PEP Episode 030 — Merchant Agents Business Growth in Payments: Leveraging AI & Social Media with Josh Holden

Podcast Description:

Unlock the secrets of thriving as an independent merchant agent in the fiercely competitive payments industry with our special guest, Josh Holden from Card Connect. From the financial challenges of Southern California to the critical transition from bank-fed sales to independent agency, Josh brings his extensive experience from Wells Fargo, First Data, and Heartland to the table. This episode is packed with his invaluable insights on building a robust client base and navigating an industry where smaller firms often struggle to survive against larger, well-established competitors.

Explore the contentious issue of clawback letters and the financial headaches they cause for small agencies and ISOs. We’ll dissect the importance of customer service, legal advice, and how software-driven processing mandates are reshaping the industry. Josh’s practical advice on survival strategies and industry adaptation offers a lifeline to those struggling to stay afloat amidst evolving market dynamics. If you’ve ever faced unexpected financial burdens in your business, this segment is a must-listen.

Discover the latest trends in the payments industry, from the nuisance of junk fees to the revolutionary potential of AI in business operations. Josh shares his thoughts on leveraging AI for digital marketing, enhancing communication with clients, and building a personal brand through consistent social media efforts. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the payments sector, Josh’s strategies for strategic growth, customer-centric approaches, and community partnerships will provide you with the tools you need to achieve business success. Tune in and transform the way you approach the rapidly evolving payments landscape.

Reach out to Global Legal Law Firm today: https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/

Josh Holden (00:00):

I read a stat, I was looking at stats yesterday. The average merchant agent on their own out there makes $48,000 a year. Wow. I don’t know how it’s not going to work in Southern California. You can’t live on that, right? You can’t live on that at all. And then they say after five years you can make six figures and even six figures in California may not get you a house. May not. It’s not going, especially with interest rates going up and the qualifications to get something like that. So I think you’re going to get swallowed up where you have to go get a W2 job. You have to go get that. And maybe this becomes more of a side thing or who do you know? Networking. I think there’s going to be a lot of changes coming up and your bigger ones will obviously survive because they’re going to have a big brand, big name and they’ll be able to put the money towards customer service or the things that are needed to stay alive. But I think a lot of your independent people or your solepreneur, you would say, I don’t know how much they’re going to do just this. Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (00:56):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Jeremy Stock (01:10):

Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Today we’re really excited to have in studio with us managing partner of the firm, James Huber, as well as special guest Josh Holden, who is an agent with Card Connect. Josh, thank you so much for joining us in Studio

Josh Holden (01:27):

Today. Thank you very much. What’s your middle name? Josh Benjamin’s, my first name. I go by Josh. Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (01:36):

Very cool. Good question. Well, you guys have a number of things we’re going to talk about today. Absolutely. If you guys want to maybe Josh, tell us a bit about Card Connect. How’d you get involved with them, your background in payments?

Josh Holden (01:48):

Absolutely. So again, my name is Josh Holden. I’ve been in payments for about 15 years now. I started off with Wells Fargo, worked there for about eight years. Then I transitioned into First Data directly at Wells Fargo. At Wells Fargo Bank. I was a banker there. I moved my way up through the ranks and Merchant services was the avenue I went down. So when people came into the bank and they’re like, I need processing, you nailed them. Yeah, we would nail them. It’s like I kind of consider it being in the zoo. They fed us leads, they fed us, all this stuff. So it’s a hard transition to go out there and go get it yourself. But once you get that muscle memory down, then it’s great for knowledge though. I learned so much from your goal to sign up there is 15 to 20 accounts a month when you’re an independent rep.

Josh Holden (02:36):

I don’t know too many people who do that on their own independently, unless you have a team built out. Right. Okay. So then you said you went to work direct for First Data? Yeah, directly. I covered all of California for their BBVA relationship. So you were a sales rep? Yeah, I was. They called it Mid-market rep. So I handled accounts from 4 million to about 200 million. And they were shoveling you the meat still? Yeah, they would still connect it to different banks and things and they would still shovel the meat over to us. And then I went to Heartland. I did a short stint at Heartland. I was original. Why

James Huber (03:08):

Leave from this data?

Josh Holden (03:11):

I don’t like all the regulations that a lot of these bigger processors have. I don’t feel like they have the best. I know we can go lower on the pricing if we had to win the deal and they still wouldn’t do it. They’d nickel and dime, all these little things. I was like, we don’t need to charge all that kind of stuff. And maybe I didn’t see the bigger picture. Right. I’m not the CEO e I’m only thinking about me signing up a client and me getting some residuals off it. So it’s a little different when you’re running a big organization. But yeah, I didn’t like all that kind of stuff.

James Huber (03:41):

Yeah. Cool. And then you said you went to Heartland?

Josh Holden (03:43):

Heartland for, I did that stint for probably about eight months to a year. I was original manager there, helped them in the San Diego market, and then I started on my own agency. It was actually Ignite at first. I don’t know if you guys remember Ignite, but I started with them. Then I went over to Card Connect and now we’ve added my camp and Card Connect together. So we’re using both channels just depending on the client and what their needs are.

James Huber (04:06):

Okay. So you started your own shop as First Data Ignite. Yeah. So basically you’re direct with First Data. Correct. Retail not taking any risks,

Josh Holden (04:15):

Not taking a lot of risks. Yeah.

James Huber (04:16):

And how was that transition? Now you’re out hunting.

Josh Holden (04:22):

I like it. Okay. At first it’s rough, don’t get me wrong.

James Huber (04:25):

Was this like 2012?

Josh Holden (04:28):

When was this? No, 2015.

James Huber (04:30):

Okay.

Josh Holden (04:31):

Yeah, 15, 16, right around there. It’s rough at first. You are trickling around two accounts a month, three accounts a month, and then once you get your rhythm, it took me about a year and a half before I started having referrals, really getting the brand out there, the name out there, the trust factor out

James Huber (04:49):

There. Remember you selling as Ignite? Yeah.

Josh Holden (04:52):

So yeah, I was selling as an Ignite agent rep.

James Huber (04:55):

Did you get to keep any of your old residuals when you’re an employee?

Josh Holden (04:59):

Oh no. Not from when I worked with the other

James Huber (05:01):

Companies now. Yeah. No, that’s

Josh Holden (05:03):

Too bad. Yeah,

James Huber (05:03):

They get you.

Josh Holden (05:05):

They put in markers and it’s funny now that I’m an agent owner and I have people underneath me, I understand why they do some of that stuff. Well, sure. Yes. So I get it.

James Huber (05:17):

Okay, so you were Ignite and then Card First Data says, we don’t want to deal with this stuff anymore. Let’s put you all under Card Connect. And that just kind of happened automatically. Yeah, it was. How was that transition and will the word awful be a good description?

Josh Holden (05:37):

Okay, so I don’t know if awful is the correct word to use. I mean, you’ve got to be understanding there’s going to be some growing pains anytime you do anything. I mean, we just switched over, we added my CAM to our solution. We have some growing pains. It’s not exactly Card Connect. I’m used to a certain platform. They use a different platform. So there was some growing pains. I like Card Connect’s platform they use, it’s called Copilot. It’s very agent friendly. We get to see everything that our clients do. We have access to all that stuff. So when it comes to managing your business, it’s very good for that customer service, things like that. They’re growing too, I’m sure. And you don’t always get ahold of the people you need to get ahold of. And so we’re out here kind of dancing around trying to fix things that we maybe not have access to fix and we’re waiting on a lot of things, but it’s growing. But any kind of business you’re with.

James Huber (06:34):

Yeah, well, I mean I saw it and we were always puzzled when First Data is going, it almost seemed like they don’t even want to deal with the ISOs anymore. They like their big president’s, club boys, and that’s it. And then the smaller people, they were like, and then they just straight out did it and said, you can all go to Card Connect and deal with them. I know everybody really liked Card Connect before that. Then Card Connect came in and the first data people started bleeding over there and all of that. There’s great people there too. But now I’m looking at it and I’m seeing the same thing and it’s all coming from Frank up at the top, but you’re seeing the same thing where they’re starting to treat their ISOs. Not that great. Did you guys get a claw back letter? Oh yeah.

Josh Holden (07:25):

Call out back. Yeah. What was it? A year and a half ago, year ago, something like that.

James Huber (07:30):

All of a sudden a bunch of people got a letter saying, Hey, we’ve made a mistake for the last five years we’ve been under billing you and we’re just going to take it, but we’ll be cool. We’ll just take a little a month. And I’ve heard it from way higher ups going, yeah, this is a business model, take it. If people complain about it, okay, we’ll reverse it. But we run into a ton of people that they didn’t even complain and I’m like, why didn’t you not complain? Then we will go in and we’ll get them some of the money back sometimes, or at least get them to stop taking money because it’s total bs. Yeah,

Josh Holden (08:12):

100%.

James Huber (08:13):

And it was just a big cash grab. But I’m going, we’ve always said the ISOs are the lifeblood of the industry. The industry dies otherwise it’s all going to be square and stripe, which we know do not help merchants. The only advocate for the merchant are the good ones. Like your outfit, they’re advocating for the merchant. Yeah, you want to make money, but you’re going to lose your customers if you’re just screwing them over

Josh Holden (08:37):

If you’re not taking care of them.

James Huber (08:38):

So by treating the ISOs like crap, I think the industry, the particularly small businesses take a huge

Josh Holden (08:47):

Hit. 100%.

James Huber (08:49):

And so it’s really interesting to see Card Connect now taking that on, and I’m glad that you’re working with the other ISO that you mentioned. My camp who Yeah. Has the No, the ISOs are the lifeblood. Well they

Josh Holden (09:05):

Know. Yeah.

James Huber (09:06):

Winding and dining you and we will bend over backwards, so that’s great. Alright, well go ahead.

Josh Holden (09:14):

Just so I want to comment on that one thing. To your point, why I don’t think a lot of people stood up for the clawback thing. A lot of the reps or agencies are so small, they don’t have lawyers on hand. They don’t have anybody like you to, Hey, let me balance this off you. What’s about to happen? What’s your advice? A lot of ’em are just like, okay, what is my other choice not to have this anymore? So I think it’s important as your business gets larger is to start looking into having legal advice, having someone to have on your side.

James Huber (09:45):

Yeah, I mean it’s one of the reasons that we kind of fell in love with this space as we saw people like yourself, entrepreneurs built up this huge business. Then they’d call us and we’d be like, oh, why didn’t you call

Josh Holden (09:56):

Me before?

James Huber (09:57):

We would’ve been able to figure that out. So it’s interesting. Alright, so what are you seeing out in the field now? You guys got your eyes L up running, you’re cranking. What are the opportunities and threats that you’re seeing out there?

Josh Holden (10:13):

I mean the biggest threat out there are your SaaS people. Your softwares out there. Yeah. I mean that’s the biggest threat. It’s funny, I was talking to someone else in the industry and they’re like, Hey, what do you see it happening in the next five to 10 years? I think it’s going to get weed out a lot. I think these SaaS programs are going to, I mean auto places have it, restaurants have it, all the major industries have someone like that. And then they’re telling you who to process with. Eventually they’re all going to do that and it’s going to really be hard for agencies. I think they’ll still be the agents. We give the customer service, we get that, but your smaller ones are going to get kind of swallowed up because there’s not going to be a lot of money out there. I read a stat, I was looking at stats yesterday. The average merchant agent on their own out there makes $48,000 a year.

James Huber (10:59):

Wow.

Josh Holden (10:59):

I don’t know how

James Huber (11:02):

It’s not going to work in southern California. You can’t live on that.

Josh Holden (11:04):

You can’t live on that at all. And then they say after five years you can make six figures and even six figures in California may not get you a house. May not. It’s not going. Especially with interest rates going up and the qualifications to get something like that. So I think you’re going to get swallowed up where you have to go get a W2 job. You have to go get that. And maybe this becomes more of a side thing or who do you know? Networking. I think there’s going to be a lot of changes coming up and your bigger ones will obviously survive because they’re going to have a big brand, big name and they’ll be able to put the money towards customer service or the things that are needed to stay alive. But I think a lot of your independent people or your solepreneur, you would say, I don’t know how much they’re going to do just

James Huber (11:45):

This. Yeah, it’s tough. And I hear you on the, I mean, we’ve got our headaches, our software as a service, our law firm software has the payments tied to it and you’re not allowed to get out. And the rates are, I don’t think the rates are that bad, but I’m going, I’ve got clients who would give it away to us because they want the nice clean business. I don’t think we’ve ever had a chargeback.

Jeremy Stock (12:09):

Well, it’s funny, have we ever had a chargeback? We actually just lost a chargeback last month. I think it’s our first one, literally our first one.

James Huber (12:17):

And now we’re going to go sue that.

Josh Holden (12:19):

Yeah, right. Wrong person to do it.

James Huber (12:21):

Well, that’s the point.

Jeremy Stock (12:22):

The irony of it really.

James Huber (12:24):

So ours, and we don’t even really like the software, but they all suck according to us. So yeah, I mean I think you see that because look, it does help. It’s better than when we used to run it off of Excel. So yeah, no, I think that is a big threat. But what I hope I was hoping you were going is that these softwares as a service are so bad that there’s going to be a way to get in there, to get out of it, to break that up. Because you have the big companies going around the ISVs buy up all those veterinarians and they’ll mess with it to get their payments in there. So what I’m hoping I see is that, okay, look, I’m stuck with Rocket, whatever our systems is called Rocket matter. Rocket matter, and we’re stuck there but going, no, you have to let us out of this.

James Huber (13:25):

You have your agreement with them, that’s your thing. Great. Go get the attorneys that aren’t payments attorneys that no, this is not the best option out there and open it up. So I’d like to see some of the cracking for that so that there’s competition. Because all of the bigger ISOs out there that have their own developers or anything, they’re all saying, no, we can route into the backend, just do it. But then we’ve tried it and it doesn’t link with QuickBooks and all of that. We’re going, look, we just don’t want to mess with it.

Josh Holden (13:53):

That’s the answer right there. We don’t want to mess with it. It’s a headache. And I get it. Convenience means so much. I think that’s one of the most valuable things. I pay extra for convenience if I don’t have to do something and it’s not much more, I’d rather just pay a little bit

James Huber (14:07):

Extra, but okay, fine. But you are bawling. Most businesses are running a margin. So restaurants, I think their margin is 10%. Oh, and if my processing fees are three and a half to 4%, my margin is now 6%. So lawyers doing math over here,

Jeremy Stock (14:27):

That’s a dangerous business.

James Huber (14:30):

It leads me to the biggest problem that we’re seeing in the space that we’re advocating against is these surcharge caps. The rule is supposed to be, I’m allowed to recoup my processing fees. So in California, California has now passed legislation that says that it’s same as Visa. It’s the same as what they just did in New York, that the cap is 3%. You can’t surcharge a debit card, which makes it almost impossible to,

Josh Holden (15:00):

In a restaurant environment, do a

James Huber (15:01):

Surcharge in any environment. You look at, is this a debit card? Oh, I see this. Oh, whoops, no surcharge. And then you can do cash discounting, but the cash discounting needs to list the higher price and then you do a discount. So my dollar 99 hot dog is now $2 and 8 cents, and I’m not recouping the fees, so my margin is still low and I might get fined and there’s going to be attorneys going out and going after the merchants. If you’re violating this hundred percent on behalf of, now I’m a consumer protection protecting the card holder. But to your point, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, nobody cares. Charge me whatever for you having to use my card, but just you can tell me and then maybe I’ll go to the att m. I’ve been always saying if you want to charge someone 20% for using a card, do it. Do you have to tell the person? Yeah,

Josh Holden (15:57):

Well, I mean in the restaurants, I see a lot of line items. Now it says for business expenses, business service, and it’s a line item on there. It’s like as if you purchased it or something like that. And it’s 5%, 6%. I was just at Mastros with my wife eating in San Francisco probably about a month ago. And they have a line item and there are signs everywhere. 5% business expense service fee

James Huber (16:19):

Or something like that. Yeah, that’s not compliant. Yeah, it’s not compliant with Visa. It’s not getting compliant with a new rule and it bleeds into something else we were coming into is it’s potentially a junk fee.

Josh Holden (16:28):

Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (16:29):

James, can you talk about for our audience, why is that not compliant? Why is that line item not okay?

James Huber (16:35):

Well, it would be a surcharge, call it whatever you want. If you’re adding any fee to a transaction for using a card, even if you’re doing it across the board, the merchant that’s the plaintiff or the subject of our class action, they were charging 4% for cash, 4% for this and short, no, I’m buying a service fee. This covers my overhead Visa says, and the legislation, the way it’s written and probably going to be enforced is if you add anything to the transaction that is a surcharge really,

Josh Holden (17:06):

Even if it’s for cash also

James Huber (17:08):

Really interesting. And that was the one, they got a $70,000 fine for that, for adding across the board. And so yeah, I’d say that’s total BS if I want to charge A, because I mean look, that’s what they’re doing, but if it is, it’s a ma d fee because we’re having the ma d. If you don’t want the ma d, you won’t have to pay that fee. That would still be a surcharge. Oh my gosh. I wonder if there are ways to do it. I mean we’ll be arguing that in our case if it proceeds that far. But can I add any, what if I’m selling a bread fee? How is that different? So the junk fees is another thing that’s scary is this could go hit our business 100%. Your interchange fee. I mean interchange 147 different interchange fees. Yes. So confusing. Bundled it. So they’ve bundled it all into one fee. I could say you could go, that’s a junk fee now. It doesn’t look like it’s going to go that route. It is going to restaurants for that. They are going to hit the restaurants with the, what do they call it? What did you say? The maestros Ma Ma

Josh Holden (18:31):

They call it. There’s a bunch of other restaurants. I mean a lot of the higher end restaurants I see have it. And I mean I have a consumer, I don’t care. But I just know that somebody else I guess out there cares about whether they’re getting an extra fee or not. I’m not going to not eat there if they have a 5% service

James Huber (18:49):

Fee. No, no, you’re not. It’s not going to matter. Because the thing that Visa has said is being like, well, you need to know what you’re paying. You never know what you’re paying unless you’re in Wyoming where there’s no sales tax. I’m not sitting there computing sales tax. Sales tax is junk fees. It was dynamic. But the junk fees, I mean Ticketmaster is the perfect example of what the junk fees are. Oh my gosh, you have no idea what the fee is going to be. 100%. And you don’t know until checkout. I’ve had some of ’em where it’s like, what? Whoa, this is $200 extra. And then some of ’em it’s like 14 bucks and you’re like, thank you Live Nation. But

Josh Holden (19:29):

I just bought pottery tickets yesterday and I thought they were going to be like $300 a piece and they ended up being like $400 a piece because of these extra fees. I was like, holy cow. Right.

James Huber (19:40):

But the surcharging and stuff like that, I don’t put that in a junk fee. It’s a 3% fee. It’s not changing, it’s not dynamic. I would say doing the dual pricing could get it a little bit confusing going, I have to do math.

Josh Holden (19:57):

Which one? Yeah,

James Huber (19:58):

I’m screwed. Alright, well, so where are you guys going? Where are you taking your business? What’s next? So

Josh Holden (20:08):

I mean, right now we’re going through a lot of growth and a lot of expansion. We’re hiring on new sales reps, we’re playing with some different things. I think in our industry. I talked to a lot of other, I’ve been the new one for about 15 years, so I try to stay connected to other merchant reps out there, people that I’ve worked with in the past, new people from Instagram and social media and stuff. And I find that the biggest problem in our industry is the canvassing. No one wants to do it. You get excited about it knocking on the doors and all that stuff. So I think there’s a big miss in having a call center or someone setting up appointments. And I know there’s other companies that it seems to be more and more popping up recently doing the call center. And I know our office starting to put together a call center. So we’re really working on how do we eliminate all the stresses of being a merchant rep. So call center and then we have an installation team. So we’re telling reps, you come with us,

James Huber (20:59):

We’ll

Josh Holden (21:00):

Go ahead. We’ll set up the appointments for you and we’ll do the installations for you. All you need to do is go and pretty much present the pricing and sell the product. So that’s been big. That’s something that we’ve taken on in the last two to three months and we’re really working on that.

James Huber (21:14):

Good. Yeah, I mean the brutal part of the call center is just the capital and having employees in California is deadly. We had some clients that were, they’d take people out on parole really? That was their call center. And this is hilarious too. The guy running the call center was a former corrections officer. So they go, oh, hey, officer Brown, good to see you again. He was super cool too, and he was one of the cool guys. So they loved it and they didn’t have any issues in there. He got, and people are always like, oh, that’s a problem. You’re going to have former people. They’re on parole, they don’t want to get in trouble.

Jeremy Stock (21:58):

They’re going to follow every rule there is

Josh Holden (22:01):

Prison

James Huber (22:01):

Cards overseeing it. It was a beautiful setup. But I have seen in California people that they love their call center. Great. You pay people a small wage, you’re just coming in the office making phone calls, you’re reading off of scripts pretty much, and you’re smiling and dialing and you can make good money because if they get an appointment and you’re skiing them out, if the sale closes, you’re skiing them out and it’s great. And then learn that business and then go out on the road yourself. And there’s a great room to advance. I mean, I had a canvassing job and I hated it until I got good at it then I loved it. So the problem though is you’re just in California and you’ve got people, here’s the supervisor sidling over.

Jeremy Stock (22:48):

Well, can we talk about ai? It sounds like the call center, maybe at some point AI can be an answer for some of that. Yeah.

James Huber (22:57):

Thought about that. What do you think? It’s a great idea, Jeremy.

Josh Holden (22:59):

It’s a great idea. I think, I mean, we’re trying to get more into the digital marketing, digital that stuff, and I think AI is going to play a big part into that, where leads are just starting to come in all over the us. That’s definitely something that we’re trying to kind, I guess dabble in right now. But yeah, I think AI is, if you are a business owner of any business, AI is going to come in and play some part. Restaurant owners are going to have robots or something like that, delivering the food. I’ve heard of different places where they don’t have any employees already. Yeah, that’s wild. Yeah, it’s wild. I think AI is a big part and if you’re not trying to learn it now and try to get ahead of everybody else, you’re going to be left behind.

James Huber (23:43):

We just bought a clone of me. There you go. All

Jeremy Stock (23:47):

Right. It’s going public. James is saying it in public.

James Huber (23:51):

No, it’s actually me, but as you type in whatever you want and I sit there and talk about it. Really? Yeah. And the first one was pretty bad. It was like my mouth was all of a sudden over speaker moving around and my head’s shaking around. It’s like total recall, you take two weeks, right?

Jeremy Stock (24:10):

Or Max? He max. Hedged, Drumm,

James Huber (24:13):

Max Hera. And now they redid it and it kind of looked pretty good. Yeah,

Jeremy Stock (24:18):

It was a lot better. So you

James Huber (24:19):

Guys are even dabbling into that right now? Yeah. Well mine has put it out there because the biggest problem that lawyers get complained of is we’re not talking to our customers enough. Communication in your business where they need someone when they have a problem to call. Ours is I need an update. I need an update. So I can send you an email and update, but why not? I’ll just type it in and I’ll tell it to you on a video. That’s cool. It’s

Jeremy Stock (24:43):

A personal touch. Yeah.

James Huber (24:45):

Hundred percent. Yeah. That’s cool. We should show you that. I could see that being really great for you guys. Hey, you’re onboarded. Here’s what to expect. Call me. I’m the CEO, I’m always available. What was the guy who sold it? He has one of him. It’s on him on a mountain bike

Jeremy Stock (25:00):

And he’s like, Hey, I just

James Huber (25:01):

Got done a ride. I was just thinking about you. Yep.

Jeremy Stock (25:04):

So that’s exactly what it is really. Yeah, and I think the thing about it is, and James and I have talked about this, this is probably going to be good and fresh and usable for a couple of years now, but eventually everyone’s going to realize I’m seeing ai, I’m seeing ai, and it’s going to lose its value, it seems to me.

James Huber (25:21):

Yeah, even still fine. It’s ai. Mine is cool at this point.

Jeremy Stock (25:27):

At this point for sure.

James Huber (25:28):

And when I went to a presentation where the guy presented it and they asked that question, he’s like, is it going to be a problem in five years? I don’t know. Ask me in five years or right now. I think it’s super cool because yeah, if somebody calls me out like, James, that wasn’t even you, that was a clone. I’d be like, I know. Cool. Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (25:46):

Wasn’t it cool? Yeah, exactly. I’ll come to party too. Well, true story. So yesterday we have a meeting every day, Josh for the whole firm comes together in the morning, we call it our standup meeting. We just check in with each other, et cetera. Well, I played for the first time James’s AI clone, and I had him do this monologue from the office, a Dwight Shrew monologue. Okay. I’m telling you James, only two people out of probably about 30 people were like, is that ai? Is that Everyone else was like, I didn’t know. They didn’t know. That’s cool. And that was on a big screen

James Huber (26:22):

Breaking the Mandarin. It’s supposed to have 20

Jeremy Stock (26:25):

Languages. I wish I could have done that. I didn’t get that part done. Yeah,

James Huber (26:29):

Yeah. No, I see that being a huge thing. Even on the call center, I haven’t used it, but the new chat, GBT is conversational because, and you have to train it, but you train it just you would a sales agent overcome, overcome objections, and I could see that being huge.

Josh Holden (26:47):

Oh yeah. And they’re not the same cost of an employee.

James Huber (26:51):

They’re not the same cost. And everybody’s goes like, oh, jobs are going to go away. No, you still need someone to manage the ai. It’s just got to be more efficient. Or the computer took people’s jobs away. Yeah, some of ’em, but no, yeah,

Josh Holden (27:06):

Right. Just getting screens. Just as you scale faster too. You can grow your business quick once you have multiple things that can go on and

James Huber (27:12):

Then you can hire more people because they’re getting bigger. You need more people to do that. So what’s next? Where are you going?

Josh Holden (27:21):

Again? We’re just trying to grow out, grow the company out. We’re trying to get into the call center. We want to get to the point where we can set appointments for other merchant companies out there, not just ours. Having an installation and a service team, I think that’s a big miss in our market. There’s so many reps who hate doing it

James Huber (27:38):

And it’s a pain, and they shouldn’t be doing that. They should be doing what they’re best at

Josh Holden (27:42):

Selling. So we’re just really trying to handle those both sides. I mean, it’s nice when you can just come into a place and kind of like a bank have leads ready for you. So the burnout hopefully goes down a little bit when you’re doing, when that happens. And then we’re really trying to partner with the communities out there. A big thing that we’re doing is we’re offering up 50% residual splits on anybody who refers us a deal. That’s great. Very cool. Just trying to get out there. So many people that I am friends with and different network groups and communities out there are starting to refer deals, and then it’s just side income for them. They don’t have to focus on it, don’t have to concentrate on it. So it allows our company to scale faster because we’re getting referrals and leads from all over the us from people that I would’ve never met in person here in San Diego. That’s

Jeremy Stock (28:30):

Very cool. Can we talk to real fast, Josh, as we come to the end of this podcast, you’re doing a great job yourself, of marketing, of getting yourself out there. You’re very video friendly. You want to talk a little bit about your average day, what your day looks like, and how you’re incorporating your video marketing into your business model.

Josh Holden (28:50):

Absolutely. So this is a new favorite topic for me is the marketing and the personal branding. About a year ago, I said I was going to dive into it and really try to get my name out there because one of my mentors, grant Cardone, I don’t know if anybody knows him, but Grant Cardone, he says, they don’t know you. They can’t flow you. They can’t do business with you if you’re not, well, wait a

James Huber (29:11):

Minute, what was the last know you flow you.

Josh Holden (29:14):

Yeah. If they don’t know you, they can’t flow

James Huber (29:16):

You doesn’t rhyme. No,

Josh Holden (29:17):

That part doesn’t rhyme. But think about this too. Best known beats best product, right? That is something that’s always hit with me. So everybody’s concerned about being the best in their industry. You need to be well known. You need everybody to know you. And so I spend a lot of time now, I make a commitment to post at least three videos on my Instagram. I’ve hired a marketing team for my LinkedIn for TikTok, and really trying to expand the brand. And it takes, I would tell anybody, this is not one of those things where in a month it starts to explode. It is taken me six to seven months. Now I’m starting to get people who trust me. And consistency is the biggest thing that you can do if you’re not consistent. If you send a video once every two weeks, once a month, no one’s going to really trust you. But if they start seeing you every single day, sometimes twice a day, they’ll start to trust you. I have relatives who’ve known, I’ve done credit card processing forever, who are now going, oh yeah, I got clients that would be great for you. And I’m like, where was this before I started posting? When I was struggling when I needed this? So I think marketing, personal branding, you guys make a commitment to it.

Josh Holden (30:30):

Everybody starts off bad. I’ll tell you right now, the biggest thing was getting in front of your camera or your phone and posting something on Instagram or posting something on TikTok if was uncomfortable. It’s too many people go and edit it a thousand times before you post it. Some of the advice I’ve had to me is record it, post it. Who cares? Just record it and post it. And the more you get into that, the muscle memory starts to kick in. You start to start saying the right things, and then it starts to become this flow. It is just every single day it’s like breathing. So I would tell you do all of that as much as you can. You’ll see your business grow faster than you would’ve ever done doing something else.

James Huber (31:06):

Are you getting sales agents calling you or are you getting merchants calling you? I’ve

Josh Holden (31:10):

Got agents. I’ve had agents from other companies who can’t do deals, send ’em to me because they know me from Instagram.

James Huber (31:16):

Huh. That’s rad. Yeah. They’re

Josh Holden (31:17):

Like, Hey, I can’t handle this. Or This person wants free equipment or this, and I’m too small to be able to handle this. Will you go ahead and sign ’em up? And I’m like, absolutely. And then we’ll get a lot of referrals from this. So a lot of people coming in and doing referrals. And again, I told you six, seven months. And we’re starting to get some larger companies now, companies that are doing a hundred million dollars a year who are sending us referrals going, Hey, get in contact with my C ffo. I love seeing what you guys are doing. See if you could help us out. I would never have gotten that if I wasn’t on social media all the time. That’s

James Huber (31:52):

Great.

Josh Holden (31:52):

Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (31:53):

It’s the new business card. I mean, as we talk about our website all the time, we’ve got traffic just constantly coming through there.

James Huber (31:59):

Are we on Instagram? We’re

Jeremy Stock (32:00):

Not on Instagram. We’re not on Instagram. I know. I guess we better get on that after today. Yeah, we’re everywhere else. Well, we’re not on TikTok either.

James Huber (32:10):

I don’t even really know what TikTok is. I’m okay with that.

Josh Holden (32:15):

I try to be everywhere.

James Huber (32:19):

Are we on Facebook?

Jeremy Stock (32:20):

Yes, we’re on Facebook. We’re on LinkedIn. And we’re on YouTube. I mean, YouTube is where it’s at.

Josh Holden (32:27):

That’s probably where I lack the most is YouTube.

Jeremy Stock (32:29):

That’s where your strongest

Josh Holden (32:30):

Need more presence on YouTube. I love LinkedIn. I’ve been trying to post on there once to twice a day on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn.

James Huber (32:36):

Yeah, that’s probably where you’d get most of your stuff. I’m surprised how much people actually use LinkedIn for looking at videos and stuff like that. I always just look to look people up. But

Josh Holden (32:46):

That’s how I originally used it. And now when something’s in my face all the time and you’re like, oh, okay, this person must be important. They must know what they’re doing.

James Huber (32:55):

Yeah. I see. It’s

Josh Holden (32:55):

So funny how video makes you feel connected with someone, right?

Jeremy Stock (33:00):

Which is really true. Which is why the AI might work even in five years. Yes.

James Huber (33:04):

What about Twitter X?

Josh Holden (33:07):

I’m not big on that. It’s probably, again,

Jeremy Stock (33:09):

I should

James Huber (33:09):

Be never used. I never used it. I did

Jeremy Stock (33:12):

Eight years and years ago. Yeah,

James Huber (33:14):

You did.

Jeremy Stock (33:17):

What’s

James Huber (33:17):

That You were doing getting in this thing, like talking trash. Oh yeah. I remember your video of masks don’t work.

Jeremy Stock (33:26):

Jeremy

James Huber (33:26):

Spraying

Jeremy Stock (33:27):

Air. James has to mention that once a month at least spray, it’s all at a can. He’s going, look, look,

James Huber (33:33):

This mask doesn’t

Jeremy Stock (33:34):

Work. This is going to get edited out. But

Josh Holden (33:40):

Going to your guys’ point video is so important. We’ve started following up with our clients by video message.

James Huber (33:45):

Yeah, that’s

Josh Holden (33:46):

Do this and text it to ’em. And it’s something different when you, I guess see another person’s eyes or what it may be, but then you just believe

James Huber (33:54):

Them. Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (33:55):

You guys pause real fast. I apologize. We should wrap it up. The camera’s overheating. I got to get this addressed. It’s a major issue. I apologize about

James Huber (34:02):

That. Conversation’s too hot.

Josh Holden (34:04):

Yeah,

Jeremy Stock (34:05):

Exactly

James Huber (34:05):

Right. Just that one camera.

Jeremy Stock (34:06):

You know what, it’s these two and I’m not sure exactly why yet. Why

James Huber (34:11):

Don’t you just wrap it up from over there, then on yours, you can just say, great

Jeremy Stock (34:14):

Conversation. Love it. I’ll give you the last word that I’m going to. Oh

James Huber (34:17):

Yeah. Because we need to go, Josh, where can we find you? This, this, this.

Jeremy Stock (34:22):

Yeah. Great conversation though.

Josh Holden (34:23):

Yeah. And if you guys, I’m local, so anytime you guys want to do this, I love doing this stuff. Let me know if you guys are like, Hey, we need some more content for this week or next week or whatever, let me know. I’d love to come in. Love it.

James Huber (34:36):

And I’ll just be a robot next time

Jeremy Stock (34:39):

You’ll be talking to a screen. Yes.

James Huber (34:44):

That’s funny. It’s pretty cool. And I think we paid a thousand bucks upfront. And then, do you know how much, I think it’s like a hundred bucks a month or something.

Jeremy Stock (34:57):

Like it’s not too bad when

James Huber (34:58):

Surprising. Yeah, it’s wicked cheap. So I could see, because think of how much your time goes down, just type in boom. Content, content, content. That’s

Jeremy Stock (35:07):

Awesome. And according to them, 14 minutes later. So if you type them your script, whatever you want James to say, supposedly 14 minutes later, your video’s ready to go.

Josh Holden (35:17):

So did you have to first initially do video

James Huber (35:20):

With your Yeah, we need to do another one.

Jeremy Stock (35:22):

We actually get to do two more because they gave us one for free.

James Huber (35:25):

Oh, I thought it was just to train it. It’s just different backgrounds. Different

Jeremy Stock (35:28):

Backgrounds. Which I think would be really helpful actually.

Josh Holden (35:31):

If you have their card or information, lemme know.

James Huber (35:33):

Yeah. Will you send it to him chair? Absolutely. Oh, and I think we get referral fee too.

Josh Holden (35:38):

They definitely send it to me. Absolutely Send

James Huber (35:40):

It. Yeah.

Jeremy Stock (35:41):

By the way, Josh, if you’re getting all this work coming your way, they need legal as

Josh Holden (35:46):

Assistance, two people. Well, I’ve told ’em about you guys. I don’t know if they ended up using you guys, but I tell everybody this is the group to be a part of. Right on.

Jeremy Stock (35:54):

Awesome. Okay, we’re golden. We’re back on. So you guys ready? We’re jumping back in.

James Huber (35:59):

Okay. Alright. Well Josh, thanks for joining us. Absolutely. This has been lively conversation. Stoked to hear about your success. Where should people get ahold of you?

Josh Holden (36:10):

If you guys are on Instagram at htb? Josh, if you’re on LinkedIn, Josh Holden on TikTok. It’s at htb. Josh, contact me anywhere there. DM me if you have questions. I love to connect with other merchant reps out there, other agency owners love to share ideas. So please reach out to me. I answer all my stuff. So if you get an answer back, it’s from me.

James Huber (36:34):

One more thing that I really like when you’re saying other agents, reach out to me. I think that’s cool because you’re not competing with people. It should be a collaboration because we’ve always gone like we’re in this together. We have only one attorney group. There’s may be like five other payments attorneys out there total. It’s only one group that we don’t totally get along with. And it’s really interesting. It’s their choice.

Josh Holden (37:00):

Yeah, it’s a

James Huber (37:00):

Collaborative effort. I’m very likable.

Jeremy Stock (37:04):

Every council likes it. He loves James. We’ll go charming one. We’ll

James Huber (37:09):

Go fight it out and we’ll do our work. But then afterwards it’s okay.

Jeremy Stock (37:15):

Want to go to a bar? Yeah.

James Huber (37:18):

Awesome. And then fight. Alright, cool. Well thanks for joining us. Absolutely.

Josh Holden (37:23):

Thank you for having me.

Jeremy Stock (37:24):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirm.com.