The Fundability Podcast | David Smith | FICO World 2024

 

Ever pondered the intricacies of credit scoring and its impact on business financing? This is crucial for entrepreneurs and business owners alike. Merrill Chandler brings David Smith, a Key Account Partner and Small Business Segment Leader with FICO, to give some updates from FICO World 2024. They discuss the layers of credit scoring and the importance of cash flow analysis. Tune in to get some invaluable insights as they navigate the complexities of creditworthiness.

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Live Updates From FICO World 2024 With David Smith

We’re here with you once again. What time of the year is it? That’s right. It’s April. It must be FICO world. I’m here with my guest and our favorite FICO friend, David Smith. David, I’m glad to have you again on the podcast, but more importantly, just to be here, we get so many things done. I learned so many things from you. It’s crazy.

It’s an accelerated time these days. We just feed off each other. I learned something from Merrill, not even related to financing small businesses. We were talking about how to be more prolific at blogging. He goes, “Here’s what I do.” I’m like, “That is brilliant.” Not even this credit-related. I’ve picked up on things.

Optimize everything.

I’ve picked up on some. Some of the customers I’ve taught have some really good ideas, and they want to do some funky things. I’m having the best time. I always do, and I hope I’m glad you do.

This is always great. Last year, we were in Miami and they did four city blocks of Downtown Cuban Street or Cubano Street. They sealed it off. Every restaurant, cigar bar, everything was like going in. You have run of the place for all these restaurants and things. We’re wearing little Cuban hats and everything. It’s so much fun. We’re in San Diego. Guess what we’re doing? It’s super Superman-themed and they’re doing the same thing. Several blocks. We just got a run of downtown gaslight. What is a gaslight district?

It’s the theory of work hard, play hard. We do a lot for our customers. We bring value, our software brings in profit, and our customers are very smart. They work hard at what they do to help their customer downstream. You know, we reward that and say, “Hey, let’s, let’s have a lot of fun.” “Let’s do a lot of work.” “Let’s solve a lot of problems with let’s think hard on things, but in the evening, let’s have a little fun.”

Tomorrow night is no joke. They’ve rented the USS Midway aircraft carrier. We’re out there literally on deck, partying. This reminds me of back in 2016, my very first FICO world in DC with the Smithsonian Institute. They read that the entire Smithsonian, we’re sitting there eating hors d’oeuvres in the African Savannah exhibits and the DJ was world-class. These guys know how to throw a party.

Nikhil is our Chief Marketing Officer.

There’s a C-suite person.

He is unbelievable. Again, he thinks big cause our customers think big, our product team thinks big and I’m not trying to sound like a commercial, but it’s true.

You guys are top-of-class everywhere and in everything you do.

We’ve got over almost 1,200 people from our customer base, about 40% of those from overseas, from various countries with 50 countries represented. Think about it, 50 countries. I was talking to a guy this morning at my table, one guy from Canada, and one guy from South Africa. We all had something in common, trying to solve credit problems. We all had this common language to speak, and it was pretty cool.

FICO

One of the things that I’ve always loved is not just about the FICO world, but the gravitons that it has in the marketplace. Everybody knows FICO, you know, for credit scores, but they don’t know FICO for this, for this back of the room, hardware, software commitment to make things easier.

When we got into the scoring business back in 1956, it was an abacus. Seriously, it was a slide rule. It was honest-to-goodness, slide-rule engineering. Over time, we built software to build our models and then when we built that software, we’re like, “I bet you are customer base could use this.” What if we could build this as a product? Then that led to this, this, and this.

Now we have this entire decisioning platform suite called the FICO platform. We don’t know inventive names, but it’s a decisioning platform that ingests data, runs simulations, does decisioning builds models, has an AI component as a machine language component, and does funky, cool things for both big and small institutions. I just love the fact that we can serve banking insurance.

What I love is its predictability because here’s the thing from my perspective, because we’ve done enough clients, we’ve done our reverse engineering, I can predict what money needs to go through an account, what baseline balances to have, what timetables to do for your SBSS, for lender underwriting software, for all of them to go green light and get an approval.

Because it is a decision engine, if you put in a hundred of the same applications, the theory is you get a hundred of the same answers. There’s no subjectivity to any of those decisions. It’s all an objective decision because it’s looking at data elements, not Bob sitting in the back room going, “I don’t know.” Something I said earlier today was, that if Bob goes to a conference and figures out this new metric, and then next week he’s basing everything off that new thing he learned. Then the people who applied last week weren’t subject to that metric people, this week were.

I talked to a bank a couple of years ago and they said, “We only let our underwriters have three overrides per quarter and they’re all holding them till the last week of the quarter.” I want to file at the end of the quarter so that Bob can override my credit. They’re all going to be spent in the last two weeks of the quarter and nobody’s going to spend it the first week of the quarter. You rethink how you allocate, you know, overrides and such.

Guys, this is a perfect example of what we talk about. First of all, for lack of a better term, the algorithm, the modeling, it’s colorblind, it’s financial blind, it is checkboxes in a cycle of decisions. I’ve said this, it’s on the back cover of my book. If you know what the underwriting conditions are and you meet those underwriting conditions. Who is in charge of your approvals? You are.

That’s you. Straight up. You know, whenever I tell people who I work for at a party, I either get, “I’ve got an eight 20.” or, “Oh, you prevented me from getting a mortgage.” I didn’t prevent you from anything. Sorry, man. Your credit is bad, that’s on you. I don’t ask. All we do is measure your suckage.

That’s going to be a new technical term inside of the smart co-velocity funding model. We’re going to measure your suckage and see what we can do about it.

It’s true though and if you, if you follow the plan, the plan works. Not a two out of four, not a three out of four. It’s a four out of five.

We’re a hundred percent. Here’s a great metric. Last nine months, 100% of clients implemented it exactly on plan. 100% approvals from all 7 of our top funding banks, 93% because there were a few people who said, “You know what he said, ask for this, but I’m going to ask for this anyway.” Then they got denied.

Why deviate from that?

It’s perfection. We’re nailing this thing.

The Journey Of A Small Business

That’s why I’m here. We were talking before this. If he was 70% right or 75% right. I’d still be here. If you’re 60%, okay. If he was 45%, I’d be looking for the back door to exit. You’re not. You’re well above what other people are doing. Why are you doing anything else? Follow the man’s plan. It might be tough and it might take you a while to get there. That’s the struggle. Correcting where you are to where you want to be but that’s the journey of a small business.

The struggle to get from where you are to where you want to be is what running a small business is all about. Click To Tweet

Follow behaviors have a chance within 90 days to turn around on the look-back period, something was fascinating that you and I were talking about before I didn’t know 10T was coming out but we were already teaching our clients the 24-month look-back period before it.

Before it became a thing. No trending is one of the new things right now. Somebody equated this to an insurance form. They want to know what you weigh today. They also want to know what you weighed last month. Are you consistently 185 or did you get down to 185?

You spent two years at 350.

He said, “When they said that, it dinged in my head, has somebody fixed their problems and you see a solid trend to improvement or has somebody been rocky?” “I either want to see somebody who’s consistently good or somebody who’s fixed a problem and then held it.

That 24-month look-back period, was so fascinating because I always tease my community, my tribe. I’m always like, “Fine. I’m right again, whatever.” The funny thing is, it would be arrogant if it weren’t true. While I laugh it off and play it off. Trending data is now FICO’s mainstay. You guys are moving everybody.

We’re pushing it hard when you show like mortgage companies on the consumer side, the evidence of it, it’s a no-brainer.

What is it? Another 19% shaved off?

FICO 10

The numbers are huge. It’s almost like if you don’t do this, you should not be in this position. We’re pushing all of our small business lenders into FICO 10 as well. Now, there are some technical reasons why we can’t do it immediately, but we’re fixing that problem because 10 is the better option. 10 is significantly above.

We have a Small Business Scoring System that we have. We also had a consumer solution built on the same philosophy. We took it down because the FICO 10 is so much better. We’re competing against ourselves right now. No, seriously. The technology is so much better and I’m talking to my customer base and saying, “Look, we’re having to get rid of this product because they’re just better products that we sell and it’s cheaper.”

They’re like, “I like it.” I replied, “You don’t want to stick with this. This is a better product.” I know what we all have habits on and they’re looking at the data and they’re starting to make decisions to move. We’re getting a groundswell of mid-tier community banks and regional banks looking at the FICO 10 because of those differences.

Remember if we can get them trending, they’re likely going to move faster toward automatic underwriting, which then moves our fundability. We now have a bigger palette of banks to pay fundability with.

I’ll give the credit to the FICO lobbyist and even the credit bureaus here. The reason a lot of banks held on to an older score like a FICO 4 was because Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage place required these older scores and nobody could use anything else in that space. Several organizations, FICO was one of them, petitioned to update those scores.

When you’re in a mid-tier bank and your mortgage department is using one score and you’re using another version of the FICO score, their complexities and how to manage them. Everybody just went, “Forget it. I’ll just use this old score, the same one, the mortgage team uses.” Now, the mortgage team can use a newer score. It’s opened up the world to better and more efficiently.

That’s the bottom line but you guys have the installed base. You have it all.

We have a 95% majority. It’s not a monopoly, by the way. I’m talking to you, Senator from Missouri. It’s not a monopoly but we’ve got the majority.

It’s popularity.

Everybody likes it because it works and even head to head, we beat Banach’s score. Everybody’s moving to the newer scores because it can, because regulations have gone away and I think it’s going to help everybody. The difference between an older score and a newer score is that there’s more gray area, and there’s less clear black and white.

Again, the technology to build those models is better and it helps everybody, let’s say you were midland. Let’s say you’re average. The previous score would either have to score you fully credit for that average score or no credit for that average score. Let’s say it’s zero or 10. Now we can give you a five instead of zero or 10 and so your score is going to float up a few points.

If you’re either really good, like an eight, 28, or 50, you might see some movement in your score, good or bad. I don’t know but if you’re on the tail end of the, on the other side of that improve. It’s still not incredibly great, but you’re going to see a 20.30-point move easily because you’re getting more credit for the good that you have. Instead of being a pundit. The baby with the bath water is a great way to put it.

Small Business Scoring System

Let’s talk SBSS, Small Business Scoring System. I know recently we talked last year that it was a mandate to upgrade everybody from version six to version seven. What do you see happening in business underwriting between SBSS using FICO 10 or other onboarding? What can my crew anticipate is going to happen with the business bank underwriting?

The trends in that area, number one, everybody’s going to upgrade, where most people, most organizations are going to upgrade their FICO score or their credit score that goes into SBSS. The FICO score is a component. It’s going to improve the accuracy of that score. That’s the best legal term I can give you.

If your FICO score gets better, your SBSS score is going to get better. If your FICO score gets worse, it’s going to get worse. It’s going to be more accurate. That’s one thing. Secondly, most banks use a dual matrix thing of FICO score. You have to meet a minimum FICO score and then you have to meet a minimum SBSS score. If that’s both consumer and business scores are better and more accurate, you’re going to get better credit. You’re going to get better risk-based pricing.

Risk-based pricing is the fancy term, better terms are better interest rates and higher approvals. I’ll translate. I speak FICO.

Cash Flow Analysis

Also, even if you barely clear the hurdle, they will approve you now because they can price you better. They can say, “Well, you’re higher risk, you’re good enough to onboard, but we’re going to make you pay a little more until you prove otherwise.” Then maybe at some renewal, they’ll reset the terms. Risk-based pricing tends to benefit the applicant, not the bank to be perfectly honest. Another trend is analyzing cash flow.

Attention, everybody we have, we’ve talked about this extensively.

Cash flow is king because right now we’re coming into a period where there’s a little bit, the Wall Street Journal called it a cloud of credit. We’re still in the post-COVID economy. Don’t think we’re not.

All the home-based businesses, everybody went home, and commercial values are falling because nobody’s sitting in the buildings.

Inflation is not looming, it’s impacting daily business and it’s not insignificant. It depends on what sector you’re looking at, it’s 20%, you know, over the last two years. The COVID is pushing the economy up. You’ve got businesses that were getting deferments aren’t getting the deferments. The PPP money’s run out. The EIDL money’s starting to run out. You’re starting to have to repay those loans. Those who did not qualify for immediate PPP wipeout are having to pay back those loans. You’re starting to see that effect in the credit.

There’s a burden coming for people who owe that money.

Also, the economy is starting to show the businesses that can’t adjust. The PPP money saved them, the deferment saved them. Otherwise, COVID would have crushed businesses. Now we’re seeing businesses just fall off the map again, like 2008 to 2010, they just disappeared. Not a lot of slow decline, it’s a lot of cliff because they’ve run out of money.

Cashflow, what the banks are doing with that is they’re turning around and saying, “Okay, fine. Your credit looks okay. What’s your velocity of money? What’s your volume of money? What’s the in go over the sea out go.” They’re not checking every bank account you have. They’re checking one bank account.

Primary checking everybody.

Ding ding ding. I mean, I cannot sing this song loud enough and with enough choir robes on it. I’m talking to so many banks that say, “Well, we need to analyze what do you do if they’re not banked with us?” I was thinking, “You get a solution like a platter yodely, and you have them sign into their bank account. It’s secure. Don’t think it’s not. Not everything’s perfectly secure, but it’s secure enough. You give them your bank data and they go in and they analyze, I think the last 90 days’ worth of activity, something like that.

90 days of activity. Remember that.

90 days of activity and they figure out what your in-goes and your outgoes are. What your velocity is for deposits? What your velocity is for your outgoes? Is more money going out on a 30, 15, 45, 60 day basis? Where it should be, or is it going out in weird increments?

Baseline balances plus cycle dollars equals?

Minimum balance, cash flow, and then keep that minimum whatever he tells you to put in there, do it. It’s magic.

#NewZero. It works, doesn’t it?

It does and they’re looking at this data. They’re analyzing average daily cash balance, low balance, and high balance. They’re looking at these things to figure out, because your credit, again, credit, it’s determinant, but it’s not perfect. It’s determined by how you’ve treated your credit, not how you can repay your credit. They’re looking at repayability, how can you fund this loan, this line, et cetera. While we’re talking about money, they’re also looking at how you’re using that credit. Don’t use it too quickly, use bits of it. Again, talk about how he talks about how to pull the, “Where would we hear that?”

The Fundability Podcast | David Smith | FICO World 2024

FICO World 2024: Credit scores depend on your credit history, not just your current repayment capacity.

 

Somebody’s got to be teaching that somewhere. There is a formula called traffic intervals to use your new credit line in a way that trains the algorithm to say, “These guys know what they’re talking about. Let’s raise their limit.”

If you grab every dollar that they just gave you and go spend it, you’re never getting another, you’re not. You got to carefully, spend it wisely and the joke that we were talking about earlier is they care more about how you spend their money than you spend your money. They do.

The Fundability Podcast | David Smith | FICO World 2024

FICO World 2024: Simply spending every dollar they provide won’t ensure your success. Wise financial management is crucial. They’re more concerned with how you allocate their funds than how you manage your own.

 

Until they give you their money, they’re tracking your money. Those are the deposits, the track. Once they see that you are legit with your own money, they’ll say, “All right, we’ll give them ours.” That’s where they don’t care anymore. Just like he said. They don’t care what you’re doing with yours. They’re watching you very carefully on how you spend their money, charge up, pay down.

If you’re banked with a bank that you’re applying at, they already know. If you’re not banked, they figure it out. Have that one account so that you’re not going to explain, “Most of my money’s here, but some of my money’s here.” Have it all go into one central place. Then it can go wherever you want it to go.

I’m going to clarify. You guys, we talk about having one checking account and that they’re, giving them the thing to measure. If you have even several accounts in the same bank, you’re not giving them one thing to measure. That’s your take-home here guys, is that we got to make it easy for them to give us money. They want to.

You’re assuming they know all these checking accounts are related. You’d be surprised. Some systems and some models can’t analyze several accounts at once because they don’t expect you to have. Give it to them, how do you know they can consume it? Again, listen to Merrill on that stuff.

I love it. It’s like the bottom line. What’s the bottom line here?

Price Elasticity

Listen to Merrill. I hate saying it out loud a lot. The next trend is price elasticity in small businesses. This is where I don’t know if you talk about this at all. I don’t know if you’ve gone to, and I’m going to pick on a couple of burger joints, you know, Five Guys or something. Two and a half years ago, if you wanted a burger, fries, and a Coke, $15, $10, $11.

Try going into Five Guys with a $10 bill and coming out with a burger fry. You’re not doing it. You’re not doing it. It’s $25 or $20 now. Price elasticity talks about, there comes a point where consumers are just not buying your service because it’s not worth it. I was talking to a group of credit risk folks and I said, “Do you know that meme of we’ve got McDonald’s at home?”

Which says we’re not buying it. We have it at home and we’re going to use what we already have. That’s essentially what small businesses are facing these days if you sell a service that I can do myself, even though that costs me time if I, as a consumer, and being hit by inflation and higher prices and my rent’s 20% higher. My gas is now 47% higher. My utility bill is 30% higher. I don’t have money to spend. I have more time than I have more time than money. I complain about folding laundry. I’ll fully admit I use a service to fold my laundry, but that’s only worth so much money to me.

It becomes $120 a week.

If it becomes pricey, I’ll sit down and suck it up. I hate folding laundry, but I’ll do it. It was a perfect example. Same with burger joints. I can make a burger at home. I can make a pretty good burger at home for $5. I’m not buying, the five guys and I can buy a bag of frozen French fries, throw them in the air fryer and it’s not bad. It’s comparable. It’s a trade-off. Can I make a fall bowl, whatever you want to call it? No, I can’t do that. That’s too expensive. I’m going to buy that. That’s again a time trade-off, a quality trade-off.

Or not buy it because it’s now too expensive with a new price point.

Do not buy fancy soup because it’s gotten too high price. I think at some point, small businesses are going to have to face the fact that they’re going to have to lose profit to keep their prices low. They’re going to have to rethink their profit margins, rethink margins in general, or optimize the business in any way possible. Whether that’s laying people off or you’ll see there, some products are going to cheaper ingredients. I’m not banging on Chick-fil-A.

At some point, small businesses are going to have to face the fact that they're going to lose profit to keep their prices low. They have to rethink their profit margins and optimize the business in any way possible. Click To Tweet

There’s some gray area to reinterpret what the language is.

To keep their price point they have to go to a chicken producer that can’t guarantee hormones. I forget what it is. I don’t want to insult Chick-fil-A, but they’re having to switch who gives them their chicken. Nobody’s buying an $8 chicken sandwich because they had to make that trade-off. I think small businesses are going to have to make that trade-off to stay in business. I know that’s not necessarily about fundability, but it is.

Small businesses are going to have to make that trade-off to stay in business. It's a harsh reality, but necessary nonetheless. Click To Tweet

It comes into play significantly with many of our tribe, and our real estate investors, and the profit margin on a flip now is lower because of all the material costs, the labor costs. Everything’s just getting shoveled further downstream. It is materially affecting the desire. Some people are going to wholesaling now and right now note buying is huge because you buy a note. There is no transaction other than the paper and you’re now the bank. There are no materials involved. Everybody’s pivoting to different strategies because of the significant increase in costs, labor, and materials.

There you go. That’s a perfect application, but price elasticity is going to become a big issue in the next six months. It’s factoring into lots of things.

Credit Availability

Speaking of prognosticating, tell us about, you’ve been to some bank conferences, you’ve been to policy meetings. What’s the prediction about the availability of credit over the next six to 12 months?

It’s not good. It’s less. Again, if a bank lent to a C quality credit, they’re going to start lending to B quality credit and ignoring the C. Banks are starting to look at their portfolios and optimize their portfolios to say that If we want an average of a B, let’s say a straight B quality credit, but our average is a B-minus. That means we can’t take on a lot of B-minuses where we have to take on the A-pluses.

We’re going to just have to ignore everybody until that balance comes back into play because all of that is based on losses and 30-day delinquencies, 60-day delinquencies, etc. They’re having to pivot to and put more analytics into their portfolio to figure out what they can lend. The first initial reaction is to shrink everything, shore up stop until we know what the lay of the land is. The first sign is to stop digging. They’re going to stop digging and then they’re going to figure out how deep the hole can get.

The model we use is a target and so we say the lazy funding is the cheap and easy money is the outer rings we develop top-notch fundable bullseye borrowers so that they will always lend to bullseye borrowers you guys. Here what’s fascinating is that even during 2008, there was that six to eight-month period where it froze. The first loans that were being given, to AAA borrowers only then they began to expand over the decade after that.

It’s not going to be that much of an attraction. I think it’s just going to be more, we’re going to stop lending to C’s and only lend to B’s and A’s. On the flip side of that they’re looking to manage their cash reserves. If you have a line of credit, if you have a credit card, with a high limit, they might knock that limit down. If you’re not using it, they don’t see enough cycles.

They’re going to retract that line of credit to a certain point. That’s more manageable because think about it this way. If you’ve got a hundred thousand dollar line of credit, you’ve never used more than $45,000, there’s $55,000 that they have to keep on the books and account for a certain percentage of that, in held reserves that they can’t lend to anybody else and you’re not using it. It’s a waste to them. They’re losing money on this money.

The Fundability Podcast | David Smith | FICO World 2024

FICO World 2024: If you have a credit card with a high limit and you’re not using it, they might knock that limit down. If they don’t see enough cycles, they’re going to retract that line of credit to a certain point that’s more manageable.

 

They’re going to pull you down to the point that they figure that they give you $50,000 and you only use $45,000. According to them, you’re fine. You should have no problem. You’ve only ever used $45,000. They give that money to somebody else who’s going to utilize it and they’re going to make money off of it. That’s how they’re going to stay profitable going through that portfolio and figuring out who needs to get cut.

Cycle your credit lines. Come to Funding Hackers. If you don’t know what that means or go to the boot camp, by the way, on May 16th and 17th, we were back in the Business Funding Summit. It was formerly known as boot camps. We’re back in the boot camp game, by the way, I’m going to announce right now. We have a special guest. He’s going to be giving a presentation at that business funding summit. I’m so excited.

Digital Application

There’ll be some meat behind what I’m talking about here because I don’t think that everything’s going to change, but I’ll have more evidence to prove what I’m talking about and why I’m talking about it. The next trend is not a trend, but you’re going to see it more as a digital application, digital engagement, where you’re not going to have to go into a bank. You’re not going to be handed 14 sheets of paper.

Everything’s going to be done online. You’re going to upload your tax forms and they’re going to scrape that and process it automatically. You’re not going to have to wait 16 days for an initial response. Now, one of a group of customers, it’s a consortium, said their biggest attrition is between when somebody initially applies and when somebody looks at the loan, looks at the application.

In that time, that is 48 hours because there’s an entire underbelly of analysts. The first thing they’ll do is run your credit. Even if you submit something on paper, they’re going to key you in and run your credit. There are systems. There’s a college industry of companies that check to see whose credit has been run, then they’ll announce that to their customer base.

The Fundability Podcast | David Smith | FICO World 2024

FICO World 2024: To stay profitable, businesses go through that portfolio and figure out who needs to get cut.

 

Let’s say you’re a FinTech and say, “I want to know everybody who’s experienced business report was pulled in the last seven days.” They get a list and so then I called you and I said, “I can give you money in three days.” They’re coming in and taking it. By the time this loan underwriter has gotten back to them, they’ve had three people contact them to give them crappy deals on the money, but they’ve got faster, much faster.

I don’t want you to turn vulture-like, but there are vultures. Things are circling that are targeting you. If you apply at the right bank and they run the credit that these companies are looking at, you’re going to start getting these calls and you’re going to have to resist the urge to say no to the 28% APRs, the 37% APRs and hang out.

Because the money is available, they’ll transfer it tomorrow. Our solution to this is to get money before we need it. We are strategic borrowers. We are not, “I need to make payroll tomorrow.” No, we do cashflow three months in advance to know where the holes are in our cashflow.

That’s where these companies, these FinTechs are just making their bones as somebody who needs that money today, or needs it instantly, or else, disaster happens. You’ve seen this, you probably know people who have payday loans. You never recover from that. It’s really hard to get out of. The same with 37% APR.

We won’t name names. I named them at other times, but today we won’t. We’re at FICO.

I’m not saying do away with any of them, but they serve a purpose, but they’re an expensive purpose. If you don’t have to be in that world, why are you? Listen to what the man has to say and avoid needing money today and paying for it for the next two years.

Avoid needing money today and paying for it for the next two years. Click To Tweet

I think that’s me. Any other any other trends? We’re emptied. That’s the entire financial universe from here at FICO World 2024. David, I always say this, but this is always so much fun. It’s always a revelation. Your episodes are the highest-watched episodes of my podcast. I’ve got some pretty brilliant competing seconds and thirds. Yours are always.

I forgot to talk about this because I told you yesterday. We brought in a new consultant. She knows the lending industry left and right. She’s worked at some of the top firms across the country. She said, “Hey, David, I need an overview of the SBSS score.” I replied, “I don’t have time.” She goes, “Is there anything out on the web?” I said, “Yes, just go search. You can find it.”

She watched a podcast of ours that we did four years ago, five years ago and she said, “My God, I learned so much from it. I’m set.” She had a few questions about a tweet from an insider’s position. She said, “What about this? What about that?” Stuff that nobody is asking. She’s asking because she’s just so knowledgeable. I was like, “That’s out there on the web?” She’s watching our podcast to learn about the business that I was supposed to tell her about cause she’s a colleague of mine.

That’s street cred right there.

That is serious insider stuff that nobody else has and I’m shocked that the general lending public hasn’t picked up on it. I’m seriously thinking about it because there’s a Fundera. If you go to Fundera’s website, you can find a write-up on the SBSS score. I always send that out as sort of our literature, because it’s a third-party thing. I’m starting to send that link out. I mean, why not? If Sapna can take it and Sapna has worked for Amazon, small business lending, and a couple of other companies, she’s legitimately brilliant. She said, “No, that was fantastic. I learned so much.”

Done. We’re going to start sending out the podcast. I did a podcast 142 or something.

I was like, I didn’t even know it was out on the web. I do apologize for not even sending it to you.

That’s a great idea and once again, we keep setting standards, but not just for my community.

FICO industry leaders. She consults with. Top 30 banks and She said, “That’s brilliant. That podcast told me everything I needed to know.” You guys have the same stuff that she’s learning.

It’s not marketing. When I say you guys have inside access to inside secrets, that is not marketing guys, that is pulling back the curtain at the FICO world. David, it’s always just so freaking amazing to have you here spending the time. We’re going to now go carouse the streets. Guys, take-home message. You have access. I have access to something unheard of in the borrower, lender, community industry, the relationship.

Implement. You guys have access. Make sure you go to the business funding summit. Make sure that your funding hackers get back on your subscriptions. Make sure that you’re coming to the Tuesday and Thursday meetings. Ask the questions. Do the steps, and let’s get you inside of all the approvals that are possible because the man says, I’m not the only one saying it’s possible.

100% approval. If that can’t sell it, I don’t know what does.

You’ll never do it again. I already know that.

You fix it and solve the problem.

Thank you once again, David.

There’s a reason why I’m here. I just love you, brother. I’m having a good time.

Thank you so much. This is Merrill Chandler signing off for the Fundability Podcast. Peace.

 

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