Johny Fernandez: Located just north of Central Florida Elevate
Funding has its headquarters in Gainesville deBanked took a trip
there to chat with CEO Heather Francis.
Heather Francis: So we are a merchant cash advance provider
to small businesses. We are a boutique type shop. So we're, I
say boutique because we like quality over quantity. We're not
a big powerhouse in a space. But we are, I think one of the
funders in the space that are really more conscientious to the
small business owners and you know, the product that we're
providing. And the services that we're giving them.
Johny Fernandez: Francis has been in the alternative finance
business world for more than a decade. She says her company's
location away from big cities like Miami or Manhattan is an
Heather Francis: Gainesville is always had that college feel,
advantage.
but it's starting to adjust a little bit to more of family and
young professionals. So we're seeing a big growth in that now.
Most of its medical I mean US is Shands US. And that's a big,
huge medical facility there. So a lot of that is, you know, what
is here is medically based, you know, health based. So there's
not always a lot of finance to go from, but I think it makes
Elevate stronger, in the sense that when we bring on people,
they're not from this industry, they're from other areas,
they're from other backgrounds. And they make us as a whole
better because they're bringing in different ideas, different
ways to handle things. And I find that just makes us stand
out and different, you know, in the alternative finance space.
Johny Fernandez: Her business approach is unique and
Heather Francis: You know, embarked on my own, I wanted to
meaningful.
provide a product, again, at time, high risk being a credit
profile, not high risk on stacking, but high risk with
credit profile, I wanted to provide them something that made
them feel of worth, something that said, you know, yes, this
is my credit score, this is where I'm at. I know that and
most business owners, I think what we fail to, to think about
when we're underwriting and we're looking at files is that
they didn't pay their car payment. So they keep the doors
open. They didn't pay that credit card bill so that they
could do payroll. And so when you look at a credit score, I
don't think it's the true value of a business owner. And I
wanted to have a product and a company that represented that
and provided a path forward for those business owners to have
financing that was meaningful, that was going to provide an
opportunity to grow.
Johny Fernandez: With the space changing constantly, Francis
says she's always adjusting. So how does a company like yours
compete with technology giants like Square and Paypall. And
just companies and businesses that offer similar types of
technologies.
Heather Francis: Oh, it's very difficult to compete in that
market. It's not easy at all, and we're constantly having to
adjust and I would say, more, so keep looking to what the future
like I said, you know, being proactive versus reactive from,
you know, our IT guys, which you know, with our proprietary
What do you think about having a direct sales?
software, which is a huge benefit for us to be able to
compete in that market, we're able to really quickly change
things, we're really quickly able to have merchants who
interact with our we call it Elevate view, who interact with
that, have different looks when they come in, we're working with
Um, it's something that we're, prior to this I didn't think was
our marketing, you know, doing more information and training
for our small business owners. We have a new thing that's
coming out. It's a blog post that we're doing with our
accounting company that we actually use. And they worked
out some automation for elevate in ourselves in our accounting
department. I was like man, if small businesses knew of this,
a good fit for Elevate prior to COVID we were referral based,
and could get away from you know, the day to day of
accounting procedures and have this automation available, it'd
be very beneficial for them to the business. So partnering with
things like that and doing the education, I think kind of sets
us apart.
the type of product that we have was was very necessary for
referral base, going forward, and what we noticed in COVID, is
that you know, people's marketing dollars were very
affective, which obviously affects applications we receive
and it felt that it would be beneficial for Elevate itself to
start working some direct. However, for us direct isn't
going to be like a dialer. It's not going to be that on the
phone. You know calling leads buying leads. Direct for us is
SEO.
Johny Fernandez: Francis says 2020 was a big year for the
company. So let's talk about 2020. I mean, it was a big year
for you guys, you guys rebranded, you guys had a
million dollar in contracts, introduced new programs to help
during small businesses. You know, in this time when things
were just a lot of unknowns were going on. So explain how you
guys did so well.
Heather Francis: So that goes to, I think a little bit of the
philosophy for me and our company is to be proactive, not
reactive, we adjusted for our underwriters, they were able to,
through our proprietary system, see what was restricted, we were
able to change it on the back end, and they're like, oh, nope,
we can't do that anymore. This is what it falls under. Now,
this is the we call them tears. This is a tear that they're
eligible for at this time. So we kind of we're really just trying
to be like, in the now. And we would have weekly meetings on
it, go over what we felt comfortable with, we created a
new program, called it abound, it was for restaurants. And we
were able to give them it was very small amount of money, it
was to really help them just for immediate needs, whether it was
reopening and having to get things stocked back into the
restaurant. And it was very short term, but it was very low
cost. And so we would do what we call a bound. And once we had
that payment history and saw how they were performing, we were
able to say okay, like, we know how you're going to behave, we
know how you know your customers are behaving in this pandemic,
will go ahead and throw more funds at you put you in one of
our tier products and build it out that way.
Johny Fernandez: She said businesses also had to adjust to
get by and will continue to have to get creative.
Heather Francis: So I think PPP was was huge. I think it did
have a positive effect for the true and legitimate businesses
that applied for and got it. So we would see that from our
clients. But when COVID happened, we allowed for payment
holds for those that were affected by COVID. We actually
we had our software, we had our IT guy set up a software part of
it that where we would label them as COVID effective
affected. And then we would do payment holds and we would you
know have them monitored and work with them on that. And a
lot of them would be like, oh, you know, as soon as I get my
PPP, we'll, we'll take that off. So we actually got paid off by a
lot of people through the PPP. They just, you know, took care
of their outstanding balance. We did see that it was beneficial.
Johny Fernandez: Her advice to ISOs business owners and people
in the MCA space.
Heather Francis: Study, learn, know. There is a lot of
misinformation in this space and a lot of misinformation on the
products provided. And I've said this a couple of times I'm sure
people who know me or have heard me talk and have heard this
where it's like telephone in our space. Don't just try and learn
how do I get to sell. How do I you know, convince this person
take the money understand the product, understand what you're giving.
Johny Fernandez: In Gainesville, I'm Johny Fernandez with
deBanked News.