Alex Setzer, CEO of GoLobby Speaks About His Business and What It Brings! | Biz To Biz Podcast

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Hey everybody, welcome to B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast. And today I am honored to have one of my clients on the show. Now I'm going to mess up. Jonathan, Alex from—

Alex, just go with Alex. Huh? Alex Setzer.

Alex Spencer. Setzer.

Setzer. S-E-T-Z-E-R.

Okay, Alex Setzer, and he's the founder of a platform called GoLobby. And, you know, me and Alex met a while ago, and, uh, he called me with a very frustrating telephone call, which we'll get into. And, uh, Alex introduce yourself to the B2B Vault audience.

Well, Allen, first of all, appreciate the opportunity, bud, and appreciate everything that you've done for us. Yeah, so we have a new concept. It's called— we call it GoLobby. It's golobby.com, and it's a first-of-its-kind, you know, concept. And basically what we have done is we are looking to bridge the gap between political lobbying and the average consumer. I've been a political lobbyist for 20 years, been in the political process for a little bit more than that. And the, the challenges of the political lobbying world are that if you are a political lobbyist, there's only like 10% of the population, if even that, they can afford your services. Those are generally large corporations or associations or very wealthy individuals. And the other side of the coin, and this is just through my experience, was that the average consumer, and I would see this in every single meeting I would go to, whether it was state or local level, they'd have 250 people in the room who would be, you know, we can't afford the expensive lobbyists and the cards are stacked against us and we never had a fighting chance. And there was a lot of truth to that. So we've come up with this revolutionary concept that what it does is it bridges the gap between the average everyday voter, consumer, citizen, and professional political lobbying. We're calling it Democratizing Democracy. And what it does is it allows anyone who wants to, to go create a campaign on our site. And through the power of crowdfunding, you can generate a lot of, a lot of revenue that then can be used to match you to a political lobbyist, um, all across the United States of America and at local, state, or federal level. And then with, with the income that you generated, you can actually afford a top-tier lobbyist to go fight for your issue on your behalf. But those issues are wide and varied for sure.

Yeah, and I, you know, when, uh, when Alex first called me on the phone, you know, the first call was, uh, this is my business and I've talked to 20 people and no one can help me.

It might have even been more than 20 people.

And I, you know, I sat down, you know, we had a conversation. He basically like explained his whole business to me showed me the website, which took, you know, we had to go behind the scenes and look at everything. And then I kind of had to explain to him the process that we had to go through to get this from start to finish. And it was a really, you know, I know it was time-consuming. And Alex and his team, I really give them credit because they had invested a lot of money into this project. And, you know, I wanted to help. I was determined to help them finish the project. And through, you know, we met and we had many experts in the credit card industry. And I want to tell you, like many, many people, we had Roberto from one company who ends up to write the business, look at everything and give his suggestions. We had another compliance expert come in. And give their suggestions. And all in the end, all the suggestions and all the work paid off. And we're at launch code right now.

Yeah, it's funny because I think anybody who's ever started, especially online platform or any new venture, you always know there's gonna be some bump or some rub, like one issue that's gonna be the hardest issue to get launched and to overcome. In the beginning of this process, if you would've told me that was credit card processing, I would've laughed at you. I honestly believe that would be something that we would like do, hey, you know, I want a credit card processor. I'll, you know, I'll ask for it on a Friday and get it on a Monday type of deal. In a million years, I never thought I would've went through that entire process and really just the hoops. And I learned a lot through it. And most of it, thankfully to you. Able to get through this process. But you learn a lot. Like, credit card processing is something that I don't think I ever wanted to know this much about or learn this much about, but here we are.

Yeah, people don't realize, you know, a lot of people come up with these like really brilliant business ideas, you know. And I thought your, your business idea, I thought it was fantastic. And I was telling you a story, like right now I'm talking to the people where I live in Margate, Florida, The, uh, there's a golf course in my community and the golf course owner wants to build all these apartments. The neighbors don't want it. It's very difficult to communicate to people today because where— how can you communicate to this crowd of 9— there's over 9,000 homes in our subdivision. The, you know, there's one big association and a bunch of small associations. And how can you do that? We would have to send mail to everybody. There's no guarantee everybody's going to read the mail. We don't have everybody's email and nobody gets the newspaper anymore. If there was a newspaper, if everybody got the newspaper like 20 years ago, there would just be a newspaper story and then everybody would be protesting down at the city. And yet we've had a couple meetings and I'm trying to convince a bunch of the people that we should go lobby and get a lobbyist and then kick this landowner and the city in the cojones, right? And get our point across that we don't want them to build 900 apartments.

We actually have our first live campaign. So we've really been live for really a matter of weeks. We were obviously a little bit live, but we haven't been real live for about 3 or 4 weeks now. And we actually have our first campaign being funded by the citizens to hire professional lobbyists. To fight a local and state issue. And it's very similar to yours. And it's been interesting because everybody we talk to, they go, "Well, why wasn't this around? Why has this never been an option?" And the truth is, it's a simple concept, but it really required a fair amount of understanding of how this process works and somebody who was crazy enough to go do it, I guess. That's what I keep being told. But back to the credit cards, I mean, we have these weekly phone calls with my investors, And everything is going well. The website's being created. Everybody's in a good mood. Like all the things that like designing the website that we envisioned. I said, man, it's working exactly how I saw it when I thought about it for, you know, the 2-year lead up to it. But every single time it was like, well, so, you know, why aren't we live? Well, I don't have a credit card processor. And I mean, that really was, it was crazy. Again, I, if you would have told me this would have been the one major issue, I would have that. But yeah, I mean, thanks, thanks to you again, bro.

A lot of people don't understand, like, there's compliance issues that come into play when you're doing different things when it comes to payments, as to how that's going to all play out. And even, you know, even the simplest e-commerce website, you know, a simple website just selling like whatever, you're selling this on the website, or you're selling a cup, right? You've got to have, you know, a privacy policy, terms and conditions, return refund policies. You know, you've got to have your GDPR. You've got to have checkboxes when people check out, you know, and that's just on the very simplest level, right? And then when you're thinking up some kind of advanced, you know, platform, right? Oh, we're going to do this crazy thing. And that's always it. It's like the thing that nobody's ever done before. Right. And I can say that in the last year I worked on one, two projects that nobody's ever done before, like a business no one's ever heard of. And we got them both approved by two different banks, Alex's company, GoLobby, and another company. And no one had ever worked on, worked on any of this before. And it was, they were, they were just, it was just about, you know, like going back to the bank and going, okay, like, is that threading the needle? Do we need anything else? You know, anything else, anything else? And then going to somebody who is like very knowledgeable with compliance and asking them to do us a— do me a favor, right?

Normally, yeah, for sure.

Won't say that. I'll say, you know, my friend Kevin, right? No, let you know, Kevin doesn't like publicity, but in order to get somebody like Kevin to like look at your project, you might have to spend thousands of dollars to get Kevin to do that. But since he's a friend of mine for over 20 years, you know, I called them in today, you know, could you put eyeballs on this?

And I mean, it's even more complicated than that because— and I had this conversation with somebody who's interested in starting their own site right now, and it's a little less complicated than ours and it's not as outside the box. And remember, we're the first of its kind to do this. So, you know, banks don't like the new, right? Banks like put you in a certain cookie cutter box and this is the box you live in. So when you're trying to live in like two boxes, they're sitting there going, we don't know what to do with you. It's not an exaggeration to say that I talked to 20 or 25 people before, you know, you came onto my radar. And all of them, it was just, well, I can't put you in this box and you don't fit in this box, so I don't know what to do with you. And it became incredibly frustrating. And then, you know, working through the process with you was great because, you know, you were able to basically explain to me, don't say the following this way, because if you say that, it's going to bring up this issue. And you won't be compliant in this way. So like I said, I've learned more about compliance than I would ever care to admit. I've learned more about acronyms. I've learned more about consumer credit card processing. It is a crazy, crazy wild, wild west world out there. And if you don't have the right person to navigate it, you truly— I don't know that you could get through the process.

Well, I appreciate that. But also, you know, I have the ability to reach out to like some really good experts, you know, a president of a payment processor, you know, that actually took interest and their board members took interest in the project. They thought they really liked it and they thought that it had merit and the public needed it. And believe me, I had to go to, I had like 2-hour-long meetings with them to pitch your business. I'm pitching your business. I'm like, listen, you guys need to help this guy. This is a cool project. And this is— the public needs this. And I think, listen, I hope that the people in my community bite off on it and we do the second Go Lobby.

Yeah, I think it can help you. So I equate it to this. We're trying to make it a very simple way of explaining it. You can have the single best cookie on the market, right? But if Publix doesn't put you on the shelf, it does not matter. And that is exactly what this process is like. You have a great idea and you know it'll probably do well and you know it's something that the public needs, but if no one's willing to take a chance on you and give you an opportunity to put you on the shelf, then it really doesn't matter.

Yeah, and it just takes, you know, the— you know, I believe me, I've had companies come to me before, they get like super frustrated, and I'm like, listen, like, if, you know, you, you're gonna have to thread the needle on compliance because compliance just keeps getting tougher and tougher with anti-money laundering rules and, you know, AML, John, looks probably like AML You know, you know, hearing that for the first time, like, you start to just go— but it's, you know, we deal with AML every day, like anti-money laundering. Like, I have to explain to merchants, like, we sell you an ATM. You can't take the cash out of your cash register and put it in your ATM machine. That's money laundering on its simplest level.

So I think my favorite was when we got to the point where it's like, oh, everything is great except for now you have to verify every single person against the Homeland Security list that comes onto your site. And I'm like, excuse me? Like, what are we talking about now? And, you know, so it's just a tough world to navigate, and I think it's getting increasingly tougher. So it's just important to have somebody who can get you through the process. There is no way we would be up and running and where we are if we not had somebody navigate for us. It's remarkably complicated.

No, it's, uh, it's, it's crazy though. But because— but also, we had discussed that like right before we started working on your project, it was like two huge companies that were in a funding space and they were being investigated because there was foreign money coming in and shouldn't be, whatever. It's crazy. Everything. And in the end, I wish Alex all the success and his partners. And I hope that this thing catches fire. And you guys get a bunch of people wanting to put their issues and then get it funded and hire so that the little guy has a voice. I always feel like since the newspapers are gone, that we don't have the ability for people that don't have a ton of money Right.

Yeah.

That they don't have a voice, you know, and this gives everybody a voice.

So the origin story of this is actually very funny, if I'm being honest with you. So I had an HOA, which is kind of like the scenario you're in right now, right? And this was like 3 years ago, who wanted to hire me. And they really were kind of getting screwed over on multiple levels of government. And it was a water rights issue and they were getting bounced back and forth. It was very, very complicated. And the more complicated the issue is, the more expensive it's going to be. So I quoted them a certain price and, you know, immediately they said, we just don't have that money. And I said, I totally understand that. I mean, I get it. And that's why the little man gets screwed over because they don't have the ability to hire somebody like myself. And 3 or 4 months go by and I get a phone call from the HOA president out of the blue. And he says, I've got your money. And I said, you gotta be kidding me. I said, I gotta just ask, how did you get the money? He says, oh yeah, I just, I just went up like every Saturday morning, I'd go knock on— there was like a thousand rooftops in the neighborhood. He goes, I just go knock on all the doors. And he's like, you know, it was like $50 here, $25 there, a couple people gave me $100. He's like, before you know it, you know, I was able to get all of your money. So I go— I live in Orlando, I go to an Orlando Magic basketball game that night. I'm a couple beers in, but I'm sitting there, I'm like, I can't keep scaling this concept. Why couldn't you like take this exact concept using crowdfunding and scale it on a platform that allowed everybody to do this? And because crowdfunding exists, we all know that, and political lobbying exists, and these are two industries. I mean, if you think about it, political lobbying is the oldest industry in America. It's 250 years old, right? It's been around forever. But you've never— you've had two groups of people that have never been able to do business together. So both sides want to do business together. They just never had the ability to do it. So we created it as a— yeah, yeah.

And more and more, more so it's, it's not really like crowdfunding. It's more like, hey, here's the bill, but we're all going to— or we're all going to split the bill like in a restaurant, right? You got your bill in the restaurant. We're all splitting the bill. And that's kind of like what the concept is. It's not really like a crowdfunding because the money's not coming from all over the place. It's coming from a select group of people.

Well, and it's different in one single way. It's the way we have it set up is you know exactly what you, what you need, what the total bill is going to be before the money starts coming in, right? So then here's our very specific bill. Like you said, everybody put your credit card in, right? I mean, it's not like we're just gonna raise as much as we can. It's like, this is what we need to hire. We've selected this individual we think would be the best for our issue, and we— the total bill is this, and we all need to chip into the pot here to make sure we can do this. And like I said, it is a new concept and, and we're, and, you know, we're looking to prove it. And I believe, you know, give us some time here. I believe once people— it's an educational process too, because it's, you know, great for like associations.

An association has an issue, okay, we got 2,000 members in our association, everybody can chip in to pay the bill, you know.

Yeah, so we actually are in talks right now onboarding a couple of those in, in the first month here. And so there are associations, many associations out there who hire professional lobbyists. I'll use an example. Like every state probably has a realtor board. They do, you know, they hire political lobbyists on behalf of the realtors to go to their state or local level and fight for certain issues. So they already are all shipping into the pot. The problem they have is you've got 2,000 lobbyists across, you know, whatever state you were in, and everybody's got to mail a check in. And somebody's got to track the money down. Now all you got to do is send them a link and say, everybody just make your donation here and the money immediately goes to pay for the lobbyists. So it's making— it's simplifying the process.

And yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity out there for associations, for homeowners to really put, you know, get their voice heard. You know, like you were telling me, it's not like overly expensive. But you just have to have a way where everybody can share and pay the bill. Everybody can chip in to pay the bill.

Well, the other side of the coin is this. It allows for a very fast process. So it's no longer like, I've got to mail you a check to do this, or we've got to go knock on doors to get the money. It is a very— because politics moves very quickly. And a lot of times these issues, you have 2, 3, 4 weeks, or it might be an issue where like, hey, we're going to gear up for this for a year. But a lot of times, and HOA is a great example of that, you know, maybe you're talking about this golf course, you might have a city council meeting coming up in 6 weeks and you're like, we've got to move the lights now. And so this is the quickest, easiest way to bring on a professional to go fight on behalf of our behalf.

Yeah, because it's, you know, it's difficult and, you know, it's a crazy— it's crazy that, you know, you would have thought that somebody would have come up with this idea sooner, but nobody has. And, you know, That's what, you know, United States of America and entrepreneurship, you know, is so important that we have entrepreneurs out there like Alex and his partners. And, you know, you have, you know, I applaud people when they're doing a startup, you know, and how they have to persevere through all of the different, you know, trials and tribulations that come up when you're doing a startup. Because if you're coming up with an idea that nobody's done before, You know, a lot of people don't understand you're going to have to convince somebody at a bank or credit card processor to take a chance on that project. And a lot of times when I talk to people like that, they ask—

they—

I've had people like, oh, you're going to put the president of a company on the phone with me? And I'm like, yeah, like, you know, no one's ever done this before. Like, we can't— if we fill out an application and just send it in, the underwriting department's going to go, Huh? What? No, we're not doing it. You know, forget it. You know, you've got to really— you've got to— you've got to— you've got to get the C-suite involved. And that's one of the things, you know, because I've been doing payment processing for 25 years, started this company in 2001, right? And, you know, when I told Alex, I said, yeah, we're going to— you know, you're going to have a meeting with the president of the credit card company. And I put the credit— the president of the credit card company on a Zoom call with With Alex, I'm sure he was— I hope they— I hope your team was impressed. Like, you guys got to talk to them.

Well, I can tell you this, the 20 to 25 previous applications that we had put in, it was, you know, most people were the first line of defense, the second line of defense. Maybe you get past that and the second person in some room who you never get a chance to talk to is like, nope, we're not doing that. And, you know, you're filling these applications out endlessly. You just get to a point where you're going, why is it I can go to the farmer's market and swipe a credit card under somebody's tent But I can't get a credit card processing online for a multimillion-dollar invested startup. And so when you came on board and said, oh, we're going to meet with the president, our very first meeting, I was like, oh, this is very real. And it was nice to go back to my investors and say, hey, I've got a phone call with the president of the bank out of the gates. And I think this was very real.

Yeah, because it's important when you're, when you're going that route. I mean, you know, we've had—

I've had—

I was— I had another client a couple of years ago that contacted me. They watched the podcast and reached out to me and I said, oh yeah, we're going to put the, you know, someone from this bank on the call, the CEO or the COO is going to be on the Zoom call. And the guy told me he thought he— we're having the Zoom meeting and during the Zoom meeting I'm getting texts and I look at the text and the guy said, I thought you were full of it because wow, you guys really can't— you came through. And they were having the meeting with, you know, they were having a meeting with the president. They were having a meeting with the CEO and the COO of a bank. And I was like, listen, there's no other way to get your deal done because you just— this has never been done before, you know? And that's what it was.

It was even— it was even a little further than that. And this was something I went back and immediately told my investment group. It was not only were we having the conversation with the president of the bank, it wasn't just like, you know, sell me on the idea. It was, okay, if you want to do this, these are the following things we suggest you do in your application. And I mean, that's, that's, I can't believe that's the next level stuff, right? Because at this point they're asking, you know, they have interest and they're giving you the best possible route to success. And, and, and if you're a startup, you don't often get that type of level of engagement. I mean, usually it's like you're trying to beat the door down over and over again and get the concept across. But when you have the president actually telling you, hey, I'm interested, but you have to do the following things to, to get me on board, that was very helpful.

Yeah, it's definitely helpful. And we try to, you know, we try to help as, you know, clients with that, you know, especially startup companies. There's a lot of times people have sunk in a lot of money by the time, you know, to their, um, you know, into their business. And you don't, you know, and you want to look at it and you go, hey, like, this is a worthy— this is a work— definitely a worthy project. And, you know, we worked very hard to get it all done. And, you know, and I wish Alex, like, great success. So tell, tell everybody, the audience, like, what kind of, you know, projects should people consider bringing to, like, Go Lobby? Besides, we talked about homeowner associations. We talked about different types of associations that might exist, a realtor association, or maybe there's like a union out there and they need a voice in Congress.

You know, like, yeah, I mean, so I actually think that's, that's the beauty of this concept is there is no lack of clientele, you know, or consumers or voters or citizens who can benefit from this, right? So it might be something as very specific as we are trying to stop, you know, something from being built down the road, or we want something built in our community, or, you know, we need funding for a community center, you know, any of those things. But it can also be in a lot of ways, I mean, there are a lot of issues out there. If you go on any of these political forum sites, right, you can go under the Reddit, you will see these, you know, they're more 10,000-foot view level concepts. And the beauty of this concept is, is you can, you can say, okay, here's my concept. I want to, I'll say, save a whale, you know, whatever it may be. Or, you know, we want to save lynx, or, you know, we want to, we want the state to put more money into solar. I mean, it could be anything, right? Or it could be the federal level. And by, by having— by being able to fund and bring in a professional, they can help you take those very 10,000-foot view levels and then get down to a brand new 1,000-foot view level and then take your concept and put it into action and try to make it work. So I mean, there is absolutely no like downside to being too big or too small. And the argument that I've always made is the way our website works is you start funding the concept, get a bunch of people to fund, or maybe you have those groups who are already ready to fund, you have a very specific idea. But, you know, the money isn't gone as soon as you donate. As soon as you donate, the funds are not taken out of— the funds are not distributed until you actually have a promise. So we're allowing people a really good opportunity here to take things that they can't really sit around and talk about every day, whether it's, you know, the cancer on a chat forum. They would talk about since they were in middle school or something important to them. And finding like-minded people and pulling the resources together to pay for a professional to go make this happen. And in the political process, I've told this to people, I'm sure everybody has been in a room with 250 people, whether it's a community, you know, a city council or a county commission, state house or federal government. And all 250 of you or 300, whatever, might be, you have these concepts in mind, you know what you're trying to do. And what's frustrating, and many times this is true, is that the other side that you're fighting against is probably very well funded. It's probably a corporation or a very wealthy individual. They have been having these conversations with elected officials behind the scenes for months and weeks because they could hire a professional who knew how to go in there and knows how to talk to staff and knows how to knock the doors down and it was— understand something. The machinations and mechanisms of government. So we're calling it democratizing democracy for a reason, because it allows the average citizen to now be able to access the type of political power that you need to navigate these moments and to affect real change. And I do think it's, it's game-changing, because in the history of America, there has never been this opportunity for the average citizen to have access to this sort of It simply has never been done. And so that's what we're attempting to do here. And we think it's a revolutionary concept and we believe it's going to take off.

Yeah. And that's exactly what's going on in my city is that the developers having backdoor meetings with the different, not with the elected officials, but with the people who work in the city. And I think that issues that are that big need to be the The citizens need to vote on. It was very telling in the election, our local election in the city, there's 55,000 or 58,000 residents and only 11,000 or 12,000 voted in the local.

I make this joke and again, to the average citizen, I'm the evil lobbyist, but I know what I'm doing and everybody else like me knows what they're doing and we're very effective in what we do. So, you know, you know, it's no joke. If you can't beat the city, don't join it. And I've made this— I've told this to everybody. I'm like, look, I understand your frustration. And in many ways, you're absolutely correct that you have been locked out of this process. And it is a process of 1% who have the ability to hire people like myself. Well, what if you level the playing field? What if that— what if now the 99% can access the 1%? Just think about the change in dynamic that that does to the power structure. Because now not only do the elected officials have to listen to the voters every— just when there's an election, they now are being accessed by those very same voters, by the powerful people that they're used to talking to every single day. It just levels the playing field. And it really is. And I understand it's a changing dynamic. And I have to tell you, whether it's— I've had this conversation with city groups, county groups, you know, the average citizen, get my haircut, I have the conversation, right? And then I've also had this conversation with lobbyists all across America because we want them on the website. We want them to make themselves available to the average citizen. And it's funny because everybody has said the same thing to me. They're like, why has no one else done this? And the truth is, I think this is true of a lot of ideas. Sometimes the simplest, the simplest solution is the right solution. And I just think that there's been this belief that you will never be able to combine the two, the average everyday citizen and the political power. I think there's just always been this chasm. And I think we live in a world now with technology, and, you know, we see this online where that world is shrinking, right? And so for 250 years, you didn't have access to people like myself or other people. Well, now you can. It's just a matter of utilizing a new technology. And I'm excited about it. And I'm excited about it for a lot of reasons. Because, you know, I'll tell you this, it scares some people. I mean, elected officials, I've got to have the conversation like, oh my God, can you imagine now? I mean, I'm going to have 250 people who would come yell at me, but now they're going to have you in there talking to me also. But that's a good thing.

I think that your business, your project, Go Lobby, your website, I think that gives the opportunity for the average layperson and all their neighbors to— it levels the playing field. Okay, to, for them to fight against City Hall.

It does. And additionally, on top of that, it allows them to take— because most people don't understand like how this process works, right? And it's intimidating to them. And it's by design to be that. But what it allows you to do is hire a professional who can take your idea and tell you, here's the, here's the idea, here's the method, here's the game plan, here's how we move afford to fight on behalf of us. And the best part is whether you can afford to donate, you know, $1 million or $1, it doesn't matter. It all adds up. It all adds up. It truly is leveling the playing field. And we keep saying democratizing democracy, but we mean that because that's actually what this is doing.

All right, everybody. Thanks. Thank you, Alex, for coming on the show today. I think he gave a good, good information to everybody, and we wish Alex much success with Go Lobby. And I think that it's an awesome project, awesome website. The concept is awesome. It's been needed, and I think that it's going to do a lot to help everybody do what they need to do, you know, to fight City Hall or whoever you want to fight against, the government, and give you the opportunity to get all your neighbors together and go, hey, this is our cause and this is the new way, 2025, this is the new way to fight City Hall and get the word out on what your issue is and help level the playing field so your voice can be heard and all your neighbors' voices can be heard, where all your whole association can be heard. I think it's really great. Any last words, Alex?

No, I just thank you for having me on and, you know, opportunity to talk about this cool new concept. And really, thank you for everything you did. We wouldn't be here today if we didn't have you to help us navigate this very difficult process.

Well, I appreciate that. And, uh, everybody, thank you for listening to B2B Vault today. Check out golobby.com. Com. Do you want more information about Alex and his project? I'm sure you guys can reach out to them on their contact form. Uh, if you're interested in learning more about what we do at Nationwide Payment Systems to help startup companies, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or through our website. Check out B2B Vault. We're on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, all the podcast places you can watch podcasts. And listen to podcasts. So everybody have a great day. Carpe diem. Peace out. Thank you very much.