Common Business Credit Mistakes That Cost You Money with Levi King

You're now watching B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast hosted by Allen Kopelman, powered by Nationwide Payment Systems, the number one solution for payment processing.

Hey everybody, welcome to B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast, where we provide educational information to business owners about all types of subjects around business and entrepreneurship. And today we're going to be talking about business credit and how it works with the owner. Levi King of nav.com. And, uh, interesting, when I first got into business, someone reached out to me from nav.com. They said, oh, you should register your business there, and then you can see what your business credit is. So we're going to dive in and talk to Levi today. Levi, introduce yourself to our audience.

Yeah, you bet. I appreciate you having me on. Started my first company in my early 20s fixing electric signs, bootstrapped my way all, all the way into manufacturing custom electric signs, did installation servicing as well. Sold that company when I think I was 25, but that was the first of 5 Main Street businesses I started in my 20s that were all successful. Owned a hotel and some franchises, different, different businesses. It was always super difficult to understand how credit and financing applied to each business. There's even in the early 2000s, there was some educational content online. You could go to freecreditreport.com and understand your personal credit. There's nothing for businesses. It's just a black hole. So I first co-founded a tech company called Lendio. Uh, really solves the, I need a loan now, what are my options? We partnered with 75 lenders and have hundreds of loan products, but bigger tips, but specifically business loans. And after just seeing so many small businesses go through that platform and either not get approved for any type of financing or not like their options that kind of inspired me to leave and co-found Nav. It's like Credit Karma for small business. We help small business owners understand how to, how do third parties make risk-based decisions on their business. Sometimes it includes personal credit, business credit, the cash flows in the business, and it's just incredibly complex as compared to figuring out all the same things in the consumer space. We've been at it now for 12, 13 years, got about a million small business owners that use our platform. And, uh, it was quite the journey to get this far along.

Yeah, believe me, credit card, you know, it's basically credit karma for businesses. I mean, people don't check, check their credit reports. They don't know how, you know, all the time what's going on even on their personal credit, let alone business credit. And we'll have companies come to us often and they'll be like, oh, I need to get a loan, where do I get a loan from? And they don't understand, you know, like how important it is to establish not just have the good, good personal credit, but you need to have good business credit at the same time. And you speak on that a little bit.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, personal credit is usually relevant for the long haul of your business because no matter how good your business credit is, if you want a business credit card or any type of business financing with favorable terms, they're going to check your personal credit. There's some types of financing like an equipment lease or expensive subprime financing where they don't even check the personal credit or, or they do, but it's super, super lax on the credit policy. If you have buttoned up business credit, then you have a lot more options. And so the personal credit matters. Business credit always matters. It matters a lot for business financing, business credit cards, and then in particular for trade credit. So if you want net 30 terms with one of your vendors so you don't have to pay for the lumber until you've completed the job, you know, the remodel job or whatever it is. You know, that's— it's usually the business credit that powers that whole world. It's used to decide, are we going to bring internet out to your business, whether you can have a business account with T-Mobile or some of the other telecom providers. It's used in the pricing of your insurance, sometimes in the discount processing rate that you pay as a business. And then in a lot of those scenarios, if you don't have any business credit or if it's not very good, that's where personal guarantees come up a lot. And it's obviously nice once you get more established you've got great business credit to be able to start getting out of those personal guarantees and make the business stand on its own two feet.

And a lot of times we'll see like small businesses get hurt because they go for these MCA loans, merchant cash advance. And when somebody asks me about merchant cash advance, I go, listen, you got to slow down and think about the long term. These companies are charging you 30 to 40% interest on a 100%. Like, yeah, but then what happens is, is they, they get us— they stack it, right?

That's right. Yep.

Oh, you're down to like the last $20,000? Oh, let us give you another $50,000 or $100,000. And then they're stacking that other $20,000 on top of that, and then you're paying more interest on that because now you're paying for, you know, a combined loan.

And you're—

and, and you could be paying up to 100% interest like you're talking about. And there's been several people who've gotten in a lot of trouble, companies, for doing that, stacking those loans. And I tell people all the time, if you pay attention and you keep your personal credit good and you run your business the right way, you can go out— even if you're a restaurant, which you can't always get loans for, you could get a line of credit from a bank or a lender that's not going to charge you that much interest.

That's right. There's certainly a place for them, but by and large, they're designed to kind of keep you on the hook, just like consumer payday loans. You're always paycheck behind and you're always paying that interest. And so personally, the cost of financing to me from a moral lens, like, is it right or wrong? I'm agnostic. To me, it's does it pencil out? Now, that said, there's a lot of predatory folks that they— their sales ethics are bad, their collections ethics are bad, their disclosure ethics are terrible. But there's times as a small business where you're backed against the wall or you have an opportunity you want to pounce on. As long as you understand how to do the math, which is really tough to do on an MCA, then it might make sense to take financing that's really expensive. But like you said, that's like— it's not the way to live your life as a small business owner. Stay on top of your personal credit, your business credit, your cash flows, and you'll always have much better options than an MCA. Yeah.

So tell me, what's the biggest, you know, thing that business owners don't understand? What's the most confusing thing they don't understand about business credit and why it's confusing to them?

Yeah, the first is intuitively any rational person that's just learning about it will go like, oh, this must work like personal credit, and it doesn't. There's very low consistency between the 3 commercial bureaus. So in the consumer space, if you're just tracking one credit report and score, there's 97% 7% data consistency between the 3 consumer bureaus. So you're probably in good shape with the other 2. It's okay. The commercial space, they have very different datasets. And so you got to keep your eye on all 3. Is it consumer? You know, there's just a handful of things that report credit cards, personal loans, mortgage, auto loans, and then different types of delinquencies. But you're— if you're renting, it's not showing up. Your cell phone provider is not reporting to your personal credit. In the commercial space, there's a lot more things that can report to your business credit. And trade credit is one of the biggest categories. It's $4 to $5 trillion a year that are lent. Now, I use air quotes because a lot of folks don't think of it as lending, but it is. They say, okay, you know, back to that, you know, contractor. I got a, I got a $40,000 remodel job. I'm in the state of California. The state only allows me to collect $1,000 upfront. So now I got a front probably 80 to 90% of that job is cost. You know, I probably got a 10 to 20% margin. So I got to put a lot on the line before I finally get paid. And most any contractor that's been around very long, they've got net 30 or net 60 relationships with every single supplier they work with, not just for lumber, but for electrical supplies, whatever it is they need to buy. And that is, that's the most common type of financing for business owners. That whole world is built off the back of business credit, not consumer credit. And so that's usually the steeper side of the learning curve. And then just simply not knowing that the 3 commercial bureaus exist. So a smart small business owner as it relates to consumer credit, you know, cash flow is tough, right? So you're like, oh shoot, who do I pay late? Usually smart enough to go— and they're usually using their personal credit cards in the business, usually smart enough to go, no, well, there's a consequence if I pay my Amex card late. Bob down the street where I buy my plumbing supplies, that's not going to hurt me. Well, Bob down the street offers you net 30 terms is reporting. And so you're getting— you're racking up slow payments, you're hammering your credit and you don't know. So it's usually just complete lack of awareness when folks start that they don't understand that there are reports and there's consequences to not having the same type of financial, you know, payments hygiene that you have as a consumer. That's all going to apply as a business, but even in a lot more scenarios that you don't even understand yet. So just the complexities of business credit reporting and then the business credit reports and those bureaus are not governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. And so you're not going to get a notification if you get turned down in part or in full because of your business credit for trade credit, business credit card, or business loan. You don't get an adverse action notice like you do as a consumer, which we've all got, right? Apply for that auto loan. They said no. You get a letter in the mail. Based in part or in whole by information from Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, whoever it was, we're not giving you a loan. And that forced consumer credit education because millions and millions of these letters are going out and people get online and search what the hell is TransUnion. And that doesn't happen in the commercial space. So that built-in kind of forced education mechanism doesn't exist because the Fair Credit Reporting Act doesn't cover business credit reports, scores, doesn't cover the bureaus, and it doesn't protect small business owners.

So do you provide some education on your website for small business owners? Is there education there?

Yeah, I mean, that's all we're about. Like, my whole inspiration starting the company was, as I mentioned, those folks going to Lendio that either didn't get approved for a loan or didn't like their options. I mean, they're always screaming, why? Like, what do I do about this? I got a real company. Like, what the hell? And so the whole idea was, let's, let's help them. Let's be the eligibility layer for small business owner where they can manage their data. And then we connect the dots to what they're qualified at any given time as it relates to financing. But yeah, that's, that's all we are is education company. But it's not generic. You sign up now, it's, it's all personalized. If you're a plumber with 5 years in business with bad credit or a bakery with 1 year in business with a little bit of credit, doesn't matter. It's always a customized software and customized experience because the software and the content wraps around your actual data. So, you know, every single NAV account is custom around that business owner and the business they have. And, and things stand, and then it's all automated on telling you what to do to get in a better and better spot over time. And as you improve the 3 data, you know, the 3 big datasets, consumer credit, 3 commercial reports, and your cash flows, your options will change to where we make recommendations. So you sign up today, maybe an MCA is all you qualify for. You got a tax lien on your business credit. Usually they don't even know. You've got, you know, some type of collection on your consumer credit. Maybe they didn't know about that. And you're bouncing 3 checks a month and you got plenty of cash flow. They're just sloppy in their cash management. So our software is going to guide them on all 3 of those. Get rid of the collection, get rid of the tax lien, stop bouncing checks. 6, 12 months later, now all of a sudden, instead of an MCA, you can get a favorable line of credit, you know, term loan, whatever it is, or business credit card or more than one business credit card and certainly access a lot of trade credit., for your business.

Yeah, there's a lot of scams. Like, I see these videos on TikTok, oh yeah, we can get you $100 grand, we can get you $50 grand. And I was, I was like, man, what are these people talking about? And I go and they're doing something illegal. I tell people, don't do this. They're getting you a business credit card or a personal credit card, and then they're telling you because they helped you get it to pay them a few thousand dollars. And that's basically a scam. You don't need to do that.

That's right. They know the underwriting criteria for a variety of financial institutions. They're— where it's usually the most misleading is they'll say, we'll get you a $100,000 line of credit.

Right.

Like, oh my gosh, I could get that. And then the fine print is it's going to be up to 100 grand or starting with maybe zero, up to 100 grand, coupled together with personal credit cards, business credit cards, and a lot a lot of times trade credit, and that's the most misleading because a net 30 account is, it's a credit line. You can go use that credit line. It's captive. You can only buy stuff with that actual business that's extending you the credit. And that's really another common kind of scam, scammy approaches like, well, people get $100,000 line of credit and then you get, let's say you're not B2B, you're like B2C. And now you've got a line of credit to go buy stuff at Home Depot. Like, what the hell is that going to do for you? And so sometimes they deliver. It's just completely misleading what it is they're delivering at the end of the day. And then with the example you gave of stacking credit cards, usually your personal credit is going to get absolutely slaughtered through that process. And if you've got business credit, same thing, because they're going to apply to 20 different credit cards all at once to try to cobble together a bunch of approvals, charging it like you said, thousands of dollars for that privilege. And then your credit's hammered for, you know, the next 12 months while those inquiries are still hurting your, your scores.

Yeah, we've had people try to get merchant accounts for that. Just start laughing. No way we're giving you a merchant account for that. No way. That's money laundering, basically.

Yeah, the, the FIs are not a fan of that space. They do not— that if they, you know, they're getting more and more sophisticated in their underwriting all the time. But if someone submits 10 applications instantaneously, right, to fill out 10 browser applications, different browsers, submit, submit, submit, submit, submit, right? The FIs don't see all the other hard inquiries, right? It's not— it's near real time with some of the bureaus and FIs, but it's not real time. And so it's just gaming the system because every single one of those 10 applications, the FI behind the application's like, Oh, we'll take a $5,000 risk thinking it's only a fresh $5,000. And if all 10 said fresh $5,000, now this, this individual has access to $50,000. That breaks all of their underwriting models. If they would have known there's going to be another $45,000 in available unsecured credit here.

Right. So don't fall for that trick. So like, everybody's talking about AI today. So how do you see AI, you know, helping business owners? Is it going to help them, you know, help them, hurt them? Like, what's the— are you using AI at your business, at Nav? What's going on with AI?

I'll start by answering it now. Yeah, we're using AI everywhere we can. Our headcount has been flat at about 170 folks for 2 years now, so I haven't let a single person go. Because they're getting replaced with AI. I think that is way oversold. And I think these big companies you read about in the news, you know, like Square, there was a lot of criticism, say like, oh, because of AI, we're laying off 40% of the company. And then a lot of smart people were like, no, you, you hired like crazy over 4 years. You made a bunch of bad hiring decisions and Wall Street's going to reward you for claiming the layoffs AI when really it was just sloppy hiring practices. And so I don't, I don't see anyone nav losing a job to AI over the coming years because you always have it. You know, it's like you own a business, you have an endless list of shit you need to get done and you always have to prioritize it. And the hard decision is what am I not going to do? What AI has unlocked for us is we can, we can do a lot more work than we want to do. So it's everybody in the company has access to AI tools, uses AI. The expectation is now you got to do more work, you know, in some cases they're doing 3 times the work and some cases maybe 25% higher output. And I think those ratios are only going to improve. So that's how we use AI now for every single department. Like our customer care team used to have to, you know, they get off a customer care phone call, they got to disposition it, they got to take notes. What's the follow-up with this customer? AI now just automates all of that. And that opened up 30% capacity on our customer care team. Guess what? There was plenty of other stuff we could have them do. That needed to be done at NAV. And so we didn't let anybody go, even though 30% capacity opened up from this new AI technology. So to the second part of your question about small business owners and AI, I guess there was kind of 3 parts. If I was working for an accountant or an attorney, like a small business, right? I mean, even the big ones, I'd be really nervous. Whoever owns that company is not going out of business, but to be competitive, they're going to have to use AI and it may replace people, more simple and super well-defined roles. It, small businesses like that, they're probably at a higher risk than specialized roles. If you have any type of operations, inventory, equipment, you're probably not going to get disrupted by AI anytime soon. I have a hard time believing that even if robot technology moves fast enough that me as a consumer, and I need a plumber to come out and figure out what's wrong with my toilet, that I'm going to be comfortable like, hello, I am Max here to fix your toilet. I just don't see that happening. Or even at a restaurant, like, I don't want a robot taking my order. Like, I want to know the person's name. I want to see they have a personality. Fortunately, now most of our customers are in industries that I think are a lot less likely to be disrupted by AI anytime soon. If you're an accountant or an attorney, your business credit really doesn't matter that much because you don't borrow money, you don't need trade credit, you know, things like that. But every single small business owner in any of those industries, I think, should be hustling to figure out how can I be more effective through AI? And, you know, before AI, it was machine learning. The tools were already being developed and launched. Now they're just— it's happening a lot faster. Most of the incumbent companies are implementing AI like crazy. Agents to help you with your accounting, whatever, whatever the case may be. But I think the risks small business owners face if they don't figure out how to adopt AI wherever they can in the business, no matter what industry they're in, is just becoming antiquated, not as competitive. If you maintain a higher cost structure or your velocity of revenue slows down compared to your competitors, you're in trouble just because you didn't stay competitive. It wasn't AI that killed you. It was your lack of adoption of AI to make sure your business operations were healthy enough to stay competitive.

Yeah. And I think employees, you know, wherever you're working, you know, I get AI for my employees. I'm like, okay, like, hey, I'm using Claude. I want you guys to get on Claude because it's going to help you with what you're doing. So, you know, we pay for that so people can get on there and do what they need to do. And, you know, and there's more and more things going on with AI, you know. Um, I was in somebody's office recently and this guy showed me a whole wall of computers. Some of them were tiny, they were no bigger than this. This little thing right here, and he had them doing all kinds of tasks that— and I, you know, and it still has to have human intervention, right? And I even helped a friend of mine. They said, oh, every day I have Zoom meetings, and then after the Zoom meeting I have this whole form to fill out. I don't want to say, you know, they have a form that needs to get filled out, and I'm like, what are you doing? I'm like, turn on the AI assistant. Right? Boom, print. You get a print, you get something in your email, and then you just take that and copy and paste it into your form, and you don't have to retype all this stuff. They were like, what?

Show them how to do it.

And they couldn't believe it, saving like 8 hours a week, you know, of time. And I think, you know, people need to, to, you know, start experimenting with it. I mean, listen, I don't think AI is going to replace employees, but people who know how to use AI are going to replace people who want to use AI or don't even want to learn how to use it. So you've got to, you know, there's a learning curve. I mean, eventually it's probably going to be in elementary schools, but everybody's going to have to learn how to use AI. We also see— here's something that I want to get your take on this. So we get applications for people applying for merchant accounts, and we are getting an increased amount of fraudulent applications. I mean, there's— and I mean, let me tell you, these people, they're stealing credit card numbers. They have their, um, ID. I don't know how they're getting it, but they're probably from the dark web. They're gonna have the person's ID. They have their Social Security number. Federal tax IDs can be found in public databases. And they're trying to get scam merchant accounts every day. We check the website, we'll look it up on Whois. It was created— the domain was bought a few days ago. The website's an AI website. They don't answer the phone, so we don't even deal with them. But we've had people come up with some, some fake— a whole business, literally fake a whole business. And, uh, take over somebody's business, like present it like it's their business and it's not their business. And then we'll find the real business. And these people don't understand, like, the damage that's happening to their personal credit and even their business credit at that point, because some of them end up on the match list, which is you can't get credit card processing. Yeah, 5 years.

Yeah, you're toast. And you show up on that list.

Yeah. And have you seen like people trying to like scam on getting credit cards or loans through your platform?

Absolutely. And like you've seen the, the acceleration of volume and attempts with the quality of attempts is, I mean, it's a steep curve right now. And I mean, AI is like a dream tool for a fraudster, right? Like absolute dream tool. And like you said, they're getting it. They are getting it from the dark web. Like anyone that says to me like, oh, I'm worried my identity might get stolen at some point. And I'm like, well, your identity's already stolen. All of us are. All of our information's already in the dark web. The question is, has anybody figured out how to use that identity yet to do something that's going to come back and harm you? And of course, to fraud some financial institution. Within— we use a lot of sophisticated security stuff to prevent them from ever getting through the front door. And every once in a while folks will figure it out. There's nothing you can really do inside of a NAB account to— like if you wanted a credit card or a loan, we're going to make rock-solid recommendations for cards and loans based on your data. You're still going to be underwritten by American Express or, you know, Bluevine, you know, for their loan or whatever. And so there's kind of like two layers, like they probably aren't going to make it through our platform. If they do and they go out to a financial institution, they're probably going to get caught there. But it is just moving fast. It's moving ridiculously fast, ridiculously fast. And of course, the most recent development is the big hole in that model used to be voice. Okay, well, I can't, I can't talk to them. I'm in Nigeria, North Korea, wherever, like If I can speak English, which is doubtful, it's going to be terrible, right? Absolutely terrible. And that's, that's the, the worst. Not just voice, but video for fuck's sake. Oh, sorry, I prayed. I guess you're not— you're— we're not on public airways. We're going to be okay. But video is so sophisticated now. And so I mean, like at NAV, we have all types of security training because every single person here— here's a funny one for you. Every single person that joins NAV it within 48, 72 hours of any type of public visibility that they join the app, usually it's probably triggered by LinkedIn updates. They'll get a text from me, not from me, by the way, right? It says something like, hey, this is Levi, the CEO of this new company joined. I'm in Atlanta and all my credit cards got shut off. Can you, I need you to send me some money fast. And it's actually in our onboarding training. It is like, It's me and probably a zillion other CEOs out there. And so, you know, it's kind of funny inside the company because people will post the screenshot because they've already been through a training that says this is probably going to happen. Half the time they think we're doing it as a test and we're not. And it just, it amazes me. And so the points of entry, so it's the scale. They can do so much with AIs just from a pure volume perspective. When you, when they were involved in each attempt themselves, well, their, if their hit rate's 1 out of 1,000, they're limited by the time they have to go through 1,000 attempts.

Right now it's unlimited attempts.

And then like you said, the level of sophistication is just nuts. So that's interesting because in your case, I assume it's all money laundering is all they're trying to do or process stolen, stolen credit cards pointed at some account to steal money. But that's like those are like financial crimes that the federal government, if you aren't buttoned up as a processor, like you could be out of business.

Yeah, well, we make sure we review people and now we do a phone processors, we've gotten so many of them, even on real applications, they reach out and they do a phone verification telephone call now because it's just becoming crazy of how many applications that we're getting and they're all fake. So we kind of like see, okay, does this look good, bad? Do we get them on the phone? And then we'll do the application and then they're doing a You know, I tell them, hey, we did speak to these people on the phone, and then they call them and make sure that they can get a hold of them. But of course, we had— I had a fake application. This guy applied through us to set up a restaurant equipment company. I Google the address, it's a dentist office. The guy calls me on Zoom, no, no, no camera on. The accent was horrible. I was like, oh, where are you from? Nigeria. And I started to get mad, and I was like, listen, I pulled this address up, there's a dental office there. No, the warehouse is behind the dentist office. I'm like, whatever. I just cut the guy off. I called the dentist up, and the dentist tells me he gets two Clovers in the mail, which is a little credit card machine. Yeah, the guy goes, now I got the credit card machine, but I don't understand what's the scam. I go, the scam is that that guy, not just he sent you the Clovers, but he got a login to the back end of Clover, you know, or the back end of Square or the back end of a lot of credit card companies. They usually try to get Clovers because you get a back end and then that back end is a virtual credit card machine. And then that's when the damage happens. They get in there and they start running credit cards. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom., and then that money's going into that illicit bank account, and then they get it out of that bank account to somewhere else. And then the real merchant, the real per— the person who's on that application starts getting collection phone calls, you know, saying, hey, we got $80 grand of chargebacks, or $20 grand, or $10 grand, or whatever. And that's how the scam works. People don't understand, but that's the scam. It's— and it's— and Crazy. We talked to— I talked to people all the time and I go, it's— and it's like AI. Now you're getting a dot, we're getting info, right? So we put it in AI and go, oh, are these real bank statements? Is that a real voided check? Is that a real driver's license? So now we got— we're asking AI to check on stuff possibly made by AI. It's nuts. Yeah, it's crazy. You can't authenticate this stuff. So we just have a rule: they don't answer the phone, We don't do the merchant account. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good rule.

But they're, but they're getting better because they are getting on the phone. And so they are getting these scammers. Some of them are in the US. They do get on the phone and they still try to scam.

So I'll test your sense of humor here because something you said made me laugh, but because of my inexperience, I'll warn you, my sense of humor skews dark. Okay. There's been days I come into the office Whenever there's these AI scam attempts, your website visits go through the roof, right? So it's like, you know, I've always looked at the stats like, wow, did like some article go viral? Did we get some coverage in the New York Times? You know, whatever. And then I was in our security channel, so I was like an alert, like we had, we had an AI, you know, attempt last night.

Damn it.

And I can only imagine when it started taking off for you, you're looking at however you track your pipeline and you're going, Woohoo, the word's getting out! Look at all this incoming demand we have. And, uh, it's all self-referral, which is only funny in a dark way.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. I mean, listen, we'll get 10— I mean, we get like 1 application, 2 applications a day. All of a sudden it's 3, 4, 5 applications, and then they're all the same. And then we get referrals from, from— we have some partners where they only do credit card machines, right? So they don't do internet. So they send us all these internet leads, and then I have to tell them, I'm like, man, these are all— it's all fake, you know? If I see like a home address, right, and then I ask them, oh, do you have all this inventory of all these items you have on your website? There's no way that's in somebody's house.

Yeah.

Then we go, well, where's the fulfillment agreement? Where are you— or where are you buying this stuff from? From. And, you know, they send us over some fake-looking invoice or something. It's just these guys are getting so creative. And I, I mean, literally, like, you know, we also ask them, like, we check— I have a little thing on my computer and I check, is this a telephone or a Gmail phone or a cell phone or landline? So if it's not a cell phone or a landline, we ask them, we say, we need you to give us a cell phone or a line. We're not taking— we don't take burner phones, we don't take these IP phones, none of that. So they gotta— they have to have a cell phone. So otherwise, we don't want to do business with you. And it's crazy. Yeah, I don't know how—

cell phone, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, if you have a cell phone, you can't be successful as a business owner. Even if it wasn't a scam, you just know, like, they're probably not going to make it if they don't know how to use a cell phone. Not going to be able to run a business.

Yeah, they're using— yeah, they don't— yeah, or they're in another country and they try to, you know, they, they— and sometimes they'll call me and I don't answer the phone, right, on purpose. And I notice when I call them back, all of a sudden I'm calling some foreign country because they did masking on the phone. I'm calling like Nigeria and I go, you're busted, I caught you, you're in Nigeria. And then yeah, they just freak out. It's nuts. So if people want to find out more information about NAV, where do they go?

Easy. NAV.com. One syllable and three digits to remember.

Okay. And that's the best part. Do you like— people want to— what about people want to talk to Levi?

Yeah, they want to talk to me. They can either hit me up on LinkedIn, it's /LeviKing, or shoot me an email, Levi@NAV.com.

All right, great. Any final words?

Oh, this has been fun. It's, uh, because we're in different businesses, but there is some overlap in a lot of this conversation. So, so it's been fun. But I, you know, I guess I would— my only parting advice to anybody would be you just can't get behind. And that's always been true. It's just with AI, it's happening a lot faster than it ever happened before. But, you know, it's evolve or die, you know, first If you become, if you slip into mediocrity on the other side, that's irrelevance. And on the other side of that's failure. And so it doesn't matter how old you are. I'm not a technical founder. I'm a commercial founder and doesn't matter where you're at. You better, you better keep your eyes on AI and figure out how to implement it in your business or you're sliding towards mediocrity, irrelevance, failure on some pace. Maybe it takes 3 years, maybe it takes 15, but that's, that's the direction you're headed.

Yeah, AI, definitely. I think there's a window of 5 years, could be less, but everybody, you got to be implementing AI. The other thing I would tell everybody is monitor your credit. Get Credit Karma, get Experian, get something and monitor that credit because—

and, uh, now it's the only place you can get all 3 commercial reports in one spot. It's the only place you can get your FICO SBSS score, which is the score that's used primarily for bank loans. So it's easiest place to do it if you're a business owner. And we only— we're exclusive to SMB, so we don't serve consumers, just small business owners.

Yeah, I noticed on your site that I did— it did show my personal credit score, I believe. So it's a great, you know, it's a great tool. You can find credit cards on there, loans on there, educational information. I highly recommend visiting nav.com. We'll put the link in the show notes. Again, thank you, Levi, for joining us today. Having the podcast. I totally enjoyed the conversation. We could probably talk for another 45 minutes.

My pleasure.

And, uh, thanks for listening today to B2B Vault. Uh, you want to reach out to me, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me at nationwidepaymentsystems.com. And again, B2B Vault sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems and our new gateway NPS1, which can do everything you need to do Accept credit cards, ACH, link it to your QuickBooks, send out payment links. We can open API. We can do it all. So thank you for joining us today on B2B Vault and carpe diem and peace out. And thank you again to Levi.