The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Craig M. Geisler, President and CEO of Cherrywood Enterprises, THE Premier debt buyer

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

Craig M. Geisler, President and CEO of Cherrywood Enterprises, THE Premier debt buyer cherrywoodenterprises.com Bio on Craig M. Geisler: Craig is the President and CEO of Cherrywood Enterprises.... They are a national buyer of charged off debt portfolios and they work with banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and commercial lenders. From there, they outsource their portfolios to a network of attorneys nationwide. The are considered THE Premier debt buyer. Craig has worked in the debt buying arena since 2009 and has been the CEO of Cherrywood Enterprises since 2012. Craig is married to his wife Amy, they live in West Palm Beach, Florida, and they have 4 kids.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages,
Starting point is 00:00:50 welcome to the Big Circus 10 in the Sky, where we bring you the latest minds, the brilliant people. Let's see, the billionaires, the White House advisors, you name it. They've been on the show. I mean, just every time I do this show, I learn something new, and I hope that my audience does as well. Like, hey, there's just so much you learn. And I'll just, like, I think in the previous show, I learned a new term that expanded my mind.
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Starting point is 00:01:57 And we're on the new threads and TikTok and whatever new social media they're starting this week. And we'll probably be out of business next week. We have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's a CEO. He's built his own company, and he's going to be talking to us about how he did that, how he became an entrepreneur and some of the background, everything he does.
Starting point is 00:02:15 If you're watching on YouTube, which I highly recommend you do, he's a big Indiana Colts fan of Peyton Manning, and he's got a whole plethora of Peyton Manning fandom behind him. So as a Raiders fan, I appreciate Peyton Manning, his love of the game. So we've been having a nice chat about that. So if you get a chance, check out his wonderful thing there. And of course, we're trying to shame and plug you into watching it on YouTube as well. Craig Geisler is on the show with us today. He's the CEO of Cherrywood
Starting point is 00:02:47 Enterprises. Cherrywood Enterprises is a national buyer of charged off debt portfolios. I'm going to try to talk to him in charging off my ex-wife's debt. And they work with banks, credit unions, and auto lenders and commercial lenders. From there, they outsource their portfolios to a network of attorneys nationwide, and they are considered the premier debt buyer. Craig has worked in the debt arena since 2009 and been the CEO of Cherrywood Enterprises since 2012. He's married to his wife, Amy, and they live in West Palm Beach, Florida, and they have four kids. Welcome to the show, Craig. How are you? Very good.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. And with all the Indianapolis Colts football fandom behind you, hopefully we'll get some business stuff talked about here. The show might just devolve into football fandom, as it were. Give us your.com so people can find you on the internet.
Starting point is 00:03:43 Oh, my apologies. It's SherrywoodEnterprises.com. There you go. And give us a 30,000 overview of what Cherrywood Enterprises does. So Cherrywood Enterprises works, as you mentioned, with banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and commercial lenders. We purchase charged off debt portfolios ranging from credit cards, overdraft, and auto deficiencies to commercial charge-offs, heavy equipment, you name it, we buy it. There you go. There you go. So you guys work with, what did we say? We said banks
Starting point is 00:04:15 and all these different things. Now you handle both ends of both debt buying and debt selling. And what got you down this road? What got you interested in this type of business? Ironically enough, I fell into it. I was a mortgage broker for almost a decade. The market tanked here in South Florida. I was looking for something to do. And a company that trained me into doing what I do now brought me on board.
Starting point is 00:04:40 I was there for three and a half years. Things kind of went sideways with the company. And lo and behold, I launched Cherrywood and it has been an amazing experience. Looking back on it, I got very lucky, but I think the notion of hard work and dedication pays off work for me. There you go. And that was an interesting time. We're very similar in the background. I had a mortgage company for 20 years. And then 2008 came along and said, nah, it's not going to work out. And that and all of our other companies, you know, in our little empire. And so you made a nice transition to that.
Starting point is 00:05:17 Was that the first time that you become a self-employed gentleman creating your own company and stuff like that? It was. It was. It was a scary venture, and I've said it before. I'd say the first two years were the hardest, trying to establish the company and the good name and obviously getting the word out there to other financial institutions that were around, and we purchased their debt portfolios. And before long, as I mentioned, the hard work and dedication paid off
Starting point is 00:05:47 and more and more of the financial institutions were calling. And it definitely paid off with just laying the groundwork and being consistent. And the biggest thing is answering your phone. I know it sounds silly to say, but as the calls come in, a lot of people get rather lazy and they don't want to take the calls and they don't want to have the five to 10 to 15 minute conversations with the different
Starting point is 00:06:10 institutions. And if you don't, I mean, that's really how you lay the groundwork is just letting them know your story, who you are, where you came from. You do exist. You're not a fly by night company. And, you know, just doing that on a consistent basis and responding to emails very quickly. And And, you know, just doing that on a consistent basis and responding to emails very quickly. And even, you know, when the business hours are over, five o'clock does not come for me. It's six, seven, eight, sometimes nine o'clock working with the Western U.S. boarded companies. And it's just been, it's been a roller coaster, but it's been fun and I wouldn't
Starting point is 00:06:42 change it for anything. What do you think has helped lead you to success as an entrepreneur? What are some of the tidbits of maybe things that stuck out to you and you felt made you successful? Because being successful as an entrepreneur is hard, especially in that time and era going through a transition like that where you've got to pivot really hard. Yeah. Again, a lot like that where you've got to pivot really hard. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it was just a lot of that was consistency. And I think the major thing is doing what you say you are going to do. So if you said you were going to call it three, you better darn well call three.
Starting point is 00:07:21 If you say you're going to have an answer for a company by five o'clock, you better do so. And even if I couldn't, if there was the odd opportunity that I wasn't able to get back to them, at the time I scheduled, I at least responded and said, I'm still working on it. I haven't forgotten about you, but I'm going to get you the answer I promised you. And, you know, just doing that consistently and hard work and making the phone calls and dare I say, kissing the babies, it all paid off. And of course, the other is going to conferences, meeting people face to face, shaking hands, introducing yourself. And I think a big part of being an entrepreneur is one, you have to be humble.
Starting point is 00:07:52 You can't be this, well, I'm an entrepreneur. So I'm this guy that you need to talk to and not the other way around. It doesn't work that way. So being humbled, being gracious, kind of letting your story play out to who you are, why you are the way you are. And then again, the consistency with follow up and, and answering questions and just being and learning. And that's the main thing. And as you get the questions that are answered, asked of you, if you don't have the answers, don't make one up. I mean, you just look stupid. We'll find out that you just gave him a bunch of crap. So if you're going to be asked a question that you don't know, the proper response is
Starting point is 00:08:28 always, I don't know. Let me research that and I'll get back to you. And then you do. And I think people respect the fact that you're not trying to give them a boatload of crap, but you're actually a guy that if he doesn't know the answer, we'll find it for you. There you go. And so having that ability to be a good resource, to manage your word, to stay with your word,
Starting point is 00:08:49 stand with your word, you know, there's a lot of flakiness in business nowadays. And then entrepreneurism has a tendency to kind of keep you humble. At least it did for me until I got a big head later in years. But for the early years, it kept me humble when we were still eating humble pie
Starting point is 00:09:04 and living on top ramen and all that good stuff. Did you find it was hard to transition from going from, you know, working for, you know, one thing and doing another and did you change your leadership styles? Did it give you a challenge in leadership? Yes and no. The transition was not hard because I've always said, I think if you're in some type of a sales position, I don't care if it's with Payne Weber or Morgan Stanley, or as a server and a bartender, which is what I started off at years and years and years ago,
Starting point is 00:09:40 I think everybody should start off as a server because you learn how to read people. If you're selling, you know, your specials and whatnot, how to pitch that to people, what to say, what not to say. And I think it kind of paid off. So in regard of pivoting from one line of work to another, it wasn't that hard because it was still, in all intents and purposes, it was a sales position. I mean, you're just glorified by the title. But again, if you're selling and letting people know that you're out there and what you do, I think that's what plays out. Not so much the title, who you are as a company, but again, going everything that we just talked
Starting point is 00:10:14 about before being consistent and, and making sure that you're the guy that people go to when they have questions about your particular career field. There you go. So, uh, you guys work with banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and commercial lenders to buy charged off debt, bad debt, I guess. Do you guys end up being a collection agency or how does that work? I know you have outsourcing you do with attorneys. Yeah, I don't want to be an agency. There's a lot of rules and regulations that are always changing that there's no way.
Starting point is 00:10:46 I mean, listen, I give credit to where credit's due. If you own an agency in today's day and age and you're doing it and you're successful, kudos to you because it's not easy. I certainly don't have the wherewithal or the patience to be able to do that. So the first thing I've always done is I've always worked with these financial institutions. So letting them know that we're buying their charged off debt, it seems kind of easy, right? You know, we're coming in and we want to give you money and not the other way around where most people are coming to the banks and these financial lenders
Starting point is 00:11:17 looking for money. I'm not, I'm there to give you the money. I want to take your bad accounts that stop talking to you, stop taking your phone calls, stop responding to the letters. And we go back four years. So it seems like on the surface, that kind of a pitch, man, there should be. But with that, they've really since I'd say 2010, they've really started to regulate not just the collections market, but everything associated with it. So with being a debt buyer, there's a bunch of states that require that you're licensed,
Starting point is 00:11:49 which we are, and we're always transitioning into the new states that are making that law. And then we always are keeping up with compliance. We belong to a couple of associations that are fantastic with letting the members know any of the recent changes in what particular states. So coupled with that, and getting back to your question, outsourcing is the proper way for me to go. The attorneys out there, they don't want to say anything or do anything that's going to put not only their good name on the line, but also, I mean, these guys went to school and they got a bar membership. And as far as I'm aware, maybe they're out there, but not many attorneys are going to put that at risk to
Starting point is 00:12:29 collect a couple thousand dollars. Sure. Yeah. So that makes sense. And then you guys still hold the, you're still holding that in your portfolio, right? So you're not selling, you're not selling and turning over them just so I understand the model you're using. Yeah. I mean, we do have attorneys that we work with in certain states that either, A, we don't have a good track record with, B, we don't have a good attorney relationship with, or C, we've got no desire to be in that state doing any type of collections. So in that regard, we will sell to them.
Starting point is 00:12:58 It's very far and few between, but certainly done. There you go. And what states do you cover or are you licensing? Can you buy and sell in all the you cover or are you licensed in? Can you buy and sell in all the states or give us that rundown? Yeah, we purchase nationally with the exception of maybe two or three different states that I just don't have a good track record with, but we're licensed in all the states that do require us to be. There you go.
Starting point is 00:13:21 North and South Carolina, I think right now in our industry, they are the ones that are the toughest as far as getting your licensing There you go. Um, once you do what you can do, what you can't do, how to go about getting garnishments, if you're going to garnish bank accounts. Um, so it's, it's, it's a big thing to understand. And that's why we work with what I consider the best out there, the best of the best, because they're on top of things. They're going to conferences there. They have their compliance people.
Starting point is 00:13:59 They're always making sure that they're on top of their state laws, rules, and regs. So there you go. I noticed on your, uh, on the signature on your email, you're involved in a lot of bankers associations, and I see the Utah Bankers Association, Colorado Bankers Association, and work with a lot of banks in that regard. You have to. And again, as I mentioned before, it's creating the notion that or that we you
Starting point is 00:14:26 know we go to the conferences we like to shake hands and introduce ourselves and let everybody know in those particular bank states what we do and how we do it and it shows like yours that certainly increase that word across the united states yeah and i know you have a website or on your website you have an nda on there so if uh they want to talk to you about their stuff or they can call you i guess uh is that is that the best way for people to reach out to you that are interested in buying or selling dead maybe attorneys look looking to work with you certainly you can go on our website um the nda i think is crucial it protects everybody's proprietary information so you know you work with cherry wood and you
Starting point is 00:15:06 know a lot of people might want to know how we do what we do and they want to borrow our ideas thoughts and and procedures and make it their own which is certainly you could um but we'd rather work with companies that are interested in working with us in a upward fashion of being responsible for what they do both before, during, and after the purchasing process. And again, it's all about creating the relationships with the banks out there and taking away their bad portfolios that they're making money on. There you go.
Starting point is 00:15:38 Now, the callback joke on the show for years has been that I have anywhere from seven to eight or to nine seven nine different ex-wives so uh would you be interested in buying some wives uh ex-wives uh and they're dead no but i thank you for asking no wives no ex-wives and they can keep their debt as well but do i have to do i have to fill out the nda to get that uh considered no i'm just kidding yeah i'll get it back to me we'll talk we'll get it back uh there uh so uh you know you built a successful company and how does it feel to uh you know you're what uh you started in 2012 so you're 12 12 years down the road yeah this is my i flunk second grade that's another callback joke of the show you're doing great you're doing yeah i'm trying to i i'm still i i can. I can count as long as I still have my fingers.
Starting point is 00:16:28 So how does it feel to be in business this long? You know, one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs go through is, you know, trying to get past what you mentioned, that first two-year mark where you really struggle and people are like, who are you? And you're like, who are we? And all that good stuff. What's it feel like to finally reach that point and pinnacle where you, where you know you're successful and you've got the game down.
Starting point is 00:16:52 Well, I'm going to borrow from some of the great sports legends out there that once they reach what they always say is the pinnacle of success. If you stop and look around, you've already lost it. It's just things go so fast in the industry. So I don't, maybe again, it goes back to my humble beginnings. I don't look at myself as a successful person. I look at myself as someone who's lucky.
Starting point is 00:17:15 I got a couple of good breaks, but it's also coming from, I came from Buffalo, New York, which isn't the most exquisite and elaborate city out there that you can think of when you think of, you know of great cities in the United States. I think of gold. Let me tell you something. But I will say that if you come from humble beginnings and you have to work for everything that you have, every dollar that you have, then you're ahead of the game. So I don't ever look at myself as a success.
Starting point is 00:17:42 I look at myself as somebody who's had a lot of good luck and a lot of good relationships. And I want to continue to get better. I want to continue to be more successful. And the day that I stop wanting that is a day that I will retire. There you go. And so in leadership with your employees and stuff and the people who work at your firm, what sort of style do you think you use with them? How do you,
Starting point is 00:18:06 how do you keep honed as a good leader and, and you know, keep in touch with your, with your employees and keep them motivated? So I think, as I've said before, we always look for in our company for, for leaders.
Starting point is 00:18:20 So I don't want a yes, man. I don't want somebody that's going to do everything that I tell them to. I want somebody that's going to challenge me in my way of thinking because a great leader never thinks that his way is the only way and the best way. That's a foolish leader. I've learned that the hard way. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:36 You have to look at things as there's other employees that you hire to do their job and they have great ideas. So we're always kind of spit falling off of each other, trying to hear, you know, another something or a better way to do something and try to, you know, successfully navigate the widget, if you will. Navigate the widget. I love that. Yeah. I learned a long time ago that I, you know, the CEO of the Buckstops here, but you know, I, I'm not the, uh, corner market of all the greatest ideas in the world. I, I've had a few, but, uh, for the most part, you know, I'm not the corner market of all the greatest ideas in the world.
Starting point is 00:19:06 I've had a few. But for the most part, you know, you need that input from people. And we've had a lot of great military leaders and people from the military that come from our great military here in the U.S. And it's interesting how much they teach leadership and they teach small teams. They teach everyone to be a leader basically at all levels and so teaching people leadership and being open to their minds makes all the difference in the world what do you go ahead no I just scratched my okay the what are you seeing in the world today because I think we're kind of entering possibly another, probably lots of business for you. The way the economy is going, interest rates going up usually increases with defaults.
Starting point is 00:19:52 I think car sales and repossessions have been going up. I think some housing foreclosures have been going up with interest rates. We kind of see this ebb and tide with the economy. What are you seeing right now in the debt and default business? Well, they keep saying that we're entering a recession, although if you look at some of the economic factors, we haven't seen it yet, right? So, you know, we're always hopeful. I don't want to say that I want our nation to go down into the dumps when it comes to our economy, but there are certain attributes that we want to see. So, you know, as you mentioned, the auto sales, that's a big part of the marketplace right now. There's a big debate going on with these electric cars and if it's a more beneficial
Starting point is 00:20:33 or not so beneficial car for you. I think especially if you look at states like California that have an energy crisis, adding cars that are going to be drawing from that, probably not the best idea. So I think that there's still a big market for gas powered vehicles. I think there's a lot of lenders out there that are trying to figure out how to keep people into their loans and elongate their loans and refinance them
Starting point is 00:20:58 rather than lose them altogether, which is smart for the lenders. But at the end of the day, you're going to see the defaults are going to increase. We're already hearing and seeing that banks and credit unions are having an issue with that. Auto lenders are having an issue with that. And surprisingly, and this is why we've entered
Starting point is 00:21:15 into this space, I'd say around 2018, is commercial lenders. You get a lot of these companies that are leasing and purchasing heavy equipment and cars for their businesses, vans, semi trucks. And these guys, you know, the entrepreneurs, unfortunately, aren't making it. And they're left with the equipment that they can turn in and the lender can sell the equipment to make a little bit of money back on that. But there's still that deficiency. So between the auto and commercial, it's a very synonymous sector that you're seeing
Starting point is 00:21:46 a lot of the same things, a lot of the growth in terms of their defaults. And we work with them, and we love working with both. And while we try to be empathetic to the fact that they're losing money, at the end of the day, if you're being offered money for an account or a portfolio of accounts that you're not going to get any money back from, why not sell them, recoup some of your costs and boost your bottom line so you can go out and continue to do loans and stay afloat? Yeah. Sometimes some money is better than no money. Agreed.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Especially for the work that it takes to go in and recover it. And you got to focus on what you're good at doing as a business. I know there's there's some interesting things going up in our economy it's been a weird sort of like you mentioned it's not really a recession um and and i don't know if we've soft landed or not because there's interesting thing going on if you understand m1 and m2 money policy in the federal reserve but i think in october the uh moratorium from from COVID on repayments to people's school loans expires. And they're saying there's probably some defaults coming down the wire.
Starting point is 00:22:53 And, you know, people are kind of not used to paying their student loan payments. And they've probably been having a little bit more fun with that money than they maybe should have. Maybe buy some cars and there's a there's a one channel i love watching on tiktok where this accountant guy sits down with the young generation z and and very uh young millennialists i guess at the end of the millennial phase and uh i mean they've got car payments that are like fifteen hundred two thousand dollars for car payment yeah and there's you know they're fairly young so they're still not making a lot of money but even even for what i'm making i'm just like that better be a you know that'd be a pretty expensive nice car but they're not they're just like a toyota corolla 2023 and you know the prices
Starting point is 00:23:37 of cars went crazy they went like 140 for truck pickup trucks and you're like what you know and uh so i watched some of their debts and you know they're going out to eat uh five times a day at uber eats you know that's 40 bucks a pop delivery a 10 bag from fucking mcdonald's and uh you're just sitting there just going wow and then when you look at the debt crush that's coming from that um but it's been an interesting thing because uh basically what we've had is the baby boomers and late gen extras like me have been moving out of the out of the um retiring early basically with covid we're just like fuck it we're out bye and we knew this was going to kind of happen but it's happening faster because of covid where they
Starting point is 00:24:19 just were like i am not doing this anymore i don need to. And so because of it, our job, there's a huge glut that's coming into our job market. And that's why we have this weird recession where we have high employment. But, you know, we have all the other factors. And it's kind of weird. Yeah. But I imagine there's going to be more defaults and debts coming your way as some of these different economic things. And there's always kind of this cleansing of economies. You're always up and down.
Starting point is 00:24:49 It seems like really hard to just get a smooth one for a long period of time. Well, the funny thing was from, I'd say, 2020 to 2021, and even probably in the early parts of 2022, everybody was getting their government subsidies and they paying their bills on time. I mean, I can't tell you how many of the banks, credit unions, auto lenders I was talking to, and they were saying to me, well, our defaults are down because ironically enough, everybody's paying their bills. And it was tough for companies like myself out there because we weren't getting, when
Starting point is 00:25:19 we're normal portfolios, we were getting, we're between 18 $25 million worth of charge-offs on a national lender. Now we're looking at $3 to $5 million. And it was devastating. I hated it. But then now everything corrects itself within a two- to three-year time period. And now that everybody's back to work, now they're defaulting on their loans again. And they're not paying the loans that they got from two, three years ago. Lenders are now turning to companies like Sherrywood to sell their charged off loans again.
Starting point is 00:25:49 So everything is kind of going back to that cyclical pre-COVID format. And it's great for companies like myself, maybe not so much for the lenders. I've had several conversations with CEOs that said the same thing. And, you know, again, I try to be empathetic. But, you know, you guys had your two to three years where you were making back a lot of your money and you were getting your payers and everything was great.
Starting point is 00:26:10 Now we're going back to where we should have been. And going back to our conversation about mortgages, back in the early 2000s, I felt like all these different mortgage lenders were coming out offering these insane loans, no doc loans and stated income, stated employment loans, and nobody was checking their finances.
Starting point is 00:26:29 They were buying half a million to a million dollar houses with monthly payments that were certainly something they couldn't afford, but the lenders made it easy for people to get into these houses. Until it corrected itself, everybody went back to the conventional, you know, Fannie Mae type mortgages where you put 3% to 5% down.
Starting point is 00:26:49 And now we're back to normal with the mortgage market. You're going to see the same thing happen in the lender's market where you have the government that's trying to intervene and regulate a lot more with how they're going to lend this money and who they're going to lend it to. And then on the backside of it, when they default, what we can do or not do to the debtors. But at the end of the day, let's look at it like this. You have somebody that went out and bought a car or got a credit card and bought TV and furniture and they have a nice house that they live in. And all of a sudden, they defaulted on all of that because, hey, you know what? We got the stuff.
Starting point is 00:27:24 What are they going to do? The bank is going to come in and repossess my tv or my couch no oh my car but if i put it in my garage then you know i got a half a chance so with everything it's coming back to the point where you got to pay your bills and i don't know with people that when you grow up nobody i don't know of any parent that said hey go out there and try to get as much credit as you possibly can and then don't pay it back and see what happens who says that there's probably a joke there of x y's and and uh marriage but i don't know uh you gotta love it uh but uh so what how do you you know people used to ask me what
Starting point is 00:28:09 motivates me to get up every every day and do work and i always say bills and they're just like that's an inspiring chris and i'm like it's kind of not really they come every month what motivates you to get up every day and still do the work every day after all these years? These surprising conversations and relationships. So it's funny because I wake up every day and you know, you may have something on your calendar where you've got two or three different meetings or two or three different phone calls that you have to make or conference calls. And then there's some days that you've got nothing. And I'm a big believer in the days that you have nothing you make something so whether it's putting out emails whether it's calling random companies talking to
Starting point is 00:28:51 our marketing department about coming up with new ideas and how we want to send the message across and and you know give me something new give me a new picture give me something that we haven't used before and then going to you know the, the attorneys, or, you know, sometimes if you work with collection agencies and saying, listen, I'm going to give you incentive. If we can get this threshold for this particular month and cross it, then I want to give your your collectors or your attorney, an additional incentive, you know, maybe financially, it may be a nice bottle of wine, it could be a restaurant gift card, whatever the case may be. But if you're always looking to do something and increase your bottom line in some facet,
Starting point is 00:29:31 whether it's something nominal or something big that's going to change your daily outlook and what you do and how you do it, that's it. And I can't tell you how many days where you start off and you got a couple of things that are working, all of a sudden, boom, out of nowhere, you get a new company or a new bank and they're ready to move tomorrow. And, you know, you got to get your evaluation together. We've got an underwriting team that is phenomenal with taking a look at portfolios, identifying the good, the bad and the ugly, which unfortunately more often than not, there's more ugly than anything else. But they're great. And when without them, Cherrywood wouldn't be the success that it is the people that i work with
Starting point is 00:30:09 wouldn't be the success that it is and those financial institutions that we've worked with we wouldn't be anywhere near it so you always have to be busy and don't take a day that's not as busy as a day to go off and goof off so you have to have and i think it was arnold schwarzenegger that said always be consistent. Now he was talking about consistently going to the gym every single day on days that you don't feel like going to the gym, go to the gym anyway and do something.
Starting point is 00:30:35 As long as you're doing something, you're doing better than you were if you were just to sit in your couch, watch Oprah and your other TV shows, click through the channels and drink a couple of beers and say well it was a slow day today so that's what i did now there you go one way we've got the audience applause coming in they love that uh you know i used to have employees
Starting point is 00:30:54 say to me they would come up to me and they'd be like hey you know it's so good you finally arrived you're you're making you're successful making some money and you can just kind of sit back on your laurels and ride it out and what you talk about is no you got you got to still hustle in fact sometimes you got to hustle even more the more successful you are yep yep you have to maintain you have to maintain once you get a good name established then it becomes even twice as hard to to keep that i mean what they always say is finding a wife is the hard part and then keeping them is even harder. So it's the same thing. I'm using your wife dialect there, but it's the same
Starting point is 00:31:32 idea with a company. When you're an entrepreneur, you establish and then you reestablish and maintain. And if you do that, there's no reason you can't be a success. But if you get lazy and sit back and have others do what you should be doing, shame on you. And it's only going to come back and bite you. You know what? There you go. So anything more we haven't talked about your company, Cherrywood, how you do it and what you do there? Well, I think the process.
Starting point is 00:31:59 So when we work with a bank and they say, OK, we're interested in potentially selling our charged off loans. The process we've made very, very simple. And in fact, I even hate using the word process because it makes it sound, you know, one of those things where we got to do a million things. Right. So it's what we do is obviously the first thing we've touched on was we send out the mutual non-disclosure agreement. And then we send over the Excel spreadsheets with the headers of information. And then we've got one of two ways that the financial institution can put the information together. So one, copy and paste, which can be arduous and tedious at most. But if you've got an IT group that's phenomenal at it, then more power to you. The other way is they pull it out of their system, different format from what we're looking for, but the same idea, same, I guess, the headers of information we're looking for. And then we ask for backup docs for one of the accounts just to review the terms and conditions and arbitration language and anything
Starting point is 00:32:55 that's going to allow for attorney fees and court costs. So once we get the Excel spreadsheet, the sample docs, our underwriting team goes to work and takes us roughly three to five business days to come back with a number. We present the number to that financial institution if they love it, which why wouldn't they? Then we draw together a purchase and sale agreement. They sign it, we sign it, and then we fund. So the process, if everybody's on their A game, should take no more than two weeks, 10 days. And we fund quickly. We want those accounts in here. We want all
Starting point is 00:33:26 the backup docs at that point. And we do this consistently, whether it's monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annually or annually, we want to create that relationship with those financial institutions. Now, since you buy debt, can I just, can I just mail you in some of my credit cards without taking care of it? No, I'm just it? Absolutely, Chris. Anything for you, buddy. I've got a stack over here. We'll just send you the list. We'll buy it, but I just want you to know in advance, we're going to put it through
Starting point is 00:33:53 an attorney. I'll just keep paying the bills. Probably a good idea. I was hoping there was an out there but i guess there's not damn it so we're gonna hold you to one way or the other miles i'll just i'll just keep those payments going well this has been very insightful and very inspiring i think for
Starting point is 00:34:16 entrepreneurs to give them a vision of how to build good companies how to be successful and of course uh people who can get in touch with you and work with you on both sides of the coin of buying and selling and collecting debt and all that good stuff. I know there's a lot of attorneys out there that do that. Give us your last pitch before we go out on doing business with you as we go. It's very simple. If you want to work with a great company, with a great team, that's going to give you great results and do that consistently. There's only one company to work with, Cherrywood Enterprises. There you go. And gibboushire.com so people can find you on the interwebs.
Starting point is 00:34:50 Again, www.cherrywoodenterprises.com. We've also got a LinkedIn page. You can go to Cherrywood. You can go to my own, Craig Geisler on LinkedIn. And we're always looking for new banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and commercial lenders to work with. So let's get in touch. There you go.
Starting point is 00:35:06 Thank you very much, Craig, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the time. There you go. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, FortressCruzFonds, LinkedIn.com. Join the big 135,000 LinkedIn group over there.
Starting point is 00:35:19 The big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing grows like a weed every day. And also go to, what is it the new threads app whatever the hell that is the tiktok you know all the different things on there on the social media search for the chris voss show anyway thanks for tuning in to everyone be safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have us out

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