Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Serial Entrepreneur Michael Loeb: E-commerce, Sales, Marketing, B2B, and More

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Happy Tuesday, and welcome back to another episode on The Radcast. In this episode on The Radcast, host Ryan Alford talks with serial entrepreneur, Michael Loeb. Michael Loeb is the founder and CEO of Loeb Enterprises and Loeb.nyc.Loeb Enterprises and Lowb.nyc covers a wide variety of business ventures and investments. Michael has had his hands in several e-commerce brands, marketing and sales developments, and the growth of many of the brands we know today (like Priceline, All the Rooms, Credit Key, Synapse,  and others). If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and share the word if you love what we discuss, so we can keep giving you the strategies to achieve radical marketing results! You can follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @radical_results | @ryanalford |Visit Loeb.nyc and Loeb Enterprises by clicking here.  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

you're listening to the radcast if it's radical we cover it here's your host ryan alford hey guys what's up it's ryan alford welcome to the latest edition of the radcast we are extremely excited to be joined by our guest today michael loeb, who is the CEO and founder of Loeb Enterprises. Michael has a very distinguished background in marketing, in venture capitalism, in sales, in lots of stuff. Michael, really pleased and thankful to have you on the show today. Why, thank you, Ryan. You forgot to mention voodoo. I'm pretty good at voodoo

you know there's one thing in watching all of the the interviews you've done uh you're a humble humble soul uh maybe your friends don't know you that way i don't know but all i'll say is you know to do the some of the things you've done watching you on stage and watching you know some of the other presentations keynotes and all that. You're very humble and I appreciate that, but you do have a very distinguished background and we really appreciate you coming on the show. I am happy to be here. Great. How are things going there in New York?

You guys keeping hunkered down? Oh, I think like the rest of the world, the answer is yes. And today happens to be snowing, which is more and more of a rarity. It is. It sounds like you guys might be coming out of some of the lockdowns. Are they getting any better there? All you can see is I lived in New York for a while, but it's been six years. I can only imagine the struggle that's been, but things getting a little better. Are you guys seeing

the light at the end of the tunnel? I can tell Ryan that you lived in New York for six years because of your New York accent. The answer, I I think is no. The struggle is that if you're a restaurant, you still have to have outdoor dining. You can't have indoor dining. They have pitched every form of tent and teepee for people to dine outside with all manner of heaters. But when the temperature drops below 30, it's really hard to conduct any sort of business outside. So a lot of the trappings of New York, the restaurants, the bars, the theaters, museums,

none of that is really back and you combine that with everybody working from home and also the high taxes in new york that our governor is proposing to make even higher to pay for some of the bills and kind of our weak leadership particularly in new york city and it's a formula for some pretty scary stuff new york went through a uh you know 15 year period maybe even arguably longer high murder rates high crime rates a lot of dirt and filth everybody kind of exiting the city and those were in the 80s and to a lesser extent the 90s and good management kind of put that on a good path great path and now we're you know those of us who have been long-time residents are concerned that

that's going to get reversed but we shall see new york is not alone yeah well best of luck with that i i uh i only pretend to uh have solutions marketing, and politics and government are either above or below my pay grade. I'm not sure which one, but we'll leave that for another day. Michael, I would like to give, you know, obviously you've done interviews, you've done keynotes. We do have a lot of ad and marketing people that I'm sure have heard your name around. But I'd love to give everyone, let's start with that synopsis of your career and your background, and then let's get into some of your latest ventures. All righty.

So there is no such thing as a synopsis of my background because it's just too rich and textured and lengthy that no redaction could actually work. How's that for humility? I take it all back. I'll do the best I can. So I am a serial entrepreneur. You can attach the last name entrepreneur to the first name serial. And it's about the only thing that can follow the word serial that is in any way positive. But I, I didn't start out that way.

I joined Time Warner, Time Inc at Time Warner. Time Inc was the most powerful publishing company on the planet at one time. And I actually followed my dad into that business. My dad was a renowned journalist. I think that word is fair. And I went on the business side and had the pleasure of managing Sports Illustrated. You're talking to the man who has the patent on the sneaker phone and the football phone, and had something to do with the idea of sports blooper videos, which were premiums for Sports Illustrated. And kind of as a prize for my good efforts at si i was uh awarded the privilege of launching

entertainment weekly and was paired up with an editor and kind of like a product manager say at coca-cola where the product manager has everything to do with the marketing of the product and nothing to do with what is inside the can. At Time, Inc., we had the division of what they call church and state, church being editorial, and state had nothing to say about that. And so the thought of entertainment as something quite precious and a feat, it was going to be about books and poetry and very erudite stuff. And for me, Entertainment Weekly was going to be, you know, swap out Sports Illustrated, put in the concept of entertainment. It was going to be the big

three forms of entertainment, which is to say, you know, TV, music and movies. And it was going to be the big three forms of entertainment, which is to say, you know, TV, music, and movies. And it was going to be a fans magazine, uh, distinguished from people in as much as, uh, as with Sports Illustrated, when you have a subject, you go, you know, it becomes a 10,000 word article and a whole lot of pictures. word article and a whole lot of pictures. But that was not to be. I was selling one magazine and he was creating a different one, which is the formula for failure. And indeed, both of us in fairly short order were shown the door. So I was at 36 years old and fired from the only company that I ever wanted to work for. And I had decided that instead of jumping off a bridge, which is fairly permanent when it comes to a decision, I was going to try my hand at starting the company outside of Time Inc.

that I was trying to start inside of Time Inc. And that was the notion, and it sounds very quaint, of billing magazine subscriptions to credit cards at the time, which is, we're talking the 90s. Some of your audience actually was born at that time. But in the 90s, it was a known fact that credit cards and magazines and credit cards and newspapers didn't live well in the sandbox together. And we introduced this notion of getting that subscription on a credit card and maintaining it on a credit card. The trade term is negative option, which means that it presumes the renewal and doesn't ask you. It kind of affirms that, yes, you're going to be billed

again because your subscription has lapsed and here's the price. And if you want to cancel, this is how you do so. Versus an affirmative renewal, which they would pepper you with renewal notices followed by bills. And you had to affirmatively confirm the subscription, check the box, send it back. and that would get followed up by a bunch of bills. As you can imagine, when you renew people, when you take inertia and remove it from one shoulder, which is the inertia is your enemy, and put it on the other shoulder, which is inertia is your friend, you find a dramatic difference in the retention dynamics of a subscription. And in fact, time on file grew by about two and a half x. That was the big insight

on synapse, we built a platform that did everything I just described, which had a lot of complexity in as much as you're working with thousands of fulfillment houses for thousands of magazines. But what we also did, Ryan, was sell the subscription in addition to maintain it. That company grew and grew. It sounds very quaint,

but we did it with no outside capital. I'll explain the we in a second. We did it with no outside capital. And nine years after I started the company, my former employer said, I understand you might be going public. Instead of going public, can we buy you? And I said, what's your number? And they said, 800 million. And I said, that could work and made the sale of Synapse in 2001, but had a very long earn out, a five-year earn out. So that brings us to 2006, which is when we created the model that we have today. Now, what inspired that model, going backwards, was not just Synapse, but I had a partner in the business, a fellow by the name of Jay Walker. Jay was quite the gifted thinker. The word brilliant is often attached to his name, and I think it's well-deserved.

And Jay's great asset is to come up with fantastic ideas. And Synapse was much more my baby. I was more familiar with the magazine industry. So Jay became bent on coming up with another idea of his own, and that turned out to be Priceline.com. his own, and that turned out to be Priceline.com. So we had incubated Priceline inside of Synapse for the first two years or so of Priceline's life. It was, Ryan, a very interesting experiment. Can you have one workforce, one roof over your head, one system, And can you dual task, right? Can you ask Jimmy to work, you know, the mornings for Synapse, the afternoons for Priceline and the evenings for Synapse again or vice versa? And would they spit the bit or would they embrace it? And it turns out that really, really smart people, no matter how challenging the job, after a year or so on the job, would like to have new challenges.

So we found that efficiency went up, job satisfaction went up. and after the sale of Synapse and after my earn out was paid off, I thought, let's go back and take that model and put it on steroids. And that is what we have at Loeb Enterprises or Loeb NYC. The difference being, I called it Loeb Enterprises. My daughter who works here said, dad, that is like so old fashioned Loeb NYC. I used to call what we do a company factory, likewise old-fashioned, so we are now a venture collective. But what we do do, Ryan, is we have large teams of people, and they come up with ideas, and most of those ideas, or many of those ideas or many of those ideas are de novo startups. Some are ideas, external ideas that we decide to develop internally. And sometimes it's an outside company super early in the curve.

We like it a lot. We like the business. We like the business model. We like the management team. We like the addressable market. the business model. We like the management team. We like the addressable market. And most of all, we can see ourselves helping, deeply helping with the operation of that company. And if it checks all those boxes, we sometimes will say, come on into the fold. You don't have to worry about raising any more capital. We will be the source of capital. So if you want to think about it,

what we do is combine several elements that are discrete in most of the world. And those elements are the ideas, the entrepreneurs, the executional know-how, and the capital. And we put that all together. And we believe that by putting that all together you are much more efficient and seamless and that the opportunity for success is greater what we're really leaning in on is that if you talk to people in dc dumb they will tell you that two and ten are about uh is about the success ratio which means eight out of 10 are failures. Of those eight, maybe half are total failures and half return some of the capital or all the capital, but don't have enough of a return on top of that return to have anything in terms of an

ROI. We don't see why the failure rate has to be nearly that high i mean why is it only two in ten why do only two and ten work is the question we asked ourselves and is it because you're betting on the wrong horse betting on the wrong idea or is it that you really don't have kind of a seamless execution from idea to putting it into the marketplace and growing it. We think it's a little of all three, but it's probably has a lot to do with having all those pieces in discrete corners and having to assemble them. The other thing we say is that when I do my little straw poll of CEOs and I ask them, how much time do you spend? CEOs or entrepreneurs of startups, how much time do you spend raising capital or keeping the capital you just raised happy? And I get numbers

like 75%. Well, these people are not professional fundraisers. What they did is they had an inspired idea. So why is highest and best use you going out and trying to get capital? The neat thing is with us, you don't have to. The capital is right here. Again, if it's an outside idea or an outside company, the capital is right here. The know-how is right here. You need a SEO expert, we got it. You need a machine learning expert, we got it. You need tech build, we have it. You need a machine learning expert, we've got it. You need tech build, we have it. You need direct mail, we do that too. So it's meant to be that Swiss army knife. When I describe the company, I say there's two discrete pieces, and I make the comparison to a Tootsie Pop.

And the chocolatey center is all our companies, and the hard candy shell is all of what we call shared services. That ranges from some of the things I mentioned, but also includes back office accounting. Every entrepreneur I know is missing the back office accounting gene. They see an envelope and they shove it in the drawer. They don't open it. They don't code it. They don't coat it. They don't plan to pay it. Same thing with receivables. They don't collect. If you talk to about cash outdates, they're always wrong about that. They hate putting together balance sheets

and P&Ls. So we take that burden off of them because they're not particularly good at it. Again, it's highest and best use. And what is the highest and best use? You had an idea and you're passionate about it, and that can't be replaced by anybody else in the marketplace. So let's try to free up all that effort that is needlessly spent and refocus it on building your business. So back office accounting is one service we provide. We pre-raised all the capital because the capital is my capital. So it's investable capital. We have tech,

lots and lots of tech assets in the tri-state area, but also around the world. We have deep analytic assets and AI and machine learning and AR capabilities. And then we have the infrastructure, HR, recruiting, legal. But perhaps our strong suit is marketing, which ranges from old school, which was the school I was schooled in, to new school. So old school would be TV. We actually make our own TV ads here. TV, radio, direct mail, tens of millions of pieces of direct mail. We were deep into healthcare. We largely traded out of that. But when we were in healthcare, we had a field force of 3,000 people that would

make sales calls into 400,000 doctor's offices around the country and set up materials. We have our own phone center in Virginia, 100-seat state-of-the-art center. That is for both inbound and outbound calls. This is all old school stuff. The new school stuff is everything digital from SEO, SEM, social, programmatic, influencer, podcasts, you name it. So that's the shop. The shared services are free to the companies that we are standing up. When we go for outside capital, and we also have an M&A department, a finance department that works with all the VCs, we get, the neat thing is, Ryan, this is not a friends and family round. This is not an angel round. This is not even an A round. was an 80 for a 630 post, $630 million post. And that gives you the type of capital raises that we do get when we advance the ball down the field. So instead of having like a 3 million on a 5

million, which gets a lot of dilution and not a lot of capital. We will blow through those rounds, develop these companies ourselves. And only when you can make the case that the new capital coming in is for scaling, we're still going to have losses for a while, but for scaling, that's the way to get a much higher pre-money valuation and much less dilution for the capital that comes in. valuation and much less dilution for the capital that comes in. That, I guess, is a little bit about our story. I guess one other thing I can talk to is what are our swim lanes? And the fact of the matter is we don't think about the world that way. We think about disruption. And we take a look at these giant industries that have yet to be disrupted, and we address those. We attack those.

We learn everything that we can about those because our philosophy is that everything planet-wide is going to be disrupted. You add mobility, change in work, nature of work, and you can come to the conclusion that everything is going to be disrupted. So what's an example of an industry that really hasn't been disrupted yet? There's many, many, many. Banking is a good one, although there's some nibbling around the edges. But we're taking a deep look at insurance. Insurance is trillions of dollars big, and they kind of still do business today and still think today like they did many years ago i'll give you one example which is we have another company steady it's your advocate in the gig economy uh one of our de novo startups uh it is uh killing it uh steady as um 2.7 million members. And what they try to do, Ryan, is optimize your day.

So Uber would just as soon have you sit in that car morning, noon, and night. And if it is morning, noon, or night, you're probably doing pretty well. But if it's in the in-between hours, you have no business. And so what Steady will do is say, okay, Ryan, I have you driving for Uber from 7 to 9.30. At 9.30, I got you walking dogs. At 1, you're at Home Depot. And at 4 o'clock, you're going to be working for Lyft because they pay better, right? So it optimizes how much income you get.

They have 2.7 million members. 1.8 of them do some manner of driving, at least some of the time. And interestingly, car insurance doesn't begin to understand the marketplace. And that is because there's two buckets. One bucket is, you know, you're driving personal miles and another bucket is you're driving professional miles and never shall the twain ever meet. And that is because in days of yore, you would have a taxi cab. You said you knew New York and the taxi cab would have a medallion,

literally a medallion bolted onto the hood of the car that used to cost about 1.2 million. Now you can get one for 200,000 because all the taxi cab companies are going out of business. But you'd get one for $200,000 because all the taxicab companies are going out of business. But you'd bought a medallion that got bolted to the roof of this yellow car, and you'd have six guys, and they'd all show up at a garage on a rotating basis and take the car out because that car would be driven 24-7 by a half dozen people. That's not how it happens anymore, right? Now you've got a phone and you got your own car. And when Uber says, I got something, you click a button and you race

to the location and you got somebody in the back of your car. Insurance companies don't understand that. That never used to exist. There used to be a professional car or a personal car, not a prosumer car. Right. And that's what we're talking about now. And if you are a if you are one of those eight million, one point eight million members of Steady that do some driving, you're either driving your car when you drive professionally for Uber or Lyft or DoorDash, you name it, Instacart. You're either driving illegally because you're doing a professional ride and you have no coverage. You get into an accident when you're working for Instacart, you are not covered. Instacart, you are not covered, right? Or you're paying three times too much because the presumption is every single mile is a professional mile. So you're either paying too much or you're exposed. And we're trying to create a product that addresses that, right? That you can be a prosumer.

that, right? That you can be a prosumer. You can be both. And that would be, you know, that would be charged by the mile. And the neat thing is you got the data sources to say exactly which mile was professional and which wasn't. So that's just an example, right? This trillion dollar plus industry yet to be disrupted, really doesn't understand the new economy, hasn't been built for the new economy. The average steady member makes $5,580, actually, more dollars through steady than they do without steady, but they're still $40,000 or $50,000 a year incomes. And the average cost of auto insurance, right, for personal auto insurance is $2,700. And they want you to pay that all at once. This is not the type of audience that can do that, right? What they really want to do is they want that chopped up. And if it could be chopped up by mile, and if you could pay daily, that would be ideal.

Anyway, that gives you an example of the things that we go after. Yeah, a lot to unpack there. And a lot of richness, as you discussed. Before I delve into specific questions on the business and the business model, I mean, I just want to ask, what makes Michael tick? You've been involved with so many ventures, obviously, a lot of successful ones at that, a lot of names there that people know, time, price line, et cetera.

What do you feel like has been your, obviously, intelligence, I would put at the top of that, but what makes you tick and what's been your secret sauce and or what do you feel like, what's been your additive to all of those things? Well, Ryan, I got to tell you, I think entrepreneurs are born, right? I don't think they're bred. I was always meant to be an entrepreneur. And I'll tell you one point of discrimination or illustration of this point, which is an entrepreneur, okay, a non-entrepreneur will be in traffic and they'll come across a stop sign and they'll stop, right? They'll stop. They'll look both ways and then they'll drive again. An entrepreneur will come that stop sign

and the first thing they say is, why in God's green earth is that stop sign here, right? And then they'll see it's a four-way stop and they'll say, they'll look left, they'll look right, they don't see anybody. They ain't stopping, right? Entrepreneurs believe that rules were written for somebody else. Entrepreneurs believe that if you turn over every single rock, what you're going to find underneath is an opportunity. And they look at everything, right? They can look at a garden hose, they can look at a chair and they can say, I can do this better. I can do it better, faster, cheaper. And you can't turn it off. And it gets annoying, right? I mean, imagine being in a cocktail party and you say, you know, those stuffed mushrooms,

got to tell you, too much tarragon, right? Too much. I mean, what a pain in the ass. You are the worst party guest ever. So I think lunch they really are born. They really are the kids with the lemonade stand. But they got a story. And the story is, I

ran out of, it was such a hot day. I ran out of lemonade. There was no more lemons in the house it would take too long to go to the store so i took dad's grass clippings okay and i like you know put them in a blender uh and then i added sugar and then i doubled the price and it became green food right it's how i'm sure things like every every setback is an opportunity. Every time you're served lemons, it becomes lemonade. They are not to be denied.

If there is a wall, they will go through it. If they can't go through it, they'll go over it. If they can't do that, they will tunnel under it. If they can't do that, left or right. If they can't do that, they're going to build your own wall and tell everybody else that's the fake wall and mine is the real wall. So first of all, entrepreneurs are born. And when it comes to what I want to accomplish or what will be my legacy, number one, I like starting things. I like starting things. I like meeting people, frankly, half my age, and they're all half my age these days. And they are so smart

and so gifted. And they keep me so sharp. Because, you know, I'm a troglodyte, right? I mean, you know, when I started, you know, learning how to read and write, we had clay tablets, right? And to hear about all this new technology and everything changing and to be one of those people on that cutting edge, or at least trying to be on a cutting edge, is really spectacularly challenging. And I think just, if you will, keeps me young, keeps me engaged and keeps me young. And it's fun. And it's fun about thinking of things. I had a conversation last night with the head of product for one of our companies. And I was sharing an idea that I had that I presented to the CEO of Panera Bread and he loved it, right? And I explained this idea and at the end he said, Michael, how do you think of

these things? And I said, gee, I don't know. It just kind of appears is how I think of these things. In terms of legacy, sum and substance, what drives me, i sometimes quote keats on this and keeps keats has a tombstone and on his tombstone is written our names are writ in water right writ as in old-fashioned uh way of saying written right our names written in water. And there's an irony there, right? Because you're looking at solid granite and those words, right, are carved in solid granite, which means go screw yourself, right? Your name is written water. My name, I'm in granite. And I want my name in granite. I want people to look at some of the companies that I built and say, boy, you know, that was smart, right? That was smart. That was

disruptive. That was courageous. Because to go against that grain, right? The Institute of Public Opinion, the Institute of all the inventions before your invention, and to reinvent something. The presumption is the status quo is the status quo for a reason, and that's part of the problem of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur will look at a football game and say, why are 11 people on the field? Wouldn't it be better to have 13 13, right? And, you know, why are all the linemen, you know, weighing 300 pounds? What about 500 pounds? Can we make them 500 pounds? Entrepreneurs think differently and are fearless.

And they look at the status quo and they say, that's for every other idiot because that for me, when I flip that on its head, that's my opportunity because everybody else is following that bright, shiny object. If I go in a different direction, no one is going to be there and that is going to be my fertile ground. Love it. I want to turn a little bit. I know you didn't bring it up, you know, one of your ventures, but it weighs on me. We work with a lot of B2B companies, you know, do B2B marketing. And one of the biggest challenges we do see is in the B2B e-com payment systems and things like that. I know Credit Key is one of your ventures. Can you talk a little bit about Credit Key and what you guys are doing with that in the B2B payment side of things? Sure can. And that's also an illustration of how entrepreneurs think.

For, you know, pick a number, 15 years, we've had alternative payment solutions to credit cards. So you'd have Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and then you'd have PayPal or Klarna. B2B in part because online B2B lagged online B2C, right, e-commerce sales-wise, by 10 or 15 years. And if you're talking about the small business market, right, and a good example would be I'm a distributor of dental supplies and you are dentist Ryan, right, and dentist Ryan comes on to the marketing, you know, comes on to the Michael site, right? The Michael dental distributor site. And he picks the drills and the chairs and the everything else. And he puts in his card and it says $12,542. and it says $12,542.

And he scratches his head and he says, you know what? Or you scratch your head. Then as Ryan scratches his head and says, I have a visa. I got a MasterCard. I got an American Express option. I don't like those options for a charge this big. I don't like to mix business and personal charges. I don't know if I'm going to pierce my limit. What else you got? Well, there's credit key. So credit key is another bug right at checkout. And you check on credit key and it asks you a couple of questions. and then it will give you an instant thumbs up or thumbs down. Behind the curtain, we're doing a ton of very fast analytics, looking at a lot of things. We do look at FICO, but we look at about

20 different attributes. And then we make a thumbs up, thumbs down decision. And it's for more than what's in the cart, so we'll say dentist Ryan good news not only did we approve this twelve thousand five hundred and fifty four dollar sale but you have another thirty thousand dollars on top of that that you can spend here or anywhere else right and that's the idea of a time but behind credit key it is there is no not in this country, there's one in Australia, there is no integrated online e-commerce, instant analytics, instant approval, or frankly, disapproval facility except for ours.

Yeah, I can speak to and validate that. We work with Cisco and Microsoft and some large B2B players. And I can absolutely validate that's been the biggest challenge. You've got this conversion of B2B and B2C things coming together, whether it's marketing tactics, whether it's e-commerce, all of those things. But the challenge has been on the payment side, especially having an option. So I mean, I, you know, when I first started doing my background, I'd heard of you and all that. But that was the biggest thing that stuck out to us because it was just so real world for us. All right. So Ryan, we're going to do a little business here because I was very polite and sat

down and listened to your questions and answered them, I think, pretty effectively. So you've got to get me some introductions. But that's exactly the customers that we want. Cisco, Microsoft, I mean, they have giant sales, right? I mean, what I mean by that is they will sell $100 million to the State Department, right? But then you got that little guy, dollars to the State Department, right? But then you got that little guy, you know, has 10 or 20 employees, wants to, you know, spend a lot less. And yeah, Microsoft in a second could get in the credit business and Cisco can get into the credit business, but who wants to hurt all those cats, right? What a headache, because all I have to do is make, sale to the State Department or the Navy or Harvard University or you name it. And a zillion of those guys is not going to add up to that.

And what a pain in the butt. I don't want to be in that business. So if you can make those introductions, I'd be really, really appreciative. Well, guess what? I can do one better for you because our largest client is actually a company called ScanSource. And they are second in the line in the distribution and they work with those hundreds of partners and they buy in bulk from their check second in this in the supply chain from for the cisco's and the microsoft's of the world and they buy they're a billion dollar company you can look them up

and they buy for the hundreds of partners, like the ankle biters you just described for the Ciscos and Microsoft. That's where you would probably want to start those discussions before. We could talk shop about that. No, we're not going to stop talking shop. We're going to continue to talk shop. I'm kidding. We work very nicely with distributors. We work with manufacturers. But sometimes they got their own credit options. They don't like to share that with the SMB marketplace.

But, you know, distributors. Right. I mean, the last thing they want to do is get in the credit business and, you know, yeah. And so, and right now a credit solution is offline, right? So you back out, back out of the cart, it's abandoned. And then you figure out what bank you can go to, to get a loan. And that takes, I don't know, three weeks, five weeks, a whole lot of back and forth and questions. And the notion that a scan source or anybody else would be able to maintain that sale through that, I mean, you tell me, but one in five, one in 10? Once they move offline, you're done, right? Yep. offline you're done right yeah so this is an integrated online instant solution for credit for the you know you know for small and medium-sized businesses yep and and at the end of the day the distributors they just want to make the

sale they don't want to get involved with the credit they want to make the sale they don't want the risk they want to be able to make the sale. They don't want the risk. They want to be able to make the sale and book the sale and not have it recourse on them. And that's the idea. Exactly. You know, if I'm, I was summarizing one thing from just talking with you and everything else, you know, you, right now it's big thinking about removing friction.

And I feel like that might be your greatest talent potentially it sounds like is you you recognize where there's friction and you are finding ways to remove it is that fair uh yeah um I think removing friction, yes. The other theme, another theme of mine is somebody else's garbage is my gold. So I've done a lot with remnant assets. Priceline is a good example of that, right? It's a remnant asset. As soon as the door closes on that airplane,

you know, then that's a wasted asset. That asset is expired. You got an empty seat, it's worth zero. So following me around is turning other people's garbage into gold. So that's another thing. Removing friction, thinking differently, thinking people, trite of course, out of the box, but having things go through your mind

and looking at the status quo and then say, why is that executed this this way and a lot of times ryan the reason for that has to do with legacy stuff right uh that uh everything is kind of a composite and a tapestry and um you know you put together a bunch of disparate pieces that come up with an ecosystem. And then all of a sudden, something changed. Like, one of the most remarkable changes ever is mobility. I mean, you know, now we can do everything on the phone. I mean, that's just crazy.

And that has enabled so many things that we're just still figuring out, right, the power of all that. enabled so many things that we're just still figuring out, right, the power of all that. So a lot of the things that we used to do, or a lot of the things and a lot of the systems that have been kind of the backbone of commerce and how we go about our day, all that is subject to incredible change. I mean, who would have thought about telemedicine for God's sake, right? And no, doctor, doctor doesn't have to come to you. You don't have to come to the doctor. You can do it. You can do it, you know, over a screen. I mean, how crazy, right? So, but somebody just said, I don't see why you have to, you know, anybody has got to go anywhere. I mean, everybody stays put and you have a conversation over the phone. No different than what we're doing right now.

I would not have thought that I could get Michael Loeb on a video conference and talk his brain and provide that value to our listeners as well as myself. You know, it's fascinating. you to our listeners as well as myself you know it's fascinating i mean is the there's the speed with which obviously uh embracing change is is so key to your to your success and and a lot of those things but is the speed with which all of these things are happening is it just is it can you is it to blow your mind blows my mind i And I'm an, I consider myself an innovator. I consider myself, I love change. I'm an, I'm an entrepreneur. A lot of those things that you talked about,

but the speed with which change is happening now is mind numbing in some ways. And it's on an accelerated basis. And what we have seen with COVID, I was talking to a friend of mine, Carolyn Everson. She's like number three or four or five on Facebook. And this is back in a conversation in April. And I said, what has been the profundity of this? What has been the, you know, what has this meant, right? Summon substance. And she said, the world has been accelerated by 10 years. Existing trends have been accelerated by 10 years.

And I believe that's true. I really believe that's true. And the other thing, Ryan, you've got to ask yourself, so interesting about inventions and entrepreneurs and companies. If I went to you two or three years ago and I said Zoom, the right answer is there's no room for Zoom. Have you heard of a little company called Facebook? They got something called FaceTime, right? And if it's not them, it's Microsoft. And it's not them, it's Cisco. And if it's not them, it's someone. There's

no room for like, you know, half dozen people in a garage to create Zoom. You know, you're going to get squished, you know, but these are companies that have trillion-dollar market caps, and you are just going to get run over. How could there be a Zoom? And it's amazing, right? Somebody created Zoom. I would have been a little held back with Skype and everything else. I try to find these white space, and sometimes there's just better space.

And I really appreciate your time. Let's do a follow-up. We can talk how we can get Credit Key. I would like to talk some more, so maybe I'll get Raleigh to schedule something. We would appreciate it. Okay, that'd be great. Yeah. Hey, guys, really appreciate Michael Loeb coming on today of the Radcast.

You know where to find us, theradcast.com and at the.rad.cast on Instagram. And we'll see you next time. Thanks, Michael. Thank you. Yo, guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify. Do us a solid. Tell more people. Leave us some reviews. And, hey, here's the best news of all. If you want to work with me directly, if you want to get your business kicking ass,

and you want Radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864-729-3680. Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.