Johny Fernandez: Welcome back to deBanked News. Now, Sean, last
time I interviewed you and we spoke it was back in early March
in person. And you said that this was a shakeup, and that
this was the time for action. Now, a lot has happened since
then. Do you still feel that way?
Sean Murray: I think a part of me honestly thought we were
about to go on a two week long vacation, and then come right
back to work. Looking back, I don't think shakeup was the
right characterization. I think apocalypse is the right word.
But I was still right. Because there's never going to be
another time like the one right now. I mean, I don't want to be
dramatic, but I don't think the situation we all find ourselves
in, will ever happen again, for the rest of our entire lives.
The playing field got completely leveled, everybody got crushed.
Everybody went from like, you know, up here all the way down
to the bottom back to square one or square zero. And so what's
unique about the situation is that it seems like the bigger
the company is, the bigger they got hit. I think we're used to a
world where the smaller companies are the ones that take
the brunt of it and the bigger companies kind of go off and
survive. But that's not what happened here, everyone kind of
got hit equally, or in some cases, the larger companies got
hurt the most. There were even situations in the last couple
months where you had shops with four or five people who were
outperforming on an origination volume level companies with 300
employees. That's not usually a thing that happens. I mean, here
at deBanked, we have a list that we publish every year, the top
20 funders. And let me just give you a few of these, to kind of
give you an example what happened: OnDeck stopped
funding, Square Capital stopped funding, Kabbage stopped
funding, IOU, Rapid Finance, those are just ones that I can
remember off the top of my head. And almost none of those
companies have resumed funding. I mean, if we were to publish
the top funders of q2 2020, we'd probably find companies that
otherwise never would have made it into the top 50 that are all
of a sudden, in the top five or 10. I think it was Central
Diligence Group, guys you interviewed back in March, they
recently told me that they had consistently put out like a
million dollars per month over the last few months. Or maybe it
was even more than that. And I looked at them and I told them
like, "Hey, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but I
think that makes you one of the largest small business founders
like in the entire country right now." That's how crazy it is.
Johny Fernandez: So Sean, what you're saying is for everyone
out there whose business took a huge hit, this great leveling
effect means that a small company can actually make it to
like a top five, for example.
Sean Murray: I mean, they could but I don't think anyone's goal
has to be to get into the top five. I think the message is, if
you're looking at your own financials right now and you're
like, holy shit, you know, I don't want anyone to know how
bad these look, I've got good news for you. Everyone else is
saying the same thing. Everyone's financials are
terrible, You might not have the money to go out and rapidly
expand right now, corner the market while everyone else is
down. That's okay. What's important is what you can do
outside of what you can spend. What relationships will you
make? What solutions will you devise? What changes will you
make to give you an advantage? If you think about it, I mean,
if your competitor has no money either, what can you do to
outcompete them? Pretend it's the first day in the industry,
there's no investors, right? But there's a lot of opportunity
right around the corner for when things are covered. Figure out
what you can do execute that plan and hopefully the money
will follow. That's what the shakeup has created.
Johny Fernandez: So Sean, it's easy for you to tell people to
figure it out. But what would you do if it was you? if you
owned like a broker shop or lending company, for example?
Sean Murray: Okay, so if it was me? I'd probably be sitting down
with the legendary Johny Fernandez. I'd be making a
promo, a promotional video with me in it. And it would be on
social media. We get our brand out there.
Johny Fernandez: I'd be doing the same thing with Sean Murray.
Sean Murray: Okay. All right. Thank you.