 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Nick Brophy, your host and director of DAV Patriot Boot Camp. Welcome back to DAV Patriot Boot Camp, Caffeine Connect, a webinar series designed for the modern entrepreneur seeking to fuel their passion and drive for success. Just as a shot of caffeine boost energy, this series aims to stimulate your entrepreneurial spirit with practical insights on key topics shaping the business landscape. Today, we have a great program for you brought to us with the help of Mitchell Kieffer, an Air Force veteran and co-founder of Business Leaders, Quick Reaction Force, a company which specializes in making your business irresistible to creditors, lenders, and investors. With their expertise, you'll build a strong financial foundation for your company in less than 12 months through the application of financial literacy leverage, financial literacy, and leverage, excuse me. Business Leaders' QRF focuses on five primary services, including credit building, business funding, financial management principles, data science, and talent acquisition. Mitchell Kieffer joining us today, Captain, United States Air Force retired, was the chief data scientist for several U.S. and Air Force commands as an officer in the military and as a civilian contractor. He's a combat proven leader being wounded in action, i.e., purple heart recipient, when his vehicle was directly hit by a copper plated, explosively formed penetrating IED, which resulted in an unfortunate TBI injury, as long as some back injuries. Later, he went on to earn his master's degree in data science operations research from the Air Force Institute of Technology via a prestigious assignment. Utilizing his MBA in finance and master's of science and data science, he conducted cradle to grave business plans and analysis of alternatives, alternative valuations, benefit costs, risk assessments, a lot of mouthful here, and surveying studies and workshops driven toward providing operational and strategic optimization predictions and prescriptions. He has owned his own personal training and coaching business for over 20 years, and Mitchell was also handpicked by Hall of Fame wide receiver and high husband trophy winner, Tim Brown, to be part of his Star's Helping Heroes program for veteran entrepreneurs. And more recently, he's become a mentor and speaker in the Warrior Rising organization. He's here today to teach all of us about financial literacy and more specifically, building business credit for your business on a segment we call Funding Your Business. Please, everybody, let's welcome Mitchell Kieffer to DAV Caffeine Connect. Mitchell, take it away. Thanks a lot, Nick. And thanks a lot for everyone for joining in. This is a pretty important piece for when you're starting a business or only operating a business funding and to do it kind of the right way. There's different ways that they have set up the system that is for Main Street to operate versus the way Wall Street operates. They make you do personal guarantee, put up collateral and all that sort of thing. But on Wall Street, the CEO of Walmart doesn't put his personal guarantee on anything. They buy their bounty paper towels with corporate or business credit. And that's based on their EIN. We go in, we buy that stuff off the shelves and then they pay that off and then they get more credit. So they have loads of it and it's the way that basically every small business is able to leverage money to get to become that scale bigger business. I've got some slides here that I'll show you that help you kind of guide through this process and then I'll take some questions at the end. So write those down as you see fit and let's share this screen. All right, everyone got the PowerPoint up? Yup. Yeah, so this is my company, the Business Theory Quick Reaction course. You know, it was the QRF side of it came from when I was doing an action. It was a mouthful for Nick to say, you know, it was hit by an exposed to be formed penetrating IED. So one of those copper plates that are widow makers basically that went through my vehicle about two feet in front of my forehead, knocked me unconscious, scrunched me into my seat belt so I fractured 10 vertebrae. I woke up to the hail of gunfire, we had other IEDs, RPGs flying, AKs, and our likely armored SUVs were able to limp up the road on run flat tires. We were able to set up a perimeter and no one came after us, but we still had a two and a half hour drive back to base with three out of four of our vehicles pretty bugged it up but still working somehow. Divine intervention had fully and our quick reaction force met us at the gate two and a half hours later. So that's not what QRS are there for. QRS are there for you to be with you in the kill zone when you're in, you know, dire need of them. And that's what we really try to do is make sure we get things done quick and done when you're having the problems or even before the problems happen. So there's my contact info and go to the next one. This kind of went over some of this stuff. So I'm not going to cover it too much but it was 100% stable from being wounded in Iraq, medically retired. I still went on with US SOCOM and SOX then with some of their strategy analysis teams as a chief data scientist. And to help with the strategy still deploying down range but almost got blown up in Lebanon again in 2015, I believe it was. So I decided to do more of a desk job after that point. So we'll move on quickly from that. So Nick mentioned that I was handpicked from Stars Helping Heroes and basically it's Tim Brown contacting me out of the blue. It's coming up on about a year ago and he had seen a lot of the stuff that I've been on like Fox News a couple of times, ESPN Sports Center because I had done a lot of stuff with Invictus Games and Warrior Games and won the ultimate champion a couple of times. But he knew anything and everything about me already and wanted me to be part of this program that he has to basically help small businesses break that main street aspect of it and make them more like Wall Street. So here's a little video I'll play. This is one of the ones after we had already talked a little bit but I'll let that play. We can't hear the sound Mitchell. Oh, you can, all right. Well, we'll keep going then, but this is basically where business leaders Quick Reaction Force started out is through Tim Brown and Stars Helping Heroes and getting partners through them and guidance really. So we've got a team and like a network of celebrities to work with that let us know a lot of stuff that I didn't even learn in my MBA and it was an MBA in finance. So this information, what is business credit? Have you ever personally guaranteed a loan for your business? Go ahead and throw something in the chat if you have if you don't say yes, have you been denied a loan because of your personal credit or youth personal credit card for business expenses? Have you loaned money to your business? Have you used your social security number on your business before your business? Have you used your name and personal credit for leases or rent? Now, did you know that your EIN is its own end? So not your social security number but you doing things on your EIN just like the big wigs on Wall Street do. You can get 10 times to 100 times business credit limits compared to personal. Less than 2% of businesses get approved for an SBA loan and that still is done on the personal credit side so you are liable for it. And most business fail because of capital issues. They did a study with SBA and found that of the 30% of companies died out within one year 50% are still operating in five years and only 30% are operating 10 year anniversary. And 82% of the time it was due because of cash flow issue that they had to close their doors. So that's getting access to capital and credit. But it's also faster and easier to build business credit than personal credit. So would you like to basically add tremendous value to your business? Protect your family assets, have the money you need, when you need it, separate your personal finances from your business finances. It would be easier knowing that you're protected. I can basically guess that everyone would say yes to me. So I'll go into what actually is business credit. Because this is something that probably 90% of business owners don't know. It's this, like that they actually have a business credit score that has done totally separate from your personal. So you could have a terrible personal credit history and an excellent outstanding business credit history. And you can not have to rely on your personal credit. So that's the biggest benefit here. But it's credit extended to the business, not the business owner. So they're looking at the revenue of the business instead of your own style. So that's why they can go 10 to 100 times more higher in the recommended limits because the business has quite more aspects like for credit and capital. So the business builds its own credit profile and credit score tied to the I and not the social security number of the owner. It reflects the company's credit worthiness. You could evaluate credit risk. So when you're going to banks and everything or applying for business credit cards, vehicle financing, equipment financing, comfortable financing, real estate financing, lines of credit, firm loans, everything like that. That's how they'll determine if you can do so on your EIN. And the scores go from zero to 100. And a PICO score goes 300, 850. But if you have a business credit score of 80, it's like having PICO scores 720. So you get the best terms in a race once you get to that 80. I'll tell you, basically every business starts out if you haven't built the muscle intentionally, it starts out at about a $1,000 credit limit and a 20-ish credit score. So if you haven't done anything to actively work on this, that's probably where you're going to be at. But they're primarily based on whether business pays its bills on time. So that's the good thing is that personal credit, you have utilization that's high, it's going to decrease your score. So when you're taking out loans and doing hit for credit cards, it's going to decrease your personal credit score. On the business side, it's the opposite. It's basically the more trade lines that you open up on your EIN and the more action you have, the more utilization, the better off your business credit goes. Your score is going to go higher, your recommended credit limit goes higher. And all it is is basically paying your bills on time or early, you know, there's the approval limit they're much higher versus personal accounts, like I said. And there's three main business credit bureaus, Dunn, Bradstreet, Experian, Business, and Xbox Business. And it's different than those personal ones like TransUnion and Experian Personal and Xbox Personal. So why business credit instead of conventional lending or bootstrapping, revenue, personal guarantees, all that sort of thing, which is the conventional way that things go for mainstream. Basically it provides the ability to fund itself. So there's no need for professional investors like venture capital, private equity, they're going to take your equity and control the business a lot of time. I've heard some bad stories where they've, you know, a cancer company or looking to diagnose cancer, they found their equity investors saw another way to use the product as a solvent to, you know, clean things. And that's how the company had to go that way. And they couldn't do their dream of, you know, actually diagnosing cancer. So it gives you the ability to keep control of your business. And venture capital is going to also value yourself at about, or value your business at about one fifth of what it actually is. And that's how they make money. So they have to evaluate you at one fifth of your actual valuation so that they can make their profit. But it gets you access to additional funds beyond what you may be able to get through bootstrapping and revenue alone. That's the leverage that you're trying to use. You know, you can leverage two things, people and money. And if you've got accounts receivables that are, you know, keeping money on the outside of your business profile, you know, while you're waiting them to pay off and everything, it's tough to keep operating without that money. So you can get business credit that kind of fills in that void. So you just never have to worry about, you know, how you're going to operate during the time. And you can keep expanding and scaling your business. So it increases the likelihood of being approved for loans in line to credit, which can provide the business with additional funds to grow and expand. That's the big thing is that it basically allows growth and expansion, just like all the big ones on Wall Street, they started out in the garage usually, you know, like Apple and they use business credit to be able to expand and grow. So you get improved cash flow, describes business active to revolving credit line for operating. This can be effectively useful if you've experienced fluctuation in your class flow throughout the year or down cycles. The business separates your business and personal finances. So greatly reduce the risk of personal liability for your business that can help protect the personal credit of the business owner and their asset. You can get approved regardless of your personal credit score. And basically if you do any of those first things that I talked about, like take out a personal loan for your business or use personal funds for your business or personal credit cards for the business, what you're actually doing is negating the limited liability aspect of your LLC. And that's, so now you're liable. So your assets like a key lock loan, your houses at risk, if you default on anything or don't pay on time, then they can go after your bank accounts. And so this greatly increases, there's lessens the risk for the business owner because it will be limited to the assets and collateral of the business itself. They can't go after your personal. So when separation of the business and personal finances, it's also great for tax time. It can make things a lot easier, but you build credibility with suppliers and partners this way too. So they're more likely to expand, extend credit or enter into partnerships with businesses that have a strong credit history. And you can also, getting a business credit report is public information. You just need to pay about $15 to get it. But you can look at other companies that you plan to work with and or partner with and you can see what their business credit looks like and see if they're financially sound. So you can make good decisions to determine if you're gonna work with them or not, whether they got a lot of your auditory comments on their payment on their credit report, like non payments and things of that nature. I've seen that happen all too often. But it also gives you long-term stability by building a positive credit history business to connect a better rate in terms than you've ever could on your personal accounts and save you huge money and whether the financial challenge. So here's how you do build this business credit. It would take about a semester's worth of education to go through all this to the detail. So I'm gonna give you an overview, but after this, any questions that you have, I can definitely dive deeper into it. But personal credit builds out of magic, we say. So once you turn 18, you're gonna basically, get a personal credit score and any personal credit card you open, any loan that you take out on which your social security number is gonna be reported to the business to the personal credit bureaus. Business credit, on the other hand, needs to be built intentionally. So there's only about two to 7% of business vendors and lenders that actually do report to the business credit agencies. And that's the whole way that you increase your credit limit and increase your score is by getting them to report. So you have to do the right things in the correct order as well when you're doing this to build a business credit foundation. So there's kind of seven steps we go through. The first is having the established foundations for corporate credibility. And I'll go through each one of these kind of steps in a little bit more detail on further slide. But these are things like ensuring that you have a website, ensuring that you have an email address that is at your domain, not a Gmail address. Having a phone number that's 401 to one searchable, it can't be a Google voice or Zoom number. Having an address like that's actual brick and mortar or a virtual address that becomes brick and mortar too. That's what I use since I'm in Peru half the time and Minnesota the other half the time. So I have a virtual address, but it's out of a brick and mortar building. So that allows me to do things. Now, I use the wrong companies in the first place like I postal. And when I've tried to apply for my service table veteran known small business license, they denied me because they said this address is a glorified PO box. It was coming out of the stables, but they still saw it as a PO box. And something like that is gonna get red flag right away for business lenders and vendors. And a lot of things that you're gonna apply for just like I said, on sam.gov, you even get denied. So there's a lot of crawlers that go through to find these red flags in the beginning. So you might be denied things for no reason that you know it all and they don't even have to tell you, but I'll go through kind of what they're looking for. Then you register with the business credit bureau. So Experian X Facts and Dunham Bradsture. And you have to make sure that the business address and everything aligned in that with the IRS with the Department of State and ensure that you have just one profile on each one of these. Cause if you've changed addresses then over time with your business, you might have multiple profiles. Like we've had a guy with five Dunham Bradsture profiles. And if you got something like that, then if you do find the vendors that you report, they won't know which one to put it to. So then they end up won't report it on. So you have to make sure that you're set up correctly with these business credit bureaus. And that's when you can start to begin building tier one credit. And this is going to be more net account. So like 30 days net means you've got to pay it off within 30 days and the full amount. Once you get higher credit scores from doing these starter vendors, you'll be able to get more revolving accounts. But further right now, they don't think too much of you. They think you're like an 18 year old that just got their first credit card. So that's why they're gonna require those type of payments. And you can invoice some of these payments like the view line and they might ask for payment right away. Even though it's on an invoice, but let alone they're still ones that will report to the credit bureaus. And we know which ones. While this is going on, you wanna establish business credit report monitoring. So you wanna monitor basically your credit report to make sure that everything's happening correctly. You can be doing a lot of trial and error and find out that a business credit card that you thought was reporting actually doesn't report. Like I said, only about two to 7% of them do. So knowing which ones do is really important. And this process can take four to five years if you're trying to do it on your own because of all that trial and error. But you wanna basically ensure that you're monitoring the report to make sure that nothing arise going around, making sure that they're reporting what you're spending so that you get credit for it. And my business self and what starts helping heroes, we ensure that we can get this done within 12 months instead of four to five years. But it's kind of wash, rinse and repeat at that point. You basically continue building credit with tier two accounts. Now these are accounts that are gonna be more revolving accounts, more from banks, store cards, things of that nature. And they're all stepping stones to basically increase that credit limit and credit score. And once you get to tier four, that's when all the magic happens. That's when the corporate funding is available. You get revolving credit cards, your vehicle financing, equipment financing, A&R financing, lines of credit, payroll financing, term loans, real estate, all on your EIN remember. So this is all on your EIN without a personal credit check or collapse. So that's really important to remember. So here I'll go through kind of each one of these per, that first step was establishing the foundations for corporate credibility and fundability. And it's basically your business credibility, your ability to get finance. But like I said, you're gonna have to have a phone number that's listed in 411, business website and email, business licenses if you need that, business bank account to make sure the address is correct, just like with the IRS. You got an EIN, you got an anything type like an LLC. You've got the business name. So making sure all those duct are in a row first before you move on to step two, which is establishing those reports. So you register with the three big ones, Experian, Business, Expect Business, and Dunn and Bradstreet. And once those are taken care of and you've got knowledge that you've only got one profile, all the addresses are correct, everywhere, all the same information. You know that when you do start opening up your one starter account, they're gonna report and they're gonna report to the right one. So you must find these vendors that actually report. Typically net accounts like I mentioned, rather than revolving, meaning you have to pay the entire balance in a certain number of days. But it really only takes a couple of times or a month or two of using these accounts to basically get yourself out of that tier one area and into it. So again, it's really about the trial and error of finding these less than 7%, you know, I've told you a number of times it's more like 2% that actually report. So personal side, they have to report. It's a legal thing, whereas business merchants, they don't have to report. So that's why only a certain number do. And you gotta basically find which ones they are. Monitoring the reports, it copies that there's credit reports, check for errors and appropriate reporting. You should see your credit score and recommend it to the school credit limit. Start the increase. Then you know that everything's working correctly. That's when you can start opening up tier two accounts. So these are more the revolving retail credit cards. May or may not require personal guarantee still. But I have to suggest that every time that you do open up a business account or vendor, lender, you always try to do it only with the EIN. And if they do say that they have to use your social security number as well, then go ahead and do it. You'll always apply first under the EIN. So once you get to tier three, they're basically general revolving accounts that need to be a strong credit score. So that's why you can't just hop right up to the best thing. You're gonna have to build that credit score as time goes on. Rome wasn't built in the day, but it's definitely doable within 12 months. And we've seen amazing things happen even at the six to nine month area. And while you're doing this, you'll get to this tier four within 12 months, but also you get to use this credit as you go along. So it may start out with $1,000 recommended limit, but then it might go up to 6,000, 7,000 by tier two. And then it jump up to 15,000 and then jump to 5,000 and then jump to 750,000. And that's actually a real life story with one of our trucking companies, Christine, that she had a two and a half million dollar business and that's how she jumped in about nine months. So she went from 1,000 credit limit and she had $70,000 worth business credit cards that none of them were reporting. So $70,000 of expenses that weren't doing her any good. But once she got on the program and got the right ones working for her, she went from that 1,000 credit limit up to $724,000 actually. In about nine months. And then she went on from there. So she was two and a half million dollar business then. She's over six million now and she's got about $4 million worth of credit. So it allowed her to purchase more truck to have gas cards, to have everything on the EIN. So none of this stuff, if anything defaults is gonna be coming down on her. It's gonna be all without personal credit checks or collateral and all on the business. So tier four is the higher limit accounts. They have the more respectability. At this point you can get approved from most accounts that rely on your business credit score. So anything and everything. I've mentioned a lot of those things in the previous slide. So kind of key takeaways is per the SBA having access credit and capital for your business immediately or ultimately determines your business success or failure. So over 83% of the time that a company closes doors due to poor cash flow, not having the needed capital and credit. And using personal loans like conventional lending with a security number for your business will negate that limited liability of your LLC. You the business owner will be held live. So for those that building business credit foundations helps you weather any storms or dry spots in the business. The best way to keep your doors open during adversity and down business cycles because you'll have that money or that credit sitting there just in case even if you're not even used in it it'll be there for you to use and you won't have to beg a bank or get denied by banks. Your business will be able to fund itself and have it sell. Remember that only about two to 7% of these business creditors and lenders actually report to the business credit bureaus. So you need to do your due diligence to research the underwriting requirements and reporting. That's something that we've done with our business to make sure that we can do everything in that 12 month period, like I said. The best way to minimize your risk though if your family, personal asset and your reputation is to build a business credit profile on your EIN not your social security number. So a lot of its information is what you won't hear from the banks. A lot of them don't know that you have the capability of building business credit on your EIN. And even if they do know, they're not gonna tell you about it because that's not how they can make money. So this information is really not that well known and can do you a whole lot of good for your business so that you can be one of those 30% that are still operating 10 years down the road and you can sleep easy at night. More key takeaways, here's like some scenarios. If you have difficulty in obtaining business loans without a strong business credit profile, lenders may be hesitant to provide you loans business lines of credit. So it gets challenging to access capital needed to grow the business or take advantage of new opportunities. With AI going on like crazy, there's gonna be some $250,000 purchase you're gonna have to make probably within the next 10 years and having the ability to do that for AI and to keep your business operating correctly. You're gonna need access to credit capital. Higher interest rate or a weak business credit history will result in higher interest rates on credit lines and loans, making it more expensive for the business to borrow money. You're gonna have limited access to credit. So it'll be challenging to access that credit which can be critical for managing capital, operating, purchasing inventory, making necessary investments. You'll limited supplier options. Some of them give you supplier options to get money through them or to fund it through them, but suppliers may require upfront from businesses with weak credit profiles. So maybe difficult to purchase and that's very good in services needed to operate for your business patient. Difficulty in attracting new investors. So having business credit itself gives you a higher valuation. You take two companies and if there's, both of them do the same thing, they're both maybe $1,000 or a million dollar companies. The one that has a $1,000 credit limit versus a million dollar credit limit is gonna be the one that investors choose to go with because it passes with the EINs. So when it's time to exit, when it's time to live the good life and you're passing it on to the kids or selling the business, that business credit goes with the company. So investors know that they can basically take that business and run with it. So it puts you out from the crowd and makes sure that you're the one that are getting 50 to 70 investor versus two to three. You also can have difficulty in maintaining business insurance. So having a strong credit history before providing your coverage, making it difficult for business with great credit profiles to obtain the necessary insurance coverage. Personal liability, I've hit on this, and that's a foot stopper. Without a separate business credit profile, business owners maybe personal, not maybe will be personally liable for any debts or legal issues that arise within the business. Peter Thiel, legendary investor said, no small business without business credit can survive a $1 million lawsuit. And not to say that you're gonna come across that, but basically have to plan like you are. And to have that business credit available to you, you're gonna be able to weather that storm or whatever else comes in your way. Say there's another COVID that doesn't do well for your business, something like that. But it hurts your personal assets at risk and you'll have long-term financial consequences. There's some horror stories about a guy that had $800,000 in personal loans that he took out for his business. He couldn't be defaulted on those loans, but he couldn't even commit bankruptcy, which would have ruined his personal credit anyways. And because he had two daughters that were still in college. So if he would have had the access to business credit, he would have been able to basically just wipe that clean and start over. So, few, what if situations? What if the business needs to make a large purchase, but you're unable to find the necessary funding? What if the business needs to apply for business loan or credit lines, but you're rejected due to lack of business credits? What happens if you're unable to secure credit from suppliers? The inability to acquire critical materials or inventory needed to operate your business? What if you must rely on personal credit cards to finance the business expenses? You put your personal finances at risk and potentially damage your credit score. What if you're unable to negotiate better payment terms with suppliers, vendors? You get higher costs and reduced profitability. What if you're unable to attract new investors limiting your ability to grow? If you do want to take on partners or get some venture capital work. What if the business owner is unable to obtain necessary business insurance coverage? Leaves you open to potential risks and liabilities. What if you're required to provide personal guarantee? It increases their personal financial risk and liability. And basically, what if business owner cannot obtain favorable lease or rental terms for business space on their EIN due to weak credit profile? That means you're gonna have higher costs, higher run payments and reduced cash flow. And lastly, unable to take advantage of new business opportunities, which limits the business potential for growth and success. So in summary there, you hit on all of them. Limit the business owner's ability to obtain financing, negotiate better payment terms, attract investors, obtain business insurance, expose personal assets, take advantage of new business opportunities, potentially eliminating the business growth and profitability. So that's what happens if you don't have this credit. So I'll go through this real quick, just who this can help. It can help basically everybody, whether you're a startup to business ready to exit. Even if you're ready to exit, if you get your business credit up, again, like I said, that's gonna get you on the top of the list for investors because it's gonna increase your valuation. But it's great for startups, because as a startup, you're gonna have limited ability to get funds, small businesses in general, seasonal businesses to navigate through those storms and cycles, high growth potential, because you're gonna need that credit and capital to grow. And businesses with strong supply chain, like I said, those with contraceptives out there, they're not gonna be able to utilize a lot of their money for a certain period of time. So having that business credit still allows them to operate and take advantage of growth opportunities and whatnot. So that's basically the gist of it. I wanna tell everyone that you can schedule a free Zoom call with me from my website or go over your own specific situation. Also, I can also pull you a free business credit report free to you. I've got a subscription, so I'll pay for it, but that's on me for the first 20 that make an appointment. It's about $50 to pull on your own. But just if you wanna know where you're at, let me know and I can do that for you. Or you can contact me directly for any questions or comments after this at my email right there. So on that, I'll swing it back on to Nick. Great, great, great. Thanks, Mitchell. This is a, you know, when you see, when you hear the term funding your business, it's, you know, most people, I don't think their minds go to credit. So this has been pretty good overview of the difference between personal and business credit. But we have a couple of questions. And I had the same question and I know that Alexander Timmons, he's on one of our alumni, he's on the call. He had a question, Alexander, Alex, do you wanna come on and shout out your question? Yeah, sure. Hey, Mitchell. Oh, hey, Alexander. Good to see you again. I just said earlier that you have a list of those, you guys have a list of those tier one through four accounts. Is that something that you can share with us or is that something that we can, is there a place we can find those? I can help you out with a few different examples, but that's kind of where our services are provided. And so we've done all that legwork and, you know, to make it less than four to five years to bring it down to 12 months. So I don't, I can't really give you that list, but I can still help you out in a few certain ways. Like I can tell you and give you one thing, little tidbit is Chase Inc. I heard was a great business credit card to use. But when I got my Chase Inc. Brown Air, I got the business cash card and the gray card with no annual fee. And it turned out after a couple of months, it wasn't appearing on my credit report. So I was saying, what's the deal? I was talking to some of my other client down business partners and they're like, yeah, it does report. And I found out basically that it's only their premier and preferred blue cards Chase Inc. that do report. So if you aren't, but they have annual fees, but that's one business credit card that you could get in the beginning. And, you know, I was able to get $30,000 for credit, you know, right away for that. And it all depends on, they're still gonna look at your personal credit for that and make you take out a personal guarantee if you haven't built up business credits due on the EIN loan. But it's gonna be one of the ones that do report so that you can start to build that along the way. Great, thank you. Great, thanks, Alex. We've got another question by Joe Taylor. Joe, if you wanna, it sounds like you wanna come on and ask your question too. Please do. See you Joe. You did, yeah. There he is. Okay, yes. Hey, sorry guys, I was to the side. Hey, great information. Ironically, I started this process some years ago back in 2017. And I was doing a few things here and there. I got frustrated because the personal side was not everything I was trying to do was PG. And then so I kind of like a lot of business to administrative dissolve, but I can't really say that I did check with the secretary of state before we got started this call. So I'm pretty sure there are some trade lines on there. But what I would like to do is, how do we get started with you? And for someone who already has a business that was established back in 2017, well, I don't know if you wanna do this openly. If you can put your contact information back up, then I can contact you directly. What is the process? What is the fee? How do we get started? Because I'm a fellow vet myself, maybe, me and my wife are looking to do some things together in the transportation industry. That'd be, you're a prime for that then. Okay, well, I'll put my- I'll let it go while we're doing it, we'll go over there. Yeah, I'll put my, I'll put my email in the chat right now. And basically, we'll just start out with a Zoom call and to make sure that there's a good fit. And so I can listen to what your business is all about and your situation in general. So we can probably pull that one that you started back in 2017 to see if they have some trade lines on it and to see if that would be useful or if using a brand new one is EIN entity would be a better way to go. So we can do all of that. And yeah, free to do. Appreciate you, thank you. All right, so I will email your ASAP. Yeah, and it's Mitchell at BusinessLeaderQRF.com. Thank you. So Mitchell, there's been a few people that are asking about the credit score, you know, the report that you're talking about. So Ophie is on, she messages, she tagged me in the chat, but I'm sure you'll have some emails. You're growing your email address out there. I got a question that I was thinking about as you're going through a presentation. And you know, a lot of times when we talk about anything here with DAV, Page of Bootcamp, a lot of times it's kind of in that, I want to say startup, but early stage mode, a lot of people are early on in their business. And so we have a tendency to forget about other types of businesses. And what I'm talking about is buying an existing business, which you kind of believe you do. An existing business that has good credit history or good credit position would be a higher value. Much better buy, yeah. Is that something that comes like, if you're in the position where you're building a business and then you ultimately sell it or you're looking to purchase a business, that is a carryover, the credit carryover. It works both ways, correct? Yes, it's just to the EIN. So absolutely, if you're looking to get out and exit with the best valuation and investors come to the table, it's best to have that business credit. But also, and I'm actually doing this right now with the guy, a client from DAV actually. And he's looking at laundromats. And so we're pulling all their credit scores and credit reports to see if any of them have business credit attached to them. Cause again, then he can hit the ground running but he doesn't have to bootstrap or use revenue. And that's really tough when you're starting out. And different ideas go about this, but I'm on the side of saving your personal funds and so bootstrapping and revenue kind of as a last resort. So I would like to use other people's money to fund the business, pay it back on time though. But that way you're not always putting the bill per se right away. And it gives you time to take out interest free loans and stuff of that nature. But yeah, absolutely. That's something that you would want to look at is, and something I can help out. If someone wants more credit polls, I've got a subscription. So I can help out with that. Good. Yeah, I think you pulled that right out of my mind, which was use somebody else's money if you have the chance to do so, rather than bootstrap it. So it's sometimes a little harder to do that, but that's great. I mean, that's good advice. And cause there are people out there, you know, we don't, again, we don't, we have a tendency to forget about people who, their entrepreneurial journey starts by acquiring a business that might not be doing so well or that they're passionate about. And I would even go as far as saying, is that, you know, how does that affect you as an entrepreneur or the business if you're buying, if you're buying into franchising? I mean, does that help with a pre-established credit because of the franchise or is it still something you have to do on your own? It's still something you have to do on your own. That's actually, you know, a good story too. I was working with D1, the athletic company that does a lot of like personal and group training. And they're starting to think about, you know, at the franchise level of putting that into their package, basically the cost to do it with us. And having that as, you know, a part of their building business credit because like if you look at all of them, all of the D1s, like there's not one of them that's built any business credit. So you don't get that just by being a franchise. You still are going to be at that lowly $1,000 credit limit and 28 credit score. And that's where everyone is. Like everyone's like an 18 year old again. And it's a muscle that has to be built. It's got to be done in the right way and right, you know, steps. But yeah, so if there is something in the franchise I would ask them, they have business credit and capability of building it or at least helping out with that venture because that could be a real promising franchise to get started with. Yeah, a nice blueprint for it, right? Like they should be proud to provide a blueprint. Excuse me, a blueprint in a lot of other ways. Why not with credit too, right? So Ken has a question. Ken, do you want to come? I think it looks like you want to come on and ask. So jump on here and you can ask your question to Mitchell. Yeah, absolutely. There he is. Hey, Ken. Hi. Can anybody hear me? Yep. Yeah, loud and clear. So I started a studio that does virtual reality and mixed reality. And I know there's a program with Meta platforms where everybody knows it. Used to be called Facebook. And my question is regarding that if the lenders know the company, which is still pretty new, is partnering with a large company like that? Do they take that into consideration, especially maybe avoiding the tier one or kind of like making Meta more like a co-signer kind of thing? I don't know if that will work. But I'm just curious how that worked. Thank you. Yeah, as your only EIN entity, it won't, like someone else's won't help yours. So being a partner with them. If you have equity investors or like there's a real like buyout or something, then you basically be part of that business. But otherwise it's just a great thing to have as partners to work with. But it doesn't help business credit. But brought up another thing in my mind is that if there are multiple businesses that you have or that you work with, you can also build the business credit on one of the EIN and loan money that way to the other. So there's, if that other business that you're partnering with has business credit, they might be able to loan you at real good terms and rates. So you got that option. Awesome, thank you. Thanks, Ken. Yeah, I love finance. Like finance, you can be so creative. Micah is on and, or Micah wants to come on and ask a question as well. So Micah, jump on on and ask that question, please. Hello. And Micah. Hey, how's it going? Yeah, thanks for the presentation. Great information. So I have a fledgling personal training gym and fitness business. And I'm wondering, is there a really good solid credit card like Amazon business credit card that just automatically reports and there's nothing to worry about with that? Well, Amazon's kind of been flexed right now. It used to have a business credit card that did report, but now I've been researching it and it doesn't seem like, for one, they were in tier two. So if you were brand new, like probably wouldn't get accepted right away. But I'm still looking into it if they pulled that or not. So I can do some research though and if you email me that question, I'll search more into it. But last thing I want to say- Sure, I just think it's a reliable card that you just don't have to worry about whether it's reporting or not. You can just put everything on there, but... Yeah, I'd like that's, you know, ULINE is one of those companies that has everything. And, you know, I use that for building my own business credit in tier one. They make you pay the invoice right away the first couple of times that you use it. But like there's all sorts of stuff, but then I like some of the camping gear that they have. So like, and when you're doing this and going from step by step, it doesn't take much. Like $50 on, you know, on a monthly invoice is all that you need. So you don't have to spend at 70K in expenses every month. So just by having the trade lines open and showing that you're able to pay them off and spend 50 bucks on them, you know, then that gives you the ability to increase that credit limit from the creditors. And they'll do that and it goes really quickly that way. And that's why, you know, each one of those tiers kind of takes a couple of payment periods to kind of graduate the next one, but it happens really fast when you have the right things working for you. And it does, you don't have to go into that to it, you know, you can, I like to pay everything off, you know, all the time anyways and limit, you know, the ones that I have revolving or pay a payment to like rent or utility bills, you know, stuff like that. But there's even ways to get credit for utility bills and rent payments to increase your credit limit. So, you know, those are some of the state, like real easy things to do to increase it. But otherwise I'd say like ULINE is great one because they report, I know the DNB and Experian. Equifax is a little different. You can get fleet cards, that's another thing. Certain fleet cards like Wex or Come and Go that they do fleet cards so you can go to basically any gas station around and everybody uses gas. So, you know, you can easily spend 50 bucks in a month on something like that. And they report to all the credit bureaus. So, like Wex, if you search Wex, Fleetcard or Come and Go, K-U-M and Go, they're two of the ones in tier one that also like are a great state, you know, ones that report to all three and everything. So, I'm giving some of the speaker juice already. When it sounds like, thanks, Mike, for that question because I'm sure a lot of people had a similar thing as the D, the reality is like it's, just like you said, it's an 18 year old. Seems like the hardest step, a step number one, which is making stuff all your stuff is consistent, right? And all those little checklist items are consistent and then it's like a 20, like an 18 year old would get a credit card and has a $500 limit and you, you know, you buy a meal at Chipotle, you know, once a week on there and you pay that off. And all of a sudden you have credit, right? It's all of a sudden you start receiving credit. So, it sounds like the small things have a very big impact. Exactly. That's a building credit. And again, it's just another tool. You know, we have lots of segments on Caffeine Connect where we talk about different, I consider tools the toolkit, you know, being a military guy, we always talk about having tools on the toolkit and, you know, credit's a tool, you know, the ability to borrow money is a tool in a different way, you know, that financing is a tool. Obviously, venture capitalism is a tool, bootstrapping is a tool. They're all tools, right? In order to get where you need to go. But I think this is a tool that has modular add-ons, you know, it's kind of like the battery-powered Sawzall that now, you know, the battery goes to the hacksaw or the jigsaw or the, you know, you have all these tools in the toolkit. So, Mitchell, I know we're getting close on time. I don't see any other questions. I'm sure we can. Oh, I had one other, one other quick thing I could say. Yeah. Is that there is going to be sometime a need to do personal guarantees and, you know, personal loans and whatnot. So that's something that you can still do. And like you're going to be okay. It's just something that you don't want to have to do. But it's like a band-aid. But if you have the cure building behind it, that business credit being built, you can pass that other personal guarantee over to the EIN. So it's so security number to the EIN. And that's how you can get rid of that quicker. So that's, you know, a way that they can work together and you can get double the amount of funding as well as, you know, get rid of that risk just that much quicker. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you heard him here today, everybody. I mean, business leaders, QRF. And if you need to reach out to Mitchell and his team, he has a few other members of the team, reach out to them on their website. He put his email address in the chat, which is pretty bold of him to do. So I'm sure he'll have a couple things in the inbox after this. So Mitchell, I want to thank you for your time and your experience and expertise today. Thank you for being such a patriot and a great supporter of DAV, Patriot Bootcamp as well. So I just want to extend that thanks to you. For everybody else that's out there watching, listening, whatever, what have you, I want to thank you for joining us today and appreciate all the attendance, engagement, those who came on and asked questions. I know that can be, you know, a little, a little eke from time to time, but we appreciate you taking the moment to do that. And, you know, learning about business credit and how you can utilize business credit for yourself and to build your business, maybe reestablish some new footing, et cetera. So a couple of short announcements before we bounce out of here, but if anyone's still interested in applying for our May cohort for DAV, Patriot Bootcamp, the applications are still open till April 29th. You can reach that at DAV, Patriot Bootcamp, I'm sorry, Patriot, yeah, DAVpatriotbootcamp.org, or you can, you can reach, if you have a question or something you can reach out to us at patriotbootcamp.dav.org is our email address. So that cohort is in the Cincinnati area here our headquarters from May 15th to 17th. We also have our cohort open in October. So you can also find that application, same page on our website. And that cohort is October 9th through the 11th. It's in Washington, D.C. at a partner of ours, Pooley LLP. So if you're, if that's something that fits your schedule a little bit better, apply online for that. But remember, there are limited seating. So it's on a first come, first serve application basis. Otherwise, if we're also looking for mentors, so if you're out there and you're in a position where you're an established entrepreneur and you really wanna give back and do some mentoring and Mitchell has done some mentoring with us and is gonna continue to do so. We'd love to have you. You can find that application also on our website to get signed up to be solicited to be a mentor in an upcoming program. We'd love to have you. And then, if you're someone out there that has something they wanna present on a caffeine connect segment like Mitchell did today, you can always reach out to us at our email address and make sure you include a title, your name, a title, a brief description, a head shot bio and we'll get in contact with you about that segment. If there's any other ways that you're looking to support veterans, DAV does a lot of work and you can always reach out to us via email and we can get you connected to the right department depending on how you're looking to get involved with supporting veterans. And then lastly, we always want you to follow us on social media. So please find us on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, DAV, Patriot Bootcamp. Like us, follow us, share. You'll see a lot of interesting stories that we post out there like our founder Fridays which we'll have a new one for tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. Please get connected with us. And again, until next time everybody, really appreciate it. Activate, mentor, create and grow. Everybody, Patriot Six, out.