00:00.000 --> 00:03.930 Johny Fernandez: Would you say, the approach and just working 00:03.930 --> 00:06.780 like that, is that something you'd recommend for, you know, 00:06.780 --> 00:10.170 people like business businesses? 00:10.720 --> 00:13.840 Sean Murray: Yeah. And so you would so the short answer is 00:13.840 --> 00:19.240 yes. And I would appear to be a very biased person to say that 00:19.240 --> 00:22.000 because while we write about it all the time. Yeah. And a lot of 00:22.000 --> 00:25.030 our customers do that. So you're like, well, of course, Sean is 00:25.030 --> 00:30.190 gonna say that, but believe it or not, I have actually taken a 00:30.190 --> 00:32.770 loan, or maybe it was an advance, I don't even remember. 00:33.160 --> 00:37.930 But I got it from Square. This had to be about probably about 00:37.930 --> 00:41.740 five years ago at this point. And I can't remember the exact 00:41.770 --> 00:44.830 reason why I needed capital, but I didn't need that much. It was 00:45.250 --> 00:47.860 kind of too small for the bank. And the bank was gonna take too 00:47.860 --> 00:51.520 long. And I'm like, hey, why don't I try one of these? You 00:51.520 --> 00:56.140 know, like. Yeah. Online loans, or MCAs myself, I write about 00:56.140 --> 00:58.240 them all the time. I used to underwrite, I used to sell them, 00:58.270 --> 01:02.380 right? Surely, if they really work, they will work for me. Or 01:02.380 --> 01:04.990 maybe they won't. And I'll have been proven wrong all this time. 01:05.050 --> 01:06.700 I thought it was actually a really good experiment. But at 01:06.700 --> 01:09.970 the same time, I actually kind of needed it, right. And so I 01:09.970 --> 01:13.270 took one, and it was very easy. It was an amount, it wasn't 01:13.270 --> 01:15.010 promoting a Square per se, but it. 01:15.040 --> 01:16.510 Johny Fernandez: This was an example that you went through. 01:16.510 --> 01:18.580 Sean Murray: This was real life scenario. This was Square, I 01:18.580 --> 01:21.310 opened up my Square app because we accepted Square credit cards. 01:21.580 --> 01:23.530 And it said, I was like, there was like a button that said I 01:23.530 --> 01:25.540 was pre approved. I can't remember the amount. I want to 01:25.540 --> 01:29.500 say it was like 20 or $30,000. And it was like, tap tap. Like, 01:29.560 --> 01:33.820 do you want the money? Yes. Tap here to like, deposit it. And 01:33.850 --> 01:36.190 that was it, there wasn't anything else to it. Yeah. And 01:36.190 --> 01:38.560 then from that point on, they would took a percentage of my 01:38.560 --> 01:41.740 credit card sales up until I paid that amount back plus a fee 01:41.740 --> 01:44.140 on top. And. So. It works great. 01:44.380 --> 01:48.790 Johny Fernandez: Yeah. So you didn't, it wasn't a hassle. 01:48.790 --> 01:51.120 Sean Murray: No, no, no, it was the opposite. I actually thought 01:51.120 --> 01:52.560 it was too easy. That was my. 01:52.650 --> 01:53.400 Johny Fernandez: It was too good to be true? 01:53.400 --> 02:53.810 Johny Fernandez: So you paid everything off based off of the 01:53.810 --> 01:55.602 Sean Murray: Yeah, it was it was. Yeah, I thought it was too 01:55.652 --> 01:58.755 good to be true. And I almost thought it was too easy. As in I 01:58.805 --> 02:02.008 was surprised that nobody called me. Yeah. Nobody checked to see 02:02.058 --> 02:05.011 if I was still going to be in business. I mean, in the fine 02:05.061 --> 02:06.110 print. I'm sure I signed, you know, saying that everything was 02:06.110 --> 02:09.800 transactions that you did? 02:09.800 --> 02:11.017 going to be the same. Yeah. I don't even remember. Maybe 02:11.017 --> 02:11.067 Sean Murray: Yeah. And so it wasn't like I wasn't like I took 02:11.067 --> 02:14.170 that's part of why I thought it was too easy. It was literally 02:14.220 --> 02:17.223 just like, tap, tap done. I documented it. You know, there's 02:17.274 --> 02:19.620 a story on our website I wrote about it at the time has to be 02:19.620 --> 02:20.377 more before I paid off the first one. I paid off the first one. 02:20.377 --> 02:23.229 like five years ago, but look up. I think the name of the 02:23.280 --> 02:26.132 story is I Got Funded. Yeah look, look it up. I got I got 02:26.182 --> 02:29.085 funded. And I talk about how it was it was so easy. It was 02:29.135 --> 02:31.988 almost too easy. But you know what, I ended up doing it a 02:32.038 --> 02:33.240 second time. Okay. Yeah. 02:43.680 --> 02:45.810 And then for whatever reason, I don't I don't remember what, 02:45.810 --> 02:49.710 what what situation arose. I thought to myself, I'd like to 02:49.710 --> 02:54.000 do another. And I totally got it from the standpoint of a small 02:54.000 --> 02:57.300 business owner, why you would do this. Yeah. Because it worked 02:57.300 --> 02:59.880 for me. And it's obviously not gonna work for any for 02:59.880 --> 03:04.680 everybody. And one thing I will say in that is that the cost of 03:04.680 --> 03:08.520 the funds was higher than one would get from a bank. Although 03:08.520 --> 03:11.700 the terms I was offered were not terrible. And terrible is always 03:11.700 --> 03:14.550 gonna be subjective. Yeah. It depends on what your situation 03:14.550 --> 03:18.570 was. And the amount that I paid, I felt was reasonable for what I 03:18.570 --> 03:20.910 was trying to accomplish. And that's how I look at it at the 03:20.910 --> 03:23.940 end of the day, if I can accomplish what I want to or 03:23.940 --> 03:29.970 make money off of off of it, then the cost. Isn't that huge 03:29.970 --> 03:34.470 of a factor if I'm net beneficiary of the deal? And, 03:35.160 --> 03:38.070 you know, I appreciated the payback methodology it took it 03:38.070 --> 03:41.370 took it was a huge relief, not having to worry about at like, 03:41.400 --> 03:44.340 oh, my goodness, I have to send in the payment. But of course, 03:44.340 --> 03:46.440 most people do auto debit now. And I didn't have to worry about 03:46.440 --> 03:48.150 auto debit, either. I didn't have to worry about is there 03:48.150 --> 03:49.800 enough money on this day when they're gonna make my debit? 03:49.830 --> 03:52.590 Yeah. They just took a percentage automatically. That's 03:52.590 --> 03:55.530 awesome. And I'm curious to know, do you know the interest 03:55.530 --> 04:03.990 rate? So that's a great, that's a great question. I did not. And 04:04.770 --> 04:07.170 people would say, Sean, how could you not have known the 04:07.200 --> 04:09.750 interest rate? How could you not? I think the real question 04:09.750 --> 04:13.770 is Sean, did you know the APR, correct. And the thing is, I 04:13.770 --> 04:17.940 didn't know the APR APR, I knew the factor rate. So on one of 04:17.940 --> 04:22.500 them, I paid a 109 factor, which is really good. That's 9, 9% 04:23.100 --> 04:27.990 that's not the APR. But I had to pay a 9% on top of what I got. 04:28.230 --> 04:31.530 Right? A lot of people will consider that very good. Some 04:31.530 --> 04:33.810 people will just consider that terrible if you try to boil it 04:33.810 --> 04:36.570 down to an APR it's gonna end up being more than 10% talking 04:36.570 --> 04:39.390 about double digit APR, probably. But I don't even 04:39.390 --> 04:42.570 actually know. Yeah. And in today's world, we're led to 04:42.570 --> 04:46.080 believe that if we don't know the APR, then we're stupid. And 04:46.080 --> 04:48.780 we did something that we don't understand. And we got taken 04:48.780 --> 04:51.600 advantage of. Yeah. I didn't know what the APR is. And my 04:51.600 --> 04:55.680 literal name on Twitter is finance guy 74 I will just. 04:55.680 --> 04:56.100 Johny Fernandez: Follow him. 04:56.130 --> 04:59.760 Sean Murray: Yeah, I have all the best financial advice I 04:59.760 --> 05:03.060 don't know what, I pay, I don't know what my APR is. But follow 05:03.060 --> 05:06.060 me for all your financial financial advice. And I went to 05:06.060 --> 05:08.250 school for accounting, finance, these are things I could have 05:08.250 --> 05:10.650 easily calculated. You know what, I didn't care, it didn't 05:10.650 --> 05:13.800 matter. It's an arbitrary number that has no bearing on on what I 05:13.800 --> 05:17.460 was going to do. Literally nothing literally means nothing. 05:17.520 --> 05:20.190 Yeah. It could mean something to other people. I don't want to 05:20.190 --> 05:24.150 diminish it entirely. But in my circumstances, that number 05:24.210 --> 05:25.620 literally meant nothing. 05:25.930 --> 05:28.120 Johny Fernandez: And you paid everything off. You didn't have 05:28.120 --> 05:30.370 to stress about it, because you took a percentage from your 05:30.370 --> 05:33.100 sales. You were okay with that, you did it again. 05:34.450 --> 05:36.670 Sean Murray: And here I and here I am. Yeah. 05:36.700 --> 05:38.470 Johny Fernandez: Will you do it again, if you needed to? 05:40.090 --> 05:43.212 Sean Murray: So, if a situation arose, yeah, sure. I would. It 05:43.276 --> 05:46.973 wasn't like I have decided since that, oh, no, you know, I 05:47.037 --> 05:50.988 wouldn't do any more of those. I would if the situation arose. 05:51.052 --> 05:54.940 But I think what happened next, when the next time, there was 05:55.003 --> 05:58.764 such a financial need, the amount of capital I was seeking, 05:58.827 --> 06:02.652 just exceeded what an online lender, like Square was able to 06:02.715 --> 06:06.731 offer. And so I ended up having to go to a bank, unfortunately. 06:06.794 --> 06:10.746 And I learned that everything they say about banks is true. It 06:10.810 --> 06:14.634 literally took me three months, literally, and visits to the 06:14.697 --> 06:18.139 bank branch and all paper documents to get this what I 06:18.203 --> 06:22.218 would think an easy transaction done. It was a real pain. And I 06:22.282 --> 06:25.915 had to think about it all the time and do all these phone 06:25.978 --> 06:29.802 calls, talk to underwriters and sales peoples and dig up all 06:29.866 --> 06:33.945 these tax returns. And I had all of that stuff. But I know three 06:34.009 --> 06:37.897 months is a long time, all of his work was a long time versus 06:37.960 --> 06:41.721 a click versus click click right. And so the difference was 06:41.785 --> 06:45.736 the bank, the bank financing was cheaper and I got a lot more. 06:45.800 --> 06:49.369 And then the other side was I got less and it cost more. 06:49.433 --> 06:53.320 There's a value to this, because I can just get it instantly. 06:53.384 --> 06:57.400 Yep. And if it makes sense, honestly I would. I'll do it again. 06:57.480 --> 06:57.720 Johny Fernandez: Yeah.