How Ari Page Helped Entrepreneurs Generate $2 Billion In Funding Instantly

How Ari Page Helped Entrepreneurs Generate $2 Billion In Funding Instantly | Disruptors Podcast

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Ari Page: The loans that actually pay you back are the ones that upset Dave Ramsey the most. And he's like, why would I spend a $100,000 to earn $2,000? Dave, what are you even talking about? No one is going out and just making up a $100,000 worth of stuff to spend it on to try and get $2,000 of cash back points. Right.

That's not what they're doing. Yeah. They're spending a 100,000 on their pay per click. This is spending that they would be doing either way. Now they're getting 2% cash back.

There's no other loan that actually pays you back other than a credit card.

Steve Trang: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Ari Page with fund and grow, and Ari Fuller from Spring Hill, Florida to talk about how he's helped his clients generate $2,000,000,000 in funding. Now, guys, I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires. Information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire. In In the next five to seven years, if you'll take consistent action, you'll become one.

And if you're already a millionaire, we want to recognize you here. So please scan that QR code on our page right now. That way we can recognize you. And if you want help become a millionaire faster, scan that same QR code. And before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, hit that subscribe button.

Because every week we're dropping lessons that can create your first or next million. And, guys, our AI lead manager is now up and running. If you wanna hear what our AI lead manager sounds like, text AI caller to the phone number 33777, that's AI space caller 33777. Ready? Alright.

Well, you know, I wanna say, first of all, you know, this is long overdue. Right? I've heard of Finding Girl. We were kinda chatting beforehand. Like, I've heard about you guys a very, very long time, and I just found out, like, you know, you're one of the original members in the family mastermind.

Right? I came in a little bit later. I was not one of the originals. I came in a little bit later, but, you know, you've been at this business for a very long time. So before we jump into the the business, what were you doing before you went into business for yourself, or at least before you started Fund

Ari: and Grow? That's a great question. And, Steve, thank you so much for having me on here. Yeah. Millions of people have watched your podcast, and it's just an honor to be here.

Yeah. So thank you so much. So, what was I doing before Funding Grow? So before Funding Grow, I was working for my mentor, Dave Kendall, for which was a, for LoanPro Financial, which was a, a mortgage company. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Ari: so we were doing mortgages in California. And before that, I was working in the shipyard. Shipyard? Yeah. So that's different.

Yeah. So that was a that was a very big transition there.

Steve: Yeah. So what were you doing at the shipyard?

Ari: So I was a shipfitter, which means that they would hand you a a stack of blueprints Mhmm. And they tell you go on the ship and build it. So it could be ripping out something, putting in something new. It could be changing a space. We were doing a lot of upgrades to add air conditioning

Steve: I see. In a lot

Ari: of the navy ships and, a whole variety of things, really, but that was one of the big things. And it, you know, it was it was a a very fun and exciting career until I learned about this amazing thing for me called, the law of attraction, which absolutely changed everything for me.

Steve: So what what did you learn about the law of attraction?

Ari: Well, I learned that I can think outside of the lanes that I've been in in the past. Yeah. You know, my my past, my parents joined an Amish community when I was really young. It wasn't actually actually Amish. It's Amish like.

It's called called the the communities.

Steve: I see. And In California?

Ari: No. That's they're actually, they actually have a bunch of different locations on the East Coast. They're they're global, but they, the ones that I lived in were in New York and in Pennsylvania.

Steve: I see. Okay.

Ari: And it was a it's a really beautiful childhood growing up there. It's very communal. It's like the Amish, but instead of everyone being in their own home, they have, like it's like a communal setting.

Steve: I see.

Ari: So it's a little bit different. But I learned the power of the group of how people can work together to create, like, absolutely amazing things. Like, those people are not poor. Mhmm. They they have some amazing businesses, and they you look at them, they're just like they look like Amish people.

Mhmm. But they have businesses that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, And all of it is through them working together. They're from the highest levels all the way down to the lowest person. And so it was a beautiful way of being able to to be raised, to learn. And after leaving the community, I then, you know, through a bunch of different jobs ended up at the shipyard.

So I had skills that I had learned from the Amish place that I was able to employ and put to work.

Steve: I see. So then what got you into mortgages? Because that's a pretty significant transition.

Ari: That was the law of attraction. Yeah. So I was working twelve hour days in the shipyard Mhmm. Seven days a week. That's eighty four hours a week.

And if you don't do it, guess what? There's a thousand guys outside the gate that will.

Steve: I see.

Ari: So you either work it or you you leave. Mhmm. And when those navy ships come in, it's twenty four twenty four seven. Just boom. Working on them to get them out.

Mhmm. And, once learning about the law of attraction, I realized that I'm not I I can't live my life like this. Mhmm. You know, I have a son and a daughter, and I need to provide for them in a way that's way beyond what this shipyard job could ever provide.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And so learning about the law of attraction, which is a whole thing. We can't do a whole podcast on that now. I was able to to basically change what I was thinking about, change the way I was feeling Mhmm. And insert other new things that I never would have been bold enough to think about.

Steve: Gotcha.

Ari: And so it got me just to kinda shift gears. And at that time, what that meant for me was, responding to this guy that kept contacting me for that I'd met through a previous job, and, his name was Dave Kendall. Mhmm. So he's the guy ended up being my mentor.

Steve: And Why was he reaching out to you?

Ari: So the universe was knocking.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And I wasn't answering. I wasn't answering until I learned about the law of attraction, and I was like, wow. This is I just my frequency wasn't there. I just wasn't able to to line up with it. So once I did line up with it, I understood what Dave was attempting to get me to do.

Mhmm. Really, he was trying to help me. I I then was like, oh, yeah. I wanna do this. I I don't wanna work in the shipyard.

I would love to learn how to do mortgages. I I realized I need to put my energy into something for a period of time before I'm gonna get any positive benefit out of it. Because when you're doing a mortgage loan or something like if you're a blue collar worker, you're gonna work for thirty days and not get paid. Yeah. You can't do that.

And with a mortgage loan, it could be many months before you're gonna get especially on your first deal.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And so, like, I had to really open my mind. And so, anyway, after working with Dave for a period of time, that was right in 2007, the beautiful, amazing

Steve: crash Mhmm.

Ari: Well, before

Steve: we get into

Ari: the crash before we get

Steve: into the crash. Why was he reaching out to you?

Ari: So he was reaching out to me because he had started this process of being able to use business credit cards, and he wanted help.

Steve: I see. So it was business credit cards. It wasn't, like like, mortgages is, like, buying houses.

Ari: No. Well, at the time, he he was still doing the mortgages Mhmm. And he wanted help on his website. Mhmm. So we weren't quite doing the business credit cards yet, but he was taking testimonials and pictures and videos and putting it all together.

And so what I was helping him with at the time was the technology side.

Steve: I see.

Ari: It was taking video like, some video and audio files and converting them from, like, one format to the other. Mhmm. And that's what I had typically done for Dave in the past. I'd helped him with computer things.

Steve: I see. So that's

Ari: what I thought he was trying to contact me about.

Steve: Oh, you didn't want that work?

Ari: I did not no. It it it you know, honestly, he would ask me to do stuff, and then he wouldn't even PayPal the money afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. And and we're talking, like, $20 for can you convert this audio file so that I can put it onto my website?

Yeah. And but I started listening to what these the videos and the audio files were saying. And they were talking about getting people business credit cards and to be able to use that to to to fill this LTV gap. The loan to values were dropping. 2,007, 2,008, what the banks were offering.

Mhmm. The amount that they're offering was dropping really fast.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And you had to cough up extra money if you were gonna close that loan. Right.

Steve: The house didn't appraise. You had to come up with the difference.

Ari: And Dave was using business credit cards Mhmm. To make up that difference.

Steve: Fascinating. I I don't think I've heard anyone doing that. So okay. So, he reaches out to you. You answer the call eventually.

And so

Ari: Actually, my wife at the time, she picked up she had my cell phone. She picked it up. And I was like, didn't it was Dave. I was like, alright. And then I and then I took the call and changed my life.

Steve: So what what did you what did you have you doing when you first started working for him or with him?

Ari: So when I first started working with Dave, he had me calling leads. And he basically was like, Ari, go read the website, and I'm gonna fax you over a lead sheet. I was like, but wait, Dave. Click. And and so I sent you an email.

Like, Dave, I don't know how to sell this. I don't know what I'm doing. Mhmm. And he's like, Ari, I told you, go read the website.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And I'm like, I'm the kind of person that asks a million questions. Right? I'm not just so anyway, after thinking about it, I was like, well, you know what? I could keep on doing what I'm doing at the shipyard Right. Or I could try something new.

And so I started calling leads. And, I remember the first one that I closed was this guy called Mike on Memorial Day. Mhmm. He's like, why are you calling me on Memorial Day? And my only line was, because that's the only time you're gonna catch an entrepreneur not working.

And, he actually bought the service. Mhmm. And and then he never even contacted us back ever after that.

Steve: Got it.

Ari: And he specifically said, he's like, Ari, your, your sportsmanship when it comes to sales, I must have been so green Mhmm. So just, like, excited Yeah. That he felt it. Yeah. And that had something to do because he even mentioned it on the sale.

So I I always think back at that guy. It was for sale.

Steve: Okay. So, read the website. You still don't really know what's going on. Did you read the website? Like, did it give you more clarity?

Ari: A little bit. A little bit. But it was talking about just using business credit cards to be able to, you know, fill gaps in funding.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And at the time, he was still doing loans, but I was calling on the business credit card side.

Steve: Okay. So then you're able to get some sales going. And then how did that, continue?

Ari: So Dave had all of his people working from home. Mhmm. And I don't know about you, Steve, but that doesn't work very well. Yeah. You have some people that can that can do good working from home.

Mhmm. And another guy that Dave had working for him, his name is Daniel.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Daniel is my partner today. Got it. And he was also working from home. And so it was basically me, Dan, and Dave that were that were doing all of this. And they were still closing business loans.

I was doing business credit cards, and it was all under Dave's company. And we were process doing the processing together. And it kept on building and growing. I kept on asking Dave, we have to hire other people. We need to do this.

We need to do that. And Dave's idea was, well, I'll give you a little cut here, and then you you do that. Like, Dave, that's not the way it works. You have to be able to scale. We have to you know what I mean?

Like, I don't know a lot, but I do know that when I worked at the shipyard, there was a lot of guys in there. It wasn't just me. You know what I mean?

Steve: Yeah. Go to, and, like, whenever I go to In N Out, it's like it always seems, like, excessively overstaffed. Go to Chick fil A. Always seems, like, it's excessively overstaffed. No other industry.

You're like, you just gotta hustle through it. Yeah. But for some reason, a lot of us kinda, like, start off with, like, I gotta do everything.

Ari: Yeah. And especially entrepreneurs. Yeah. They they don't want to relinquish that control to others. Right.

So then I'm not so Dave was then going through some lawsuits that had to do with, mortgage loans that he had given that had that were it was like a, I forget, but basically, he had he had, like, assigned a mortgage, the a lady's mortgage where he basically was gonna, like, get her house when she died, and he was gonna pay for the for the, the payments until she died. Mhmm. And these these these family members that were not her family members, they were, like, nurses and stuff that had worked for this lady in the past, came up and claimed to be the children, and it created this whole big suit

Steve: Oh, man.

Ari: That for you and me, we would have just moved on from.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: But the day that became the end of the world. Yeah. And he focused on this lawsuit, like, in such a big way that he felt like he needed to move on from the other things that he was working on. I see. And so he first asked Daniel.

He said, Daniel, do you wanna run this company? Mhmm. And at that time, it was called credit card builders because we specifically were building

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Credit cards for small businesses. Yeah. But that's the worst name in the world.

Steve: Why is it the worst name in the world?

Ari: The word credit is a pejorative in many people's minds. The word credit card is. Mhmm. The word builders, they see that as a blue collar. Like, it's got so many pejoratives built into it, just the word credit card itself.

Yeah. You know, where the our new name, Fund and Grow, is more about what we can do for you.

Steve: Aspirational.

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. Which and that was such a fun process Mhmm. Coming up with with that. We we were gonna go with growth capital.

Mhmm.

Steve: Because you

Ari: think about it, it's the same thing. It's fund and grow. Alright. It's about growing,

Steve: and

Ari: it's about getting access to to to capital. But go on Google and type in growth capital. You get, like, 2,000,000,000,000 you know what I mean? Like, every single company out there that does anything close to what we do, they're called they're growth capital partners, unsecured growth capital. There's, like, every variation

Steve: of that. Mhmm.

Ari: So I went through this process, and I, you know, we eliminated all these different things. You don't know if you ever gone through the process of nicknaming a company. And so I went through that. Okay. You have a mentor that kind of helps you.

And so and I was just going through and, like, figuring out all these things until we and and I really like the word fund, and I like the word grow. Mhmm. Just couldn't figure out how to, you know, grow growing funds, you know, until we just came I came up with the idea of just kinda smashing it all together, fund and grow. Yeah. And I remember when I first sent it through the through the our text chat, and people are like, that doesn't work at all.

It does fund and grow. Mhmm. And I'm like, stop saying it like that. Say it fund and grow. Mhmm.

Fund and grow. Think of it as an n, fund and grow. Mhmm. And then suddenly, it caught on to us, and we were like, wow. This was like the best name in the world.

It just felt like magic.

Steve: Yeah. So alright. So, Dave reached out to Daniel. Are we interested? And he's like, I'm not sure.

So what happened after that?

Ari: Oh, that's right. So so Daniel is he's more of a c f he's like my CFO. He's more of an accountant.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Very good at numbers. Very good at all of that. But not outwardly facing type of individual that wants to do sales, webinars, presentations, speaking, so on and so forth. But he wanted to be part of it, just, you know, the part that he's used to playing, which

Steve: is Right.

Ari: As a chief financial officer. So we just, so Dave first offered it to him. He said no, but you should offer it to Ari because he's already doing all the work. Right. And so I so Dave offered it to me.

At first, I was like, Dave, are you under, any kind of investigation? What's going on here, Dave?

Steve: How would you give it away?

Ari: Yeah. Why why are you doing this? Mhmm. And, he was he was ready for that. It wasn't it wasn't something he got paid in perpetuity.

Mhmm. So In what? You know, as a stock sale agreement. Mhmm. So every every month, he got paid off of funding grows.

Steve: So he still gets paid today?

Ari: Oh, well, he passed away many years ago. But I see. If he hadn't,

Steve: he would be. I see. Yeah. So there was something in it for him.

Ari: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

He was getting paid excess of 6 figures a month.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So it worked out well for him.

Ari: Yeah. It worked out very well for him. But a lot of people would think, well, why wouldn't you wanna make, you know, a million dollars a month? Mhmm. You know?

But I don't think Dave could have ever really scaled it to that. That that wasn't his expertise. His expertise was coming up with ideas and creating things. Me coming from the Amish background and understanding the power of leverage in the group and being able to trust, being able to trust. Like, I know that these people aren't gonna do as good as I'll do it, but it's just a percentage that they're gonna mess up.

Find out that percentage. Mhmm. Then operate off that. Alright. And then try to bump it up.

They're they're they're not gonna do it perfectly. But even us, we don't do it perfectly every time.

Steve: Even close. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I offered it to you, and you guys come to terms fairly quickly then?

Yeah. Yeah. And when when about was this?

Ari: So that was in 2009.

Steve: Okay. So it's still incredibly challenging market.

Ari: Yes. Right after right after the crash of two thousand eight. Incredibly challenging market.

Steve: Credit is tight. Mhmm. And you're doing this well, now it's fund and grow, but, you know, it was, like, credit We were

Ari: still credit card builders back then.

Steve: Yeah. Credit card builders. So what was that like? What you know, this transitioning, like I guess, first question, do you remember approximate kind of, like, revenue you guys are doing or, like, volume?

Ari: I think when I when I bought the company from Dave, we had done maybe maybe 8 or 900,000 in the entire year. Mhmm. So the the revenues are really small.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. And so in taking it over, like, what were some of the because you obviously had to change the culture, the look. I mean, mean, you said it was basically just three of you. Right?

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: At that time. There were no employees?

Ari: Yeah. Okay.

Steve: So let's talk about, like, you know, obviously, you know, like, spoiler alert, you're still here. You're doing well. So what were the initial challenges in in in building this business?

Ari: So the first thing that I did after becoming the owner was I took, everyone that was working from home and, which was me and Daniel, and I was like, we're we're gonna create an office.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So instead of having outside contractors, instead of doing that old model, even though it was only a couple of us, we're gonna come up with a new model, which is gonna be one to have people come in and sit down and do work. And, you know, Daniel, you're gonna hold those same office hours. I'm gonna hold those same office hours. So that's that's what we did. And it started with me going to my office in Spring Hill.

And, I had well, no. It actually first started in my living room. So I had my first two employees were were Zach and Liana. And, I say that because they still work for me today.

Steve: Okay. Great.

Ari: And, there was there was others kind of in between, but they don't work for me. But those two worked literally out of my living room. Mhmm. Zach is now our guy on on YouTube. He's our YouTube guy.

Steve: I see.

Ari: So after we worked out of my living room for a little less than a year Mhmm. I then ended up renting a unit in Spring Hill, and then we hired more people, went went to that unit, then I ended up buying that entire building. Then, eventually, we, I think it was in 2019, we bought a new building in Spring Hill, which is about 5,000 square feet. And yeah. And But

Steve: what kind of adversity did you have? Because 2009 was bad. Like, I mean, we're talking people getting divorced, people killing themselves. Right? Like, it was a bad time.

Credit was super tight. Did that affect your business? Was that good for your business? Was it bad for business?

Ari: Yeah. So this is a really good question because at that time, what were the what what was crashing?

Steve: Real estate values.

Ari: Yeah. So Collosures. So, specifically, with the banks Mhmm. Those mortgages.

Steve: Mhmm. Yeah.

Ari: And one of the things that they were doing was they were the banks were going from putting out major, you know, million dollars in one mortgage to putting out what they would see more as a microloan. Mhmm. So what a healthy model that was working suddenly is crashing. Now they're gonna turn to the other models that they already had that were not crashing, that were already doing well. We found that we were able to give out to get access to more business credit cards as the crash went on.

Steve: I see.

Ari: They were unregulated loans versus the highly regulated loans. And I know it crashed because supposedly they they removed, different types of regulations and so on. Mhmm. But really, there there is a lot of regulations still tied up in mortgages.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: And it made it more difficult for the banks to deal with that crisis because of all those extra all the extra red tape. Mhmm. They turned to other loan programs that were not having those pro those problems at the time. Credit cards did have a default rate, but they didn't have a massive systemic crash of all credit card companies and business credit cards Yeah. Like they did like the banks did with mortgage loans that physically needed bailed out from.

Steve: Yeah. When those mortgages were significantly larger than credit card Yeah. Balances.

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. And some of them were, like, Freddie and Fannie. Like, that you know, they don't even do credit cards. Those are the major mortgage holders.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So it's easier to, get credit. So lend it and get credit from I don't know. Who who do you get the money from exactly?

Ari: So the business credit cards that we apply for are from all of the major lenders. Mhmm. So anybody watching right now could Google 0% business credit cards or or just even 0% credit cards in general. Yeah. And you'll find that every major bank offers it.

Steve: Okay. So even though the banks were in crisis with taking over properties, for closing on people, and all this other stuff, On the other side of it, they were still just as happy to lend to to hand out credit cards, 0% unsecured and so on.

Ari: Well, if you think about it, the banks are just big cash flow machines.

Steve: Mhmm. If

Ari: they're not lending money, they're not making money.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So they couldn't just stop lending.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's probably, an important principle, you know, like because you're in this world. You wanna dive just a little bit deeper, like, why that's the case. I mean, it might sound obvious.

Maybe someone's listening. Like, what you know, what's the big deal? But you wanna explain a little bit deep greater detail why they have to lend?

Ari: Yeah. So when when you look at banks in general, and they're they're not making a whole lot off of their money. They're having to do a thousand different things with their money in order to in order to make money. And so their different lending pro programs are definitely ways that they can bolster their revenues, that they can make more. Business credit cards, in general, tend to be very low on default.

Oh, there's different default rates on everything. But with personal cards, there's a the default rate is at least two to three points higher than on business credit cards. And just in general, using business credit cards and unsecured cards is a is a safe way is a safer way than the banks giving out these massive, massive million dollar loans on properties that if they if they lose on a million dollar property, that's, you know, that that that's a huge amount that they just lost to a mortgage. Mhmm. And, yeah, they get access to the property, but most of the time, they're not even being remunerated properly for that.

They're selling them in short sales so quickly. So the the from what I've seen, the machinations that provide the liquidity behind these different types of loan programs is is is absolutely, you know, something that it's just a very complicated process, and it doesn't always pop out to us as to why. You know, like, if if we had one division that wasn't doing so good that does loans, but we have five other divisions, This one's not doing so good. It doesn't seem obvious to the public why they are gonna boost these other divisions temporarily. Mhmm.

But, of course, if these ones are unregulated, this regulated one is not doing as well. Mhmm. They're gonna boost it in the ones that are easier to to put money out. And so, you know, we could get way more complicated on it, but, you know But that's

Steve: but that's perspective. Right? Because I don't think everyone understands that. Because we don't look at it, generally speaking, in that perspective. It's like, well, their credit side credit side is like, no.

Like, credit side over here. So we have to loosen a credit over here so that we can keep the flow going. So, not everyone knows this. We don't talk about it a lot, but, like, I happen to be a partner in a bank. Right?

And so when I sit there and through, like, our annual meetings, I just look at it, like, what are the two things they they care about? Cash, in cash in a bank, and how much of that have we lent? That's the two numbers they care about because the cash that they have at the bank, they're paying, you know, it was a CD, like, four and a half percent. Right? So whoever's putting money in the bank, they're getting a four and a half percent.

They have to lend it at, like, six, and that arbitrage is all they make. Yeah. And any dollar not lent, they're still paying the premium on it's not borrowing it. Right? They're someone's deposited the money, but there's a cost Yeah.

To the bank for the for the for those deposits. So you have to get that money working if you don't.

Ari: Yep. They look at it like it's a it's it's a block of ice. Mhmm. That money, those deposits are block of ice that are just melting.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And if they don't take that and put it to work right away, it's not gonna grow.

Steve: No. It's not growing. So alright. So then it was easier, to to to, get capital to lend. How did you grow the business?

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Ari: Just like I met you, Steve, through Family Mastermind Mhmm. So Dave had taught me about affiliate marketing because that's what he was doing with the Loan Pro Financial. So he had originally made, affiliations with companies that were that was specifically about referring mortgage loans. Mhmm. But then when the whole industry crashed, Dave was talking to those same affiliates like, hey.

Look with this business credit card thing that we're doing. Mhmm. And at that time, we were getting up to we were advertising getting up to 500,000 easily getting it. And you didn't even have to do a cash advance. You could just literally have them deposit the money from the credit card into your bank account.

Steve: Wow.

Ari: Okay. So Dave took the relationship of those affiliates and started selling the business credit card program to them. We were selling it at $1,500 an hour, and it would take us on average fifteen to twenty hours per client. And after a period of time, the affiliates that we're working with were like, listen, guys. You know?

And I don't know if because we were making more than them. They were like, listen, guys. You have to, like, put this into a package. You can't just be $1,500 an hour ad nauseam for our clients. It it needs to be, you know, a specific thing.

We need to make it easier to sell. Plus, you guys will probably make more. You'll sell more. Mhmm. So you need to create a system, and you need to have a package.

And then that's where we came up with the idea of the membership Mhmm.

Steve: Of

Ari: saying, well, we will apply this amount of times with for this fee. Mhmm.

Steve: Alright. So you changed your pricing structure Yes. To instead of per hours, like, here's, like, membership, and here's how many hours it comes, and we should be able to get it done in this amount of time.

Ari: Yeah. And then working with those affiliates led us to go to other, conferences, masterminds, meet other affiliates, and then figure out better ways of being able to to to describe and discuss what the Fund and Grow program was, how to use business credit cards, how to do these affiliations with other with other companies. So if you have a real estate educator and they have they're teaching their clients about getting access to real estate, buying real estate, doing fix and flips and burring and all of these other things, what do you need for that? Money.

Steve: Right. And it

Ari: would be great if it was other people's money. Right? Mhmm. So it just makes perfect sense for these real estate educators or any of those affiliates to partner with us. Mhmm.

So we're working with them to help them sell more of their own product, to help them create liquidity for their customers, so that their customers can go out and do their course. Yeah. So that's that was kind of the way was through affiliations.

Steve: So I think it's an important point because, like, you know, we have our own company and we're trying to go through affiliates. Right? And then you look around, like, PropStream sold, you know, couple years ago, whatever, maybe three years, four years ago now. Right? Over a $100,000,000.

Right? How do they grow? Affiliates. Right? And you look at Batch.

Right? They just sold recently. How do they grow? Affiliates. So, like, there's a lot that, maybe it's not talked about enough.

Right? But I think this is, like, a a huge, what's the word? Not niche, but, like, a specialty that a lot of people could definitely learn a lot more about. Yeah. So so from you, like, how did you you said Dave taught you about affiliate.

So, like, step one. Right? Like, I wanna grow my business through affiliate. What are the first things you wanna do in wanting to build your business through affiliates?

Ari: Find conferences and masterminds that are gonna have synergistic businesses at at there for you. Mhmm. For example, like, for us, the real estate educators or an Amazon reseller, someone that teaches other businesses how to sell on Amazon. Mhmm. You know, those are gonna be perfect partners for us.

So we would go to a real estate investing conference.

Steve: So I guess step one is find people whose client base would benefit from your services.

Ari: Yes.

Steve: Okay. Alright. That's step one.

Ari: Yeah. Then it helps if you're a speaker on that stage so that you can speak to the other speakers.

Steve: Mhmm. Because

Ari: they're not gonna really speak to you if you're not speaking on the stage.

Steve: Right. So you have to get authority. So, a, reach out find who it is, and, b, create, help have them help you create authority Yeah. In there. So speaking on stage, not sitting in a booth in the back.

Right.

Ari: Yeah. You can have someone sitting in that booth, but not you. Right.

Steve: So have have you found, like what's the difference? Have you tried just sitting in a booth in the back? Yeah. What's, like what is the difference? Like, is it, like, 10 times different, a 100 times different between speaking on the front or sitting on the back?

Ari: It's a 100% difference. Yeah. If you if you're speaking on stage, people are gonna come up to you. They're gonna ask you questions. If you just run a booth in the back, people just walk by.

Mhmm. You know, I mean, you have people come up and ask questions. They'll be interested. They have nothing else to do at that moment. So they'll

Steve: Curiosity.

Ari: Yeah. But in terms of them feel being really compelled Mhmm. You you kinda need to to to speak. Now one of the things that we've also found is that if we have the, the main presenter

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Talk a lot about funding growth. Like, there's a lot of conferences that we are kind of at without actually being there

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Where they're talking about if you have if you need help funding any of these programs that we're talking about at the conference or if you need funding for real estate Mhmm. Or if you're at the back table trying to purchase something and you can't purchase, they'll bring up a QR code that has our prequalification tool. Mhmm. And then they'll just funnel people right into it by talking about us. They'll bring up the QR code on the main screen a couple times, just in a couple key moments.

People scan it, and we'll find that we can channel way more people without us even showing up to the event. Mhmm. We can channel more people into the pre qualification, which is gonna pull their credit, and it's gonna tell us exactly how much funding we can get for them Yeah. Which then they become a lead under that affiliate Mhmm. So that our

Steve: sales team can follow-up and close them. Gotcha. Okay. So, going to events, speaking on stage, what else do you have to do with the affiliates?

Ari: You have to do a good job for them. You have to get a lot of funding for their clients.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And then they'll give you introductions to other affiliates, which is really that that's So that's

Steve: a referral to other affiliates.

Ari: Yeah. And that's really the way we got our first affiliates was by our top affiliates telling their friends and then telling other affiliates and, you you know, because they they don't really take take your word for it. Not unless you were just business,

Steve: which was gonna be, like, my next question, which is, let's say, who's your biggest affiliate right now? Like, who who who refers most business today?

Ari: We have a big affiliation with NerdWallet. Mhmm.

Steve: So NerdWallet. Right? Yep. Big website. Right?

Like, when you Google things, there's Bankrate. There's NerdWallet. Right? All that stuff. That's that's what that's what I'm thinking.

Is that Yep. That's correct?

Ari: Yep.

Steve: Alright. So how do I, Steve, right, if I wanna get NerdWallet's attention, how do I get their attention?

Ari: Wow. Now that's a difficult one. Because we like, with these big companies, like with NerdWallet, we had to try over and over and over and over and over and over and over. You have to just be okay with rejection, and you have to keep trying over and over. With NerdWallet, there's no conference that we went to that we could meet the owner of NerdWallet.

They did, like, 700,000,000 last year. Wow. You know what I mean? Like, we're lucky to speak to the person that runs the division of their affiliate department or whatever. So, their vetting process was extensive, but they're you know, working with them is great.

You know, we have integration. So when people come to their website and they're looking for small business credit cards

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And it matches our criteria, then the website is just it just pushes the data right into our

Steve: Right into our guys. Yeah.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: But how did you get that? Like

Ari: Just by trying over and over again.

Steve: On the phones? Like, do you go, like, LinkedIn, cold call, like, the front desk, walk in with, like, donuts? No.

Ari: We didn't go to their headquarters. That's a good one, though. But, and and I've heard that those that that can be helpful or even sending gifts.

Steve: Right.

Ari: But the thing is is that I could send a gift to you, Steve. Mhmm. People can send a gift to me, but I don't even know who the owner of NerdWallet is. Right. You know, or even how to get access to his house, you know, to his address, or where would you send it?

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: I'm sure there's thousands of gifts being sent to NerdWallet's offices every day.

Steve: Right.

Ari: We at Fund and Grow gets it. You I'm sure you get them sent here all the time.

Steve: Yeah. Always appreciate it.

Ari: So but it is hard to like, with those bigger companies, it's about you would what I would first recommend is you go to their website. You apply for their affiliate program.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And if you know anybody else that's already in their affiliate program, of course, you can talk to them to try to get them to talk to their contact at NerdWallet. We didn't have that. I'm just saying Right. You know, sometimes that is the case. Mhmm.

But applying and then having synergy, obviously, we are a company that does fit into their criteria of who they would refer to. It's not they didn't have to reinvent anything for us.

Steve: Yeah. So it's a sales team who goes like, is it Ari? Is it a sales team? Who's responsible for creating that relation?

Ari: So at that time, when we created the NerdWallet relationship, that was, people that worked for me. I believe my executive assistant Mhmm. Is the one that was doing the reaching out and Yeah. The communication.

Steve: Okay. And then they're just trying to communicate with them in every which way. So go to the front door, which is, like, go on the website and fill out the form, but still just nonstop follow-up. Yeah. Nonstop follow-up.

Yeah. Okay. Who is your biggest affiliate in the real estate space?

Ari: Probably Connected Investors.

Steve: Connected Investors. Okay. Which is, you know, another company, if I understand correctly, had a large exit. Right? Yeah.

And so, and I'm guessing they probably got quite a bit of affiliates. Yeah. So let's say the same thing here. Right? So me, like, I wanna get connected with connected investors.

What's the first thing I do?

Ari: So for us, it was we met Ross Hamilton at the Family Mastermind. Yeah. So he was also I think he's one of their founding members. Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So, He's pretty active in there now right right now.

Ari: Yeah. So at that time, my team and me were at Family Mastermind, and we met Ross. And it was a match made in heaven because they now have a, kinda like a little funding marketplace

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: On their website. So if you're looking for a million dollar loan, they're gonna refer you over here. If you're looking for this type of loan, they're gonna refer you there. So they're a very segment of the list. Exactly.

So funding grow is one option Mhmm. Just like on NerdWallet. Yeah. They they have a variety of different types of loans they're gonna refer to.

Steve: Yeah. So, again, so similar concept was, with Connect Investors was that you were able to create that relationship because you're in a mastermind together. Yes. So did you know Ross prior to joining family or, like, hey. We're in family.

Oh, hey. It's Ross. Let's create a relationship.

Ari: That's because of family. Yeah. Yeah. So and we had done business with some of the businesses in family that we were just already doing business with them before we even, you know, before, Matt had even created Family. Yeah.

Because we were one of the founding members. Mhmm. And having having those relationships with those existing affiliates made Matt Andrews aware of the fact that we are an honorable, legitimate company, which, of course, Ross Hamilton checked with him before, you know, doing anything with us. So it's it's a whole network. And, of course, they're gonna go online.

They're gonna they're gonna research us. They're gonna see our reviews. They're gonna see the people that are writing scam and this, that, and the other. And they're gonna they're gonna weigh all that and balance all that. So, you know, it's not just about relationships either.

Some of it is also about, like like, there there's affiliates that that that approach us that we got high they were highly recommended by friends and affiliates. And you go online, and you're like, I could never promote this. Like, have you looked at anything under page one? You know what I mean? It's like, no.

I couldn't do that.

Steve: Which goes back to reputation. And so, like, that's something that we talk about quite a bit. But, you know, like, make sure you take good care of your name, you know, something growing up. When I was a kid, my dad, you know, said, like, hey. Like, make sure you you take care of your name because you only get one of them.

Right? Yeah. That was when I was a kid. Today, it means way more. Yeah.

Right? Like, what was it? I always say, keep your jersey clean. Right? Like, you gotta you have to have a pristine reputation.

Every once in a while, you know, our sales guys are on the phone. It's like, well, I don't know much about Steve Trang. You know, I don't know if I should buy his product, blah blah blah. And one of the things that they're I've told them, so I go, just tell them to Google me. Like, good luck finding anything bad about me Yeah.

Out there. You can't. And so yeah. I applaud you there. Right?

If we're doing a good job, sir, fulfilling all your clients, keeping them happy, doing a good job because that's what leads to these other opportunities later on with Ross Hamilton with Connect Investors Yeah. Which leads to NerdWallet. Right?

Ari: Mhmm.

Steve: And so

Ari: I do want a cookie throw in there. Even the negative ones, even the people that have written negative, if you're doing your job good, their negative review is gonna be like this. They promised me a 100,000, and they only got me 75,000 in it. They said they were gonna get it in two weeks, and it took two and a half weeks. And you you get what I'm saying?

Like, even the negative reviews are gonna be, like, I'll sign up for that. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna be, like, you know discouraging. Right.

Steve: Yeah. That was a good point. Very, very good point. And so for everyone that is listening there, right, so the first one was just incessant follow-up, which is sales. Yep.

Right. That's just sales, prospecting. Number two, networking, masterminds. Right? So, like, we're in family, mastermind together, and then, you know, you guys listening.

I mean, all sorts of different masterminds because it's the easiest way. Right? We're all rowing the boat in the same direction. We're all trying to accomplish the same things. It's easier to do business on one do business on someone that you know is in the same room, has done similar things, it makes sense for us to collaborate and have synergy to do stuff together versus someone that we know I've never heard of that does a collaboration.

I mean, look, you know, we're talking about earlier before the show. Right? Like, I was aware of Find and Grow because one of your sales guys reached out to me years ago, many years ago. And I talked to him once, but I was like, yeah, not really interested. Right?

Because I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who Fund and Grow was. I didn't know who he was. And he's like, well, go talk to this other person. And I did.

He's like, yeah. They got me money, but then I was kinda like, I was not really sure. I don't use you guys. I wanna promote you guys. Right?

That's kind of the the conversation. But now, right, we've interacted, through Amanda initially, and then Amanda connected you and me. How does that happen? The mastermind.

Ari: Yeah. Yep. Right. And then when we're at family, literally, you're like, we saw each other.

Steve: Right.

Ari: And you're like, hey. I wanna talk to you.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah. Right? Is there a third thing? So besides, you know, like, prospecting, going through the front door prospecting, masterminding, anything else for people listening?

Like, how do you grow your affiliate reach?

Ari: Requesting clients that have to to to leave a public experience. Mhmm. To let them to tell them, you need to let other entrepreneurs other potential entrepreneurs know about your experience with Fund2grow because your business couldn't have gotten this leverage without it. Mhmm. So asking for testimonials

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: That's I think that's an important one because that kind of floods the net Right. With with all of your testimonials. And I and I see companies out there that I know do way more revenue than we do. Mhmm. And I don't see as many reviews.

Yeah. And that's that's just a that's just a systems process.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: It's as easy as just putting in in your workflow, putting in a specific node that's about requesting a testimonial. Mhmm. And you try it a few times, you perfect it, and you find which one, you know, 89% of the time they're gonna respond to in a way that they're is kind of leaving a review. And then boom. Now you got all these reviews going out just like clockwork with every client that's graduating from the program.

So I think that, putting that word-of-mouth out there and getting a client to write about that gets them to think about that. Yeah. And in that same email, we even recommend them. By the way, you should probably send this to, like, five friends of yours.

Steve: Alright. So Yeah. So I was a client. I did I mean, technically, I guess, I'm a client. So, you know, there was a moment in time where

Ari: I didn't even know that. Yeah.

Steve: Well, I I went through Amanda.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: Okay. This is before, you know, she, said to do something else. And so, yeah, like, she connected me and got a loan, done. I was like, you know, wanted to get some cash on hand. And I wanna say, like, the experience because I've tried with other companies, and I felt like I was kinda like felt like I was doing the work.

Mhmm.

Ari: Right? I

Steve: felt like I had to push. Right? So it was pleasant working with you guys. It was like, hey. Like, she was like, send me these documents.

Give me this. And then I wanna say, like, three weeks later, it's like, hey. We got it approved.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. Like, there wasn't this thing where, like, I'm chasing you. Yeah. It was like, hey. I submitted my documents, and then it was taken care of.

Ari: Yeah. That's we are in terms of our systems and processes, we are super on top of moving our clients forward

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Getting them to funding, getting them out the gate, like, because we have we work with affiliates that are only referring them so that they can move forward with their programs. Our affiliates are logging into the Fund and Grow affiliate account Mhmm. And they're saying, were they funded yet? They weren't funded yet. What's Fund and Grow doing?

Steve: Right.

Ari: Because they have deals that are hinging on that.

Steve: Right. Your clients, your affiliate partners, they're waiting on you so that they can get paid.

Ari: So ex well, so that they can move their clients forward and yeah. And usually their payday is way bigger than any commission they're making from us. It's nice that we're paying them a commission, but they're looking for the commission on their $100,000 program.

Steve: Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's holding them back on potential revenue. Yeah.

Forget the Yeah. Forget the affiliate. On potential revenue.

Ari: Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Steve: So, yeah, you gotta keep everyone happy.

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. So and and beyond that, just from an ethical standpoint

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: You know, how are you gonna get up every day and be able to do what you do and be passionate and excited if you're not really benefiting people? And if you're not really benefiting people, how is it gonna even grow? You know, from a law of attraction standpoint and from an energy standpoint, it has to be something that's uplifting. It has to be something that that adds value. Otherwise, value won't come back in terms of law of attraction, mirroring energy.

Steve: Oh, yeah. Because I did you know, I went with this other guy. I tried it, some time ago, and it felt like I was doing all the work. And at the end, it's like, we got you approved for credit card. I was like, 9,000, like, 9,000 isn't worth me.

Like, if you would tell me in the beginning, like, I'll get approved for a $9,000 credit card, like, I wouldn't even, like, filled out. I wouldn't even send you an email. Right? Yeah. So it was just it was just this awful experience.

It was it was very, very bizarre.

Ari: Well, I gotta say that sometimes we have a harder time

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: With you could have, like, a seven fifty credit profile. And even though these are business credit cards and report to the EIN, they still look at the personal. Mhmm. And you could have one seven fifty that produces a $9,000 card

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And then one that produces a $100,000 Mhmm. You know, over two or three cards.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: And so, what we created our own algorithm, our own software that will run your credit Mhmm. And be able to give a printout or, you know, our synopsis of how much we believe we're gonna be able to get based off of all of our experience, all of our clients that we've put through. Mhmm. And it's it's pretty accurate. Yeah.

But every once in a while, we still run into that. And so we it's it's it's a difficult thing. But when it comes to what we're doing for the client Mhmm. That we wanna be on top of it. We wanna move them forward because, again, we have affiliates breathing down our back.

But, but at the same time, you know, in order to to to really be able to to to move someone through the program of what what we said they were gonna get for them, we gotta get them through multiple batches of funding. Mhmm. So sometimes we gotta prod them, and we gotta move them forward. And with the FTC coming down heavier and heavier and heavier on credit repair companies, credit stacking companies, all these different companies, it's really important that we follow the guidelines or, you know, the the law, whatever you wanna call it. Like, I don't think it's actually it's not actually a law, but basically that Regulations.

That we're following regulations in such a way where the banks aren't gonna single us out. Mhmm. So one of those things is to be walk is to walk the client through this process because we can't directly communicate with the bank for you. We have to walk the client through that process. Mhmm.

And so that's that's an important aspect is that we wanna we wanna be compliant, which means that it's kind of it's a done with you service, that we're doing it with the client. So there are some things that our clients have to do to get access to the funding, but then there's some stuff that we're doing that we're legally allowed to do on their behalf.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: And then there's some things that the only way to get that funding is to have the client make that phone call.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: But in our case, what we do is we prep the client. We describe exactly what needs to happen. We'll even go as far as getting the underwriter and them on the phone and doing the hold time for them.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: But the client is the one. And this is all surrounds legality. The client is the one that actually has to do that communicating. Yeah. And so that's where we've seen some of these other companies.

And I don't wanna name any names, but there's quite a few other companies out there, ones that I've even met recently at at different masterminds. And, one of them, the owners of them were like, Ari, I would be I would love it if you could, like, look over my website and stuff. And I did. And I was like, dude, this is like an FTC disaster waiting to happen. You know?

Like, your entire website doesn't say anything about business credit cards. And you sell well, so a lot of times when someone's a credit card stacker, when they're selling business credit cards like us, they don't wanna tell their prospective clients that they're selling credit cards. Mhmm. Because the word credit card credit cards just don't sound good. Yeah.

Like, funding and credit line and, you know, line of credit and all of that sounds so much better.

Steve: Sounds more sophisticated.

Ari: Yeah. And that's what these other companies were doing. Like, you know, seek capital as an example.

Steve: And Dave Ramsey's hammers Dave Ramsey hammers on credit cards. He'd hammer hammer funding or hammers credit cards.

Ari: And that doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. Because think about this. You could get a mortgage and use a mortgage, and that mortgage loan will never pay you anything. They'll never give you a percentage back.

They'll never give you anything except for grief, and you have to pay the payment. Same with an auto loan. Same with a business line of credit or a HELOC or any other type of loan. The only loan that will ever pay you anything is a credit card. Yeah.

And you could get a one and a half percent cash back, 2% cash back. You get the airline miles, which end up being more than 2% cash back if you know how to use them properly. Yeah. And so the loans that actually pay you back are the ones that upset Dave Ramsey the most. Yeah.

And he's like, why would I spend a $100,000 to earn $2,000?

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Dave, what are you even talking about? No one is going out and just making up a $100,000 worth of stuff to spend it on to try and get $2,000 of cash back points. Right. That's not what they're doing. No.

They're spending a 100,000 on their pay per click, on their different, you know, their facility, on their, you know, phone bill, on their electric. This is spending that they would be doing Anyway. Either way.

Steve: Right.

Ari: Now they're getting 2% cash back. There's no other loan that actually pays you back other than a credit card. Yeah. And that's that that's really important. And then if you if you're looking at the, like, the airline miles Mhmm.

Like, you can I mean, there it it's absolutely amazing that you can double, triple them? Mhmm. People don't know that. Like, if you are using, like, the American Express, or, like, any of the cards, like, the the, the American Airline card from, like, Barclays. Mhmm.

If you or use the card and you build up 20,000 miles, and then you go to purchase using the, the Barclays website, your airplane tickets, you're only gonna get a certain amount of miles. But if you go and log in to you create an account at American Airlines and then log in to your account at American Airlines and then you do a transfer from your Barclays card, the points Mhmm. Over to your American Airlines, suddenly the points are worth, like, 10 times the amount.

Steve: Really?

Ari: And so when you're spending directly out of the points programs, you kinda get screwed. Mhmm. But when you learn to transfer the points and use them through these point transfer programs Mhmm. You can get, in some case, up to 10 times the amount. And that's where people that just would rather use it for traveling and so on versus the cash back.

Personally, I like the cash back. On the webinars, I bring up screenshots of, like, funding grows cash back deposits. I think that's pretty cool.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. So before I get back into this, because I I wanna talk about, like, you know, the the how to use Find and Grow. We talked about how you grew it, which was affiliates. That's been your primary driver.

Yeah. Okay. So what were some of the adversity on the way in in building your business? Because, again, right, you're here. You're doing well.

What were some of the big pain points?

Ari: My name is Lance McCann.

Steve: I have recently switched in sessions with Ian Ross. Bill's conversations with Ian has made me 50,000 in the past two deals that I've had. I was able to renegotiate, go back and renegotiate the original purchase price on one deal, and I saved $40,000. And I got another $10,000 off my other deals. Call again and give him a chance to over grant it.

Ari: If you like what you just heard and would like similar types of success, text close to 33777, and we'll see if you qualify to join objection proof selling. We're taking good sales reps, and we're making them objection proof. So one of the problems with scaling is finding is a good employee base, creating employees and, different departments. Fund and Grow has, at this point, we have about 45 people that work for us.

Steve: 45.

Ari: Yeah. We've, it's we we've kinda scaled back for, you know, creating better systems as well as the economy. But, because we were up to, like, 60 people at one point, but then we've we've automated a lot. We've put a lot more. We we built all of our own software from the client login that to what the staff logs into to the affiliate login.

All of that is our own software. We're not using any outside stuff. And so it makes it really easy to communicate with the client, with the affiliate, to draw everything together, to make it, you know, just super super simple from that standpoint. But, well, I forgot the question though.

Steve: Adversity. Challenges and growing.

Ari: So, yeah. So, yeah. Back to HR. So, growing the team was definitely the hardest thing. And for me, I got lucky because I hired this lady called Crystal, and she was my HR manager for she's actually our chief operations officer now.

Steve: With you. Yeah. I interviewed her with her.

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. So she's worked for me for, I think, over thirteen years now.

Steve: Wow. Okay.

Ari: And, she's really, really, really, really good at hiring people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And at just getting the pulse and understanding who they are, knowing how to fire them real quick if they're not gonna work out, you know, putting pouring our time and our love and our energy into them to try to get it to to work out for each person.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Because there's no one that comes. Like, they're like, hey. I'm a credit stacking expert. There's no one that comes like that. We have to teach every single one of them.

Mhmm. So being able to build out our departments and get people that really understand this stuff and to be able to hold on to them for long term, we had to just have a nicer location. We had to have better benefits. We had to have more of an employee centric focus in terms of what would get someone to wanna hire in and to put their trust into a company long term. You know, we were operating very much like a small business and not even, you know, offering benefits and stuff, you know, in the past.

So, you know, getting all of those same things, you know, four zero one k, you know, all of that, you know, was definitely a big driver in helping retain employees long long term. So that that was definitely one a a big hurdle that was difficult. Of course, another hurdle is, pay per click marketing. So advertising.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And being, basically like, our advertising was going great, in terms of Facebook, YouTube, Google, until and I forget exactly which year. I think it was around 2021 or 2022 is when they passed the, it had to do with, like, not singling people out in advertising or something. Basically, we weren't able to target people based off of their age or based off of their gender.

Steve: Their privacy.

Ari: Yeah. If it was a credit based product, because then they're saying that it's not, equal opportunity. Even though you have to qualify. Yeah. It makes no sense.

So I'm targeting a 13 year old girl the same way I'm targeting a 64 year old man.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: That's a pretty wide net that you have to cast now. Yeah. So we went from doing, like, $607,100,000 a month off of pay per click marketing sales to that entire stream just gone. Oh,

Steve: okay. So it just no longer made sense to advertise in that.

Ari: Yeah. I mean, we still have stuff going on Google and YouTube, but we're we're you know, from both of those streams alone, we're maybe generating a 100,000 a month.

Steve: Yeah. Wow. Okay. How did you account for that, and what did you do about it?

Ari: Well, the we've we've tried to do stuff about it, but we haven't found any way of really being able to cast a wide enough net where it makes sense.

Steve: Well, I guess, like, that's pretty substantial. Right? 600 k a month, 700

Ari: k

Steve: a month in revenue. So, like, did you have to, like, slash departments? Did you have to refocus efforts?

Ari: Well, luckily, at that time, we were doing about 2,000,000 a month. Mhmm. So it it it it was a substantial hit, but it wasn't something that forced us to have to take such drastic actions. Got it. But it would be really nice to get it back.

Yeah. And we've I've I've spoken to many different experts about it, and they're they're they're basically say that you just have that there is no real you can't target based on that. You just can't use that same targeting. You have to find a way of doing it through your video, through your, you know, through through your graphic Mhmm. Basically.

Steve: And Through your advertising. Yeah. It has to resonate through advertising.

Ari: And there's a lot of people that are doing that type of advertising even for credit cards.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And and and they can bring in leads, but they're not bringing it in anywhere close to what we're able to do, like, with the affiliates.

Steve: Is and that can be the same. Yeah. Yeah. And that makes total sense. So going back to then the about the employees, like, hiring them has been the hardest part.

But it really hasn't been your responsibility. It's been Crystal's responsibility. Right? Yeah. So there's a couple different things.

Benefits. Most people listening right now aren't the kind of people that provide benefits. Right? Whether a company is smaller or everyone's ten ninety nine or whatever. So what differences do you see offering benefits to your hiring or retention in your business?

Ari: You're going to attract, people that are essentially similar to us from an entrepreneurial mindset Mhmm. That are too scared to run their own businesses. Mhmm. You're gonna be able to retain those people.

Steve: So you're saying more like you'll hire more entrepreneurs?

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. And you'll keep them. Yeah. So that's it's it's really about the long term keeping.

Mhmm. You know, if you have a retirement program we we've had one person retire from Fund and Grow And, you know, officially through the retirement, you know, and, Sweet. Yeah. And so, like, if if you have all that, like, I don't think that that guy would have worked for me long enough to retire

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: If I we hadn't had those different benefits and programs and, know, because otherwise, he could go to another sales organization and get paid that.

Steve: Yeah. What kind of benefits did you guys offer? What do you guys offer?

Ari: So health, the four zero one k, we have a, it's called an ESOP, an employee savings operation trust. So what that does is the company actually puts money into a ESOP account for each employee for when they, for when they retire, they get paid a benefit Mhmm. That they don't even have to match. They don't have to put anything in for. Wow.

And ESOTs are absolutely 100% awesome. If anybody's listening to this right now and they have, like, a really big tax burden, but you have a tax burden over a 100,000, especially if it's, like, a million dollars a year, then you can use an ESOP. An ESOP can definitely reduce the amount of taxes you're paying while redirecting some of that saved taxes as benefits to your employees.

Steve: Yeah. Well, definitely, I need to learn more about that because I heard ESOPs.

Ari: Yeah. That's an ESOP is for a public company. Mhmm. So they're gonna an employee savings operation program, they have the board member that's that would be running the program.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: Whereas an ESOP is an employee savings operations trust.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And I am the trustee because my company is not public. I'm the owner of it. Gotcha. So a private company would use an ESOT.

Steve: Got it. Fascinating. I'll have to learn more about that. And then employee centric. Right?

Again, because, like, you look at every great business, it's always the people. Always the people. So how are you how is your business ran where it's employee centric?

Ari: Well, to say it simply, the as management, we care about our employees. Mhmm. We love them, and we know that it starts from the employee. How are you gonna get someone to care about a client if you don't care about them as an employee?

Steve: Mhmm. You

Ari: know, it's like your parent asking you to do something, but they're witnessing exactly the opposite of that thing.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So it starts with me. It starts with the management. And it starts with actually caring on a on a granular level about the different things that you're working on and being honest, being open. I think that all too often, employees follow their employer because they're being told what to do. Mhmm.

There there there's there's not a huge cycle of respect. And then you end up losing them over time. You end up losing their heart. You might even end up losing them as an employee. Yeah.

And then if you lose their heart, then then they're not doing what they could do for the client. They don't if they're a few minutes late for the client, do they care? If they don't get quite as much funding for the client, do they care? Yeah. No.

You you there there is a way of caring, and that's by by witnessing to what it is that you would wish for them to do. And one of those things is, you can actually teach them those those, ideas. So at Fund and Grow, we do I don't know. We don't really have a name for it, but I do know that Zach recorded the last one and and put it on YouTube. But, but we do like these law of attraction sessions, which is basically, like, anybody that wants to be part of it during work time gets to come in and to be part of a little seminar that I'll put on where we talk about law of attraction and all of the things surrounding that.

Steve: Yeah. So Give me an example. Like, what the last session you have, what do you guys talk about?

Ari: So the first thing that we do is we'll sit down and watch the documentary, The Secret.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So you've heard of The Secret. Right? That's a great introduction for people to to understand. It's very physically motivated, if you will, on physical things, But it really kick starts the idea of the law of attraction. Then from there, I'll talk about what the law of attraction means to me.

Usually, I'll tell my story of, you know, being in the shipyard and changing my mindset and and just explaining to them, hey, I I was getting paid way less than what you guys are getting paid now.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: You know what I mean? Like, you you think I can do it, but you couldn't? Mhmm. If I could do as a shipyard worker below where you are now, you could do it too. Yeah.

And by the way, I've had employees that have eventually quit and gone off to start their own businesses. Mhmm. And I'm actually kind of proud of that. Like, how many businesses do you know that were, like, I used to be, like, the the this and this at Google or this and this at Facebook.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And there was, like, that was their big break. Now they are they're out here running their own business. Yeah. That's cool. I would love it for someone that has a huge business to be, like, I'd I've learned with Aria Fund and Grow.

Steve: You know

Ari: what I mean? Like, that to to me, that's not a loss at all. Like, Amanda moving on to work at Accruity.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: She started as my executive assistant. Yeah. She was a, a, not a CPA. She was a we're the people that do the notaries for a for a an attorney. Ezra?

No. She I forget. She she has a, Paralegal? Yeah. She was a paralegal.

She was a paralegal, got hired in as my executive assistant, and now she is an executive at a company.

Steve: Yeah. She is.

Ari: That makes and that makes me so proud. And she became an executive at my company first. She became our COO Mhmm. Before she was offered a job at Accruity. Yeah.

So and I love that. I think that that's what every entrepreneur should want for their employees is that you're not gonna have someone be your slave for their whole life. Mm-mm. But you can teach people how they can rise. And as you're doing that, you're making a whole process.

There's all these other people, all these other Amanda's in the company. My new executive assistant, Stephanie, is awesome. Mhmm. Absolutely amazing.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. And so the adversity. So then let's talk about what the business looks like today. So you said how many people?

You said 40?

Ari: Yeah. We're at 45.

Steve: 45 people. Alright. And so what does that look like on a day to day side? Like, you know, do you have are you are you marketing heavy, service heavy, sales heavy? What does your organization look like?

Ari: So all of those things. So we got marketing stuff happening daily. There's a whole marketing team. There's a studio. They're recording probably something every day usually.

There's a sales team, the sales floor that's buzzing every day.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: There is the customer journey people. There is the intake people. There is our account managers who are the negotiators. Then we have, some specialty loan departments where if you're a client with us and we can help you get other kinds of loans that I haven't even talked about yet, like, not business credit cards. We'll help them.

We we don't really do a lot of those types of loans. We're we mainly do it for existing clients and for for leads that we're in conversation with

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Where if they have a specific need or a problem where we can help them. But our main bread and butter is the business credit cards.

Steve: Yeah. Well, that that was the the thing when I was talking with you guys. It was like, well, you know, it'd be easier if we just get an SBA loan. I was like, oh, really? Right?

So I guess that's probably what that is. So, looking at the business then, I think there's a lot of noise out there about credit card stacking. Can you get some clarity? Like, what does it mean? How does it work?

Ari: Yeah. Oh, I'd love to. So this is gonna immediately make sense for everybody because probably everybody watching this has a credit card. Mhmm. So I'll just start with talking about a credit card, and then we'll talk to about business credit cards.

So if you have a credit card with, let's say, Chase Bank

Steve: Mhmm. And let's

Ari: say it's a $10,000 card, you can go back to the same exact bank, and you're gonna apply for the exact same product. And if they won't allow you to apply for that product, you apply for a very similar one to that product. But it's at the same bank. Mhmm. So let's say I have a $10,000 card.

The 0% period or the introductory period of 0% is up because I've had this card for a year. Mhmm.

Steve: So

Ari: I've had a $10,000 card for a year, no special offers on it. I go back to the same bank and I apply for the same credit card. And they say, we gave you 10,000 a year ago, so we'll give you $5 today.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So now this client has a balance on this $10,000 card. So how are we gonna 5,000 isn't enough to move the 10,000 onto. Right?

Steve: Right.

Ari: Does it matter? We take the 5,000. So we take the 5,000. Now we have a $5,000 account. We have a $10,000 account.

The $5,000 account is a new account. It's got 0% on it for either six months, nine months, maybe up to twenty two months. We take the 5,000 and the 10,000 on a separate call, and we merge it together. Now we have a $15,000 account. The 0% is over the entire account.

This is the only way to bring 0% back to an account. Mhmm. You can't take an old account and get 0% back on it unless you apply for a new card and merge them together. Now you have one $15,000 card, and you have less of that product. So you can go back and apply for that product again a year from now.

Steve: I've never heard this before. I probably should have heard this before. It's fascinating. So alright.

Ari: So and we do this on the business side.

Steve: Okay.

Ari: Because if you do this on the personal side, like, there's a lot of these credit card stackers that will apply and get you a bunch of personal credit cards. Mhmm. Those personal credit cards when you use them, they're gonna as soon as you start bringing up the balances, what people don't know about a personal credit card is that you can't go over 35 percent of the credit limit to the balance. Mhmm. So on that $10,000 example, if I put $3,500 on there, I'm now at that 35% ratio.

I go above 3,500 on a $10,000 card, it starts to bring my personal scores down.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So if I get a whole bunch of personal credit cards, I spend them in my business. Now six months, eight months later, the 0% is about to expire. How am I gonna refinance that if those are all personal credit cards? I'm not gonna be able to refinance. I'm gonna be carrying a lot of personal credit card debt on my personal credit card.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: On my personal report, I mean. And so what we do is when we're applying for these cards, we're using the client's business so that the credit card doesn't even report to the personal credit report. Now, not all banks allow this. There are some banks that you click on their business credit card, and they'll report it right to your personal credit. So we don't take any client to a bank that would report it to their personal credit.

We're taking them to banks that we know a 100% confirmed, only gonna report it to the EIN number. Yeah. But once it's all the debt is on the EIN number, once it's being carried by the business, it makes it so much easier to go back for batch after batch. When I say batch after batch, I'm talking about to be able because when we do this credit card stacking process, I I explained a $10,000 card and another card, you know, like merging them together. But if you're trying to go for larger amounts of funding, you're gonna be applying for four or five of these credit lines in the same application batch.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So a client comes into us. We look at their credit report. We do everything we possibly can to help raise their scores. We're not a credit repair service, so we're not talking about deleting negative things. We're talking about merging, cards from the same bank together Mhmm.

So they have less accounts with higher limits. We merge them into the accounts that were open the longest. And we would even recommend that for the ten thousand, $5,000 example of the merge that we would merge it. We're merging it into the $10,000 account because the $10,000 account was open for longer.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: But in the case that you're merging three cards together, you would merge them all into the account that was open the longest. So now you have higher limit on the account that was open the longest. The accounts with the shorter seasoning fall off, and that helps your overall ratios.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So doing it on the business side allows you to be able to do the process over and over, and you don't have to pay it down. The credit card's down to 35% to do a new batch, which you would on the personal side. Now on the business side, you do have to pay it down a little bit, but it's not down to 35%. It's like 60%.

Steve: I see.

Ari: So they don't they they don't want them to be fully maxed out when you're doing new applications. So we help the client, you know, we make sure that they're at those ratios prior to moving forward. And the Fund and Grow service is gonna navigate people around any of those roadblocks. We're gonna be like, nope. Cannot do that.

A lot of times, people would move themselves into a situation where they're kinda establishing with the bank Mhmm. The problem that they have, and then it's like six months, eight months, a year before you can go back to that same bank because you've established that problem. We gotta get these things fixed before we go and apply. Otherwise, you're kind of establishing with that bank that you have that problem.

Steve: I see. Okay. And then how would I use some newer, right, in the business? I don't think about scaling my business. How do I use fund and grow to scale my business?

Ari: So now there's two different ways. Let's say an entrepreneur just needs access to funding to buy more of their own products and cert you know, to buy more product to be able to sell Mhmm. Like an Amazon reseller or a real estate, rehabber. Mhmm. Obviously, just them getting access to the funding alone is going to be able to help them scale their business.

But there's a lot of companies that we work with that we're able to help them sell more of their own products Mhmm. By working with Fund and Grow, where they have leads that are coming to them, and the leads want to buy their service. It might be a $50,000 program, a $100,000 program, or even something less than that. 25,000 is pretty common. And they the client would like to buy it, but they can't.

Mhmm. So we have a lead prequalification tool. This is one of the things that helped us scale, is having this lead prequalification tool where our affiliates will put the client's information in. And with the client's permission, they do a soft pull. So it's it's not a hard pull on the credit.

It's just a soft pull. And then immediately, it runs their credit and lets them know how much funding that that client would qualify for. So now this affiliate can qualify their lead whether or not the the lead even gets started with us. Yeah. So as these affiliates are qualifying their leads and finding out if these are good leads for them, they also become a lead for Fund and Grow.

They become something that Fund and Grow can sell. And in either scenario here, when they get funding, they're using it, you know, with this company that referred them. Mhmm. So in some cases, it's about helping the the company sell their own product, where the product is simply too expensive. It's $50,000 product, a 100,000.

In many cases, it's about being in conjunction with the affiliate's product where they're sent selling them a 5,000, $10,000 real estate education course, but they want their client to be successful. And the only way to be successful is to have a little bit of OPM, other people's money, a little bit of loans to be able to actually spend in the real estate program.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So it could be that they wanna use us as an adjunct to help their clients because funding is just part of what it is they're teaching. Mhmm. Or it could be that they are trying to actually sell more of their own program directly because their their their program is so expensive.

Steve: So if I'm newer in the business and I'm looking to buy some get some software, buy some data, and so on. Right? I can apply for this. Right? Yes.

What if I'm trying to flip more houses? Like like, can I use this money? That sound like a dumb question. Can I use this money for a down payment?

Ari: Yes. That's actually an excellent question because people might be thinking, well, these are credit cards. Right. How are you gonna use a credit card for a down payment? Where in the escrow account do you swipe?

Right?

Steve: Right. Well, this

Ari: is I'm so glad you asked this question. So Funding Grow, we're not just applying and getting credit cards and, like, okay. Goodbye. Yeah. We're helping you.

We're teaching you about Melio payments, about plastic, about bill.com, BlueVine, Zill Money. All of these payment processing services are about being able to do exactly what you're talking about. So Melio, for example, or

Steve: heard of Melio before.

Ari: Yeah. Melio payments, that's a big one. Another one's Plastiq

Steve: Mhmm. With

Ari: and the the With

Steve: a q?

Ari: With a q. Yeah. Yeah. So Plastiq allows you to fund an escrow account directly.

Steve: Okay.

Ari: So you set up your Melio account. You add your credit cards in. Then you take your invoice. You upload it from the escrow company. Mhmm.

And you have to just request it, and they they then you upload it. Then they will either do a wire, an ACH, or a old fashioned check. The old fashioned check is the cheapest. Mhmm. The wire could be up to, like, two and a half percent.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: The check is usually, like, one, one and a half percent. But that way, you're you're able to use services that the banks absolutely approve of, the government absolutely approves of. They're not going against any type of breaking any type of regulation. We're not liquidating the cash off the card. We're not trying to pull the cash off the card because all of those things are red flags to the bank.

The bank says, if you wanna pull the cash off, use a cash advance. But there's other better ways of being able to purchase things, like, for example, funding an escrow account without having to pull the cash off the card.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: Just use the payment services. If you need to pay a contractor, then use the payment services to pay the contractor. Because if if they don't accept credit card, then you take their invoice, you upload it into Melio or into Plastiq, and then they simply send a check to whoever the contractor is.

Steve: Yeah. So I I yeah. I think it's it's great because, again, like, I hadn't heard of Melio, you said? Mhmm. Yeah.

Like, it's a it's you know, I go back to you know, I'm pretty old. So I remember watching, like, these sitcoms as a kid. You know, like, these guys buying houses with credit cards for flipping. Right? And it's, you know, like, they're flippers, and it's a disaster.

Right? Like, because they bought the house on a credit card and didn't sell on time. It's like, what are you gonna do? It's 18% interest. Right?

Yeah. Today is funny because, like, it's just hard money. But as a kid, I was like, hey. You know, how how how are they gonna figure that out? So it's really fascinating to see that you can actually, use a credit card, to fund an escrow account.

Ari: Yep. And sometimes you might have to use three or four credit cards. Within plastic, you can add a whole you can add all your credit cards in there. And then you can say, I wanna pull 10 from this one, five from this one, three from that one.

Steve: Gotcha. So right now, I run my business. Any expense, I basically run through AmEx. Any perspective or opinions on using AmEx versus any particular other business credit cards?

Ari: AmEx is a a really good brand, and they tend to have good cashback. Mhmm. What's the rewards on that particular card?

Steve: I don't even know. I got I got I applied on them. I got a gold. Right? Everything but the black.

So, I don't know. Like, I know we have, like, the hotel deal. Right? Like, you know, we can use for air for a hotel, but I'm not the points guy.

Ari: Yeah. So it it it really depends on what you're trying to do. Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you exactly right now which card is, like, the the the best card. Mhmm. But that's definitely something that our team knows.

Yeah. And in our case, we're we're looking to try to get as much funding for the client. So we're we're trying to get them to AmEx card too, but we also wanna get them to Chase, the US Bank, and Wells Fargo, and every other card because it's about the total amount that we're getting. Mhmm. But in your case, you're talking about using funding and paying that credit card off every month Mhmm.

For spending that you'd be doing anyway. Right. And what's the best cash back or rewards that I can get? Mhmm. And it kinda does vary, but AmEx and Chase tend to be two of the highest.

Steve: Yeah. We use Chase for personal. Chase Sapphire Reserve, whatever, for traveling. I don't even know. That that's the wife's department.

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Ari: Yes. So we've had some really cool, experience. Actually, I'll just tell you about my personal ones. Mhmm. So, I had two different projects that I that I was doing that I had to, that I basically had a problem with the contractor, and it was like, what am I gonna do?

Am I gonna sue them? And so one of them was electronics project for 35,000, and another one was a solar panel, a water a hot water solar panel, kind of like a, like, weatherizing your house. It's like a a whole little package. I forgot. That was, like, 17,000 or something.

And, in each of these cases, they're a couple years apart. But but but what happened was the contractors didn't finish. They weren't able to get the the, the house they weren't able to get past inspection.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So the solar panels did not get past inspection. In the case of the electronics project, the contractor, even though I had done a $100,000 project with them at the Fund to Grow office building, they completely crapped on this personal project I did at my house. Absolutely shocking. But am I glad that I put it on my business credit card? You bet.

Because when it came down to it, I was able to go. But first off, I tried as hard as I could with the contractor directly. You're halfway through this project. Please come and finish it. You know, like, you're not on schedule, blah blah blah.

I'd go back and forth with them until he stopped communicating. Mhmm. Then I went and called my credit card company. And I was like, listen, you know, I can show you all I'm trying to get this project finished. I've already paid them.

And so long and short, I was able to initiate what's called a chargeback, and I was able to get all $35,000 back.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: Now, I did not think I was gonna be able to keep that $35.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Because in the case of a chargeback, once you've initiated it, they they give you the money back. Mhmm. But then the business gets to respond.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So I thought, just like the other chargeback I'd done before that, that as soon as I initiated it, this guy is gonna be in contact with me. Mhmm. He's gonna come and get the job finished. Mhmm. And then his 35,000 will go through.

Steve: Right.

Ari: In this particular case, I never heard back from him. I got my $35 back, and the project was almost finished. I had to pay someone else to come and finish it, and that didn't cost $35. And so, in the case of the solar panel, what happened was it was a hot water solar panel that it didn't pass inspection.

Steve: Mhmm. And

Ari: so, it's essentially red tagged. And I tried to get them to come back. I tried over and over. I even left a a Better Business Bureau review dispute or, you know, on them. Not I charge back on them.

The guy calls me the next day. The next day, he calls me. And so he he's like, oh, it's not my fault. It's your fault. Alright.

Then I guess I'll keep the $17. Yeah. But instead, they came out and even though it was supposedly my fault, they finished the job. Mhmm. They got it to pass inspection.

The county passed it. And they then they were able to charge the $17,000 went through. Mhmm. So basically, when you initiate a chargeback, it doesn't mean you're gonna be able to keep it. But it does mean that the the credit card company becomes an arbitrator.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: Or they actually use arbitration company. And essentially, they look at this transaction, and then they they become like a little judge between you and the contractor. Mhmm. And until the contractor can prove that they've done it, they don't get to keep the money. So credit cards so we had a situation of a of a client do redoing a rehab or redoing a roof on a rehab.

He was in a a new area that he didn't usually do business. He was dealing with a contractor that he was unsure of, and so he made sure he got a roofing company that accepted credit card. Inevitably, he had a problem. It didn't pass inspection. And he was able to do the chargeback process, which then got the company within a few days to come back and to finish it.

Steve: Funny how that works.

Ari: Yeah. So you might not ever think of using credit card as as a way to hold it over the contractor. Mhmm. But in today's world, it's definitely worth doing. And these are the benefits of using credit card of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, of that process is that chargeback is built into it.

Yeah. So I think it's a it's an important thing to, and another thing, with with if you're a business and you're not accepting credit card Mhmm. My question becomes why.

Steve: Right.

Ari: Are you unable to because so many people have charged back on you that no merchant account will give you a merchant account anymore? So it tells us a lot. Mhmm. Just if if a business doesn't accept credit card, that might be enough for you to say, I don't wanna do business with you.

Steve: You know, every time I see a company that doesn't accept credit card, I always think it's unfortunately, you have such bad business acumen. Like, that's try not to be a judgmental person, but, like, you see these guys, like, oh, I'm trying to save 3%. It's like, really?

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: Really? How much business have you lost? Right. Saving 3%? For me, the convenience is is is is way too important.

So Yeah. So one of the things that we talked about, right, like, the when we were talking before, what what's important to me to make sure everyone understood is, like, you have this ability to get people 250,000 fast. Right? So someone's listening, and they want to work with you to get capital. Like, what is the process to get started?

Ari: So the process says they would go to the Fund and Grow website

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And they would click the prequalification link, which is right at the top of the website. Mhmm. Without the prequalification, we don't know what someone will qualify for. Yeah. So we have a sixty day money back guarantee.

So we really wanna know before you get started if we're gonna be able to help you so we don't have to run your credit card and then give you your money back. Mhmm. You know? So the prequalification tool immediately within, like, twenty seconds prints out exactly how much funding they'll be able to get access to with a soft pull. It does not leave any inquiry on the report.

Steve: Yeah. And so there are a lot of companies out there that offer the service. Right? For someone that is wanting to make sure they work on the with the right company, What questions should they be asking? What are some red flags to look out for?

Ari: That's a good question. So because

Steve: it's hard for us on the outside looking in. Yeah.

Ari: Or on

Steve: the outside, like, like, what makes a good company or not?

Ari: Yeah. One of the things I would ask is, are these all personal credit cards or are these business cards?

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: So many of the companies that we work with, they apply for personal credit cards. And then they're like, well, we could do business too if you want. What do you specialize in? Mhmm. Will you like, Fundigo will help you set up the entity.

We'll make sure that the EIN is set up properly so that we're we can use it in conjunction with applications and keep it off your credit report. So that's really important is keeping it off your credit, report. I would ask that. Now, another thing Fund and Grow does is, let's say that someone's signing up for us and they're they're using a credit card that is maxed out or, I'm sorry, close to being maxed out. And they're like, well, I'm gonna put it on this card.

Funding Real will be like, no. Because then now it's gonna hurt your ratio, and then we're not gonna be able to apply for you. Mhmm. So we're gonna even, through that pre qualification tool, look at all of their credit cards that they already have, even recommend. We recommend that you put our charge on this card or on that card to make sure that you're at the right ratio so that when you get started, we can move forward right away.

A lot of companies, they're looking to just to make that sale. That's it. Right. And And that they're not first. Yeah.

And they're they're not asking you to pay by credit card. We just talked about that. Mhmm. They don't have a sixty day money back guarantee. They're most of these companies, I don't I I haven't seen a single one that's offering the third party payment services to be able to help people after the after the you know, to be able to actually make make their payments and do the things.

So there like, there's a a whole variety of things. And I would say that another thing is just being able to have access to a team that's built $2,000,000,000 worth of this type of credit cards. Yeah. When you're applying for these and getting access to these, you you you don't know what to say to the underwriter. You don't know until you've talked to Fund and Grow, and Fund and Grow tells you, listen.

This is the psychology of what they're looking for. This is what they're gonna ask you. This is what you need to tell them. No. We're not talking about lying or saying anything untoward.

We're talking about just, being able to present their business in a way where the banks are, like, approved.

Steve: Right.

Ari: So that's another thing. There's a lot of these services. In fact, I don't know any service that teaches the client how to do the follow-up that we do. Like, if I had our CRM pulled up in front of you, and I was showing you this month where we get where where we're getting whatever, like, 25,000,000 in business credit cards

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And where you could see 5,000,000 of those credit cards came from the application. 20,000,000 came from the follow-up process. Yeah. So we would have got 5,000,000 had we just done the application. And even that 5,000,000 of business credit cards the client wouldn't have got had we not done the positioning Mhmm.

The merging, all of the different ratios and things that we're looking for before we even applied. So before we even applied, we're doing that positioning. Then we're when we apply, that's usually less than one third of the total funding that we're gonna be creating. Two thirds, if not more, come in through the negotiations process. We don't know any other company that even does that.

Steve: Mhmm. Negotiation with?

Ari: With the banks to be able to follow-up and communicate with the banks to be able to get whatever the limits they gave you popped up to a higher amount. That's that's the bread and butter of what Fund and Grow teaches their clients.

Steve: Gotcha. And then, like, I've seen some stuff, you know, on Instagram with someone. It's like, hey, you like your get business credit cards? Because when you get a business credit card, you don't have to pay it back.

Ari: You don't have to pay it back?

Steve: Yeah. That's what I've seen. It's popped up in my feed. I was like, this is crazy.

Ari: That's yeah. That's that's that's Is

Steve: that a red flag?

Ari: That sounds like a red flag. Yeah. You don't have to pay it back. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So what do you see in, like, these promises, like, you know, your your your competition? What are they saying out there that's, like, I don't know if that's true? Are you seeing anything else like that out there?

Ari: There are yes. So some of our competition, what they do is they they will directly, interact with the banks as if they are the client. Really? Yeah. Okay.

So that's, you know, like, seek capital and a couple of these businesses. That's one of the things that was mentioned in the FTC lawsuit. You can't you know, even if you have a power of attorney on your client, you can't call the bank and pretend to be them.

Steve: Yeah. Well, pretending. That's that's the problem.

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. You can have a power of attorney that you can do verbal and audible

Steve: Represent them.

Ari: Yeah. Right. Yeah. But you would have to to to tell the bank that. And then if you tell them that, then the bank doesn't want to move forward under that arrangement.

Steve: Got it.

Ari: So it's really important that we are advising the client on how to do this properly. We don't wanna get your card shut down. No. And so that's what can happen in those situations as it ends up hurting the client, not funding grow. Mhmm.

So we need to make sure that what we're teaching the client is gonna benefit them the most, just like applying for personal cards versus business cards. If I only focus on personal cards, I could get you way more. I might look better. Mhmm. But the way to help you long term is to get you business credit cards that do not report to your personal so you can actually use them time and time again and be able to get to grow that amount and not bog down your personal.

Steve: Can you explain that a little bit more nuance, like, why? And you might have said it already, but, like, you know, why is why why is business significantly better in personal? Because you talk about 60% versus 35%.

Ari: Mhmm.

Steve: Are there other reasons? Like, does does does the limit just continue to grow over time? Why business right over personal credit?

Ari: So imagine that you are living, like, the rest of your life. Like, you got kids, you got other stuff going on, and you need to use your credit. Maybe you need to cosign for your kid on a auto loan, or you need to do, maybe in your real estate business, you're getting more mortgages. These are all reasons why you don't wanna take a personal hit for using money that's gonna be invested into your business. If you're in putting money into your business, that needs to be coming from a loan that's been approved for a business.

Right.

Steve: I

Ari: mean, I'm not saying that anyone's doing anything illegal by using personal credit cards for their business.

Steve: You're just saying strategically Yes. Better off, going in that way. And then you guys do was it 20,000,000 a month now?

Ari: Yeah. I mean, we've done more than that. We've done, like, 30,000,000 a month. We've done down to, like, 15,000,000 a month. Yeah.

It it it kind of it it varies.

Steve: But like we were saying at the beginning, 2,000,000,000, you you as an organization, you guys are funded. Yep. So it's a lot of money. Yep. And you're clearly passionate about it.

Why are you so passionate about Fund and Grow?

Ari: So I love being able to help entrepreneurs. When I think of what I learned in school, and, they used to teach us about America. Right? Mhmm. And I know that hundreds of years ago, Americans were, like, they were, like, trading furs, and they were farmers, and they were hunters, and Yeah.

They were woodworkers, carpenters. And what would people do with that? Did they take it to Walmart? No. No.

They directly represented their wares in the market. Mhmm. And here we are, fast forward a couple hundred years, 99.9% of the people all work for some big company.

Steve: Right.

Ari: Fund and Grow is helping entrepreneurs leave their corporate job and and do it for do whatever they do, whatever they're gonna bring to market to do it for themselves. Mhmm. To get to directly be able to give them access to leverage. I'm I'm sure you've been on cruises, and you've been down in islands, like in Jamaica and these different islands. And when you walk around, when you go on the little tours and stuff, you see these houses that have the rebar coming out the top.

Steve: You You know

Ari: what I'm talking about? Mhmm. They got, like, one level, two level, but there's still rebar stick like and what we find out, the reason why that doesn't happen in a lot of Western countries is because people have access to OPM. Mhmm. You can get access to enough money to build the whole house.

Steve: Right.

Ari: In Jamaica, mom and dad build the first level. Second level's waiting for the kids to build. You know, they they they don't even have enough money per se to be able to build the whole thing. And here we are with this amazing ability to be able to lend millions or hundreds of thousands, if not, and for some people, millions of dollars to be able to buy things like real estate or businesses. To me, that's just absolutely amazing.

You know? Like, we live in this Disneyland that gives us access to all these different things, like like business credit cards and SBA loans and stuff like that. Like, how can we not be thankful and take advantage of these things and, you know, use them to help build, you know, our businesses, which end up helping our families, our communities? You know, I think every every man should be working hard on trying to become an entrepreneur. I just feel very strongly about it.

That when you're working for yourself and you're putting all of your energy into things for yourself and your family, you're gonna put so much. You're gonna be twenty four seven. Do you ever stop, Steve? You're never gonna stop. And it feels freaking awesome.

It feels just amazing. Like, I would never wanna go back to, you know I mean, not that saying working for for people is bad because I love my employees, but it's just not for me.

Steve: Yeah. So a special place in your heart for for entrepreneurs. So then what is what is something you wanna be remembered for when everything's said and done?

Ari: Helping a lot of people.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: So, helping businesses grow, helping a lot of, you know, people get out of their nine to five, out of their corporate, into their into doing something that makes them feel proud for themselves. And it's just like it doesn't matter if it's gardening or woodworking or if they were hunting. You know what I mean? Like, back in the day or even today. It doesn't even matter what you do.

Mhmm. Just find a way to be of service and of value to others and guarantee you, you'll have a lot of people coming to buy your service.

Steve: The best thing about this country is there's literally an unlimited way unlimited number of ways to make money. Like, you know, you you you see, like, you know, I do a lot of marketing and Internet marketing now as well as on top of everything else is get into, like, you know, people like, they make money from, like, make selling Etsy templates. Right? Like, these, like, these things, you know, you make a template for an Etsy site, and you sell these templates for, like, $17. And that's their whole business.

Ari: Mhmm.

Steve: Selling these little $17 templates. There's literally no limit to, like, how you can make a living Yeah. Working for yourself Yep. In this country.

Ari: Yeah. And, also, the Amish community it wasn't really Amish like I told you. Right. They're they're called the but they are they're extremely entrepreneurial. They now have a lot of different, what they call houses where they're, like, inside like, there's one in Saint Pete.

They do all thing all kinds of things from, like, carpentry to daycare. And these aren't even in their main locations where their main businesses are. So I just find that there's so many things that are that down to earth, like daycare. That's such an easy thing

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: To, you know and and, it's also something that people pay a really pretty penny for. Yeah. You know? And how often are people worried to drop off their kids at some of these big corporate places or some of these Mhmm. You know, more known places.

Yeah. And so there's just so many different niches and ways to get in to be able to help. One of my friends, he, helps people by doing this process of putting magnets on them. This guy didn't know anything about that. Mhmm.

And he learned about this bio magnetism process. Mhmm. And and if you Google it and look it up, it's it's a huge thing. It's like some it's a wellness thing. Like, over in Europe, your insurance pays for it and stuff.

Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a real thing. I I do it, and it it's unbelievable how it makes you feel. They call it magnet pair therapy.

You've heard of, like, acupuncture. Mhmm. Right? So they take the needles, and they put it on the different points. Yeah.

Well, the the the magnet pair therapy is by taking two magnets, and it creates a, like, a flow between them from the north to the south. Mhmm. So they put it on, like, one side of the heart and the other side.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And then it flows through and gets the chi or the energy to move rather than using the needles.

Steve: Yeah.

Ari: And so they put the magnet pairs on either side of all these different organs that they wanna do that to. Interesting. And this guy is now making, like, $10.12 grand a week. He went from charging like $100 a session Mhmm. To like $300 a session to like $1,200 a session.

Yeah. And he says, I wish I just listened to this other guy that was telling him, he's like, you gotta charge more. You gotta charge more. Mhmm. You gotta charge more.

And, and and that is anybody could get into that particular industry. Mhmm. The magnet parathy is something that you can get certified on, you can go and do. And people are are are trying to get into the holistic alternative health Yeah. Space, you know, more than ever before.

You know, so, like, I find that type of, entrepreneurship just absolutely amazing. And I had this other friend who, I met him when I was buying guns at this gun shop that he owned. I'm from Florida, so we love guns. Oh, yeah. It's Arizona, so you guys do too.

Open people everywhere. Yeah. But under under, you know, some of the past administrations has kind of been under under attack, so his gun store wasn't doing too well. Yeah. And so he went into woodworking.

Woodworking. And he built this shop in the back of his house, like, outside, you know, like an actual shop. And, he's done all kinds of woodworking stuff for me, for my friends, for all these he has a whole business now doing it, and I think he makes more than what he was doing doing guns.

Steve: Mhmm.

Ari: And so this is like, it's so easy, actually. You just have to, like, put your energy into something and keep doing it. Like, I have people all the time that are telling me, Ari, why are you not doing this type of loan and that and doing this and doing this? You have all these clients come to you. And what we got good at was doing one thing.

Mhmm. Focusing on one thing and doing that really, really, really, really well. Right. Not focusing on a thousand things and all the new things. Mhmm.

We're doing the same thing, business credit cards that we did when I got hired by Dave.

Steve: Yeah. What is your superpower?

Ari: Superpower. I guess I should say our superpower is funding people.

Steve: That's a company's superpower.

Ari: Yeah. That's that's our company's superpower.

Steve: Personally?

Ari: I don't know that I have any superpowers.

Steve: What would your, Daniel is your partner? Yes. What would Daniel say?

Ari: What is my superpower? Mhmm. I don't know. To annoy him. No.

I mean, I guess they would say to bring in the leads, you know, to to make it easier for everyone in the office to make the salespeople happy.

Steve: Yeah. Probably the most important thing in an organization. Yeah. Get the salespeople to make it easy to sell. And I guess the the, last question here is what book have you gifted more than any other?

Ari: Have I gifted? Mhmm. Well, unfortunately, I would say that's the Fund and Grow book. Mhmm.

Steve: You have a book.

Ari: Yeah. But, but putting my own self serving book to the side, which is not near as good, Abraham Hicks, the law of attraction Mhmm. Without a doubt. Actually, I'd recommend any of Abraham's books.

Steve: Mhmm. So Yeah. I know his name. But I'm trying to think, like, I've actually picked the name of

Ari: his book. It's actually a, I know it sounds really weird, but, it's actually a female, and her name is Esther Hicks. But she's, like she she calls herself Abraham because she's she, like, channels the information. I don't care where the information comes from. Oh.

When you hear the stuff that Esther talks about, it's it's completely changed my life. Esther is the reason why I went from working in the shipyard because she's also one of the people that was in the original version of the secret.

Steve: I see.

Ari: But she was actually so much in the original version of the secret that when it went international two years later, because I think it came out, like, 2002, and then, like, a year like, and then they were on Oprah. Mhmm. And then, like, a year after that, it was, like, all over the world. And, on the international version, they actually cut Abraham out because she was receiving, like, 60 of the revenue in the entire film. And so and they were, like, what can we do?

Abraham's, like, well, I don't care. Just cut me out. She lets people use her content on YouTube at no charge either.

Steve: Right. Yeah. If I remember now, I think, our ops person and our organization is always listening to that. I think that's when she's always, like, you gotta listen to this, like, yeah. Yeah.

I will.

Ari: Yes. Once you start, you become addicted. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay. And so, again, if someone wants to connect with you, it's just funandgrow.com?

Ari: Yeah. If, I mean, if if they wanna connect as an affiliate, then, you know, that would say reach out to me directly. Mhmm. You know, I could leave maybe my email address.

Steve: Sure.

Ari: Or yeah. Yeah.

Steve: What's the best way to get ahold of

Ari: you? Well, my email is Ari, a r I, and then period, then Paige,page,@fundandgrow.com. Alright. And, yeah. I would love to to reach out, you know, for anyone that reaches out to me to to talk to them.

And any client that wants to get started or just to see what they qualify for, that's where I'd recommend. Go to fundergrow.com. Click on the prequalification tool. Yep.

Steve: Perfect. Simple enough. What are some last thoughts you wanna leave all the listeners with?

Ari: Last and first, get started doing something now. Like, my mom used to tell me when I was younger that I would probably end up selling ice to Eskimos, and I didn't understand that. But now I wish I had started way earlier. Mhmm. You know, like, I didn't need to have a career working in the shipyard and all that type of stuff.

Mhmm.

Steve: You know

Ari: what I mean? I could have just started doing what I was passionate about, which is talking to people in business and just communicating. Because I'm very certain I could sell whatever. If it was ice and if it was Eskimos, I I'd do that too.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. So get started. Yes. Alright.

Perfect. Well, thank you very much.

Ari: Thank you, Steve. You're welcome. Appreciate you.

Steve: Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next time. Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.

How Ari Page Helped Entrepreneurs Generate $2 Billion In Funding Instantly

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From Owing $60M To Funding $4B In 2025

How Ari Page Helped Entrepreneurs Generate $2 Billion In Funding Instantly

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