00:01.260 --> 00:07.440 Sean Murray: Hello everybody, my name is Sean Murray and welcome to deBanked TV. I have a special guest today and here with Oz Konar from 00:07.440 --> 00:09.930 Business Lending Blueprint. Thanks for being here Oz. 00:10.020 --> 00:11.100 Oz Konar: Great to be here you. Thanks, Sean. 00:11.280 --> 00:17.820 Sean Murray: No problem. So Business Lending Blueprint for those that don't know who you are, what can you tell me about your company? 00:17.820 --> 00:27.290 Oz Konar: Yeah, Business Lending Blueprint was created back in 2018 as a result of demand, honestly. So I've been in the lending industry for 00:27.290 --> 00:35.240 over a decade. And one thing we notice over and over and you mentioned this before, too, that people lack a source to understand how the 00:35.240 --> 00:40.850 industry works. This is almost like a very secretive industry, but people know that it exists. But not many people know how to get into it, 00:40.850 --> 00:48.890 how to make money, how to build a career out of that. So I own a marketing agencies, and through that we got exposed to a lot of people 00:48.890 --> 00:56.150 who want to purchase leads and build this business through that method. And they wanted to get some kind of training, which we didn't have any 00:56.150 --> 01:04.190 and I wanted to find a place to refer people out to like a training organization, I couldn't find any that would be sufficient to my needs 01:04.190 --> 01:13.310 and satisfactory to what I think they should be learning. Finally, in 2018, we did an email blast announcing the launch of back then was 01:13.310 --> 01:20.750 Merchant Cash Advance Success Blueprint. So that brought in a lot of interest to the company. And ever since then, I believe in having 01:21.440 --> 01:31.160 enhancements to each program. So this is like the v3 of the program. It's now called merchant- I'm sorry, Business Lending Blueprint. So what 01:31.160 --> 01:37.760 it does is it provides people with all the resources they need, so they can become an independent business loan broker in the alternative 01:37.760 --> 01:41.480 lending industry, which has been growing massively in the past couple of years, as you know. 01:41.600 --> 01:45.980 Sean Murray: Okay, so you're training brokers for this particular industry? 01:46.340 --> 01:52.670 Oz Konar: Correct. But what we're doing differently Is there a lot of training companies, they're training brokers for themselves for their 01:52.670 --> 02:00.950 own benefits, right. So either for as employees or affiliates, or it could be like a multi level marketing structure, where we differ is 02:00.950 --> 02:08.420 we're training them to be independent brokers. So they know the lender. Who the lenders are, they can build a business without needing any 02:08.420 --> 02:17.210 middleman, they can get access to leads, they actually learn how to generate leads, and that separated us so much that people are, you know, 02:17.240 --> 02:26.720 referring to us as a platform where they can independently ask questions and get an unbiased opinion about things and how things work. And that 02:26.720 --> 02:29.780 led to hundreds of people building successful businesses through the platform. 02:30.089 --> 02:36.869 Sean Murray: Okay, so you train people to do this, but how many people have actually come to you and sign up for this? 02:37.170 --> 02:41.730 Oz Konar: So I don't know the exact number, but we have over 3,000 brokers right now in our platform. 02:41.730 --> 02:42.810 Sean Murray: 3,000? 02:42.810 --> 02:43.110 Oz Konar: Yes. 02:43.110 --> 02:49.200 Sean Murray: Okay. So that would technically, I mean, by my calculations, that would probably make you like the largest, like, 02:49.500 --> 02:52.290 broker ISO like in the country, even though that's not what you're doing. 02:52.290 --> 02:54.750 Speakers: [cross-talk] 02:54.750 --> 03:00.870 Oz Konar: So I call ourselves we are the largest training organization in the country, both the United States and Canada for alternative 03:00.870 --> 03:02.460 lender, lending brokers. 03:02.880 --> 03:10.530 Sean Murray: So out there in the world of alternative finance, 3,000 plus people have come through, your program. So there's a good shot 03:10.530 --> 03:14.790 out there. If you're working with a broker that they've at some point went to your school. 03:14.820 --> 03:20.130 Oz Konar: Yeah, either their employees, their managers, or they built their own organizations, they are employing other people right now, 03:20.340 --> 03:23.580 there's a very good chance that they've either seen our program, or have been through it. 03:23.700 --> 03:31.170 Sean Murray: Okay. So you said you were in marketing beforehand, but like, how did you yourself come upon small business, finance, MCA 03:31.170 --> 03:33.120 Business Lending? How did you get into this industry? 03:33.120 --> 03:40.230 Oz Konar: Well, I did it. I used to be a broker in New York City. So I used to have a corporate job for over a decade. And I used to sell door 03:40.230 --> 03:47.820 to door like credit card processing, payroll. Then one day I came across a lender in New York City, and I had this portfolio of businesses that 03:47.820 --> 03:54.330 I've sold credit card processing to. And he introduced me to the concept of merchant cash advance, which I had no idea what it was. And I said, 03:54.360 --> 04:01.290 wait a minute. So this is like the sexiest product on Earth. I can sell money and make money with that, right? Like, yeah, basically, pretty 04:01.290 --> 04:10.500 much. So I called a bunch of the businesses that I knew, restaurant owners, we funded one of them. And I received my first $4,000 check, 04:10.800 --> 04:18.660 which is what I used to make in a month. So that was like a, you know, a moment of like epiphany for me. I'm like, whoa, can I just repeat this 04:18.660 --> 04:25.620 process? And I did it over and over again. So it was good. And it built me a nice portfolio of clients. But one thing I noticed in the industry 04:25.620 --> 04:31.950 is that everyone was doing the same thing, right? Either you're out there hunting businesses, or you're sitting in the office dialing 300 to 04:31.950 --> 04:40.560 500 people to book appointments, that was the only form of marketing and since I was really interested in technology and marketing, I noticed 04:40.560 --> 04:47.220 that that's that's a pattern. Something is broken here because old entire world is going towards online marketing, whereas alternative 04:47.220 --> 04:55.170 lending is trying to get stuck on their ways of doing offline marketing, like direct mail marketing or phone marketing. They're all adapting this 04:55.410 --> 05:02.760 Wolf of Wall Street mentality. You know, either your buy will die, right and I didn't like that. And that's why I started like a marketing 05:02.760 --> 05:11.010 company first, teaching people how to do paid advertising and organic lead generation and SEO, that kind of transitioned me into a marketing 05:11.010 --> 05:17.880 role than just, you know, a broker, which I started out with. So I am from the industry, okay, that gave me a clear advantage and 05:17.880 --> 05:19.890 understanding what's lacking in the industry. 05:20.100 --> 05:26.700 Sean Murray: Okay. So if you're training people, right, you know, this is not an advertisement. 05:26.700 --> 05:31.440 Speakers: [cross-talk] 05:31.440 --> 05:37.620 Sean Murray: Are they signing up for this program, like it's a school or, you know, like, how does this like when you say you train you teach? 05:37.980 --> 05:42.390 Is this like, are they How are you doing? Is there like a classroom, like what happens? 05:42.390 --> 05:48.690 Oz Konar: Yeah, so for them to understand how to sign up, they have to kind of jump through hoops, because we only want people who are serious 05:48.690 --> 05:55.950 about building a business, right? Because this is not like a get rich quick scheme that you're gonna sign up and be rich, get rich in 30 days. 05:56.130 --> 06:03.240 They have to watch, we require them to watch like a 70 minute video, like a little movie about the industry that informs them, how it works, 06:03.240 --> 06:11.850 why people fail, why people succeed, and how they need to follow a proven pattern, a system, which is the blueprint, at the end, we ask 06:11.850 --> 06:18.600 them to purchase it. So it's not a free training, they pay to get in, and they become a part of this exclusive community of 3,000 Brokers. 06:18.750 --> 06:25.590 Some of them are lenders, some of them are syndicators, some of them are working from home and they're making 50, 60k. Some of them have become 06:25.590 --> 06:34.200 became our moderators. So that's what they do pretty much. And they get access to an online course, like, you know, our thing. Harvard has that. 06:34.200 --> 06:41.550 So you log in, you have access to content that's specifically created for them to follow. And they follow that model, and it's created in a 06:41.550 --> 06:48.960 specific format, even if they know nothing about it at the end of that they can't come out as an expert, understanding the industry and how to 06:48.960 --> 06:50.370 proceed to fund deals. 06:50.420 --> 06:57.950 Sean Murray: Okay, so you mentioned some numbers in there before, I think it was dollar amounts like 50, 60. I talked about it on here 06:57.950 --> 07:06.140 before about what's kind of realistic for like a broker to make any year. Because I think when people are evaluating the opportunity, they 07:06.140 --> 07:17.180 want to know, what's the potential, right. People don't want to put in a lot of hard work if the ceiling, right is low. But at the same time, if 07:17.180 --> 07:25.250 they hear like an advertisement, or they, they listen to some marketing guru, and they're like, you can make you know, a billion dollars in 30 07:25.250 --> 07:31.760 days, it almost sounds unrealistic, right. And so one thing I like to kind of pick people's brain about is like, what's realistic If you work 07:31.760 --> 07:37.850 in this industry? Now, I was watching, I watched some of your testimonial videos, you know, because I was checking out to see, are 07:37.850 --> 07:45.290 people actually benefiting from the course. And it looked to me like they were but you know, what, what could people expect? Like, let's say 07:45.290 --> 07:52.940 they, you know, they go to your school? What could people expect to make, like if they follow your program and your plans and your training? 07:53.080 --> 08:00.700 Oz Konar: Great question. So just like any business, you get out what you put in, right, if someone wants to buy in, and in 30 days make a lot 08:00.700 --> 08:07.840 of money without putting in the effort, it's just not gonna work. Nothing works that way, right. But we had, we had our record moments, 08:07.870 --> 08:14.380 someone joined not from the industry, they funded their first deal within a week, then someone else wanted to do a couple of deals within a 08:14.380 --> 08:21.760 month. So the projection we give to people, if you really follow it with the way that we design it, giving at least three, four hours focused 08:21.760 --> 08:30.460 hours per day, you can build a five figure business and 30 to 60 days. And because in this industry, even one deal can bring you 3 to $5,000. 08:31.090 --> 08:38.740 And the average income of people in us is 40 to 50K. So it's technically one deal can replace your income from the job. So I don't like the 08:38.740 --> 08:45.760 mentality of people focusing on the ceiling. Can I become a millionaire? Yeah, you can become a millionaire doing anything, pretty much. So 08:45.760 --> 08:52.270 that's not the real question. The question is, what are you trying to accomplish? A lot of times you're not happy where you are, which is 08:52.270 --> 09:00.280 point A, you're trying to get to point B, that could be making 10 grand because you have a job right now that's paying you 5K and you're barely 09:00.280 --> 09:07.990 paying bills, so you need to replace that income first. So you get rid of that draining job, right? So I want to make a super realistic people 09:08.140 --> 09:12.520 ask this question, can I become a millionaire? That's a very broad question. 09:13.810 --> 09:14.680 Sean Murray: I get that question. 09:15.680 --> 09:20.660 Oz Konar: Everyone asks that question. I'm like, What are you trying to accomplish? And it's funny that most people haven't even thought about 09:20.660 --> 09:28.940 it. Like I asked them, we call it bambbles. BAM is the first part of determining the goal setting part. Bare ass minimum, like what is 09:28.940 --> 09:35.750 minimum you need per month to cover your expenses and keep a roof over your head and food on the table? It's surprising that people do not know 09:35.750 --> 09:42.560 that they're like, oh, probably like 5 to 7k, probably. Like how much do you need per month? So it takes a while to get that number out of 09:42.560 --> 09:51.410 people. Once we do that our first goal is, alright, so what do you need to do to reach that level? Then we can talk about making 10K, 20K, then 09:51.410 --> 09:57.020 to seven figures because you're not going to jump from zero to seven figures in two months just doesn't work that way. There needs to be a 09:57.020 --> 10:02.660 lot of personal transformation and business transformation. needs to happen for someone to become a millionaire? 10:04.440 --> 10:08.970 Sean Murray: Do they need to be self motivated people? Or are you going to wake them up every day and motivate them? 10:08.970 --> 10:17.930 Oz Konar: Motivation wears off, right? So if you're going to need motivation to change your situation, probably your "why" is not strong 10:17.930 --> 10:23.870 enough. Like if someone needs to wake you up every morning to build your own business, that's just not going to work. That's why we focus a lot 10:23.870 --> 10:31.820 on helping people determine what's your why, what would happen, why would you change your current situation, if you can't really find it? 10:32.390 --> 10:38.420 You might be doing okay, actually, like, if you hate your boss, go change your job and find another boss, if that's what's, you know, 10:38.510 --> 10:45.200 causing you to look for something. But we usually look for things like, listen, I'm getting older, I can't do this job, I have no retirement. 10:45.350 --> 10:51.290 I'm a single mom with three kids. I don't like this neighborhood, I got to move out, but I can't really do it. I have to commute back and forth. 10:51.470 --> 11:00.140 I'm not I'm behind like $1,000 a month on bills, or I'm making on this current business 30K I definitely want to make a million dollars because 11:00.140 --> 11:09.890 of XYZ. So I can't find that for people. But if someone needs like their motivation to even start a business, I tell them just don't just use 11:09.920 --> 11:16.250 something is not is that connecting. That's not how you start a business. And I definitely do not claim to be a motivational coach or 11:16.250 --> 11:16.880 anything like that. 11:16.930 --> 11:25.540 Sean Murray: Okay, I'm feeling pretty motivated. So it just gave a few examples of people who might or might not be interested, you know, you 11:25.540 --> 11:36.280 gave circumstantial information. Are these primarily people who plan to work from home? Or are you like, or do any of these people intend to 11:36.280 --> 11:41.200 eventually, like, open up their own company and hire people or this, this like a work from home type crowd. 11:41.690 --> 11:49.490 Oz Konar: It is 60/40. 60% of people they want to work from home. 40%, when they join us, they already know that they want to build a broker 11:49.490 --> 11:57.650 shop. But that's- those numbers are skewed. Because people change over time. I have many people who join, they want to work from home, as they 11:57.650 --> 12:04.250 make more money, they make more money than they ever made in their lives, their goals shift. Now they want to become a broker, they want to 12:04.250 --> 12:11.840 hire people, they want to be the boss, right? So our initial feedback from them is like a 60/40. But over time, certain individuals, they 12:11.840 --> 12:19.790 definitely change their perception on the current reality of their business. And they decide to grow a shop and have to hire virtual 12:19.790 --> 12:26.990 people. We had someone use in the real estate industry, for example, within six months, he moved out and he now has like, 17 employees in 12:26.990 --> 12:34.400 office. That's what he wanted to accomplish? I have my opinions on like in office employees and things like that, but that's their business at 12:34.400 --> 12:35.930 the end of the day, we're not managing them. 12:36.570 --> 12:38.970 Sean Murray: Okay, so you have people working for you? 12:38.970 --> 12:45.590 Oz Konar: I do. Yeah, we have a full team of people. We used to be actually not far from me here. In Midtown, New York City pre pandemic. 12:45.830 --> 12:54.410 But at some point, we had 11 people in the office. But that always bothered me, because I- it's always better to give people freedom to 12:54.440 --> 13:02.000 work from wherever they want, it kind of opens up the talent pool too, and pandemic kind of gave us an excuse to be remote 100%. So now I work 13:02.000 --> 13:04.790 from home. And every one of my team members work from home too. 13:05.690 --> 13:13.670 Sean Murray: Alright, so here, here is something that I just thought up, you trained 3,000 plus brokers. Now in my experience, because I I tend 13:13.670 --> 13:21.620 to interact with a lot of business development, people who are trying to recoup brokers, they are typically looking for, because it's easier for 13:21.620 --> 13:30.470 them, large broker shops, companies that can produce a volume for them. They're looking for in they're like, can I get a million a month from 13:30.470 --> 13:37.970 you? Can I get 2 million a month from you? That's how they think. Not all of them, you know, but most of most of them, do these brokers that 13:37.970 --> 13:45.890 you're helping, do they suffer from any type of difficulty and working from the funders and the lenders because they're working independently? 13:46.730 --> 13:55.760 I mean, are they just able to sign up with anybody like. Hey, I took Oz's training and now here's my deal, like, how did that all go about? 13:55.760 --> 13:56.930 Like, what's the transition? 13:56.930 --> 14:03.000 Oz Konar: Great question. So every lender that we recommend they know who you are. So they know how particular we are about which lenders we 14:03.000 --> 14:10.980 allow in our platform. And we don't, we don't accept any monetary benefit from any of the lenders. So you can't pay your way into being a 14:10.980 --> 14:16.410 recommended lender into Blueprint. So you need to be running an ethical organization, you need to be funding balling you need to be in 14:16.410 --> 14:24.540 business for a certain amount of time. A lot of my training on specific product on lending options are done together with the lender, actually. So 14:24.810 --> 14:34.020 either their CFO or someone from the C level, you know, Suite we do the training together, so they know who BLB members are. So it's not like 14:34.020 --> 14:41.910 some random person is sending them an application. And we usually tell them, do not try to send an application to sign up with them unless you 14:41.910 --> 14:48.270 have deals going on. So we make it really realistic. A lot of times what happens is people Google lenders and they just call, hey, how do I closed 14:48.540 --> 14:54.660 deals? Well, it's not lenders to have to train you. Hopefully, you're trained enough to know how to do that they're in business to make money 14:54.660 --> 15:01.920 off of their money, right. So because of that reason, although our brokers have the freedom to work, anyone they want. So they're not, you know, 15:01.920 --> 15:10.080 but we want to give them a good baseline of lenders on different products. And all of them know me. And we sometimes meet in person, we do 15:10.080 --> 15:16.740 updated trainings here and there in the Blueprint, so they all get an assigned representative from that specific lender. So they're not just 15:16.740 --> 15:22.170 calling the 1-800 number. So we have those deeper relationships with every product that we represent. 15:22.170 --> 15:25.640 Sean Murray: Okay, so these lenders, these funders, they know what's essentially coming from your group. 15:25.720 --> 15:32.170 Oz Konar: From our network. Yeah. And they know that they don't need to split anything with us. And they know that there's no, you know, we're 15:32.170 --> 15:38.350 not going to be like, hey, if you don't pay us, we're gonna kick you out kind of thing. I've kicked out lenders before, for different reasons. 15:38.380 --> 15:45.730 Backdooring, they lied, and eventually, like every lie resurfaced, you figure out the truth, and we kicked them out. That's why I think it's 15:45.730 --> 15:52.390 important for us to keep the relationship that way for our brokers too. So that way they can, you know, they can try and have confidence in our 15:52.630 --> 15:55.360 ability to recommend somebody and that person being legitimate. 15:55.390 --> 16:00.970 Sean Murray: Yeah, I mean, I can just tell you from and I totally agree, I can just tell you, from my experience of that, there are too many 16:00.970 --> 16:09.640 people that do what you what you just said before that they Google, you know, random lender, and they have like one deal. They don't have any 16:09.640 --> 16:18.670 relationship with them. And then whether or not it gets funded, they're at pretty high risk of possibly not getting paid. Because who are they? 16:19.090 --> 16:20.050 They're nobody. 16:20.050 --> 16:23.000 Speakers: [cross-talk] 16:23.000 --> 16:29.870 Oz Konar: It's their family they're trying to fund, they have no idea about the business, you're just looking to be taken advantage of. And 16:29.870 --> 16:36.950 these lenders, obviously, not all of them are bad. But even at the salesperson level, they kind of know that you don't know what you're 16:36.950 --> 16:42.650 talking about. And they say, sure, we'll find that deal for you. We'll let you know when it's funded. And you pass it off to them. And 16:42.650 --> 16:48.800 meanwhile, you call 10 other lenders and so horrible way to build a relationship anyways, that's your kind of deal shopping. But at the end, 16:48.800 --> 16:56.720 you get taken advantage of and you're mad. And now this puts a label to the entire industry. Oh, and you know, alternative lending, they take 16:56.720 --> 17:06.320 advantage of you? Not really. It's like a mutually destructive process. Unfortunately, because you haven't either done your due diligence or 17:06.320 --> 17:09.560 just had one deal. You had no intention of building an actual business. 17:09.600 --> 17:16.770 Sean Murray: right? I'm just trying to picture right now, if a funder is watching what they might be thinking about the man that is trained 3,000 17:16.770 --> 17:22.590 brokers. 3,000 plus brokers that are out there in the wild, because they're always trying to figure out how to get more deals. How do I find 17:22.590 --> 17:29.130 more brokers? They're always looking for a list of them, we get emails, calls, like, Hey, can we buy your list of records? And we you know, we 17:29.130 --> 17:37.320 won't sell it. And they're always curious, who is out there. Apparently, you know, you've created 3,000 plus, are these people like all over the 17:37.320 --> 17:41.400 country? And by the way, are they only in the US? Or do you have any, like, outside of the country too? 17:41.730 --> 17:51.240 Oz Konar: Mostly us and also about 30% are from Canada? Yeah. And we have about 100 people or so in different countries, they and our 17:51.240 --> 17:57.000 requirement on accepting people from different countries, as long as they can manage to open a business account in the United States. They 17:57.000 --> 18:07.170 can target businesses in the US and fund it. So we have people from Russia, Denmark, Philippines, India, like Europe, UK, New Zealand, we're 18:07.170 --> 18:13.410 funding deals in the United States. And again, we tell them, listen, we're not lawyers, we're not accountants, you got to figure out how it 18:13.410 --> 18:19.980 works for you to open a business account here. Once you do it, you're free to join our program and take advantage of the network that we have. 18:20.310 --> 18:27.300 Sean Murray: Okay. Do you have anyone doing deals? I get that you have people who are located in Canada. Is there any funding happening in 18:27.300 --> 18:29.160 Canada too or are you kind of staying out of the Canadian? 18:29.420 --> 18:35.240 Oz Konar: No, we're not. We have actually actual lenders from the from Canada. And again, we're not just focusing on merchant cash advance, 18:35.240 --> 18:37.640 we're focusing on invoice factoring equipment financing... 18:37.640 --> 18:38.750 Sean Murray: That was gonna be one of my questions. 18:38.780 --> 18:44.060 Oz Konar: Yeah, not just merchant cash advance, because honestly, if that's all you're doing, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. And 18:44.060 --> 18:50.900 you're not being really consultative, because the product is not a good fit for most people, you're trying to try to fit that into a box that 18:50.930 --> 18:57.890 they don't belong to, right. So in Canada, the Canadians are actually more fortunate than people in the US, they can build our business in 18:57.890 --> 19:04.280 Canada, but they can also build in the United States. So they have this, you know, double option. A lot of our Canadian brokers are also getting 19:04.280 --> 19:06.380 clients in the United States and also in Canada. 19:06.770 --> 19:13.010 Sean Murray: Okay. What about COVID? I imagine that this type of business probably did really well, during COVID. I know this from 19:13.010 --> 19:19.940 firsthand, I was telling you before off camera, that I noticed that there was a lot of activity in like social media groups where people 19:19.940 --> 19:25.580 were getting together and like, I don't know if some of them might have been motivational. Others might have been, you know, work from home 19:25.820 --> 19:35.030 concepts. But it was my perception that there was a lot of this type of activity going on. How did it impact your business? Did it grow? Did you 19:35.030 --> 19:39.680 see more people wanting to work from home and become a business loan broker? Or what happened with you? 19:39.750 --> 19:44.700 Oz Konar: Yeah, it was totally unpredictable. Obviously, when I first started because I haven't been through a pandemic in my lifetime and 19:44.730 --> 19:51.900 didn't expect it and we didn't know how that would affect anything and everything. I think that sums up everyone's ideas on what happened, 19:51.900 --> 20:03.780 right. But I've been saying for years that what you think is safe might not be so safe, which is your job. Because I always believe that good is 20:03.810 --> 20:10.890 the enemy of great. A lot of people assume that their situation is good, I'm doing fine, I got this job and I get my pay every single week. It's 20:10.890 --> 20:18.390 not that bad after all, but they're sacrificing the potential of being great, right? I talked a great deal about that. And my weekly calls too. 20:18.630 --> 20:25.590 Every one of us there the potential to build something, it's just sometimes especially after our 20s we kind of give up on that idea and 20:25.590 --> 20:33.420 kind of buy into this corporate mentality of, hey, we can just settle. I mean, why push so hard type of thing, right? I think pandemic reminded 20:34.800 --> 20:42.660 that fact to people. Hey, I'm really not that safe on what's going on. I'm not really ready. Even for like a recession, let alone pandemic, 20:42.660 --> 20:50.760 right, that realization that a lot of people are coming back to us, they looked into us before they're like, you know, I'm fine. I after all, I'm 20:50.760 --> 20:58.020 not doing that bad. They've seen that potential or being good is not really enough. So I got to do something to be prepared, have some money 20:58.020 --> 21:05.220 saved up or be able to do something from home, even through the recession? Because alternative lending industry, yes, certain products 21:05.220 --> 21:12.630 slowed down, but others still did okay. Certain other industries, they just died off, like totally stopped. Right? So when you did that 21:12.630 --> 21:21.630 comparison, what would you want to be? And this industry survived 2008 recession and came out with flying colors and strength and after that, 21:21.630 --> 21:28.560 and we know that's the same thing is going to happen after the pandemic, which we're, I think, getting the end of it, right. So that changed the 21:28.560 --> 21:35.850 perception for a lot of people. There's not so much do I want to become a business loan broker. It's just, oh crap, what do I do with my life 21:35.850 --> 21:42.420 now? Like, what do I see myself 5 years, 10 years and what happens in in times of chaos like this? 21:43.440 --> 21:52.950 Sean Murray: Okay, how do they find Oz during the pandemic? Right? I get that people were thinking about you know, their lifestyle and their 21:52.950 --> 22:01.800 career and stuff. But how does someone find you because I know you have a YouTube channel, and a lot of videos a lot of followers on there. But 22:02.040 --> 22:04.500 you know, how did they end up in your world? 22:05.160 --> 22:07.200 Oz Konar: It's quite magical actually. 22:07.200 --> 22:09.900 Speakers: [cross-talk] 22:09.900 --> 22:16.290 Oz Konar: Sometimes they're surprised how they find us through different some of them through you, your network they hear of us. Others is 22:16.590 --> 22:21.990 through our YouTube advertising. We do a lot of advertising so far our my ads have been seen by like 4 million. 22:22.020 --> 22:32.850 Sean Murray: I've seen an ad for you on your own video. I was watching an Oz video. And then an ad for you was the ad I had to watch to get to 22:32.850 --> 22:34.620 your video. Yeah, I thought that was amazing. 22:34.680 --> 22:40.110 Oz Konar: It's so amazing. But it gets really awkward when you have like a family get together and you watch- you're trying to watch a video on 22:40.110 --> 22:45.570 YouTube and everyone has to go through their own ad, we skip over should keep it. 22:45.570 --> 22:47.940 Sean Murray: Yeah. What's protocol for that? 22:47.970 --> 22:52.650 Oz Konar: Oh, we skip it. Because I see my own face. 22:52.650 --> 22:59.250 Speakers: [cross-talk] 22:59.250 --> 23:05.460 Oz Konar: And the kids, when they want to watch like simple cartoons and they have to skip times. We have family struggles. 23:06.240 --> 23:07.350 Sean Murray: Dad's videos are on again. 23:09.460 --> 23:16.090 Oz Konar: So they think that every video they watch out there, I'm going to show up at some point. They truly believe that evidence is there like 23:16.120 --> 23:22.090 and the other day they're watching Brad Pitt? Their like is he your friend? Sure. Why not. I'll take that. 23:22.090 --> 23:22.120 Speakers: [cross-talk] 23:25.360 --> 23:32.410 Oz Konar: But to answer your question. So our ads have been seen by more than 4 million people in United States alone. So it's primarily YouTube 23:32.410 --> 23:39.160 ads and YouTube ads really, we don't have any pushing styles, like, hey, check out my content, you might enjoy it. That's how we drive traffic to 23:39.160 --> 23:46.120 our YouTube channel. And those who are interested, they stay with it. Usually people before they join Blueprint. They spent about two weeks 23:46.150 --> 23:52.570 checking out different content and watching the webinar jumping on a call with us. Because we truly want to make sure that this is the right 23:52.570 --> 23:59.410 fit for them. Because I'm in the just like you I'm playing the long game. I'm not here to let's just build a business make a bunch of money 23:59.410 --> 24:03.370 and disappear type of thing. And so it's important for people do their due diligence. 24:03.630 --> 24:07.800 Sean Murray: You know, it's interesting. I've never actually done any YouTube marketing before I was telling you before we don't even have 24:07.800 --> 24:15.510 like a real, like a real YouTube channel. What about Facebook? Because, alright, so oftentimes, we talk about social media marketing, for 24:15.510 --> 24:23.940 whatever reason, this industry tends to be different than a lot of others. I don't know why. Other businesses like real estate and so 24:23.940 --> 24:33.330 forth, they have YouTube celebrities, YouTube stars, and it becomes it's like part of the fabric you know, it is TikTok and all this stuff. And 24:33.330 --> 24:39.150 for whatever reason, this particular business, at least in my experience, tends to be a little bit more old fashioned. I don't know 24:39.150 --> 24:49.500 what your take is. But YouTube, for whatever reason, tends to be one that people don't take that much advantage of. Is there any value for 24:49.530 --> 24:56.160 let's say, like a broker or lender to use YouTube as part of their marketing like I know you use it, what about your lender and broker? 24:56.450 --> 25:03.080 Oz Konar: One thing about YouTube that's different other social media platforms is that The half life of content is really really long, right? 25:03.230 --> 25:12.800 So I create a content in 2017 people still find me through that and become a part of our YouTube channel and watch other stuff. So that 25:12.800 --> 25:21.350 doesn't happen anywhere else. So the content gets really old and aged than any other platform like Instagram, you post a story, gone in 24 25:21.350 --> 25:22.670 hours. it's just not there. 25:22.670 --> 25:24.020 Sean Murray: Spend all this time on your story... 25:24.020 --> 25:31.070 Oz Konar: Yeah, exactly. And TikTok, look at TikTok. Right. So your preparation probably takes like two hours to shoot that video. And it 25:31.070 --> 25:33.440 just gets old in like, 30 minutes. 25:33.440 --> 25:35.570 Sean Murray: And what's the call to action there? You know what I mean, it's kind of- 25:35.600 --> 25:40.730 Oz Konar: What what do you be accomplishing? Like, if you want to be like this online influencers? Like, yeah, that's fine. But what are you 25:40.730 --> 25:49.910 really building right? So I don't like I'm not anti social media. But I definitely limit my time spent on certain channels, like I have like a 25:49.910 --> 25:58.190 Facebook newsfeed blocker. So I don't have to scroll right? Same thing with I do use Instagram, but a team handles that I don't handle it. Same 25:58.190 --> 26:05.360 thing with Instagram, even if you're not doing a story, the post people see it algorithmically. And then it kind of unless they come back and 26:05.360 --> 26:11.330 look at your profile, it's not there. So if you compare all of that against YouTube, YouTube is going to is the winner and will be the 26:11.330 --> 26:17.810 winner for the next five, six years. So anyone any business, and like you said, alternative lending industry for whatever reason, I'm not 26:17.810 --> 26:25.100 they're afraid to, you know, YouTube and whatnot. But there's a lot of valuable content. And that needs to be shared. Sure. And they don't need 26:25.100 --> 26:32.870 to be involved every single day on like other channels, because you can't build an Instagram following. Unless you're shooting stuff every 26:32.870 --> 26:41.900 single day. That's not YouTube, you can do like a live stream or, like, invite everyone that you know, on your email list and just answer 26:41.900 --> 26:50.480 questions. That's pure value content, you can redistribute over and over again, you can use it in your email campaign. So I agree with you that 26:50.480 --> 26:56.930 this people are not especially alternative lending industry, they have they spent a lot of time on their website and a lot of money on the 26:56.930 --> 27:05.540 website, but not so not so much on other platforms that will be very easy to reach their target audience. Because millions of people are 27:05.540 --> 27:11.840 searching online, especially through YouTube, and on how to get funding for their business. And to me-, 27:11.840 --> 27:13.070 Sean Murray: They're searching on YouTube? 27:13.340 --> 27:14.960 Oz Konar: No, they're still searching on Google. 27:14.960 --> 27:16.160 Sean Murray: Okay, that was gonna be my last question. 27:16.160 --> 27:25.910 Oz Konar: But the behavior, content consumption behavior has shifted, right? People search on Google, but they don't want to read a blog on 27:25.910 --> 27:31.040 it. They don't want to read the 5,000 word blog on it. They switch to YouTube to watch content. 27:31.040 --> 27:32.810 Sean Murray: Wait, you're saying people want to watch videos? 27:32.810 --> 27:42.140 Oz Konar: Yeah, like what a concept, right? Short content, that's two to three minutes. So that is, especially if they kind of sit down and shoot 27:42.170 --> 27:49.130 10 videos and put it out there. I can guarantee you that over long term, it'll be beneficial. You can't do that in any other platform. So I think 27:49.130 --> 27:54.920 anyone watching it, and they don't need anything fancy, they can just show up and talk about their business. And we'll be fine. 27:54.990 --> 28:01.740 Sean Murray: Yeah, so you've actually made videos and said three or four years back where I go just find now. And that's how they'll get and then 28:01.740 --> 28:03.780 they'll catch up and see the newest stuff or reach out to you. 28:03.810 --> 28:09.840 Oz Konar: Yeah, because once they're in that in that, you know, channel, they keep seeing it actually, my first video is when I got really 28:09.870 --> 28:17.100 accurat- aggravated, I got off a phone call with a broker back then we're doing marketing services. This guy was persisting and arguing with 28:17.100 --> 28:21.600 me that the future is in telemarketing. Like I'm here. I can pick up the phone and make deals happen. 28:21.600 --> 28:22.710 Sean Murray: What year was this in? 28:22.770 --> 28:30.810 Oz Konar: This is 2017. Okay, okay. All right. That's interesting. And this was like the 10th conversation I had that week, I got really pissed 28:30.810 --> 28:36.870 off. So I pulled up like a whiteboard, little tiny one. I said, here's how we're going to fail in this industry. It was a really negative 28:36.870 --> 28:37.510 video. 28:37.510 --> 28:38.320 Sean Murray: It's still up. 28:38.410 --> 28:43.870 Oz Konar: It's still up. A lot of people are like whoa, and I started getting emails, someone called no one called them called out this 28:43.870 --> 28:50.530 industry like this. If you do this, you're gonna fail. If you do this, your turnover will be like 60%. If you keep doing direct mail, guess 28:50.530 --> 28:57.850 what the open rate on direct mail is less than 1/10 of 1%. Keep doing that. So it was like 16 minutes or so. And I'm like, Wow, I can't 28:57.850 --> 29:04.960 believe I just did that. I offended a lot of people. And I posted out there. And even to this day, they used to see that and say, Oh, that was 29:04.960 --> 29:14.020 a good job, man. And so again, it wasn't planned. I didn't have any content strategy. I was just angry. I just wanted someone to listen to 29:14.020 --> 29:19.180 me. And the first year only like, 20 people watched it. I'm like, That's pathetic. Like no one- 29:20.020 --> 29:21.490 Sean Murray: No one was here to witness your anger. 29:22.720 --> 29:25.630 Speakers: [cross-talk] 29:25.630 --> 29:33.490 Oz Konar: Should I just delete it? But then that's what I mean. This is like the biggest evidence of content on YouTube never dies, especially 29:33.490 --> 29:41.350 if someone is as a lender. Let's say they're comparing you to some other competitor. Don't you want them to find more information about you? Like 29:41.350 --> 29:42.520 it makes a lot of difference. 29:43.140 --> 29:51.120 Sean Murray: Alright, so you mentioned a few things there. You mentioned. telemarketing, direct mail. What is your opinion on them? Do 29:51.120 --> 29:54.630 you think they work? Or do you think that they were the future? 29:57.450 --> 30:03.780 Oz Konar: If they were they will not have been replaced with something else. The market works that way. If something is not really working, 30:03.780 --> 30:11.910 something else replaces that. And you know, market has its own rules, right? I'm not against telemarketing, as long as the owner and I'm 30:11.910 --> 30:18.930 talking to the brokers is not doing that. So what happens a lot of time is owner want to set the example. Listen, I can dial 400 people and make 30:18.930 --> 30:25.860 2 appointments. Well, how do you double that business? Are you going to dial 800 people a day? Yeah, you're going to hire more people, then 30:25.860 --> 30:33.210 you're kind of your entire marketing walks out at 5pm. Like, yeah, 10 people dialing and they walk out your marketing is done. So you're not 30:33.210 --> 30:41.430 going to market after 5pm. Like, that's silly, right. So as long as the part of a bigger strategy, I'm okay with that. But it is so inefficient, 30:41.820 --> 30:49.830 it is better to have people call on the inbound leads that you can generate really economically, for example, generating leads on Facebook 30:49.830 --> 30:57.120 for alternative lending is less than $1, you can have an entire opt in form filled out with the person's name and phone number, their address, 30:57.120 --> 31:05.130 how much they need, and all that stuff for less than $1 if you're doing paid advertising, so then instead of having 45 people dial, you can get 31:05.130 --> 31:12.030 the same results with like four or five people. So to me, that's how I look at telemarketing. Same thing with the direct mail, I used to run a 31:12.030 --> 31:19.350 direct mail company, direct mail is not dead, it still works. But the strategies have changed. Back then you would just do one blast and still 31:19.350 --> 31:28.200 make money. Right now you need three, four consecutive direct mails of same type to remind yourself because the attention span of people, they 31:28.200 --> 31:36.810 came down, right. So back then in 2015, it was like a minute and a half right now it's like 16 seconds. And then some claim is less than that. 31:37.260 --> 31:44.700 So we don't know the real number, actually. So you have to match the right marketing method to the right audience. So for that reason, you 31:44.700 --> 31:51.930 can still use that as long as that's not your go to option because there's no way you're competing with the rest of the market. It's just 31:51.930 --> 31:55.230 you're just gonna make money. You just bought yourself a job. Let's just say that. 31:56.730 --> 32:02.760 Sean Murray: The dream is you mentioned the dream, right? It's inbound marketing, you don't have to do telemarketing. People just call you all 32:02.970 --> 32:11.490 right. But I mean, it, it sounds amazing. But it's how do you get those people to find you and call you. You mentioned something about Facebook, 32:11.490 --> 32:13.230 that Facebook? Is that part of your course? 32:13.230 --> 32:20.620 Oz Konar: It is, we talked about, we talked a great deal about organic marketing, paid advertising, right? So you need to develop certain 32:20.620 --> 32:26.770 skills for that to happen, you're not going to wake up tomorrow, but we're going to go crazy over you, right. So you need to learn how to 32:26.920 --> 32:34.540 generate demand or channel demand to your channel. That's done organically. You can do through Instagram, through LinkedIn, there's so 32:34.540 --> 32:41.380 many strategies that we train our members on. But if you want the ball, if you want to add fuel to the fire, that's paid advertising. You can 32:41.380 --> 32:48.670 literally pay to purchase leads, which is another topic that it's talked a lot about in this industry, we get a lot of calls just I don't want 32:48.670 --> 32:54.310 the program, can you just tell me leads? No, because you don't know what you're talking about. If I give you leads, you're not gonna do much of 32:54.310 --> 32:59.410 that, right? I'm gonna close I close everyone all that's the problem right there, you shouldn't be closing everyone. That's the first thing. 32:59.560 --> 33:08.500 So if you're into buying leads, and if you have somewhat of a budget, it's way better to generate your own leads that you own than purchasing 33:08.530 --> 33:16.810 a lead list that's been sold 5,000 times to other people, right? That's not the best way to build a business. That's what I'm saying. So yes, it 33:16.810 --> 33:23.680 might sound like a dream. But if you learn the skills, you will never give that up to go back to phone sales. I've done phone sales for three 33:23.680 --> 33:25.300 years. I'm not missing a day with that, you know? 33:25.720 --> 33:31.240 Sean Murray: Yeah, you know, I did that, too. I didn't telemarketing in this industry as well. At this point, it was honestly like more than 10 33:31.240 --> 33:39.010 years ago, and I burned out from that. There are people who can do it their whole lives. You can make the 400 dials a day and they're totally 33:39.010 --> 33:45.010 fine doing it when they're 50, 60 years old, hopefully by then, you know, they're you know, they have people doing it for them. They 33:45.010 --> 33:52.720 are not doing dials, but I did burn out after about three years. But I want to go back to this video you talked about before, where you were 33:52.720 --> 34:01.510 mad? Because it's my understanding, you also have worked with people who are already brokers. These weren't random people. Because I know there's 34:01.510 --> 34:08.530 some people that I know personally, who were already in the business, who then went to school, even though they already understood the 34:08.530 --> 34:20.710 product. And so I'm wondering, like, what type of things do brokers get stuck on that they feel like they need to learn more from you or take a 34:20.710 --> 34:23.680 course like, you know, what areas do they get stuck? 34:25.130 --> 34:32.390 Oz Konar: We focus on what they need to stop doing first, instead of giving them more things to do this kind of counterintuitive, right? 34:32.390 --> 34:39.020 People think that I prescribed them to do this and do that. I take a look at what they're currently doing. They're usually doing a lot of 34:39.020 --> 34:47.390 that. That's not efficient. We stopped them. We have a lot of existing brokers. They used to do 15, 20K a month, and they think it's great. 34:47.420 --> 34:55.430 Well, yeah, it is great. Actually, it's not that bad, but the potential could be 30 to 40,000 and 50,000 that we have probably six, seven 34:55.430 --> 35:03.470 brokers who still work from home with one virtual assistant and they break 50K per month. Because of that mindset shift, like I look at their 35:03.470 --> 35:09.470 business model, like how do you keep track of your leads? Well, you're on paper, some of them are still doing it on paper. I'm like, no, that's 35:09.470 --> 35:14.150 not going to work out. Spreadsheets. No, like, make everything efficient. Even if you're improving your process. 35:14.360 --> 35:15.680 Sean Murray: There are people using paper? 35:15.710 --> 35:22.610 Oz Konar: 100 percent because it works, they think it works. And it gets to their angle 15, 20K. 35:23.450 --> 35:25.640 Speakers: [cross-talk] 35:26.540 --> 35:33.080 Oz Konar: But if you want to jump to that next level, you need efficiency in your system. So you can't have just paperwork, just you 35:33.080 --> 35:39.560 know, losing that and losing your deals and things like that. So what we're focused on is look at looking at what they do to generate leads, 35:39.560 --> 35:46.940 for example, one broker, they were doing telemarketing and LinkedIn, and he was not tracking the proportional deletes, where it comes from, we 35:46.940 --> 35:54.530 find out that 60% of the funded deals are coming from LinkedIn. And I asked them to stop telemarketing, do more LinkedIn, and add something 35:54.530 --> 36:02.510 else just Facebook advertising. Right now that same broker is doing 45K per month with one BA not doing telemarketing for the past two and a 36:02.510 --> 36:03.170 half years. 36:03.890 --> 36:04.760 Sean Murray: That must be nice. 36:05.890 --> 36:13.720 Oz Konar: Wow, how did that? That's the magical moment that we talked about, right. But once you have those skills, is transferable to other 36:13.720 --> 36:20.410 things too. Now you're thinking more like a marketer, I tell my students all the time. Don't think of yourself as just a business loan broker. 36:20.770 --> 36:27.640 Think of yourself as a consultant, you're out there to help people. Second, think, of yourself as a marketer. If you're a marketer, you'll 36:27.640 --> 36:35.290 never run low on leads, you'll get creative, you'll do something to generate leads. But if you consider yourself as Jordan Belfort nothing 36:35.290 --> 36:43.120 against them, but I can close everybody and I gotta close everybody give me a list and I can dial it, your burning candle from both ends. And 36:43.120 --> 36:49.360 that's, that doesn't lead to scale, it will lead to some money, you'll be fine. But if you want to scale a company, that's a whole different 36:49.360 --> 36:52.180 structure, then what you could be doing, 36:52.660 --> 36:59.230 Sean Murray: You know, when you every time you use the word students, I'm tempted to think that your name is actually Dr. Oz. Has anyone ever 36:59.230 --> 36:59.920 said that to you before? 36:59.920 --> 37:00.340 Oz Konar: A lot. 37:00.340 --> 37:08.110 Sean Murray: they have? Okay. All right. So you have all these brokers that you trained, right? Do you ever get together with them in person? 37:08.110 --> 37:13.120 Or is this purely zoom and email stuff? You have to have like a like an Oz, like, together? 37:13.120 --> 37:20.230 Oz Konar: Yeah, we used to. We tried that. We've done three events in the past in like a little mastermind format, like a mini event for like 37:20.260 --> 37:27.790 10 to 15 people. We were going to do one big one than we got hit with a pandemic. So we're planning one this year, but it is too early to tell 37:27.820 --> 37:35.200 if we can pull it off because of what's happening, but yeah, so our plan is to add more of that. So we get to- because our community interesting, 37:35.410 --> 37:42.280 they have their own local meetings before the pandemic like BLB members, we call them BLB members or students, they will get together in Atlanta, 37:42.280 --> 37:49.000 Georgia, and California, they started having their own local get togethers. Which was not organized by me, they decided to do it on their 37:49.000 --> 37:55.270 own. Some of them run their own weekly calls for other brokers, accountability partners, like they match up with each other to practice 37:55.270 --> 38:02.620 certain things and answer questions. So we have a lot of that going on. But obviously we want to host it to bring all these people so I want to 38:02.620 --> 38:08.710 get to know them. They know me but I don't know who they are. A lot of times so we have something in the pipeline but let's see if we can pull 38:08.710 --> 38:09.370 it off. 38:09.370 --> 38:15.580 Sean Murray: Cool. Okay, well that sounds great. Is there anything that I'm gonna give you the opportunity is there anything that you would like 38:15.580 --> 38:18.310 to plug about Business Lending Blueprint? 38:19.200 --> 38:24.540 Oz Konar: Whatever business you're looking into, just do your due diligence. I'm not gonna pitch Business Lending Blueprint. I think we 38:24.540 --> 38:33.120 talked enough about it. One thing I I'm a big advocate of just don't buy into the hype, like yeah, some you might see a video of mine saying that 38:33.120 --> 38:40.830 this guy made $40,000. Just listen to the video, just watch it to see how it worked out. Go through the content. We have a lot of content. 38:41.100 --> 38:49.530 Honestly, we answer probably 50 emails a day, people are emailing us saying how do I start? Like, go watch this, go watch this, go watch 38:49.530 --> 38:55.140 this. We want them to watch the webinar. Because last thing you want to do is buy into something you don't really understand what's going to 38:55.140 --> 39:01.440 happen. Because then you can we can't really lead you when you come in like that. Right? It's really difficult. So it's not a plug but it's 39:01.440 --> 39:08.760 just whatever you decided to decide to do know that you can jump from good to great, but do your due diligence and check out the content. 39:08.870 --> 39:17.030 Sean Murray: Okay. Well, Oz appreciate it. If you were listening out there the good chance that one of the brokers you work with possibly 39:17.030 --> 39:22.310 came from this guy right here. Thank you for coming into the office today and making the time- 39:22.370 --> 39:24.290 Oz Konar: Thank you for the invitation. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate it. 39:24.290 --> 39:31.700 Sean Murray: No problem. Yeah, I appreciate your time here. So everyone, thank you so much. Again, Oz Koner, Business Lending Blueprint. And I'm 39:31.700 --> 39:36.590 Sean Murray from deBanked TV. Thank you for joining and tuning in and we will see you next time.