Feeling the FUD: Dana White Fears She Isn’t Ready to Franchise

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Dana White tells Paul DS and Jay goz why she's experiencing fud fear uncertainty and doubt over whether she's really ready to sell franchises in paral Boyd she's concerned because her hair salon is having some issues with customer service on the other hand her head of operations Ashley is telling her if you wait to expand your business until every customer is happy and until everything is perfect you will stay at one location for the next 50 years plus Paul resolves his cyber crime and we find out whether Paul Jay and Dana have done anything to prepare for a ransomware attack it turns out one of them has even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find the transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Paul DS who is founder and CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which makes custom conference tables outside of Philadelphia Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Dana White who is CEO of paral Boyd a chain of hair salons based in Detroit the episode is titled feeling the fud Dana White fears she isn't ready to franchise welcome Paul Jay and Dana it's been a few weeks since we've sat down together let's catch up Dana hey what's going on with you what's new in the in the world of franchising and paral Boyd the fud as we like to call it in the franchising world it's called fear uncertainty and doubt the fud is what going on wow what does that refer to fear uncertainty and doubt about what franchising and that is that a term that you came up with or is that what people in the franchising World say that's what people in the franchising World say and I have a bad case of it why it's because I've never been good at separating what's going on in my business with the vision for my business and so here I am actually nothing bad is going on we just became apprised of a small group of unsatisfied customers and we're trying to get to the bottom of it and they're very nasty so it's leaving us kind of Frozen it's not anything that substantive it's not anything we can do it's I don't like Dana well have you met Dana no but I heard and it's well I don't like the fact that you did my hair so fast I want to sit here and talk to you and it's a lot of that it's a lot so it's a lot of that so here I am hearing these things oh my goodness we're not ready we're not ready we're not ready and again my operations manager who has operated with you know multi-unit franchises has said Dana this is this is business this is what's going to happen when you have five locations when it has 20 and if you wait to expand your business until every customer is happy and until everything is perfect you will stay at one location for the next 50 years you let me worry about this and I you worry about growing the company and when it's something that I need you to be brought in on I will come and get you and has she pushed back on my standard sure Dana you don't need to know that she's absolutely right you need to focus on this so I'm had fear the fud because I'm thinking what if we're not ready why am I the first African-American hair salon to do this there's a reason and it's a secret that I don't know and I won't find out about it until after I open what am I thinking this is stupid there's you know so what you had the money why are you doing this this is dumb like all of that is going on but the process itself is going great we just finished the operations portion they're putting together my operations man uh manual now we're on version two of the pro forma the numbers look really good oh my goodness I'm I'm like wow wow looks really good Have you shared any of your fud with your franchise consultant oh yeah and what do they say you know part for the course they're like Yep this is what you go through but they do a really good job of managing the the the expectation they are saying look at where you are here are where other franchises have been and even if that's not enough for you let's feel focus on what you're doing really really well there's really not much you're not doing right because you're not a franchise yet there's certain yes some of your processes can be you know fine-tuned but you're one person and you farther you're much farther than most of the people we franchise these processes a lot of the stuff is already done for most franchises they don't even know what is an sop right so she said that's most your numbers are a lot higher than most salons who started but you know I'm I've got pressure when you hear all the negative ity oh my goodness I don't almost don't even want to announce how did you hear about it where's it coming from so I I brought on a new social media manager and she sent me voicemails from people um one made me cry um a lady said I'll never be desperate enough to go there again um one lady wait based upon what why was she mad I don't know it's just a lot of negativity and judgment and I and I shameful to admit it has literally threw me off my Square have there been any positive messages or you get nothing but negative feedback no that's what Ashley she she is very we are very Vigilant on our customer service we make dozens and dozens of calls hundreds a week to our customers and she takes notes and I read the notes but what's being brought to me is yeah that's what they tell you over the phone but this is what they're saying about you behind your back well is there any benchmarking like what's the average Salon that must be true of many businesses most salons in in the black hair care Market don't ask right so everybody you've been to a salon did you love every second of it no right so there you go I mean I I will I will give you a comment on a slightly different context because I'm in I'm very worried about negative comments from clients too and try to never have any and if we do we we fix it and it's often extremely expensive and there's a guy I know who had a manufacturing business and he said eh if 5% of your customers aren't complaining you're spending too much fixing problems you need to be taking that time and attention and concentrate on growing your business don't worry about that which I I disagree with to a certain extent if 5% of my customers were complaining my life would be hell but there's a there's a valid point in there which is that you're not ever going to be able to please everybody and you just need to know whether you're running off the road or not and I think that focusing on any particular comment is just going to make you feel bad and uh you should really be thinking about okay what's the overall picture of what's happening right and I'm I'm a Solutions based person so when it's just negative negative negative negative and that's what Ashley said Ashley's like you can't just give Dane a negative and then there's all this judgment to question my business savvy the people who are complaining well I own a business and I know this is not how things are done is there a Common Thread to the complaints is there some issue that you think you should be addressing we're trying to find it the common issue is she doesn't know what she's doing you know there's a certain part of this to to Paul's point with the manufacturer or making desks or framing pictures I agree with Paul I don't want 5% of my customers unhappy because there's no reason for it but when you're doing people's hair that is the nature of the beast that's like taking you know I'm in Chicago give Pizza to 100 people some people are going to say this is food of the Gods and some people are going to go this is the worst crap I've ever eaten it's the nature of the Beast there are going to be some people that just don't like what you're doing by the nature of what you do so there's going to be some people that aren't happy and this comes back to how long have I known you the very first time I met you you did a speech in New York and I will still remember the phrase I'm still laughing about it you said I don't do messy do messy that is the problem you still haven't gotten over that business is messy you need to manage the messy you still think naively you're going to get every single person happy and everything's going to go perfectly and that's just not what business is no Jay I don't think I'm GNA make everybody happy I'm just surp I guess what hurts is how nasty it is it's personal but what I can't understand is why are you so nasty like we intentionally set out to make you upset I can tell you it's real easy it's the seven deadly sins people are jealous to anyone getting that nasty on you there's something wrong why why would they possibly something wrong with that there's something wrong with that picture and and that so this isn't about you and and I'm not saying there's not things to look at that probably you could be doing some things better I'm not ignoring at all exactly but to get that nasty um there's there's more to it than um I either sat too long in the chair or I was not there long enough I don't know which one it is but here styling is very personal is there something that you should be doing to reach out to the people who are complaining and try to get more information we are doing it we have a whole process for first visit people even if you even if we sense in the salon that you don't like something you may not have said anything you're going to get a call from us we have a whole call process and now I'm upgrading that process so it will include transcripts and recorded calls of the call like we we're already doing 10 times more than any other you know independent stylists would do we could still have people operating on the floor and then have someone in the back office calling and speaking to customers and so that's what we do we email we call um even if we even if we heard it's not even just about complaints it's about things going on in your personal life if we hear your mom or dad or a loved one is sick hey we're following up how are you doing we heard so we really do our best to go above and beyond and um one lady was concerned that why aren't people talking to me more why isn't this Salon more hype it's too quiet I need it to be more hype I was just going to say it seems to me like some of the people coming in it's hair styling and they want a new friend and that's not what you do you get the hairstyle and you move them on that there are some people that want to spend the whole afternoon and have a new friend to talk to and they're upset when they're insulted by them being moved along it's not the right service for them it's exactly and so that's the conclusion well Dana let me ask you a question what is your pre-written we're not a good fit for each other goodbye letter it's not even a letter it's a conversation no no no no that's your mistake right there no yeah at a certain point you got to be able to just be like you know what we've done everything that we can reasonably do we're sorry you're not happy with our service we suggest you go find somebody goodbye and just like cut it wait we don't take their address we were doing that via email they weren't getting the emails now we have a documented conversation that's why we stopped doing the email because they would give us their junk mail email because they don't want their email bombarded from all the places that they patronize so now we have a convers based on their service history with us based on their complaints and we say we do not believe we are the salon for you but we do hope that you find a salon we have one or two recommendations but salons don't like that styl is like if you don't want them don't give them me so we stop making the recommendations but we do have that we just had that conversation earlier this week with a longtime customer who flares up every six months to a year when we don't give her a refund for something we don't do so she'll ask for a service and then we'll do it well this isn't what I wanted I want my money back so we go we don't we don't we've always said in the almost nine years we we don't offer refunds and she so we've had that conversation with her because emails don't work and we don't take their address to send them an email there's a problem there you you just said you don't do the service but then you did the service no so let me be clear she wanted a rinse then she said I want a rinse just on the bottom half half of my hair we don't do rinses on the bottom half of your hair so you're not going to do because I this is when we did it this is not what I wanted even though we told you and you said go ahead again it's back to Paul and your guys's point it's not always us sometimes it's them and when it's consistently them we're more than ready to let that relationship go and we have that conversation we tried via email it doesn't work oh I didn't get that email so what percentage of the people you reach out to are happy and how many of them are mad yes and sometimes it's like 70 70 to 74% lately it's been over 85% mad or happy happy well there you go you're doing great right that's what I'm thinking we're doing deare Victory stop stop worrying about it here's the problem one word ready Dana you need to grow up and realize you're not making everyone happy with this because it's impossible and like get over it and say okay I got 85 I'm not saying don't keep trying but but you can't seriously expect that 100% of the people are going to be thrilled with your service that's just not the way life I'm not expecting that I don't think it's a matter of growing up I think it's a matter of you have an owner that is very impassionate about giving this service to this group of women and even though I don't expect them to everybody to love it what I don't expect when you're when you're inviting a guest into your home and you're serving them I don't expect them to pull their pants down and take a Duke on my table well some of them do though and some of right and some of them do but then they and then they get mad at you and I don't think I have to grow up because I wasn't expecting them to do that no no you need to grow up you need to grow up and realize that stop taking this personally for God's sakes it's just like the difference between me and you is I worked in my father's Dime Store since I was six years old I grew up with with customers this is still new to you that that you that that you're taking this personally you can hear it in your voice you're upset they're attacking you cuz they're saying Dana this Dana that yeah so what right so what that's their problem yeah whatever it's like that's the nature of business people are not and they're being more do I excuse it no I think it's terrible they're being that vicious to you but like whatever yeah I think you're right well the other thing is that you could set up your company so that you don't have to hear that oh I did I I have it set up and that and that brings more backlash who does she think she is oh she's too good to talk to me yeah she is basically you know like we we we hold when I'm dealing with Troublesome clients my first thing is my Frontline people deal with it and I'm only there if we want to salvage the situation like they pull me out and they say okay you got to talk to these people and I go in and I Salvage the situation but if it's a just a goodbye like no they don't need to get to me exactly you're not you're not a public utility you you you're not a resource for everybody who feels like it to come and take a few punches at exactly so act like it you understand it now start doing it Dana it sounds to me like it's it's not that this is this problem has gotten worse it's that you're more sensitive to it right now cuz you're going through the franchising process would that be correct d yes I and I didn't realize that until you just said it I think I'm I'm well one it's because the new social media manager sent some of it to me and then was a little baffled as to why I wouldn't and I said oh I send it to you send it to this person and she's like oh oh and it was it wasn't an oh oh I get it it was oh really well you don't want to know and it's like it's not that I don't want to know and Ashley said it's not that she doesn't want to know Dana's about to launch a national franchise business like she doesn't have time for this like this is what I do and so it was it's it's and you guys are absolutely right and I think I will go along with the you know Jay saying yeah you got to grow up a little bit yeah because it's a matter of putting myself in the perspective it's like me wanting a a personal assistant I'm like oh no I don't want to be the person who here talk to my assistant but if you're doing things at you know at the based on the performa I'll have 20 of these in two years yeah you're going to need a a you're going to have rapid growth and you can't do it all and you can't care what people think about what you need to do to perform if you need to perform better by giving your customer complaints to another person then that's what you need to do if you need to perform better by having a personal assistant grow up tighten your bra strap and get a personal assistant and forget what people who don't are you looking for a personal assistant Dana I am a real a live one or a virtual one a live one a live one and then we could probably move virtual but I need a live personal assistant how old is your social media person uh I believe she in her early 30s okay the part of the this process is educating her cuz I can see where she's rather taking a back don't you want to know when people areen happy she needs to be explained to her listen here's the way it is there's some people that are used to going to the salon and they want to be best friends with the person that's not what we do there's going to be some unhappy people I know that for me to read all these frankly just gets into my head and and I've got someone who's professional that's going to take care of this so explain to them and they'll then they'll say oh okay now I get it you do need to help them understand why you're blow otherwise it looks like you're just blowing them off but in fact there's a method to your you know thinking Laura Xander she did a great job of explaining it to me this week she said you need a social media manager not a social media secretary secretary just brings you the messages right this is what they're saying about you yeah she said so this is she goes no you need somebody who's not going to bring that to you and just CFT a social media campaign addressing the concern she's heard and I said you're absolutely right and so you're absolutely right too Jay I think we've had that conversation with her um and then when when we meet up to do our review of how we've been doing so far I'll reiterate that to her but you guys are right there's some growing up that needs to be done no one has ever personally in general personally attacked me the way you're getting p and I do feel bad about that you're getting it from some people that really whatever for whatever reason they're doing it I am sorry that you're subjected to that because I don't believe that well I think part of it is because Dana is disrupting the the industry you're doing something different and you're attracting some clients who like it the way it's always been and aren't happy with the change is that right and are taking it personally absolutely Lauren great I mean Lauren for the win today right like two things Lauren's like yeah you're super sensitive to it because you're franchising and the other thing is that you're you know you're doing something disruptive and people want what you have in the traditional way and it can't be that way so you got to just keep moving forward and and do what you do you have to find the right clients and make sure people understand exactly what what it is you're offering exactly so back to my my formula of success a it is what it is okay there's going to be some people that are taking it to deal with it you are dealing with it three you're not doing anything wrong you're trying to take care of customers and the last piece is like I have different versions of the last piece we'll keep this one clean no just no no no say it say it say it say it say it what can I tell you really just really like they want to get that vicious on you like you know what that's their issue and I'm sorry and you don't say it out loud but you cannot take this personally and it's in your head and like I said you are getting it 20 times worse than I've ever gotten it and and um and I'm sorry for that but you're pioneering a new way that's awesome thank you you guys thank you you're welcome Paul uh what's your fud level like it's like nine about business um it's pretty low that's good the lady who had the issue with the uh cyber crime she actually paid me in full last week wow sent me the other 63 Grand wow wow what what prompted that how did that happen I don't know we think you you had this is a cyber uh attack you had you had a vendor uh who tried to pay you the payments were diverted uh to someone in Texas and you went back to the per to the vendor uh and tried to get them to pay you again uh properly right and you're telling us that it it finally worked and you got the money she did not want to take responsibility for the uh basically a theft from her company and didn't really want to believe in acknowledged that it had been her accounting team that had done this and tried to on several occasions get me to file an insurance claim for it which would have been fraud and uh I had to have my lawyer send her a nasty letter and we have some potential ongoing business so I didn't really want to want to go all the way to the end of the process with her just decided to wait and I guess maybe she made Insurance claim or whatever she had the money and she sent it to me in three payments over 2 and A2 months but we got the last result I mean the last payment uh last week and now I'm like great I'll never trust her again and I will be very careful with her or organization but we're we're paid in full did you learn anything through this that you should do differently or was this just a a weird one-off event that is what it is well you could certainly call it a weird one-off event because it's been a business for 36 years and I've done business with thousands and thousands of people and we've never never had anything like this happen before but given that there seems to be such a rise in cyber crime and a total inability on the part of law enforcement to do anything about it I would say that it it the lesson is you need to be careful you need to be careful about about uh confirming Bank information and making sure that your own house is in order so that if something like this happens like I could point to I've engaged since the beginning of the year a a net security firm that does that was able to audit our emails and make sure we hadn't been spoofed and sent any directions or somebody hadn't using our used our email addresses to to direct this client to send these pay anywhere else like we were able to as far as possible prove that it wasn't our fault and so to the extent that the people you do business with are vulnerable to being hacked you can't control that but you can certainly get your own house in order so I'm spending significant money this year on security in general that I've never spent before is some of that prompted by all the stories about the ransomware issues it was really prompted by a a a set of Defense Department directives that we got in the fall that said hey if you want to do business with the defense department you need to be able to conform to these protocols which are very strict and we do a lot of business with the defense department so I got going and trying to do the protocols so it just happened that I spent all this money and did all this stuff and then we had a an incident almost immediately where I was glad I did it and of course it rarely works out that way usually you spend all the money and do all the stuff and nothing happens but um yeah I it wasn't because of the stories it was because I kind of had to but I'm glad I did do you feel as though you have set up uh procedures that will protect you from the kind of ransomware issues that we're reading so much about everybody in my company is more aware of it and I doubt that we would be invulnerable to a really sophisticated attack because it seems that really sophisticated attackers can do pretty much anything they feel like but um I for ordinary uh ordinary things like someone getting a hold of our into our server and encrypting it I believe we are protected by that least that's what my vendor assures me and uh so yeah we've upgraded and I hope I'm in decent shape what's the nature of the insurance that you have would that cover you for a ransomware attack I don't have specific ransomware insurance because I looked into it a couple of years ago and they gave me checklist of here's the things you need to do before we'll even think about selling you a policy and it was a pretty extensive checklist and I looked at and I was like oh my God I'm not doing that because I would have had to do it personally and um there wasn't any nobody was screaming at me to get that stuff done at that point but then when the defense department came out with their new protocols it pretty much like if we were fully compliant with all those things uh it would have easily cleared the bar where I would have bought the I could have bought the insurance but also if I am fully compliant you know you're in pretty good shape in terms of being able to resist these attacks so because they're designed for a locked Martin to be able to to not get hacked they're they're very extensive and they include all kinds of things that are quite complicated to implement Jay I think the last time this came up we talked about uh cyber insurance you said you were going to first find out what cyber insurance is and then see if you have it did you do that I've been busy um as soon as we're done here seriously I'm gonna redouble and and and find out what the story is because I I'm not blowing this off I I do know someone with a similar size business to mine that did get hait and I am going to uh you know it's been hard cuz nobody's in the office all the people involved are home so it's not like I'm having my regular meeting no it's concerning and I will uh convene the people together and uh figure out what we're doing and should we be doing more when your team is at home that's actually kind of a bad thing in terms of we got we got a a a hack incident about a year ago that I I don't know sure I mentioned it where I was away one day and somebody spoofed an email to one of my employees that what dides that mean spoof they sent an email to one of my employees that appeared to come from me very convincing and that said hey go I'm going to give a surprise bonus to all the employees so go buy five grand worth of gift cards from Walmart and then send me the numbers on the back and this guy thought that that's something that I might possibly do which maybe not but it's not out of the realm of possibility since I'm a communist at heart as Jay tells me socialist and so so he did it and then I walked in the next morning and he handed me all the gift cards and he said here's the gift cards you got boss and uh and I was like oh no knew what had happened immediately but when your employees are isolated from each other I think it's they're more vulnerable to those kind of human hacks because there's not somebody right next to them they can turn to and say does this seem real or they can't come and ask you quite so easily did he send the numbers to this oh yeah we were out five grand it it sucked and I just have to ask the question and looking at this employee have they done other that's that's that's kind of frightening to me that somebody would do that I is that someone that does other stuff that not too smart because that doesn't sound too smart to me given what's going on in the world well this was this was a year and a half ago all right so it wasn't headline news and it's one of those things where he's a good employee and he's he's the kind of person who if I said to him you know go do this he jumps up and does it and it wasn't entirely out of character for me to give people bonuses so I would say that I chalked this up to the the the story of the uh I can't remember who was Warren Buffett or somebody who uh one of his managers had made a mistake that cost him 2 million bucks and he said and someone asked him did you fire that guy over there and he says no I just spent $2 million to educate him so that's that's sort of how I took that one I don't disagree I just I have had stuff they do I have had people get emails from similar from me and they always call me but you know it doesn't have to be that way it can be more sophisticated it it can look like it's coming from an HR department or from the Social Security Administration and it's you know we need this and we need that and people do get fooled by it which is why a lot of companies uh educate their employees by putting them through training that's what we did you did do that well when we engage this firm at the beginning of this year they they did a whole series of seminars and they send us a little email every week and it's just to keep it top of mine Jay do you uh have you thought about ransomware do you do you know what it is I believe um I've gotta I've got to talk to my attorney before uh I I know my CFO is on it but I'm going to verify I will go through with him but it's not like he's he's on it if you Google what should a small business do to prepare for a ransomware attack one of the things they tell you is that you know the the way it works is they they get into your computer system and they lock it up and you can't you're you're paralyzed you can't do anything unless you pay the ransom uh the one protection that everybody advises against that is you need to back up everything and have it backed up somewhere else not on your system so that if your system gets locked up you've got all your data and everything available and you can kind of reboot and get restarted can I add something to that yeah please tell me what what have you done when I engaged these guys like we had that an offside backup every day and what they said is that the way we had it set it up it was it was okay like you're backing up the data but what we weren't backing up was an actual uh image of our of our server so that we wouldn't have been able to just take the infected server and throw it away and get a new one and and reinstall everything we would only have a copy of the data and so that there's like I mean I I'm not technically Adept enough to be sure this is true but apparently there's a couple of different levels of what a backup could consist of and we now have a complete offsite backup that at the end of the day we could throw away all our computers get new ones and start over again and we'd be okay did you hear that Jay okay there's a difference here between Paul and I I have a CFO that's been here for 20 some years who I believe is on this Paul doesn't have that so Paul's the guy doing this stuff as he should be doing it I'm not the guy that does this but I certainly am going to follow up after this conversation and find out where we're at on it but I believe he's doing all the stuff right we have had Consultants come in my guess is we should be doing more Jay if your CFO were doing all this I think you would know about it no you don't know how it works no that's not true my CFOs well the other thing would be it it shouldn't be him doing it like he's a CFO he's not a he's not a cyber security expert I got 130 employees four businesses I don't know of every single thing that's going on in this company I guilty is charge I'm just telling you with that being said I'm not staking my life that everything being done right I will follow up on this conversation but there's a good chance that everything's being done as it should be I will follow up the next time you ask me I hear a little fud in your voice Jay no I don't get fud I'm foodless I'm foodless foodless Dana you're going to have to worry about this too especially when you're a national franchise operation yeah I'm listening you are a futter I'm a you are the no Lauren's the futter you'll notice Lauren always tries to get about something you're you're a f enabler he's not he actually I mean all of you just kind of you know did the Magic Eraser on the fud today it was good Lauren came with the the PowerHouse two question and I said well I'll be that's it I'll tell you what's a little disappointing to me obviously they've got this phrase in the industry fud right and your Consultants I don't think what what we just told you I think they should have told you I think they do this for a living I think they should be a little more Hands-On with the owner to understand where their head's at and say listen people go through this here's the issue I I think I they they did okay yes they did but here's the thing you guys did it a little bit more in detail because you know me better okay fair enough right I mean d you've known me for years that's fair I want to actually comment on one thing Jay said which is that uh that the the consultant should have warned you yeah they should have warned you but you should never only believe the consultant like you always have to look at at multiple sources of advice that's why she's got us because those guys those guys need you to pay the bill and need you to move forward and they're going to do whatever it takes to get over your fud but there may be a moment when your your instincts to not do something that they're telling you to do are actually correct and you don't want to just have one source of information like yeah you want to bring it to your friends and people who know you and other business sources and and then make a decision I agree well obviously they also understand because they coin the phrase fud and so they dealing they're dealing with you know tons of entrepreneurs who are franchising their business and know that this is something that they go through but whether it's the fud whether it's the viability whether it's culture and training whether it's you know the prospect of potential franchisees I never go to One Source I have a board of advisors if you will of which I'm proud to say Jay is one of them Laura is another one of them where I go hey does this look right to you does this smell right um and that's why I'm so thankful for the time on this show today we spent a lot of time sorting through the fud because you're right people come to you with their own agenda and I find that this show is very agenda less it's the agenda is peace of mind and business success and however you define that the fact is some of the people with fud have legitimate problems that to Paul's point that maybe they shouldn't be franchising and these people are probably not going to go you know what we didn't realize that and we first met you we we should rethink this there's probably some people to do discover some things along the way that realize this isn't right for them how could that not happen we're running short of time Jay I want to catch up on your business about a month ago when you were here you were excited kind of crowing that after 18 months you'd finally gotten a bank to agree to give you the loan you were looking for uh what did you decide to do with all of your loot well it was a mortgage and I do have this bank that that's ready to go no but you you had it all done no I well it was done except they kept putting more strings on it oh we want you to move your your regular account to us no no I'm not doing that so in the meanwhile so wait a second that that loan fell through no it didn't fall through it's right in the middle of let me finish I'm going to tell you the whole story so this this new bank keeps telling me Oh and we want this and we want that and finally I go enough it's not it's only a 45% loan to value on the building I'm not giving you all my inventory there's no reason for me to do that so in the meanwhile I call the new banker and I go I got to ask you a silly question have things changed at the bank do you think they'd be interested in doing this loan she calls me back and she says oh they're excited about doing this loan really because they weren't up until now so she's led me to believe that today they're going to want to do the loan I mean this is the bottom line you actually have not closed a loan I didn't close because I chose the guy just left me a message right before we came on this he's ready to close and I told him I got to wait to see if the other bank wants to do it because it'll be easier to do it with my existing Bank oh God you never know what to believe I'm getting a complete opposite story now from this existing Bank it used to be they didn't want to do the loan now they're surprised that they didn't do the loan and I'm thinking what I I don't know what's going on there all I know is today I should find out whether I'm going to get the loan from one of them for sure all right tune in in 2023 see well here's the joke I don't really need the money anymore because frankly things are going nicely but I'm still going to take the loan out because I want extra cash that's if I've learned anything from this pandemic always have extra cash laying around y take the money Jay does this say anything about the general ability of small businesses to access Credit through banks or is this another just weird oneoff situation no absolutely I believe behind the scenes these Bankers only one of them actually he said this to me the guy used to be on my banker he went to another bank he actually said to me on the phone out loud he said we're no longer giving loans to retailers or anyone in Hospitality he actually said that out loud when was that uh three months ago so I think the difference between him and the other Banks he told me the truth the rest of them don't want to say it out loud they are under the impression that every retailer is going to go out of business would this have been easier for you or harder for you if you were going for uh a a loan to expand your business that's not even an option no there's no way I would have gotten a loan for that that's what's so sick about this I'm only looking for 45% loan to value on very hot real estate like this is an extremely conservative loan and I'm telling you I don't think the banks ever recovered from 2008 in their heads I don't believe this would have been the case 20 years ago if I was doing it um um but but I've literally I'm not I've literally talk to eight six six Banks many of which they've known me for 30 years we've done the lunches we've done the here's the key word this is the key word when they tell you relationship we're looking for a relationship punch him in the face that's what you should do when I hear that word I cringe I go please stop with your your relationship stuff because I know the second there's any kind of blimp there's no relationship in and I have to tell you 43 years never left never been asked to leave a bank never missed a bank payment got an over 800 credit score like like it's it's really remarkable they're they're afraid of their Shadows now so I don't know what the story is but I will absolutely have a loan signed by next week all right I'll bet you 10 bucks I will bet you $10 you do not a follow up on that one my thanks to Paul Downs Jay gos and Dana White as always guys thanks so much for sharing wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at 21h hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by just through Baron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]