How Allen Kopelman Helped Alex Setzer! | Biz To Biz Podcast

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 gonna, you know, you're gonna 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 that.

Well, I can tell you this, in the 20 to 25 previous applications that we had put in, uh, it was You know, most people were the first line of defense, the second line of defense. Maybe you get past that, there's a 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 gonna 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 good.

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— he— we're having the Zoom meeting, and during the Zoom meeting I'm getting texts. 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—

yeah, 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 the best possible route to success. 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 get me on board, that was very helpful.