this also really isn't a predominant social system. This is almost a kind of an under the radar system that I just don't think a whole lot of people really understand.

Right. It's a system, but kind of a quiet dark system. You know what I mean? I mean, this isn't a blatant thing. Exactly. Yeah. I was sharing with one of, we were starting this and trying to raise some funding and I was meeting with a financial leader here, a guy who owns a

big financial company, and he thought, well, I don't know why you would charge 10%. That seems like a lot. And obviously he had never heard of a payday law. Ha ha ha. That's also coming from a place of a little bit of privilege. As big as his heart is.

He's like, wow, 10%. I think you can cut that. I was like, man, they're paying 400%. Yeah. He couldn't phantom that. It's like that. I bet he supports you now, doesn't he? Oh yeah.

He's one of our biggest supporters. Of course. That makes perfect sense. That's awesome. Travis, it has been an absolute pleasure to hear your story, to hear your personal story, frankly, and also your story about how you got where you got in Ford Memphis. What a phenomenal initiative that does seek

to serve those who need it the most. It's God's work, brother. And I can't wait to see where it goes next. I appreciate it. If people want to hear more about Ford Memphis or, you know, we have people all over the country. I mean, this is a big show. Lots of folks listen in some other part of the world that really thinks, you know, I'd

like to engage in that in my community. How do they found Ford Memphis and how do people find you? Yeah, we would love to talk with anybody who has an interest in connecting with us and they can contact us at forwardmemphis.com. So the F-O-R-W-A-R-D, memphis.com. Somebody wants to support you financially, they can do that too.

If somebody just wants to ask you a question, can they email you somewhere? Yes, they can email me as well at travis at forwardmemphis.com. Travis at forwardmemphis.com. All right, brother, I guess you need to go out and beat up some predatory lending guys the rest of the day.

I appreciate you having me here. I appreciate you being here. And thank you for joining us this week. If Travis Moody or other guests have inspired you in general, or better yet, to take action by telling folks about Ford Memphis, trying to start something like it in your community, donating to them, teaching folks about predatory lending, or something else entirely, please let me know.

I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normal folks dot us. And I promise you'll hear back from me. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, join the army at normal folks dot us. Consider becoming a premium member there. Any and all of these things that can help us grow an Army of Normal

Folks. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs, I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can.