The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mastering Business Credit: Michael Sean McCall of Kennesaw’s Expert Insights

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Mastering Business Credit: Michael Sean McCall of Kennesaw's Expert Insights Assurancebusinessconcepts.com About the Guest(s): Michael Sean McCall of Kennesaw is the Executive Vice President at Assurance Business Concepts and McCall Business Capital. With extensive experience managing corporate credit and alternative financing, Sean offers a hands-on perspective essential for business owners looking to separate personal and business finances. Through his personal journey, Sean provides actionable insights into corporate credit, alternative funding, and preparedness that resonate with both entrepreneurs and business professionals. He assists in the development of business financial strategies that create stability and opportunities for growth. Episode Summary: Join host Chris Voss in this enlightening episode with guest Michael Sean McCall of Kennesaw, as they delve into the intricacies of business credit and financial management. The episode sheds light on the critical importance of separating personal and business finances, offering entrepreneurs invaluable advice on creating a future-proof business credit profile. Sean shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting both the struggles and the strategic moves that can make or break a business. In this insightful discussion, Michael Sean McCall of Kennesaw emphasizes the necessity of proactive financial planning for business owners. Drawing on data that underscores the prevalence of cash flow issues among small to medium enterprises, he provides practical solutions to avoid common pitfalls. Key topics include developing a robust business credit score, utilizing alternative financing options, and preparing for unforeseen financial challenges. Sean also discusses the process of becoming bankable and underscores the value of setting up safety nets when they are not urgently required. Key Takeaways: Separate Financials: Ensuring the separation of personal and business finances is crucial for credit building and legal protection. Proactive Planning: The best time to secure business funding is when you don’t need it, allowing for better terms and preparedness for unexpected events. Building Business Credit: Intentional and strategic actions are required to develop a strong business credit rating to leverage for future growth. Navigating Financial Challenges: Preparing for financial challenges includes having alternative financing sources and clear strategies in place. Transferable Credit: Strong business credit can be transferred within family lines or between key employees, enabling smoother business transitions. Notable Quotes: "Business credit has to be done intentionally. It's not like personal credit, which builds automatically." "The best time to get a loan is when you don’t need it. Because everybody wants you." "If you own a business, you're going to need money at some point." "82% of businesses fail because of cash flow." "Cash flow problems don’t announce themselves. You've got to be prepared."

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Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we're going to be talking with Sean McCall. He's the executive vice president at Assurance Business Concept. So we're going to get into it with him. He offers a unique perspective on corporate credit and alternative financing because unlike typical financial experts, he's personally managed these complexities as a business owner. He provides a hands-on experience that allows him

to share relatable challenges, practical solutions, and valuable lessons learned that directly resonate with fellow entrepreneurs and business professionals in your audience. That would be my audience, I guess, the way they wrote this. They can provide real-world anecdotes and actionable insights into securing funding, managing credit, exploring diverse financing options, and making for engaged content. Welcome to the show. How are you, Michael? I am doing fine, sir.

How are you? I am doing fine, sir. How are you? I am doing excellent. And, uh, uh, give us your.com where can people find you on the interwebs to get to know a couple of places, assurance business concepts.com and, um, McCall business capital.com. Uh, and then, you know, I can, I can, can I give my phone number? Someone can text me. I don't mind. That's 404-431-1263. And that, you know, send me a text. Always have it with me. I'll answer or call you right back. And then do you want me to call you Michael during the show? I know your full name is

Michael Sean McCall or do you want me to call you Sean? Sean's fine. So give us a $30,000 over you. What do you guys do there at the company? We help small business operators separate their personal finances from their business finances. And what it looks like is a small business operator, say it's a plumber, they get really good at their job, they bust out and start their own business, but they need supplies, all the things you need. Well, they start guaranteeing things with their social security number. They've got their EIN and as you go down the road, next thing you know, you've got commingled

funds, you have business expenses tied to your personal, your personal died to your business and you want to keep those wallets separate for a whole bunch of reasons. The veil, right? The corporate. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, you know, Chris, a lot, a lot of really smart people out there just miss that, you know, and I didn't know. And I mean, so that's what we do. And we paired them up with with funding if they needed on the front end,

because it seems like everyone we meet with, they need capital almost immediately for something. So we have that ability and then once we get that handled, if they need it, then we formulate the plan to get them with a solid credit rating so they can get most, if not all of their business funding done through the business and not through them. Is it usually people that have, uh, the, the clients that struggle to, maybe they don't have quite perfect credit or, uh, and, uh, you know, banks aren't, aren't in there up there. Sometimes, you know, most of your, most small business,

medium business owners have around a seven 20 personal FICO score. That's, that's just a national average, but it doesn't matter, Chris, how good your, how good your credit is. They're only going to give you so much. You could have an 800 credit score, but sooner or later, you're going to run out. So what happens is they're not building any credit on the business. And they get to a point where they can't borrow personally. And then they're up against it. And with business credit, we can talk about specifics later. I don't want to bore anyone, but only 7% of vendors and lenders out there report to the credit reporting bureaus for business.

Yeah. So with your personal credit, when you turn 18, you start building a credit rating, whether you like it or not, and it's on autopilot. Business credit has to be done intentionally. And so we are aware of the other 93% that do report and we're looking to take them from, We are aware of the other 93% that do report and we're looking to take them from, this is a silly example, but a Home Depot personal or an Office Max personal card. They should have an Office Max business card. So they're starting to build a little bit of business credit and there's a lot more to it than that. That's just an example. Yeah. I mean, we used to have all the Office Max cards and all the crazy stuff with my own companies. I think they all had like stuff with my own companies.

I think they all had like $25,000 lines. Um, the, uh, but yeah, building business credit is, is smart. Like you talk about, and yeah, you come, if you co-mingle funds and you have, I don't know about S-corps and the other course, but I believe it does pierce the veil, but, uh, one of the reasons you have like a C-corp, which we always had with our companies, was it gives you that personal asset protection, where if you get sued, they can't touch your personal assets. So you're not going to let them home or anything and be on the streets. But if you've commingled your funds, if you're personal and you're whatever, and the attorneys can map that out and find that you were, there's people that slush fund the account to have fun

and shouldn't do that. But if you're just paying personal expenses or whatever, once you pierce that veil and they can identify that, then you've crossed the line and you've removed your protection as it were. Yes, sir, you have. And you know what that gets you when you figure that out? When it's too late, it gets you a whole bunch of sleepless nights.

Oh yeah. You know, you're lying to be, you know, I can remember being years ago down in, down in Seaside, Florida on vacation and my kids and my wife and everyone else was, were out on the beach enjoying life. And I'm lying there on in the sand looking at my POS system on my phone to make sure that we had a good Friday night because in Saturday night was payrolls coming out the next Thursday and you know due to one thing or another you know I was worried about being short because it was a summer yeah sitting there going

well crap you know I'm down here I'm gonna have to take money out of my personal account and transfer it over, which not the end of the world, but it's not exactly what you want to do when you're on vacation is slide over $20,000 out of your personal account. You know, but, but you don't know that when you start. Yeah. No one, no one tells you that. I mean, you, unless you really get a good advisor at the start, no one tells you that.

Well, that's the problem. You know, like we, we, me and my wife bought this tavern from a friend back, back when we did, and I come from the media business. I was at, you know, I was at ESPN. I was at E entertainment and Fox sports, and then went into the dot com bubble that definitely burst on me. Um, and then, you know, my wife's a C level executive and I was still doing the, the sports stuff and doing, you know, my wife's a C level executive and I was still doing the sports stuff and doing charity events. We bought

this restaurant because it was on autopilot. That's what we were told anyway, the GM kitchen manager, why this thing's doing doing $1.2 million a year. It's an easy $100,000 in your pocket. You and Robin don't have to do anything. Just show up, collect the checks. You know? Yeah, right. I mean, that's not the stupidest thing I've ever done is buy a restaurant. I could tell you a lot about writing press releases, but I didn't know the first thing about a restaurant. And so what happens is you get in there and it's like with all business owners, you're worried about what's happening

tomorrow most of the time, what bill you have to pay tomorrow, but you're not thinking about the future and the simple things. And so what we try to do is just set up that business credit line so that when they need it, they have it. And they're not jumping through hoops. You know, for me personally,

we borrowed $400,000 to get in to buy the restaurant was five. We borrowed four from the SBA and they had everything tied up Chris. I mean, I'm talking all the equity in our home, 401ks. It was all way more money in there than we needed to satisfy the loan. But it didn't matter. It was all had a lien. So along came 2018 and the interest rates went down to almost nothing. We were like, Hey, let's refinance your house. Well, the SBA said, that's cool. You can refinance

your house as soon as you pay us off. And I said, well, can we pay at the closing table like everyone else? And the answer was no, you got to pay now. And I'm not walking around with you got a wow now. Holy crap. Working around with a guy like he probably folding money, but you know, I don't have $375,000 lying around. Yeah, that's crazy, man. We had no lever to pull because every bit of capital, you know, personally what was there was some but not enough. Because what we ended, you know, to, to really get we couldn't get any capital out of the restaurant. So we were just stuck. We're, you know, later on we were able to get a

lower interest rate, but it, but it, it was no help from the SBA and they do not care. I mean, they're great. You know, they give you loans, but you're, you're a slave to them. So we were there, you know, and yeah. And later on, I won't bore you with all that. We ended up having a lawsuit with the people we bought it from. I'm sure the rebrand that was, you know, $175,000. We got that done. And, you know, we were able to, we were able to do that one. And then all of a sudden, you know, this is before COVID are in one week, our payroll, you know, payroll was due, the rent was due, which is close to $20,000. And then the county comes by to do their inspection and they tell me they need it.

I need a new grease trap and I need it next next month. And it's an outdoor grease trap, which is in the ground and 30 or $40,000 to build. Oh, geez. So, well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't strip public zones, the strip center that shouldn't they put it in? I can't take it with me. No, no, you have to do it. Wow.

So there we are, you know, and you try to plan, but you know, you don't know about that. That week, you know, you have to come up with $100,000 and, you know, that kind of messes with your operating capital, especially in the middle of the summer. So we were able to get an alternative equipment funding loan and make that happen through a great company that we met. And that's when I started learning about all this stuff, because we're blessed that we would have been able to probably shoulder it one way or another, but we wouldn't have liked it.

Yeah. But man, after COVID, people didn't come back. And we were sitting there with all that extra debt on us personally. You're talking about $300, $350, $400,000 in debt after all that, not including, plus the SBA loan. And thank goodness for the government, we got a grant because my wife was 51% owner and we got the PPP money. Nice. Yeah. So we ended up getting out of a lot of it. We still have still servicing one debt, but man, if it weren't for that, we would carry a lot of debt to our personal. And to your point

earlier, a lot of people aren't prepared and people do lose their homes and they do lose college funds. And that all stinks. Yeah, it really does. You know, you've given me more thought too, that, you know, I need to take a look at what we're doing and building our corporate credit. I mean, people, this is something people don't do. And I remember, I think that's where we started building ours. We started getting office max cards, the staples and all those things back in the day. And then we just built them and kept paying them off and doing stuff with them. But you know, having that credit profile, profile, but there didn't, there used

to be a thing back in the day where there was like a credit, I can't remember what they used to call it, but there was like a credit profile of some type on. It's paydex score. A paydex score. Paydex. It's kind of like your FICO scores, you know, Equifax business, you know, all the, all the business bureaus, which are separate and you know, Equifax business, you know, all the all the business bureaus, which are separate. And you know, it was changing very rapidly, you know, a couple years ago was just that just the

payback score. And if you think of personal credit, you know, the ranges there business credit goes zero to 100. And you need to be over 70 to start getting you know, some decent fair board terms, you know, showing a better rates, better vendor relationships and all that stuff. But now it's, it's, they've made it much more algorithm driven. So you've got lender compliance. We have a scan that any business owner can run. It's free.

And that scan takes a look at 150 data points to find out where your business is. And all we need is the EIN of your company. It's going to tell you where you are compliance wise. It's going to look at your credit history. It's going to look at your, you know of your company. It's going to tell you where you are compliance wise. It's going to look at your credit history. It's going to look at your scores and it's going to look at your bank rating. And there's another rating called the SBSS, which is a private language between the banks. So you have a score. You need to have over a 160 with the business bank rating. Good luck figuring out what it is, but you have to have a low five.

So, when you look at, you know, we did a thousand scans and 10% of them came back fully compliant. And you know, we're not rocket scientists. This is proprietary software that's been around for 15 years and it identifies everything. It'll give you what kind of loans you can get right now, everything from a line of credit to MCAs to you name it. And then if they need that, we'll walk them through that. But then they're paired with a personal credit analyst who walks with them, does a deep dive because every case is different, right? You're in a different spot than me and so on and so forth.

So that's how it works. So, uh, the potential clients that are out there, entrepreneurs that are out there, do they, I mean, is the, is the time, should they be waiting until they really need money and a loan to talk to you, or should they be talking to you ahead of time to try and, you know, start building, what would you guys call being bankable? Tell us what that is. It's, it's a SAT word for being, being able to be approved for a loan. Nah, you know,

That's the same term women use for me on Tinder. They're like, are you bankable? I'm like, what does that mean? I failed both of those. Yeah. So it's, it's the ability to go to your bank, your local bank, and get a traditional line of credit, right? And if you can do that, this is how, you know, I hope you could tell that I'm honest. If you can get that kind of loan, please go get it. Run. Go straight to it and get it. Because there's a couple old, it seems, you know, fast money is not cheap, cheap money's, you know, not fast.

It's usually what I hear on Tinder too. Yeah. I don't know what that means. But speaking of dating, speaking of dating, business credit and business loans are just like dating or anything else, you can't be too available. You know, if you have a high business score, the best time to get a loan is when you don't need it because everybody wants you.

It's true. It's true. I remember the, I remember the famous story. If you don't mind me interjecting this, make your point, but, uh, there's the famous story of, of how Ford, I don't know why, or if they saw something coming, but they took like a billion or $2 billion alone as a slush fund just for shits and giggles right before COVID hit. And they just, or no, hold on.

This is in 2008 when the market crashed and they'd taken out a loan to have a slush fund. I don't know if they saw the shit coming down the pike or why they did it, but they did it and I don't think they had the foresight. They were just kind of like, eh, it'd be kind of nice to have a slush fund of like one or $2 billion. And that was the thing that really helped them survive the 2008 crash where GM, I think GM and Dodge or Christgrant to go to the government to for bailout. Ford was able to weather it because they just had a rainy day fund. Yep. That's right. That is, you know, you could pretty much be the CEO of our firm because you're saying the exact correct stuff and you know, with those types of things, you know, especially with alternative funding, we had a client the other day that they were worried about upcoming tariffs, you know, and it's their slow season. So they wanted to buy as much product as they could now before they anticipate getting, getting tariffed on it.

So they got a loan that is a year of AR loans, right? Accounts receivable loans in a lot of people, builders will take those out. Someone might owe money for 120 days, but they've got to do their next, their next job. Well, there's a, there's a accounts for payable loan for the same thing. So if say it was, I think that was $175,000. The bank paid them $175,000. They got the product and then they have a small, small payment on that product. It's like 100, almost 120 day, I believe term, but it was just enough to get them through

to get their product and get to the busy, it'll be to the busy season. Then they'll pay that off and they'll be done with it. But they have it in the bank, you know, and same thing was happening back in November, before the election, the smart, the lot of companies were getting ready. They thought thinking about thinking about it now or back then. But man, everything, one thing you can count on, and you know this, if you own a business,

you're gonna need money at some point. I remember like the day we got that business, I was so happy. I called our CPA and he was the guy that had been doing it. And he said, Sean, whatever you do, get a new marketing person, change the menu, do whatever, whatever you think, but trust me, brother, don't mess with your finances. And I was like, don't you don't have to hire me. You don't have

to keep me, please, for the love of God, hire somebody. And, and we kept him and he's, he's an awesome CPA. But you know, he didn't know anything about business credit. He didn't tell us about it. When PPP, when the, when COVID came, we had to figure out PPP all on our own. Oh, wow. So we ended up losing our restaurant. We walked away after, after COVID. Yeah. And it was just, we had instrumentable debt.

Now my colleague who had, he bought one of the other front, one of the other locations, he went the other way. He prepared. Pete has opened up his second restaurant tomorrow. Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, and he's doing really, really well. You know, that's, that's a, that's a great example of how, how he can use it. You know, opportunity doesn't wait for anybody. He had to get a new restaurant that's going out of business around here. Yeah, he bought it. Sadly, I have a kind of a friend. I met him through one

of those networking groups. Young guy had a has a pet grooming business, you know, where they come to your home and mobile grooming. Just up and started two years ago, I tried to get him and his partner to do to start this program. They didn't do it. And this past Thanksgiving, their van was hit by by a driver that was uninsured. And their insurance just paid off their their one their one van, they didn't have enough money to get another one their credit shot. I've been trying to get him alone for six months. I just found out today the last kind of last hope I had was it was a denial. And you know, there's even with the alternative lending,

you need to have at least $30,000 a month in revenue and you have to have assets, you know, and he, his, his assets were gone. So I feel terrible about it, you know, and you know, things, things can go wrong, but always prepare in advance. Always prepare. And that's a really good, smart thing. We've had business brokers on the show that have talked about, I remember a few years ago, I always built companies for empires. So I built them, I hope that they'll last forever, but I've kind of learned over a lifetime that things don't always last forever.

And there's ebbs and ties and flows of technology and stuff. And sometimes interest rates and the 2008 credit, the collapse crisis was pretty interesting. And I was wondering if we're going to go through one with this tariff business. I know there's probably a lot of people that are in trouble right now that were imported from China and they've been kind of caught in a lurch now for almost what, five months maybe of this, are they terrorists or they're not, flipping around. Like you say, a lot of people are smart and they load it up on inventory in anticipation of some of this chaos. So describe for me what you guys do. I'm

looking at your website and you guys have a process that you do when people work for you to become bankable. So, for those out there, kind of give us at least a kind of a rundown overview of how you guys make me bankable or, you know, a client, prospectively, out there in the field. Absolutely. So the first thing we do is we run that business scan on you. And that gives us, again, it looks at like 150 data points and really gives you a pretty crystal clear roadmap of things that need to get done. And none of it is incredibly complicated. It just has to be done in a certain order and with certain vendors.

And we're fortunate that we have, we know that, we have that knowledge and we have the relationships with the lenders to be able to tell someone like you that we're not gonna ask you to apply for something we know you're not gonna get approved for. Cause we have all the underwriting guidelines and it's a process. Nothing is too good to be true. It is right.

I mean, it takes six months to do. Yeah. You know, process on average. Then I saw an ad yesterday on LinkedIn or somebody posted that they're selling shell corporations, age shell corporations. Wow. You can buy a 10 year old company and that the pitch was, Hey, you know, you'll get it, you'll, you'll get it. You'll inherit their trade lines

and a couple of some creative, some creative language and you can go apply for a loan with all those, with all that history. You can, if you like jail, you can, you know, you can sell the companies all, you can sell those age corporations all day, but you can't, you can't go into a bank and claim, claim their, and claim their payment histories. Pete Slauson Yeah. That would be kind of weird wouldn't because the revenue balance sheets wouldn't match really. Chris Bounds I don't know how, I don't want to be involved. I mean, there's a lot of shadiness out there, you know.

Pete Slauson But you know, like I started mentioning earlier, I think I segued off of it, but we had some folks on that, you know, I always thought in building a vampires, we had some folks on that were like, no, you should be building your business and be preparing it from the get go for potential exit sale. And I'm like, God, I never thought of, I never thought of exiting a company and building an exit. I mean, I always thought it was a cool idea, but I'm like, God, if I'm putting this much work in, I want to keep it forever. It happens. It happens. I had one the other day from actually a personal friend. He's had a printing company here for 30 years. Commercial printing. He does really, really well. During

COVID, he had to shut down and he was maintaining $100,000 a month of buying paper on his personal credit card. Wow. So, you know, this gentleman is 1663. He's got two more years and he wants to transition that business to his brother. And so you can business credit will transfer to family or to a key. Oh, really? Yeah. So he got in the program to build the because he has a relationship with the vendors. His brother doesn't. So by the time his John takes over from Pat, he'll, he'll be in a good position

to continue running the firm that his brother built. So, so you guys help you guys get me ready for lending, working capital that might need, you know, and you're right. And I've been in those processes where it's like, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, we need a giant cop or we need a new machine. You're like, what happened to the old machine? We paid like a 40 grand for that fucking thing. It doesn't work anymore. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, yeah. Bob broke it. He wasn't paying attention to training. Oh, that's great. Thanks, Bob. Yeah. I mean, yeah. What about the restaurant? I called, he called me one day and said, our, our ice machines out. And I said, yeah, I know. I've been talking to people about getting known as well at busted. So what did you, cause I paid to get it fixed. No, it's out out.

How much did you pay to get it fixed? $2,000. And I was like, CJ, I was about to buy one for $1,500. Do you think he might've want to run that by me before, before you did. So, you know, they don't still think $2,000 here, a hundred dollars there, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they always think the owners like driving a brink struck up to his home to dump off the cash. We had one of my executive secretaries one time she, we had her in charge of purchasing and one day there was like a sale at office max. And like I said, we've sent these really crazy credit card lines, uh, with our, by

the company's high stone. And, uh, and so she bought like two years worth of office supplies. One day, like two years, you know, and, and, you know, you try and keep a just in time inventory of JIT, J I T we like to call it. And you're like, you bought two years worth of shit on our credit cards and we're going to pay interest on that. Yeah. And you're, you're toast.

Yeah. Her job didn't last long. Hey, they have, they have loans out there. These, these NCA which, which call you and say, Hey, Chris, I see you do well here, I can give you $50,000 tomorrow just based on your sales, put it right in your bank. And then we'll start drawing it once a week. And then you wake up one day, six years later and you've paid 80% interest. And, and they have business cards stacking where you can go out and you can get a

business card that doesn't report to your personal credit until the day you're late. And then the day you're late, it reports in. It, yeah. If business credit, business credit doesn't business credits got to be paid on time. Really? It doesn't. No grace period.

Um, and when you pay it late, then it, then it affects your personal credit. Oh, really? Yeah. And you just don't want that. I got, I got like a flood of those, like every day I have those coming in the mail. It's freaking insane. And it's like the same companies too. Like, and then I get these weird calls too.

And, and you're like, after a while you're like, is it not obvious that I'm not going to take your offer? You've sent 100 pieces of mail. Do you know? Uh, it's just, I don't get it, but whatever. That's just it. You know, you get all those, all that stuff, but when your business is circling the drain, you don't have any time to, you're going to take what you can get that stinks.

I mean, get it, get it when the getting's good and just be prepared. I wish that day I was on vacation. I had a line of credit at my bank. I would have just rolled over and just transferred it in. And that would have been that. And again, we survived, but we, and just transferred it in. And that would have been that. And again, we survived, but we, it was, it was a bunch of blessed blessings in luck. And so, you know, the message be prepared now, get involved now, get in,

start looking at your credit, make sure you don't pierce that veil. I mean, one of the things I, we always did C corps cause I had partners and stuff and I liked the protection of it. It, you know, it's a bit more much, but I I liked the protection of it. It, you know, it's a bit more much, but I got to tell you, when you get sued, you sleep so much better at night. And when you become successful, you just pick up shakedown lawsuits. I mean, it's just, people are like, you have money? All right, let's sue this guy. And it's just insane. Some of the different things that you go through and having that C Corp protection or, you know, even there's some protection with S Corps and, and, uh, limited liability partnerships

and stuff, but you have to make sure you don't pierce that veil and commingle your funds. I mean, that's just that, that will make you lose sleep at night, especially if you're in a lawsuit. Cause you're I mean, I had the, I had the added pleasure of thinking that my wife was going to murder me if the restaurant did. You know, I mean, she's, you know, she just divorced you. That's more painful. I I've read some of your material.

I still can't win an argument with her. There's a split in the difference that she's, she's on that side, but you just get in a jam and you just never know what's coming. You mentioned earlier that the cashflow problems don't announce themselves. She's on that side, but you just get in a jam and you just never know what's coming. You mentioned earlier that the cashflow problems don't announce themselves and 82% of businesses fail because of cashflow. And 82%? Wow.

Yeah. And not necessarily because they don't have the money is because it's just in the wrong spot at the right time. I mean, we used to loan money to businesses and buy them out. Just small businesses. I'm not that rich. But one thing that we always find is they'd be like asset rich, but cash poor. And so, you know, it'd be some guy who had like, you know, 400,000 bucks or 200,000 bucks

or some, and he went and bought a business, but he went and got like grade A office, you know, spend it's and then, and then, you know, so he, I'd be like, you're at the highest, do you know, you're at the one building in town that has the highest square footage of costs. Like you just went right for that. And then, you know, usually they have like, you know, high end computers and high end furniture and high end everything, you know, like they're a barbecue place and they not only started the barbecue thing, but then they bought some expensive barbecue truck, you know, and so, and a lot of that's out there, man.

I mean, and so a lot of business brokers, and then I learned that from them in offering loans was, you know, you have these people that they're cash poor, but they're asset rich. And so, you know, you can give them some walking money, but you can be like, I'm going to save you from bankruptcy. But yeah, you've got to, this is your dream, but it's dead. You killed it. And it's a hard thing to do, but you can't keep them around because they're going to, they just sink the company. They're the problem actually. Um, I've heard that many times at my company, but somehow I'm still here. My employees are like, you are the problem. Uh, but, uh, and I'm like, you're right. And, uh, but I'm also the boss.

So, so yeah, being, being prepared for these things, be prepared, use your boy scout thing. And I think is the important lesson here, because like I said, you know, being prepared to exit your company, being prepared to build its credit, you know, I mean, and like you say that credit, if you build it, it, it, it will go to the next buyer, correct? If there's a buyer for a company. Situationally. Key man, family member. And you know, there's ways to structure that too. You could start a few years earlier. You can start a couple of years earlier with a, um, you know, with one of your

key employees or something, but not, not at the last minute, it's not one of those. So, uh, as we round out, give us a final pitch out, how can people reach out to you, how can they reach out to you? How can they get to know more? I think we've established that trying to plan ahead for this and get data and information is probably really important. The worst thing you could be is have that gun to your head and you're willing to take anything just to stay afloat or make payroll and you take some crazy stupid high interest

loan. Yeah, I can make it easy. We're getting short for what we spoke about earlier, but it's very, very simple. It's the easiest time to get a loan is when you don't need it. And I understand, I really understand because I bought a restaurant for coming from sports and media, I knew nothing. So I was more worried about trying to figure out how the ordering worked and things like that than, than thinking about business. I mean, I had to just had a brand new loan, you know, money, I thought all that was was locked up, but it wasn't until it was too late. So I would say don't wait. And always remember that the best time to get one is when you don't need it. And there's what an old Asian proverb that said ancient proverb says, best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago, but if you didn't do it, then

do it today kind of thing. That's it. To reach the best thing to do, I would encourage everybody take five minutes, send me a text at 404-431-1263. I'll get back to you. I will run that scan for you. There's a no obligation. That'll actually get you in the system and you can see where you need to shore up and you can do part of it on your own before you hit a paywall. And I can also pull your business credit report to let you know where you are. And none of that, that's all complimentary. And I see it all the time. Somebody will, somebody will tell me, I'm good. I'm good. Then I'll pull their credit report and they're, they're 25 with a $1,500, $1,500 limit.

And, you know, but they, but they're doing $2 million a year, you know, so, but they haven't been, they've been around for 15 years, but they're not been paying building any credit. Yeah. That's it. Just reach out, take the time, make it. No one has time. You've got to make it.

Well, thank you, Sean, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yes, sir It's been fantastic. Thank you for the time. Thank you And thanks for tuning in go to good reads.com for chest chris fos linkedin.com for chest chris fos Facebook.com for chest chris fos chris fos one on the tick tockety be good to each other. Stay safe folks We'll see you guys next time and that should have us out