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Today, we have two financial powerhouses joining us, 
Lou Rosabianca and Matt Meehan. With a wealth of experience in finance and business, these experts have become trusted advisors for entrepreneurs looking to navigate the challenging world of securing capital. Lou, known as “the professor,” and Matt, a seasoned veteran of Wall Street, bring a unique blend of expertise to help business owners optimize their financial strategies.
In an age where accessing capital can be a daunting task, Lou and Matt shed light on how businesses can strategically position themselves for success. Having transitioned from Wall Street to Main Street, they specialize in guiding entrepreneurs through the complexities of funding solutions and growth plans. Their successful track record is a testimony to their ability to align with the needs of business owners.
Throughout this engaging episode, Lou and Matt discuss key strategies for overcoming common funding obstacles that many businesses face. They delve into the significance of what they call the “three Cs” of business lending—Cash flow, Credit, and Collateral—which are fundamental in securing the right capital for your business. They also explore groundbreaking SBA lending strategies that permit enterprises to expand by acquiring competitors potentially with zero money down.
The conversation also ventures into how entrepreneurs can leverage capital to exponentially boost their business valuation and optimize exit strategies. Emphasizing the difference between acquiring ‘right capital’ and merely accumulating debt, Lou and Matt provide practical advice on avoiding common lending pitfalls.
In This Episode
- The Three Cs of business lending
- Game-changing SBA lending strategies
- Leveraging capital for business growth
- Avoiding lending pitfalls and acquiring the right capital
Dave: Matt, Lou, welcome to the show.
Matt: Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having us here tonight. Appreciate it.
Dave: Yeah, 100%. Really appreciate you guys joining us today. I know the audience is going to get some insightful wisdom from both of you—not only in terms of your background, accomplishments, and what you’ve done today, but also how you’re helping entrepreneurs.
Whether that be access to capital—which, let’s face it, most businesses out there are undercapitalized and unable to find solutions to get capitalized—or on the strategic side, trying to grow and optimize their businesses. So I think this is a great discussion.
At the start, why don’t we kick things off and talk a little bit about how you guys got here? I know, Matt, you come from a Wall Street background. We’ve had some chats on that. Why don’t you give the folks a little bit of background on where you came from and how you got here?
Matt: Man, how long do we have? So yeah, I didn’t take your usual path. It was a lot of punches in the face, a lot of falling down and getting back up.
One day I was working in a diner. A few weeks later, I was working for a company that got bought out by one of the oldest firms on the New York Stock Exchange. Flash forward, that was…
Lou: Thank you.
Dave: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Matt: 1999. Flash forward to 2011, I went out and bought a business—I bought a broker-dealer and turned it into a full-fledged investment bank with four partners. By the time I left, we had 80 registered reps. That was 2015.
They wanted to buy me out, and I got into the private lending space, helping small businesses grow. So I took all the knowledge and everything I learned on Wall Street and helped more Main Street businesses—your mom-and-pop, salt-of-the-earth businesses—try to get ahead and get the loans they need.
I just gave them the guidance I had already learned in my prior career, I guess you’d say.
Dave: Yeah. Awesome and how about you, Lou?
Lou: A similar story. Child of immigrants. The one rule in the house was, “Do your homework and do well in school,” right? So you get that firstborn overachiever.
I went to college, went to law school. I met Matt in the canyons of Wall Street years ago, but we met socially. Back then, they had happy hours. You’d go to the local watering hole, have a drink or two, and fast forward to today—like Matt said—our podcast is called The Liquid Lunch. It’s a throwback to when business was conducted over a lunch meeting or a cup of coffee, not on LinkedIn or through some static Zoom call.
Matt and I got together and realized it was the classic mathematical formula of one plus one equals three—and hopefully four or five sometimes. But the value there is in taking a small business, where the owner is fraught with so many tasks and responsibilities, and guiding them through the procedural steps needed to make them primed for access to working capital.
That’s our special sauce. We hold the small business owner’s hand and get them access to the right capital—not just any capital, but the right capital. It’s a heavy lift. We’ve got 129 lending partners.
The reason we need those is because no two businesses are built the same. They have different credit, different revenue, different trades. If you and I walk into ABC Bank on Main Street, we have to fit within their box—trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Nine times out of ten, it doesn’t happen.
Our competitive advantage is that we have 129 boxes. You’re going to fit into one of them, and it’s our job—and our advisor’s job—to find the right solution to help you grow.
Dave: Yeah. Well, I can certainly relate to that challenge—not only as a business owner but as a consumer. As an entrepreneur, every time I’ve looked for capital, whether for my business or to finance real estate or something else, it’s the most frustrating thing to work with a lender.
You explained it so well—they just put you into a box. They have their underwriting requirements and what they’re looking for. If you don’t fit, it can be really frustrating and time-consuming. It’s kind of like going through an audit, providing them with everything.
So that’s pretty amazing that you’re able to identify the right lending solutions for business owners. We have a ton of entrepreneurs in the audience at various stages of growing their businesses, but everyone is looking to grow.
As I mentioned, you probably know the statistics. One of the biggest reasons businesses fail is a lack of funding. I think it’s over 90% that don’t make it past the first five years, and then in the next five years, 95% of those don’t make it. The number one reason? They run out of capital.
Lou: I refer to that as orbital thrust. A rocket or a plane needs more fuel to take off than it does once it’s gliding.
The problem is if you don’t have a business that generates cash flow almost immediately—so you can bootstrap—you need working capital to give you that orbital thrust. Once you’ve stabilized systems, processes, sales flow, and a pipeline, then you’re stable. But how do you get to that point? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Ultimately, what does the small business owner do? They take on three, four, or five roles and become a jack of all trades. “I don’t want to hire a bookkeeper. I don’t want to hire a sales manager.” So they do everything themselves, and what happens? The business suffers.
Dave: Yeah, let’s talk about the problem a little more and really unpack it from your experience working with so many different business owners.
When should people consider taking on outside debt? What are the right scenarios or milestones they should be thinking about before they do it? And, on the other hand, when should they not be taking on debt?
Lou: Dave, what happens with the—sorry, please go ahead.
Matt: Every business should have a line of credit. They should have a line of credit no matter what—no matter where they are or what they can get.
The terms and what’s available to a business owner will depend on their time in business, and they’ve got to make sure they run their financials right from the start. But you should always have a line of credit for emergencies.
A line of credit is not meant to be used entirely and then just making interest payments until the end of the year with a balloon payment. It should be used and replenished as you go, either on a weekly or monthly basis. Having that extra cushion, when used properly, could give you the orbital thrust that Lou was speaking about.
Every business should have a line of credit-period. It’s not for maxing out; it’s for security and strategic growth.
Dave: Makes sense.
Lou: Dave, the sentiment I was trying to share is that when you get to our age and you’ve got a little bit of salt and pepper, it comes with the humility that not every great idea becomes successful, and not every stupid idea becomes unsuccessful. There are a lot of crazy stories out there.
But as a rule of thumb, I like to lean on the following proposition: If you don’t have the systems and processes in place, and you haven’t perfected your product or service, there’s no fire to put fuel on.
I always compare working capital to fuel on a fire. If the business is working, great. How do we 2X it? How do we 5X it? How do we 10X it? Usually, you do a copy-paste, and to do that, you need working capital.
Dave: Yeah, makes sense. Any other scenarios you can think of? Or can you give us an example of a client? I think that would help make it stick.
Matt: You know, taking—
Lou: One of my favorite stories to tell in the office—because we have a lot of young advisors, and sometimes you want to share experiences through analogy so they can apply it to their clients—is about the negative connotation around merchant cash advances or revenue-based financing. Yes, they’re expensive.
We had a client a couple of years back who ran a water drilling establishment. His greatest competitor and he were like the Hatfields and McCoys—always bidding on the same jobs and undercutting each other to win contracts. For years, they were at it.
One day, on a Wednesday, he gets a phone call. The caller says, “Hey Joe, this guy was supposed to buy my business. He put together a good faith deposit, but he defaulted. I need to make a move, and I need an answer by Friday. I need a deposit by Friday.”
So he calls us up. He needed X dollars—it was a king’s ransom. Now, unless you’ve got a big fat piggy bank somewhere, even if you have a SEP plan or a 401(k), it would probably take five days to liquidate that. He just didn’t have that liquidity.
We got him an MCA. It was very expensive simply because of the nature of the transaction—it had to be done quickly. But he gladly paid that rate because, in the course of two quarters, he tripled his business. Now, he had a monopoly in three or four zip codes.
Yes, the cost of doing business was high, but the opportunity cost was priceless.
Dave: Yeah, we’re actually on the other side of that, as we run an MCA fund as well, and it’s performing super well. I couldn’t agree more—it’s about giving access to capital to investors and entrepreneurs who need it upfront due to specific circumstances.
They more than make up for the rate they pay—it’s just about getting access to that capital. It’s a great alternative solution. And if you look at the market, growth has been phenomenal—over 20% combined annual growth rate over the past 20 years in this whole alternative lending space. I expect it to continue growing.
Matt: Yeah, it’s been growing really fast. The alternative lending space really took off after 2008 when the banks ruined everything. Small businesses needed another way to get the capital they required, and that’s when private lending popped up.
Now, some of these alternative lenders are awesome—but others are brutal. Not all alternative lenders are the same. Some are worse than the mafia.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: On the other end, you’ve got traditional banks. You go to your banker and say, “Hey, I need a loan.” He says, “Yeah, fill out the paperwork, and we’ll find out.” They don’t tell you if you’re approved or denied for 30 days.
Your banker doesn’t want to tell you you’re not approved because they don’t want to lose your deposit relationship. So where do business owners go? They’re flooded with information online—lines of credit, MCAs.
A lot of times, a client comes to us and just says, “I need a loan” or “I want a line of credit.” The first thing we do is understand what the money will be used for and why they think they need as much as they do. Then, we reverse engineer the process to find them the right product.
We do equipment financing, AR financing, invoice factoring, purchase order financing—there are so many options. But most small business owners don’t know the right product for their situation.
Dave: Yeah. And I think there’s also a huge lack of education in the marketplace. A lot of these alternative lending solutions are still new, and business owners only think, “Can I go to a bank?”
Meanwhile, I get inundated—I must get a dozen different offers a week through text, voicemail, email—”Get funding here!” Who can even sort out what it all means?
Where is a business owner really supposed to start?
Matt: So I think.
Lou: You’re supposed to start with the foundations, right? And the foundations are, I think my partner likes to call them the three C’s. Matt, you know what, you share with Dave the three C’s and then we’ll take it from there.
Matt: Yeah, so you gotta look at, every business is unique like we already said. So essentially what you wanna do is you wanna look at the strength for your business, right? Here is what lenders are gonna look at. And once you know what your strength is, we call it the three Cs, it’s either cash flow, credit or collateral. You don’t need all three to get a loan, but you need at least one. The more you have, the better rates and terms that you’ll get, right? So cash flow, the way you manage your bank account, right?
That’s actually an asset. People will buy your future cash flow from you. That’s exactly what an MCA is, right? Collateral, we all know what collateral is. You go, get a mortgage, you put up the house, the bank actually owns the house, you pay back the bank. You miss your payments, the bank’s gonna take the house from you, right?
And credit, this is one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs have an issue with and they overlook. They don’t nurture their personal credit score. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what these gurus are telling you online, lenders are going to look at your personal credit score unless you’re Google.
Don’t worry about your business credit and yeah, they’re gonna want your social security number. They’re gonna do a credit check and see what type of character you have. They’re gonna do background checks on you, right? So the three C’s is what it really comes down to. You gotta nurture them all. And then you figure out which one is your biggest strength. And then you can go with the lender that has the right product for you.
Dave: Yeah, that’s interesting. So one of the reasons, you know, I was excited to talk to you guys too, was really, you know, from a wealth-building perspective, right? You know, we look at really the equation of kind of growing your net worth. And one of those big components is to actually increase the amount of investable capital that you have, right? And everyone wants to, you know, try to 10x that, you know, how can you do that?
We have people starting new businesses, side hustles that can turn into a business that can actually create freedom of purpose for them too, and that business that they’ve always wanted to do. So they’re looking for capital at those places, or people who are seasoned entrepreneurs really looking to, again, 10X their business or grow that business. From kind of a return standpoint and a valuation standpoint of businesses, in your experience,
What have you seen with respect to business owners that have leveraged capital properly and then really taken off to the business to double it, triple it, right, or grow it?
Lou: You wanna take this one pal?
Matt: Um, yeah, I’ll just give you an example. So during COVID, we had a client that he owned about three gymnastics studios. He came to me, he had an opportunity when everybody was closing the doors and things were shut down to purchase more gymnastics studios. Most people thought he was nuts. Um, he was kind of tapped out at where he was at that time, but we put together a game plan where he came out by the end of 2023, owning 17 gymnastics studios. Now he’s breaking ground to build his own new, what would you call it, Luke?
Lou: Flagship, it’s basically a flagship kids’ emporium, you know, gymnastics, babysitting, party center, you know, bouncy places. But the nice thing about him is you don’t stop at the kids’ level. Then if you see a young person with potential, then they have Olympian-level trainers that will take that gymnastics prodigy to the next level.
Matt: Kids facility, right?
Matt: So he wound up partnering with a very well-known gym, one of the founders there, and the game plan is to bring this facility, just not one location, but to build five within the next five years, right? Then 10, then 20, all around the country. And here’s the cool part. He came to us from an email that we sent out marketing-wise.
We started out as brokers, now I’ll say we’re friends. We actually invested equity in his company and we’ve been with him every level and seen what he does. But the difference is, he does the work, right? And he takes accountability for what he does right, what he does wrong, where most business owners have a real issue with that, a real hard time.
Dave: Yeah, and then Lou, I think you had mentioned a trucking company, was it, that had expanded as well?
Lou: Yeah, trucking and logistics for various reasons have a black eye in the American lending space. Nobody wants to lend to trucking companies. They’re usually highly leveraged just because of the nature of their equipment and trailers and rigs. And it’s almost like that three-tiered food and beverage system where you see that you’ve got the distribution, you’ve got the logistics, you’ve got the brokers. So at the end of the day, by the time the pennies trickle down to the poor truck drivers, there’s nothing left.
So they’re always getting squeezed. So the trucking space is primed for disruption, but it’s gotta be done well, right? Because you’ve gotta operate at scale. But to operate at scale, your logistics have to be primed, your credit has to be primed.
And just to lean on that credit conversation from earlier, Dave, when you deal with these lenders, they all have various, if not proprietary, credit rating systems. You’ve got Dun & Bradstreet, you’ve got TransUnion, you’ve got SPSS, but the one constant with all those crazy algorithms is the principal and the owner’s FICO score. So there is no such thing as I’ve got a good FICO. You know what? It could always be better.
Because like Matt said earlier, the better the FICO and the better the credit, the better the chances of us getting you a single-digit rate. In this market where, without getting political, over the last couple of years, inflation’s been tight, labor’s been high, margins are getting tighter. So the difference between two, three points on an interest rate could be the difference between having a banner year or a loser.
Dave: Yeah, for sure. Well, one of the reasons why I really like that really, you know, strategic thinking, right, in terms of scaling the business, getting access to that capital, and whether you’re doing kind of an acquisition, you’ve got growth, right, those strategies. I mean, that’s how you can 5 or 10x your EBITDA and increase, you know, the value of the company and then exit from there. Right? I mean, this is how you can really move, make big moves on the chessboard.
But the capital is a critical component and I think a lot of people just don’t understand what’s even possible in terms of, you know, accessing that capital. But once you can get it and plug that in, know, then and then you put these pieces together, right? That could be, you know, really significant in terms of wealth creation.
Scaling your business isn’t just about working harder-it’s about leveraging capital and making big moves on the chessboard.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely.
Lou: You just use Matt’s favorite algorithm, favorite acronym. He loves EBITDA. Matt loves EBITDA.
Dave: Ha.
Matt: Yeah, I was just I was with somebody last night that just exited their trucking company for—oh no, trucking, I’m sorry, construction company, HVAC—at a 16 multiple.
Dave: Nice. Wow. Wow.
Matt: Yet and the way they—and they started the company in 2020. They got bought out at the end of—
Lou: Matt, what was special about that business that allowed them such a high multiple?
Matt: I believe their systems and their processes were in place. They had a training school as a part of it too, right? So where it comes to get somebody to train them on the job, they’re making mistakes, they make them go through the school prior to that, right? So they have 30 days in the school, then they have 30 days, they’re making money within 30 days for the company, and so that 60-day term.
Lou: Smart.
Lou: They created a strength out of the weak link of the industry, because the weak link of the industry is getting trained skilled craftsmen today. I mean, nobody wants to go into the trades. And if they do go into the trades, who has the patience to go through like an 18-month apprenticeship, right? So that’s really smart.
Matt: They created the feeder system for themselves, right? Which was that. Also, the other way they got there was through acquisitions, right? It’s the fastest way to double your business, right? Go out and buy a competitor. But what most people don’t realize is the SBA has changed their rules more in the last 18 months than they have in the last 10 years. You can actually go out and buy one of your competitors with no money down, as long as we have the same industry code.
Lou: Smart.
Lou: Hungry Hungry Hippo. Remember that game when we were kids?
Dave: Ha ha ha.
Dave: Can you talk about that more? Matt, let’s talk about SBA and what are some of the qualifications. Okay, really.
Lou: Dave, listen carefully to these new guidelines. They’re gonna knock your socks off, buddy.
Matt: Yeah, so the SBA’s changes, I mean, we’re constantly getting updates and changes, right? So let me take a step back for everybody and just so they understand. All the SBA is is a government agency that insures a loan, okay? Now they have their own set criteria that you need to meet. Then the banks, okay, are the ones that actually give you the money. So Chase, Wells Fargo, Celtic Bank, the biggest SBA lender there is, they have their own guidelines you need to hit. So you can go to Chase, you can hit the SBA requirements, but Chase can say, hey, we don’t like your business, you’re not for us, but I can bring you to Celtic and get you done.
So all an SBA loan is is the government insuring the bank against their loss, usually 90-10, which means they give you $100,000, you don’t pay it back, it’s okay, the most the bank can lose right there is $10,000. So this is why all banks want to push you towards an SBA loan and the traditional business loan is pretty nonexistent these days, right? Because I mean, let’s think about it from the investing point of view. If I can insure my money and a 90% loss, that’s the way I’m gonna go, right? So, now they keep coming out with new guidelines. It’s almost impossible to stay up with, but I was with a banker friend yesterday.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt: They came out with a new working capital line, which is pretty crazy, but no banks are doing it yet because there’s not that much money into it for them. But the biggest thing right now is partial ownership, partial buyouts, partner buyouts. In the past, you used to have to buy 100% of a business, right? Now you can go in and use an SBA loan, buy 20% of the business. You’re an owner and you have no exit strategy, you wanna take some chips off the table, you can sell to your employee with no money out of pocket for him, a portion of the business, and finance it and get a lump sum from the SBA.
Then what can you do with that lump sum? Well, let’s face it, 80% of the business owners’ net worth is tied up in their business. Take out, have a partner come in, somebody buys a portion of their business, they take the lump sum, they go invest it in a family office, right, to grow their wealth and diversify out, you know? The last thing somebody wants to do in a case like that is—
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: —get to the end of the road and they can’t sell their business. We’ve seen it in 2020, companies that were sellable were no longer sellable in three months. So your plans got erased. We just watched, what was it, Nvidia lose $600 billion market cap in one day because China’s got this deep seek AI that’s coming.
Lou: You had to bring that up. You couldn’t go a whole podcast without you bringing that up.
Dave: Yeah, had to bring—yeah.
Matt: No, but my point being is anything can change, so why not take chips off the table when you can and use the SBA as kind of like a mini PE firm, right? Or bring an investor. So that’s my point there. But yes, so if you’re in the building, if you’re paying rent. You want to go over that one?
Lou: Yeah, so the key here is experience within that NACE code. So experience in that industry. You’re not gonna be able to sell it to the cleaning lady that comes in twice a week. But if you have key personnel, like a foreman or VP of operations, or maybe an estimator—someone that is privy to the inner workings of the company—yeah, 100% financing is available.
It’s a no-brainer. It’s just not been on the radar for our products and services in the past decade. Same thing goes for an entrepreneur that seeks to expand geographically, always under the same NACE code. So let’s use a landscaper, right? Like I’ve got a landscaping business, I’m really successful, I’ve got my systems and processes in place. But at the end of the day, I probably can’t go further than half an hour, 45 minutes, because then I spend two hours for each job, right?
So the only way I can grow my business is if I piggyback and then go to two, three zip codes later and do the same thing. The SBA will allow you to acquire competitive businesses with the same NACE code with 100% financing. But I’ve got a proven track record because I’m a landscaper. I know my business. I know systems and processes. And I could do exit.
Dave: Yeah.
Dave: Yeah. Now, and another great strategy, right? So obviously we do a lot of passive investing here. And one of the great strategies is to either create your own business or acquire another business and then turn that into your passive investment vehicle, right? That provides you income in later years, rather than tie up all your money in the market as Matt’s going to share with us his experiences there.
So, you know, that’s an important strategy, but using some of these tools like SBA and some of these options really makes it so much more accessible that I think people don’t even realize the opportunities that they have right in front of them.
Lou: Dave, let me mention one more for you, which is even more sexy. This is personally, it’s a pet peeve of mine. When I see a small business owner, I insist that they buy their location where the business is located. One, peace of mind, security, and at the end of the day, if you do retire and the business is not sellable for various reasons, at least you’ve got the brick and mortar where you can get some triple net leases back. The SBA also allows what’s called a rent replacement acquisition.
Matt: Yeah.
Lou: Right, so if you’re paying X amount in rent every month, they’re not stupid. They realize, well, you can easily replace that rent with a mortgage payment. So why shouldn’t you own your real estate? So that triggers two things. Let me have a conversation with my landlord and see if I can work something out. Otherwise, I’m moving, buddy, because I need to build some equity.
Dave: Matt, you were gonna say something?
Matt: I wasn’t, but I’ll just add on to what Luigi said. Yeah, if you can own the real estate—look at the McDonald’s model, right? They own the real estate, and that made them more valuable. Real estate’s not going anywhere. We just had a client recently who did an acquisition, and the acquisition came with a building.
Dave: Did you have a comment as well? Yeah.
Matt: He sold the real estate right away because it was worth more. It was extremely undervalued. But who did he sell it to? He wrote a triple net lease to himself for the next 20 years. So he didn’t have to worry about it. And I think he profited really well—I think he pulled like seven figures off the table in that transaction.
Dave: Yeah, wow, that’s fantastic. And do you have any comments coming out of the Wall Street industry, building a wealth advisory firm? I know we had some conversations on this in the past, but just your perspective on investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds with conventional financial planning versus being an entrepreneur investing in tangible assets.
Matt: Yeah, I got a lot.
Dave: Ha ha ha!
Matt: I trade stocks every single day. Wall Street is set up for guys like me—or the way I used to be—to make money from your money, plain and simple. It’s the way it worked. There’s a reason the private markets are larger than the public markets right now, and they’re going to continue to grow that way.
Alternative assets—whether it’s PE, merchant cash advance funds, or alternative lending strategies—are becoming more common. There’s a lot more information available now, and people can actually get control of their assets better than they could in the past.
Here’s what I mean. If you came to me with an IRA and wanted to buy real estate with that IRA, and I was the broker at a brokerage firm, I wouldn’t want to lose that money. So, I’d put you into a real estate ETF. But I’m not telling you that you can take that money, do a self-directed IRA, and invest it however you want. You could buy land, purchase a house, or generate rental income.
IRAs and brokerage firms pump up the market. I truly believe alternative investing is going to get bigger and bigger over the next few years. It’s the same reason why a lot of companies stay private longer now—there’s no reason for them to go public anymore. The liquidity isn’t there. There are secondary markets now for these companies that still aren’t public yet.
So, that’s my thought.
Dave: Yeah, we share the same philosophy on that one.
Lou, I’d like to go back for a second into how you really kind of reverse-engineer a plan for potential clients, right? If they come to you and they’re kind of looking for capital, right? You talked about, say, let’s first kind of really analyze the business, understand how they’re doing, and they may have some things they need to fix in-house before they add capital.
Lou: Yeah, part of our onboarding call is to go through our mental checklist, right?
Okay, so what are you doing for marketing? If it’s a product, where is it being manufactured? If it’s a service, who’s your client base? Just kind of try to poke holes into the story because I know the lender’s going to poke holes. So, let me make you poke-hole-proof by going through our own little audit.
Then, when we see some proverbial dings, well, let’s fix it and prime you. So, for example, let’s say you have a business that has poor accountancy. My metric is by the fifth of the month, you should be able to generate a profit and loss and balance sheet for the prior month. And if you can’t, we got to fix this.
Forget about heavy debt loads. If there’s heavy debt, the first thing we try to do is consolidate that debt and try to get you out of that. First of all, you’re not bankable if your ratios are sky high. So, let’s try to consolidate the existing problem rather than adding additional debt service. I don’t want to be the nail in the coffin. We want to try to help you folks.
Through that, we’ve had to partner with a lot of bookkeepers and a lot of accounting firms and had to have a lot of tough conversations. Nobody wants to be told that their baby is ugly. Everybody’s baby is beautiful. There’s a little massaging there, saying, “Look, your business is great, we just have to adjust it a little.”
It’s like that sailboat—you move the tiller half an inch, and the whole boat turns. Right? You just have to make certain tweaks to make you bankable.
Dave: Yeah, and what’s the process if someone wanted to work with you guys?
Lou: Boy, Matt is real. Besides being a day trader, he’s really good at marketing. So, he’s set up an email marketing funnel. You run our podcast, you see our podcast. We have a weekly that comes out every week. It’s our newsletter. All our advisors are really aggressive on LinkedIn.
Matt: Thanks.
Lou: And we’re all doing network. The best way to find us is at www.creditbank.io, and you can reach Matthew Meehan or Luigi Rosa Bianca on all the socials and LinkedIn as well.
Dave: Yeah, how about from a process standpoint though, Lou? Let’s say I was looking for capital needs, right? What does the process look like to engage your company?
Lou: Besides that initial 30-minute phone call.
Dave: Yeah, I mean, how does it work? Do you guys do an assessment? Is there some kind of strategy stuff upfront and figuring that out? What does it look like?
Lou: Yeah, so I think you’re eyeing into our business model. We have a bifurcated business model.
We have Shield Advisory Group, which offers consulting services, right? The advisory work. And that’s an acquisition strategy, a scaling strategy, some debt consolidation.
Then, on the Credit Bank side, Credit Bank is our classic brokerage firm. So, if you need a line of credit, you need a loan—just plain vanilla line of credit—your business is perfect, everything is fine, you just need a line of credit. You reach out to one of our advisors on Credit Bank, and we’ll knock one out for you within a day or two.
So, that’s how we’ve organized our business.
Dave: Okay, great. That makes sense. So, how about anything you guys want to share in terms of personal productivity hacks or things from a self-improvement standpoint that the audience can learn from?
Lou: Be brutally honest with your team, with your partners, and have a thick skin, right? Because if I can’t tell Dave that he has a stain on his shirt and he gets all sensitive, then he’s gonna walk around all day with a stain on his shirt.
But Matt and I could pretty much tell each other anything, and very rarely do we have to follow up with, “I was just telling you for your benefit, buddy.”
Dave: Got it. Matt?
Matt: Yeah, man, you said productivity hacks. I gotta give you a new one that I have, and this is a little bit different. So, I bought this gum, and it works amazing. It’s energy and focus gum. It’s called Norogum, right? 95 milligrams of caffeine. It’s like popping a cup of coffee in 10 minutes.
So, that’s a great hack for me, especially when you get to like three o’clock.
Dave: Wow, nice. Probably good if you’re traveling too and driving somewhere, huh?
Matt: Yes, exactly.
Lou: I’ve got the espresso machine in the office. I’m kind of old-fashioned.
Dave: Yeah, well, of course. I would expect nothing less from you, Luigi. Yeah, I have the same.
How about from a wealth perspective? If you guys had just one piece of advice that you could give the audience in terms of how they could accelerate their wealth, what would it be?
Lou: Thanks, Dave, I appreciate the dig.
Matthew, by personality, is a lot more aggressive than I am. So, he’d have to force me to do something unique like crypto, NFTs, or Bitcoin. I’m kind of like gold, real estate, blue-chip stocks. I want dividend stocks. Matt’s like, “Hey, I got this new IPO tomorrow, let’s look into it.”
Dave: Got it.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, diversification, right? It’s really what it comes down to. You should have a little bit of everything, but you should also have safe money and some play money, you know?
I would say, whatever the amount of money you have, you can put 20% into something that’s risky, that has a little more bang for its buck if it hits, right? But don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t go YOLO on the next meme stock or meme coin that comes out.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: I was at an event last night, and somebody told me they put $25,000 into a meme coin and made 2.4 million in like five days. I never heard of it. That’s unheard of.
Dave: Wow. Yeah, interesting times we live in for sure.
Well, yeah, look, it’s been a pleasure having you both on the show. Really appreciate your wisdom. Just to summarize for the audience, I think this has been some fantastic insight into opportunities to really start thinking bigger with your own business—whether that’s a side hustle today that could grow into your complete passion business, or if you already have a scaling business and are looking to take it to the next level to increase that enterprise value through access to capital.
That opens the door to M&A strategies, roll-up strategies, doing exits, or creating the business as a passive investment. There are just so many different opportunities.
If people want to reach out to you guys again, learn more, and connect with you, could you give those sources one more time?
Lou: Go ahead, Matt.
Matt: Yeah, you can go to shieldadvisorygroup.com. You can go to CreditBank—that’s B-A-N-C dot I-O. Reach out to us. Our calendar links are on there, and you can book a time. We’re on all the social channels, Matthew R. Meehan and Luigi Rosa Bianca.
Dave: Awesome. And the podcast Liquid Lunch, which is a great show as well—very entertaining and educational. Yeah, for sure. It was a good one.
Gentlemen, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Take care.
Lou: Watch the episode with Dave.
Matt: All right, thank you, buddy.
Lou: Thanks to you, Dave.
Connect with Lou Rosabianca and Matt Meehan
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