Eric Bostic, Owner Of EBA Payments Talks About The Payment Industry! | Biz To Biz Podcast

Welcome to the Biz to Biz Podcast, your number one source for all business news. Hey everybody, welcome to B2B Vault, the Street Smarts edition, sponsored by The Green Sheet. So each, um, month I write articles in The Green Sheet titled Street Smarts and doing podcasts about these different articles. And today's article is called Recommended Reading Your residual report. And I have a special guest today, Eric Bostic. He's been in the business 18 years. He's the owner of EBA Payments powered by Evolve. He was living in Orlando. Now he's going to be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He enjoys hunting, fishing, motocross. He likes to go to the outdoors and he loves residuals.

Yes, indeed.

And he's— he has a great saying: integrity beyond reproach, and governs all transactions, both personal and business, in that manner. So I have my sayings about residual: figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure. And that goes—

there you go, that's true—

everything: proposals, accounting, uh, residual reports. You know, and I have a big saying. I always say, you know, you have to— people do what you— don't always do what you expect, so you have to inspect. Okay, that's right. And you know, Eric's been in the business a long time, so, you know, back in the day we would go to the Green Sheet and you'd have the forums. Did you participate in those?

I didn't. Back in the day, I wasn't as savvy as I am now. So I didn't participate in the forums. I read the green sheets, but I just didn't participate in the forums.

Okay. You know, and today the forum's not really that— it's not used hardly at all. Most of everybody is into— there's probably 3 or 4 very active Facebook groups. Facebook groups.

Yeah.

And everybody goes there and they post the same question across 4 groups. Because not everybody's active in all the groups, but you see a lot of questions, and questions are always coming up about commission and residuals and, yeah, and how to, and how to deal with that. And I think that it's a kind of a crazy subject matter when it comes to residuals.

Yeah, there was just a question in there the other day about when does everyone get their residuals. I'm like In my head, I'm like, that should be covered in your agent agreement.

Yeah, but I mean, I think, you know, a lot of times people get bogged down and like, oh, I just signed up this merchant. Yeah. And they're trying to figure out how much is it going to make a month. Yeah. You know, you got to really try to figure out, like I try to tell people, you really need like your first 25 accounts then you need to get to 50, then you need to get to 100, you know, where you're, you know, making money. And, and, you know, like, we started a long time ago, so we didn't have all this, you know, cash discount, dual pricing, 0% programs that are throwing off 10, 20 times the normal residual amount.

Yeah, life is good right now. Yeah.

So, you know, there's a lot of agents that go out, they sign up 3, 4, 5 accounts they're making a few thousand dollars a month and they go into lazy mode. Do you find that?

Yeah, yes I do. Yes I do. And I tell them, it's like, you guys, you know, you don't know how good you have it. Back in, back in my day, we signed up, you know, an account, we were happy to get $35 to $50 on that account. You remember those days?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, if you had a small merchant, you, you know, you weren't getting a few hundred dollars, you're getting Penny's.

Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, like you say, you know, they go out and sign 3 to 5 deals and they're making $2,500, $4,000. And I'm like, if it's a good size account and I'm like, geez, you guys don't know how good you have it.

But people, I think, need to concentrate on building up a portfolio of businesses and not concentrating on little minutia. Oh, how much is this making? Yeah. Like one of the things I had a few agents come to me last month and they're like, 'Oh, my residual went down.' I'm like, 'Okay, well, we're at the end of the year.' Yeah. And you're gonna have a trend where people are not spending on their debit card, they're putting everything on credit. So now you're not going to have that, you know, that gap. Yeah, that spread. And, you know, when the economy— and I've been, you know, doing this like you have for a long time— you can see when, you know, as the economy is in a wave the Durbin debit, whatever. Although, you know, it's going to go down, and debit usage in general is going to go down, and that is going to affect your residuals.

Exactly, exactly. Hey, you know, and with the coming in at Pro Business Administration coming in, you know, the residuals will be going up. So I'm sure we'll be fielding, you know, questions again, you know, how much is this account going to pay me, and How much will I make on this and how much will I make on that? You know, I supply my agents with a margin calculator. That way I don't have to field those questions. I give them the tools and they can plug their own numbers in with their buy rates and whatnot and get a good assessment on what they're going to make on the account. So that alleviates some of the headache for me from fielding those questions though.

Yeah, I think that those kind of tools are somewhat accurate, but you can't go by that by 100%.

Oh, heck no. Heck no. It's just a good— it's a good generalization, um, just to put a number in their head to ease their mind a little bit. I'll probably make somewhere in the neighborhood of around XYZ on this account, right? Yeah.

You know, one, one way, like I've told people, is, is, you know, to watch out for— a lot of agents don't read their contracts, so they find out, like, all of a sudden, oh, I signed a paper that says if my merchant doesn't pay their bill, I'm responsible for it. And they thought they had no liability, but somebody snuck something in somewhere. Yeah.

And it's funny you say that, Allen. Whenever I send an agent agreement out to an agent, I know if they read that contract or not, if they read the agreement or not. Based upon how soon they get it back to me, you know what I'm saying? Sometimes it's— sometimes it's within the hour. I'm like, they didn't read that.

They didn't read it. No, that's why, like, there's companies that basically take advantage of people with these 4 deal minimums. Yeah, you know, and then all of a sudden, you know, they go to work for Company A, then they find Eric. I don't really recruit agents, so they find you or they find another company, right? And they go, oh, I'm gonna go with this company, I'm gonna get better mentorship, I'm going to have better products. Exactly. Everything looks better. Then they got 10 accounts over at Company A, they stop sending them business. All of a sudden, boom, your residual stopped.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, see it all the time.

And you know, one thing I've always told, you know, like I've always used as a checkpoint is getting a merchant statement and comparing that to my residual report. You only need to do— you only need one or two. You know, to see exactly what's going on. Although I will say, you know, when companies get acquired or you're, you know, like I've had a— I have one portfolio. It's a crazy story, but started at Imperial Bank of California. Imperial Bank merged with Comerica, later got sold to Global Payments, the portfolio. Then Global Payments came to us and said, hey, you have to switch everybody off TSYS onto Global. Which at that point in time was next to impossible. We had point-of-sale systems and all kinds of different equipment that Global didn't support. And we're like, well, who's paying for all this stuff? And then finally they just told us, like, you guys need to leave. We don't want to deal with this anymore. If you can't put these merchants on Global, you know, we're done. Yeah. And then we moved, we moved our entire portfolio to Comdata. Comdata sold to PAI and then PAI sold to Clearant. And that, you know, over time, you know, merchants go out of business, merchants sell, merchants form a new corporation, you know, so, you know, you have to do whatever you got to do. But like, it's lived that long since 2001.

Yeah. And it's funny, I know it was a headache trying to keep track of your residual reports during that time frame as well. I used to like to get, you know, I used to always ask for the raw data report. I wanted the raw data report and I would go through it line by line on 2 or 3 of my large accounts. Yeah, just to trust and verify, you know, trust you. Yeah, but I want to verify. And, you know, sometimes you would catch, you know, a little error here or there. Sometimes it would be perfect. More times than not, it was pretty accurate. So I, I had no— I've had no issues. I've been blessed. I had no issues with any of the companies I've ever represented on the residual report. Um, now on the first ISO I had, I worked with— I had some large— I had a large multi-location account, and sometimes they would call into the corporate office and sign up for accounts, and they wouldn't give me those deals. So I had to go back and I had to You know, that's a, that's a different issue, but it affected my residuals in that way. But, um, yeah, that raw data report is your friend.

Yeah, you have to, you know, my attorneys used to always tell me, they go, well, you know, all these contracts that you sign with all these companies, they're as good as the person who signed them. And I, I remember in the beginning, one time we signed up with this one company, and actually like a couple companies, one of them The guy sold his, sold his business, you know, sold his residual stream. We never found out who bought it, so we never got paid again. Oh wow. And then another, another company pulled this, and I don't wanna mention names of people because those, some of those people are still out in our business. And if I ever come across them, it's a big fat no. But they pull a thing where they go bankrupt. And then when they go bankrupt, they sell their portfolio and then the portfolio is gone because it was sold off in a bankruptcy sale. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen that, but I haven't—

I haven't experienced that.

I had that happen to me actually one time, and the second time it happened, we found out who bought the portfolio and we're like, well, you have the portfolio, we need to get paid. Yeah, yeah. They decided that they were going to pay us because we said, well, if you don't pay us, we're just going to go. There was a large merchant, one very large one. We were like, we're just going to go move that merchant like tomorrow.

Yeah.

And they were like, okay, well, we'll come to an agreement and we'll pay you.

They better.

They better. No, I mean, it's just— and the other thing I see in this business, which I don't like, is that You know, I've seen companies like sell out, you know, they sell, they sell their company, they sell like their ISO to Tesis Global Heartland or to First Data, and then they're paying the agents, right? Or they bought the portfolio out. And then I don't like it because I've had agents come to me and they're like, I'm like, well, where are you getting all these clients from? Well, I got— I sold my portfolio. Okay, well, did you get paid? Did you get paid? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, well, I can't— you can't bring them to me.

Yeah, I don't want any of that smoke.

Yeah, you got paid, man. Like, now it's another story. Like, you come to me and you say, hey, I have this merchant and the merchant needs to buy a new point of sale system, and, you know, Company X is not— does not have that, and I can't get it anywhere. So do you want, you know, now that's another story.

That's another story altogether. Yes.

And it's a— that's another huge problem in our business. And I've talked to many sales reps. Yeah. Off agent offices and constantly losing merchants to, um, when the POS companies— I just did a podcast with James Eber and I go, what protection do agents have or ISOs have when you're, you know, using agnostic software?

Mm-hmm.

Right. What protection do we have in order to protect us? So our residuals are good. They're basically, you know, James said there's nothing, there's nothing you can do. And I said, if you're doing business directly with the software company and you are paying them residuals or you're doing a split with them, you should definitely have in your paperwork that if they sell, that they cannot exit that relationship unless they want to buy it out from you. Right. And, you know, that's, that's something that I never thought of before. And it was a pretty interesting comment on his part because, you know, the software is becoming the new ISO. But I've talked to guys who have lost anywhere from I've talked to people that have lost— I mean, I myself have lost thousands of dollars a month. Point of sale system gets sold, the first thing the company does, they take over the payments and then the bleeding starts.

Yes, indeed.

If I put back all my restaurants that were on PosiTouch and other POSs back onto my portfolio, I'd have another maybe $10,000, $20,000 a month.

Yeah, yeah, I've been really fortunate in that I've not experienced that. I do a lot of B2B, so I don't have a lot of restaurants. Actually, I probably have less than 15 restaurants in my entire portfolio. So I haven't had to deal with the point of sale, quote unquote, nightmare or attrition as of yet. So because I just made a concerted decision to go after B2B. So I haven't had that issue.

Yeah, one of the things was, is when I got into this business, I used to be a chef. So I came from the food and beverage world. I would work for a hotel company. I was a food and beverage director.

Yeah.

And, and I was a, and I was a chef, and I owned a restaurant, and I owned a consulting company. So that was my world. So we saw, you know, in the beginning of time, you know, there was point of sale and then there was a side machine. Seriously. Then there was point of sale and then there was a swiper.

Swiper.

Swipers. They had to put this data cap modem that hooked up to a phone line. That's how dated this is, right? And that— and we had tons and tons of those customers. But then data cap hooked up to the internet. Mercury came along, they started paying the dealers, and slowly And that's when we shifted to like a lot of internet merchants. Yeah, a lot. Most, you know, a lot of internet, all kinds of different businesses, accountants, attorneys, insurance companies, any, anything that was, you know, B2B and started to, you know, and also just, you know, e-com in general, you know, and we do get retailers to still today and there's still, you know, the, I divide everybody into like two groups. So the groups are the older crowd, 40, 45 and above, and the younger crowd. The younger crowd all want point of sale.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

They all want point of sale. The older crowd is more into, hey, you know, I don't want— you know, I'm still doing the cash register and the credit card machine because whatever it is, they're still trying to put that cash.

Yeah, they want that hard currency, you know.

And, you know, I, I see things all the time like cash is dead, and I, I don't agree with that. There's—

I don't either, baby.

Out in the world. But let's talk about when you do have a problem with a residual report, you know. What should you do about it? What, you know, my whole thing is never call your lawyer first.

No, no, no, you don't need to do that. If you got a good— if you have a good relationship with your ISO, you know, send an email to your ISO, CC yourself on it. I'm a big proponent of that. When I send an email to my ISO, I CC myself on it for my records and just point out the error, screenshots, point it out. And send them a nice worded email. And I think they have, you know, by most agreements they got, what, 30 days, 30 or 45 days to correct it.

Usually you have 30 days to report an error. Most errors happen. I find most errors happen when there's a sale going, when somebody buys another company. Yeah, this is when 90% of all the errors happen. Yeah, yeah, 90%.

You send them the email within the 30 days and they have a 30-day window, 30 or 45 days typically. To correct it. Typically it's done. You'll get an email back, oh yeah, I see what we did wrong here, blah blah blah, usually within a day or two. Something— that's been my experience. And, and the money's back in my account, the correct amount's back in my account. So that's, that's my experience with it.

Yeah, we just had one company got bought by another company and then they were switching all the billing systems all of a sudden. Like a whole— I had like a whole group of merchants we weren't getting paid for and it went on for a few months and then they finally sent me like they reconciled the whole thing and I was like, what is that? I mean, you guys, you guys got to show me like what you're paying me because I have no clue what this lump sum of money is for. And then they spit out a report, got on the phone with me, and I said, okay, here's my list. Now you show me that I got paid.

Yeah, they walk you through it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been— again, I've been fortunate. I've not been involved with any portfolio buyouts. By anyone yet. So when I've signed with an ISO, I've always got my residuals from that ISO, and they never— unless I sold my residuals, that's a different story. But I haven't been involved with that. Um, and, and I honestly can say I don't think I'll ever have to experience that.

Well, you don't say never, because everybody's for sale for the right price, right?

Well, this is true. This is true.

Yeah, everybody's for sale for the— everybody's for sale for the right— for the right— for the right price, you know. Yeah, you can't, you know, you can't, um, you know, you can't discount that.

This is true.

And it's, you know, but that's all part, you know, that's all part of our business is, you know, making sure, you know, you— a lot of guys, I noticed they don't read their contracts. You know, you need to say to yourself, hey, I'm building a business that I could be making, let's say, 10 grand a month from, $120,000 a year. And that could continue for many years. There could be a lot more than that. You could be making a million dollars a year from somebody. And you know, you need to make that initial investment, whatever it is, maybe it's 1,000 bucks, maybe it's $1,500. I mean, there's a slew of, industry attorneys. But I would say on average, you know, and you also need to learn how to read these agreements and, and see, like, one thing I've learned, like, I can point out a bunch of, like, inconsistencies in the agreement.

Okay.

And then send it back to them and I'm like, well, you know, I need all these changes done before I even show it to my lawyers. Yeah, because I'm not going to pay the lawyer for different things like, oh, there's— you have to send in 4 deals a month.

Yeah, you go ahead and redline it in advance and send it back to them and say, this is what I need done.

Yeah, yeah, no, but it's important, you know, like, it's, it's important to make sure, like, that you have good, you know, that you, you don't take— and also the other thing that I tell agents, which kind of frustrates me, and I'm writing some, a lot of different articles to try to help agents. That's what the streets Smart is about. It's not about promoting me or promoting my company. It's all about, hey, here's information you guys need to know, right? Yes. So one of the things that kind of frustrates me is, you know, I have a couple guys and they're making like 10 grand a month in residuals, or maybe close to that. I'm like, you know, you guys need to make a little investment. Like, you need a one-page— at least a one-page website for yourself. Yeah, you need to like have a real LinkedIn profile. Like you need to set up— if you have a corporation, set up a company page. You need to put a post on there once a week. You know, you need to invest in your business. This isn't just take, take, take, take, take, right? You got— you need to invest. And also tell guys, like when they're telling me like, oh, I'm not signing up deals. Okay, well, if your email is Billy Bob at Billy Bob 489 at gmail.com. How much trust does a business owner have in that? Exactly. Billy Bob at Billy Bob Payments dot com or whatever it is, right? ABC Payments dot com. Then it looks a lot more professional.

Exactly.

We're not talking about— you could build— you could get a landing page built for probably $1,000. Hosting is like $10 a month, you know, put some, you know, I mean, you don't have to— I mean, I'm a blogger, so I post 2 or 3 blogs a week. Yeah, I'm a big blogger. And I mean, obviously that's a long-term— that's a, that's a long-term process of blogging. So, you know, but you need to, at a minimum, you need to have yourself like a one-page website, promote your own company. I don't care what it says in all these contracts, like, oh, you promote this company, right? Yeah. You don't have to promote yourself as a credit card processor. Promote yourself as a business solutions provider.

Yep.

You know, I provide business solutions because, you know, ultimately, I mean, we provide— I don't even know— dozens of solutions.

Yeah.

For businesses, right?

The main thing is just to be consistent though as well, Allen. When you get that set up and you're posting, just be consistent. Like you said, you know, once or twice a week, just be consistent with it. Promote yourself.

Yeah, exactly. Because people, you know, we don't have the— I joke around, I tell people, you know, the Yellow Pages used to be a thing, right? Yes, yes. Yellow Pages, uh, what's a Yellow Page? Yeah, right. Oh, Google. It's, you know, but the Google is not a level playing field. So if you walk into a business owner, right, and you want to make your residual, and I say, hi, my name's Allen, I'm with Nationwide Payment Systems. Well, if they go and start looking for you online and they don't find anything, or they just find you having fun on Facebook, they're like, how serious is this person as a, as a business person? And I'm trusting them with my data, my point of sale, my money. Am I going to get paid? Who do they work for? You have to represent yourself like, hey, I work for myself. This is my business. And I work with a bunch of trusted partners. Yeah, because you're never going to find one ISO. I don't— you know, there's never one ISO that's going to take 100% of what you're doing. Exactly. It might take 80%, but then the other 20% you might have to spread around. And today I think everybody needs to get off this. I wrote this article about agnostic or antagonistic. I think people need to really start to think about that. These, these agnostic companies are disappearing on a daily basis.

They are.

We just saw Givex get purchased. So if you have merchants on Givex, the credit card processing revenue from those merchants is probably not— is probably going to disappear. Yeah, going down next. In the next 6 to 12 months, it's going to be gone.

Yeah.

You know, and that's— and, you know, and that's our lifeblood. So partnering with companies who own the POS company and they own the credit card processing, maybe you have to make a little bit less money, but you're on a more solid footing. What do you think about that?

I, I agree with you on that 100%. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got my brain frying. My brain is— the pages are turning in my brain right now because of that. Um, it's, uh, these point of sale companies, man. Wow, wow.

I mean, we've seen in the last 5 years more acquisitions of point of sale.

Yeah.

Ever before. I mean, even look at NMI has become a credit card processor.

Yeah. And when they come in, you know, like you said, within 6 to 12 months, your residual stream is going to go because they're going to push out to those customers who are currently using that deal and say, hey, we want you to come.

I don't know if NMI and SwipeSimple can do that because they're actually probably have agreements with ISOs. They can't steal their merchants. But if they got acquired, what would happen? Exactly. That's the problem. Oh, if this solution got acquired.

Yeah.

That's why you see now a— there's a record number of ISOs right now, uh-huh, all building out their own virtual terminals.

Oh yeah.

That I would say it's more than I've ever seen before. What do you think?

I would agree with that as well. They're all trying to do it. You know, they got— they've got— they're reaching out to the coders and, you know, making all kinds of stuff, trying to get— trying to get things so they have their own in-house solution so they don't have to go outside and deal with anybody.

You're exactly right. Yeah. And another trend I see, and I don't know— I mean, I know it's not gonna— it's gonna take— I don't, I don't know if it's going to blend into like our world so much, but I see a lot of companies trying to build out dashboards. And dashboards have been around for a really long time, but we always go and look and, you know, for some reason like the smaller merchants never log into these.

Oh, they don't, they don't. I want to circle back to something as well. Um, and we were just talking about the companies trying to do the virtual terminals. And, you know, reaching out to the coders. It's actually going in reverse as well. The developers are actually reaching out to agents. Has that happened to you? The developers are reaching out to you offering their services to develop, you know, virtual termite? Yeah, that's happened. That's a real thing.

Yeah, it's very— it's a kind of— I looked into it at one point to see what it would cost. The biggest issue is the PCI compliance piece.

Yeah.

That's the, that's the main, that's the main, that's the main issue. Yeah.

And then getting certified on, on the platforms and whatnot.

Yeah. To be PCI compliant can be very, very expensive. That's why, um, point of sale moves so fast. As soon as the semi-integration was introduced and you saw companies— we saw, I mean, I'll mention some names, but you know, they're not even around anymore today. If you look at the landscape of terminals The two biggest are Pax and Deja Vu.

Yes.

Okay, the names— you don't see Verifone.

Nope.

Like you do— you didn't— Hypercom is gone. They— now there's Equinox, which kind of took over Hypercom. Narit is gone. The owners of Deja Vu, you know, man, we are—

we are dating ourselves. The old Hypercom T7s.

You know, the Valor terminal, which is kind of an interesting terminal. And but, you know, you don't see the, you know, the landscape has kind of changed in this semi-integration, you know, moved a lot of people into like, well, now I don't need to certify my point of sale system for, for PCI. But one of the things I see a few companies doing right now, which I told one of my partners to do this 5 years ago, but they finally listened to me and I said, you guys have your own virtual terminal, you guys need to connect a terminal, a terminal to that thing. And the actual project just started. Oh nice. I think that's going to be like a big game changer for them because that's going to get— that's gonna, that's gonna do a lot of— that's going to do a lot for merchants to be able to get that. Once that hardware comes out, they're probably going to shift from what they're doing now to the new hardware solution and then everybody, everything be connected into the gateway. Yeah. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that.

I can see that. I can definitely see that.

But, you know, let's go— let's just, let's just talk a little bit more about, you know, about, about, about residuals. Do you think it's important? Like, like to me, I don't really care when, you know, that I get paid at the end of the month. And I think a lot of companies do that when the one of the— okay, let me get focused on this a little differently. Okay. Everybody's focused on like, oh, what's the percentage of residual? How many basis points am I paying? How many cents per transaction? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It seems that the companies who pay like the higher splits pay you later in the month. Okay, now do you— you know, I, I think sometimes that a lot of companies have got themselves in a lot of trouble when they were giving out 80, 85, 90, 95% splits to agents to get agents to sign with them. And then couple that with, oh, we're going to give you free equipment and an upfront bonus. And yeah, oh boy, yeah. And all that. And then, and then, and then we see in the, on the Facebook pages, oh, so-and-so just raised all the merchants. So-and-so just raised all the merchants. Yeah, because they're not making any money. You got to be in the hole.

They're in the hole.

Yeah, they're in a hole. And I mean, I've seen agents— I talked to an agent not that long ago. I mean, and we turned them down. They wanted to send us business, but then we were like, okay, well, what are you guys doing? And they're like, Oh, well, we lease terminals for $99 a month. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, I'm not going to end up like on BBB with people complaining about my company because you lease them a $99 machine that costs like $250, you know?

Yeah, that's not going to happen.

That's not going to happen. You know, you know, these kind of things can cause reputational, reputational risk to, to the to the, the sales office or the ISO office where the business is going, you know. So you got to be careful. But I think that agents need to start— like, I have companies that I do business with that pay me less money than I normally would get, but they're providing a point-of-sale system, they're providing all the support for it, they're taking the phone call and training the merchant over the phone. Yeah, which is good for me because then I'm not landlocked to my area, right? I could sell all over the country. And when the person gets the point-of-sale system, if they're in— if they're in Hawaii, I don't have to get on a plane and go there. Yeah, they're going to call the merchant on the phone and train them over the phone. It's a win-win for you right now. I might make less money on the residual side, but I'm not getting phone calls for tech support. And that's kind of like what we— that's kind of been my approach for the last couple of years. And we know that those merchants are not going to be gone, you know, anytime soon because they love their point of sale.

Mm-hmm.

Not like terminals. Terminals can be swapped out, you know, unless it's a higher risk type of business, then there's kind of less players in that game. Yeah, yeah.

Back to the, you know, what your original point about the residuals there. It has to be a win-win scenario. It can't be a lose-win, lose being the agent lose, the ISO win, or a win-lose where the agent wins and the ISO loses. It has to be a win-win scenario and it has to be a good sweet spot. I know where my sweet spot is for my ISO when I'm dealing with my agents., to create that win-win scenario. Um, because like you said, a lot of— when you're giving away the free equipment, the free terminals, the point-of-sale system, the ISO goes in the hole, and it takes them 6, 7, sometimes 9 months, you know, to turn positive on that account, um, based upon all the equipment, time, labor, support, and all that good stuff, and upfront bonuses as well. So, you know, it has to be that win-win. So when it comes to the residuals, I mean, agents out in the field, they have to be realistic in what they're looking for. I mean, you're not going to get the 90, 95% agreements. Those days are over in my—

Oh yeah. But you know, I've seen guys where they're doing this upfront residual and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm talking to somebody on the phone, oh, I got like $15,000 in clawbacks. I'm like, yeah, what do you mean $15,000? Yeah, well, you know, if the merchant doesn't stay with them for a whole year, Right. They start clawing back your residuals.

Heck yeah. That's not fun.

I've also seen guys that they don't know this. They sign— I talked to a couple agents over the last, last year where they were leasing, you know, Clover systems to people and they didn't realize that if the merchant failed to make like 6 months of payments, that they were actually on the hook for the, for the lease, for the lease and got charged back.

Who?

And, you know, you got to really, you know, know what you're doing when you're getting into this whole thing.

Yeah, you got to read that fine print.

Now let's split. Now, now we talked about that and, you know, residuals and, you know, if anybody else— if you guys have questions and you're listening to the podcast or watching our YouTube video, feel free to leave us questions. You might see Eric back again because I'm going to be doing a couple, one or two of these every month and inviting different people to come on. Maybe you want to be a guest on B2B Vault Street Smarts and talk about one of my articles. Welcome to have you. But let's just talk about some fun stuff. So what's your favorite football team, college or pro?

Pro.

Pro.

Well, moving back to Charlotte, I'm going to go with my Panthers.

Right.

You know, when I was a little boy, of course I was a Cowboy fan because my dad was a Redskins fan, but we didn't have a pro team when I was a kid. So he liked the Redskins, so I liked the Cowboys. But when the Panthers came to Charlotte, diehard Carolina Panther fan.

Well, I'm a diehard Miami Dolphins fan. I did live in Dallas, and when I was a chef, we catered a lot of parties for the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, that was kind of cool. I got to meet a lot of players. Yeah, they used to and eat in the hotel, and we also did catering for them. So that was kind of cool. That was in the days of, you know, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman. It was pretty wild. They won all those Super Bowls, so that was fun. The Dolphins, I got to experience the undefeated season. Oh man. And Marino. And now we stink. Yeah. So We're horrible. Yeah. College football. What's— who's your go-to?

I'm a diehard Notre Dame fan. Tony Rice led Notre Dame to their— what about Rudy? National Championship. He's a family member.

So what about Rudy?

Oh, Rudy too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rudy. Yeah. But I'm diehard Notre Dame because, you know, my cousin Tony was their quarterback and led them to the national championship.

Awesome. So I went to a convention one time and the guest speaker was the actual real Rudy.

The real Rudy?

Yeah. Yeah. And I got to meet him after. It was a very— he gave a really nice talk. He actually like showed the actual play that's in the movie.

Uh-huh. Right.

It's kind of interesting. Yeah, kind of interesting. What's your favorite food?

Steak.

Me too. Love a good steak.

A nice filet mignon. Preferably dry-aged, cooked to medium. That's it.

I hope the guys you're visiting right now are taking you out for a good steak dinner.

Oh yeah, we're having a good time out here. I'm actually at the Evolve Summit. We just finished our— I'm on the advisory board, so we just finished our advisory board meetings yesterday and we had a time last night.

So nice. All right. So anything else you want to put out there?

Well, you know, EBA Payments been around 18 years, rocking and rolling, actively growing, moving back to Charlotte. Any of you agents out there need a new home, want to experience the EBA way, give me a shout. Love to talk to you.

All right. Sounds good. Well, thank everybody for listening. If you didn't see the article in the Green Sheet, check it out. Recommended reading, your residual report. Hope you guys learned something today. If you have questions about residuals.

Um, trust but verify. Ask for that raw data report.

Exactly. Yeah, it's super, super— yeah. And I, and I say don't worry about when you get paid. I don't think people should worry about that. And also, you know, make sure it's a win-win because a lot— this is another thing I want to throw out there because we talked about in, on the, on the, in the group about mentorship, right? So sometimes when you're getting a lot, when you're getting a big split those, that, those groups, they're not looking to mentor you. They, they're, they're not, they're not willing to, they're not going to spend their time with you. They expect you to take care of yourself. Exactly. So you have to remember that. And especially for the newer guys, sometimes it's better to get in a situation where you're going to get mentored, right, and have a mentor. And maybe you're going to make a little less money with that company, but you can always go back. James Huber Allen Kopelman always tells me you can go back and renegotiate that contract down the road. Say, hey, now I'm a seasoned guy, I got 50 accounts, maybe I'm getting 50 or 60% now. Now I want to get 70%, you know, on my new business. And you can, you know, there's no reason why you can't renegotiate because you're not calling them 50 times a day, right? You know, so that's, that's my message on that.

Stand on your own.

Stand on your own. Well, thanks for joining us on B2B Vault Street Smarts Edition, sponsored by The Green Sheet. And thank you to Eric for being a guest today. Peace out. Have a great rest of your day.

You too. Thanks, Allen Kopelman.