Everett K. Sands – Chief Executive Officer of Lendistry | Los Angeles Leaders

Everett Sands transforms the lending landscape for underserved entrepreneurs through innovation, vision, and a deeply personal mission. Drawing from his grandfather's tailoring business experience—which thrived with five locations but ultimately suffered due to poor financial advice—Sands built Lendistry to provide the responsible capital small businesses desperately need.

With remarkable transparency, Sands reveals how watching his family lose their home to foreclosure planted the seeds for his future work. "I grew up with a what-if story," he shares, explaining how this childhood experience drove him to create better financial options for minority, women-owned, and rural businesses that traditional banks often overlook.

Under Sands' leadership, Lendistry has deployed over $10 billion in capital and processed nearly 1.9 million applications in less than a decade. His approach combines technological innovation with human-centered design, recognizing that many business owners can only apply for financing outside traditional banking hours. The data proves him right—Lendistry discovered many clients were uploading documents between 10pm and 2am when they finally had time.

The conversation illuminates Sands' leadership philosophy of "adding a zero" to goals, challenging the limited thinking minorities are often taught to accept. He builds his organization with leaders who have experience beyond the company's current stage, strategically preparing for future growth. His team structure—leaders managing no more than 8-10 people before adding another leader—creates clear pathways for scaling.

Particularly fascinating is Lendistry's approach to risk management through technology, developing virtual wallets that function like traditional bank lockboxes but with greater efficiency and lower costs. These innovations allow Lendistry to secure loan collateral while providing business owners real-time insights about their financial health.

Whether you're an entrepreneur seeking capital, a business leader looking to scale your organization, or simply interested in how financial innovation can create positive community impact, this conversation offers invaluable wisdom from someone who's built a mission-driven financial powerhouse from the ground up.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Everett Sands
• 9:30 Family Business and Financial Lessons
• 19:35 Creating Lendistry and Meeting Customer Needs
• 27:12 Leadership Mindset and Team Building
• 38:45 Product Innovation and Digital Solutions
• 48:00 Policy Influence and Community Impact
• 54:40 Personal Routine and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Narrator 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Los Angeles Leaders Podcast, where we dive deep into the stories of the visionaries shaping the future of our region. Hosted by Christopher Luna, this podcast brings you conversations with the movers and shakers driving innovation, leadership and community impact across Los Angeles. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a community leader or simply someone passionate about making a difference, this podcast is your gateway to the insights and inspiration you need to lead and succeed. Get ready to be inspired by the leaders making waves in Los Angeles and beyond.

Narrator 2: 0:36

In this episode we welcome Everett Sands. A native of Washington DC, mr Sands and his family reside in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, mr Sands is an advisory reside in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, mr Sands is an advisory board member of the Penn Institute for Urban Research and a member of the board of directors at Goodwill of Orange County and the Center for Strategic Economic Studies and Institutional Development. Mr Sands has more than 20 years of experience in lending, including tenures at national and community banks. He has served as a board member and an executive for two minority deposit institutions, where he helped guide the bank's lending teams in executing exponential growth.

Narrator 2: 1:11

Everett K Sands leverages his 20-plus years of experience in banking to change the game for underserved small business owners who need access to responsible capital to reach the next level. Mr Sands has shared his recommendations before congressional committees and at conferences hosted by Fortune, the National Urban League and several industry-related events. He has appeared as a subject matter expert on national business media, including CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. For his leadership at Lendistry, mr Sands was named an Entrepreneur of the Year Greater Los Angeles Award winner in 2024. When Mr Sands saw the accelerating trend of capital becoming less accessible and more expensive for small businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans and rural dwellers, he recruited an experienced team of fellow banking professionals and founded Lendistry. Since 2015, lendistry has provided responsible lending to small businesses directly and through partnerships with banks. Please welcome Everett Sands.

Christopher Luna: 2:07

Welcome to Los Angeles leaders. Everett. Pleasure to have you here today. Great to be here, it's an honor.

Christopher Luna: 2:14

I met you almost three years ago when I started working at the Chamber. You left an impact on me from the first time I saw you on a panel it was a union bank panel, I'm not sure if you remember it was during the holidays. You're on a panel with my CEO and what really tied me to you was your sense of community and and I come across a lot of great leaders like you and I'm not sure if I ever told you why I came up with this podcast or this, this, these episodes, but in um, in my line of work, I come across a lot of great leaders and I go to a lot of seminars and conferences and summits and you guys are always on a on a stage right, and when you're on a stage on a panel or a keynote, you're always talking about your organization for the most part, Um, it's very it's. There's not a lot of opportunities to get to know you as a person Right, and I'm I'm still growing my career and when I see and hear things like this and see you guys as leaders, I always wonder, like, how did you get there?

Christopher Luna: 3:21

Sure, and what's the backstory? So I really appreciate you taking the time to come here. I know you're very influential at the chamber. You're just awarded this last year the Corporate Leadership Award and then just recently, with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, you got the Community Impact Award as well. So again, you're very community driven and but what I want to know is how did you get there? So tell me a little bit about your history. You've mentioned that you grew up in a family business that always has a special meaning to me.

Everett K. Sands: 3:50

Yeah, so from Washington DC, ended up going to boarding school in high school in New England, Went to Penn for undergrad and got into business. But the business journey started as a kid. My grandfather in the 1930s owned a tailoring shop and the tailoring shop at that time in the 30s and 40s, was synonymous at least in the black community was synonymous with what we would call a barbershop or beauty salon today. So if you just think about it, you've got on a very nice suit or a beauty salon today. So if you just think about it, you've got on a very nice suit. That experience has been reduced in terms of the time, but in the 30s and 40s not only were you getting the measurements and everything, they were trying to make sure everything fits.

Everett K. Sands: 4:34

You were like sitting there and waiting for the pants to be made or for the jacket to be made, so you can imagine you might spend a couple hours. And so, again, a tailoring shop was synonymous with community, because you and I might be sitting in a lobby talking for a couple hours while we're waiting for our shirt to be made or waiting for something to be tailored. The convenience of tailoring, of going back and the week later and things like that came a little later, not that people didn't do it, but it just wasn't kind of quite the moment, because tailoring is an artistry. And so he had five different locations. He had an apprenticeship school. There were veterans who were coming back from the war and they didn't have a trade and they didn't have jobs Unfortunately, that still exists sometimes today and so he would teach them the trade of tailoring.

Everett K. Sands: 5:24

And as a kid I would go into the shop, I'd sweep the floors. I'm not, I have no artistic bones in my body, so they wouldn't let me anywhere near the clothes. So I was allowed to iron and I was allowed to work the cash register and I was allowed to sweep the floors, and most of the time I was sweeping the floors in the cash register. But he had he. He grew his business pretty well, but he got some bad financial and tax advice and so, as you can imagine what might happen in a small business when things go south financially, we lost a lot and so we lost our home. I didn't know it as a kid, didn't really understand what happened, but as I became an adult I realized foreclosure was what happened. But as I became an adult I realized foreclosure was what happened. We still have two of the locations, but nothing near kind of the prominence that he had at that time.

Everett K. Sands: 6:11

And so I kind of grew up with a what-if story. You know, what if he had had a better situation? What if things happened? And one of the pros of going to a boarding school and some of the kind of upper echelon Ivy League schools and things like that is you meet people's parents who were able to get financing and and had a different trajectory, and so again grew up as a kid with this, this what if? What if he had a better situation? And so part of what I see in small businesses that we help and the community at large that we help, because we also do home mortgage now and we're dabbling dabbling in that we help and the community at large that we help, because we also do home mortgage now and we're dabbling in insurance. It's all about the community, but it's all internally. It's this I wish I was there for my grandfather.

Christopher Luna: 6:54

Wow, that's powerful. And now I know why you are the way you are. I mean, I grew up in a family business. My parents started in their early 80s. They grew their business and multimillion dollars they're national. They used to import a lot of product and we had a fleet of trucks that would go all over the nation.

Christopher Luna: 7:14

We used to distribute mostly Hispanic goods. I took over the family business and I managed it for about 12 years and I went through COVID and that was a scary situation. You know it was very difficult at that time. I would import a lot of product from Turkey, china, germany, mexico still, and you know when you're, when you're buying this product overseas, you're prepaying for a lot of that merchandise and when COVID happened, we had a whole supply chain issue Right. So a lot of our money was literally sitting on the ocean, yeah, and then it would take. The lead time was a lot longer. So you know we would have to buy more of this merchandise and by the time it got to us, you know the forecast completely changed. The market was completely changing. So we did have a cash flow issue during COVID.

Christopher Luna: 8:01

Yeah, that's what drove me to the chamber. You, during a COVID, that's what drove me to the chamber. I was always around the chamber world when I was in banking. I would go to a lot of the events in the early 2000s when I was with JP Morgan and the chamber is really influential on the global trade, so I was always involved in that, and then through my parents' business, I would always go to the global events as well. So it's funny, because then they offered me a job.

Narrator 2: 8:25

I'm like sure Cause it was like almost perfect timing.

Christopher Luna: 8:27

But knowing that background and and knowing what I know now too cause there's so much resources out there and your company provides a lot of those resources to small businesses If I would have known what I know now when I had the business, I probably would have done things differently. So you know it's very impactful what you've done, but tell me a little bit more about, as you're growing up, what kind of kept you in line in the financial space?

Everett K. Sands: 8:57

Yeah, so it was interesting the beauty of me going to boarding school. So I'm a DC kid, to say so you have some perspective. I'm going to New Hampshire, uh, and so what that means is a long drive eight to 10 hours or a flight from DC to Boston Logan airport and then jump on a bus for two hours. Uh, I didn't have the money to go back home. So what would happen is I would inevitably stay at a friend's house. Um, I don't know how you grew up, chris, but the way I grew up, like my mom was very strict on rules, and so, as you can imagine, I'd go to some friend's house and the parents would be there and they'd be talking and these are generally fairly well to do, uh, and the kid would be like whatever, I'm out, but we're sitting at a table and adults talking, and I'm so afraid that they would call my mom that I just sit there and what. And so what comes from that is a lot of lessons from people who have failed and succeeded most recently succeeded because of where they're at. But it started to teach me about finances, started to teach me about business. So now I've kind of got the family experience of having worked in one and seeing what's going on in my family dynamics and literally the complete opposite in terms of how they've weathered a storm or leveraged finance and different things like that. And so I then, in high school, ended up going to Japan for two and a half months, which is a completely different kind of financial structure In high school. In high school it's effectively a half months, which is a completely different kind of financial structure In high school. In high school it's effectively a social structure where you're born really dictates what you're going to do. But my host family happened to work in the US and then come back. So, just interesting perspective my host father worked at Mitsubishi and so now I'm getting this kind of worldly example of how finance done again completely different than the US system.

Everett K. Sands: 10:48

I ended up going to Penn, and Penn, as most people know, because it has, you know, one of the best business school, if not the best, and Wharton. Inevitably that trickles into the undergrad school. So I was actually pre med, but I threw parties because I needed money and so I had three jobs I worked cleaning fish tanks, I worked at banana republic and then I also was the kid in the cafeteria so I hustled cereal. Hopefully that doesn't get me in trouble later in life, but um, so you can imagine I had this kind of entrepreneurial spirit, uh, but mixed with, um, you know, needing to pay for school and different things like that and and so these lessons that, if I'm being honest, in high school I didn't really understand are starting to slowly materialize as I'm understanding money better and understanding need for money, so always pretty much a saver, but I started to.

Everett K. Sands: 11:42

One of the things that was very interesting to me when I was a kid was that everybody was in a real estate that I had met, that had money, and so I started to try to buy real estate very early, at like 21 years old, then started to get into financing and the first thing I learned was actually the economics of financing related to home buying and real estate. That then led me into trying to understand kind of the finance of business and how businesses work, which is much more complicated than real estate. Real estate, generally speaking no offense to anyone is fairly easy, but at the end of the day you generally have you know you have the revenue side is the income from the tenants.

Everett K. Sands: 12:20

And then the expense side, again fairly easy in terms of utilities.

Narrator 2: 12:23

Very straightforward.

Everett K. Sands: 12:25

Yeah, pretty straightforward, um, but it was a good entry point for someone who was a novice at finance to start in real estate, uh, and and since that time I continue to invest in real estate to this day. I've been an investor in real estate 20-25 years, um, but really I like complex problems and I like to solve things. On kind of the professional side and on this personal side, I still had this kind of like thing that was kind of you know, twisting kind of at me in the side. My parents are also entrepreneurs and different things. So I've grown up around entrepreneurs my whole life, but that kind of going back to the family history and the legacy of the family history kept being that thing that drew me into finance. What do your parents do? So mom's a lawyer at her own firm uh, entrepreneurship, yeah, entrepreneurs. Or dad's a doctor got an entrepreneurship, probably a better doctor, uh but they're self-employed a lot.

Christopher Luna: 13:22

a lot of doctors and attorneys are small business owners.

Everett K. Sands: 13:26

That's right, and my dad I think probably should get some credit in terms of leading me into my shift academically. So I was pre-med and then ended up majoring in Japanese and then getting into econ and entrepreneurship and all these other classes that I had taken, but it was my dad who was like get an MD MBA that I'm taking. But it was my dad who was like get an MD MBA. And what happened is, you know, one night I'm studying organic chemistry and and the friends that are in the business classes are like hanging out and I'm like that's pretty, that's much cooler than orga um. So again, he, he kind of. I think the thing that my dad did is he gave me that freedom to explore and then curiosity and everything else took me the other way.

Christopher Luna: 14:07

Yeah, there's um, I had the privilege of bringing my son here today. Yeah, Um, he's sitting behind the cameras, but I grew up in a family business and we experience a lot of things that other kids don't experience. You're mentioning sweeping the floors, my son when he would go to the store. I mean, we have a warehouse, the warehouse is, and then the storefront in downtown, la, right near the road. Okay, so if you, if you drive down olympic and you see, all the candy and pinatas okay, that's all ours to this day real estate.

Christopher Luna: 14:37

my parents were able to acquire a lot of that. Yeah, so he would go to the store and he would just start opening up boxes and restocking the shelves and helping customers and and and charging customers. And it's funny, cause you see this kid and that's exactly how I was growing up. And then when I sold the business, um, recently, I felt like I, I I let go of a legacy, right, and I'm I'm trying to provide that experience to my son. Yeah, so having him come here today, it's just a different opening now, right, there's still ways to incorporate our kids into what we're doing now, absolutely so I mean, yeah, I mean I think of the same thing.

Everett K. Sands: 15:14

My kids are in school and they're. They're like, dad, I want you to. I want to take like biology and Spanish and Spanish. I'm like, yes, biology. I'm like maybe should take like an Excel class or maybe you should learn about AI or something else. Because I constantly think about what are the things they're going to need in business, what are the industries that they're going to be exposed to? And to your point too, I mean I go through that kind of legacy battle twofold One what are the things that I should be investing in to propel them in the future? Twofold one what are the things that I should be investing in to propel them in the future? And then, two, should there be a family business that they could take over While at the same time, as you know, giving them the freedom to explore and be their own person, which you know is kind of somewhat conflicting to the leg?

Christopher Luna: 15:57

there was six of us in our family, so we know one, one of the business for me. Yeah, I mean, so you kind of zoom that?

Everett K. Sands: 16:02

exactly, exactly. And, and my kids have talked about everything from being a veterinarian to be a business owner. So you know, I don't know if they're going to own the veterinarian hospital or something like that, or what they're going to do, but I think all of us, as entrepreneurs, go through a little bit of that, that struggle of struggle, slash, hope of where. Where do the kids want to be and how do we help propel them forward?

Christopher Luna: 16:23

You have a strong background in fintech and technology, Knowing the way things are changing I mean, every year something new is coming. What are your thoughts on giving our children that experience right and kind of leaning them towards a certain way, Because a lot of times you can't really have them study? A topic right Because it's going to change. So what do you think about that?

Everett K. Sands: 16:47

You know. So let's just talk about why fintech for a second as well. There's a lot, and you know this as a banker. A previous banker, same with me, like you get all these studies about the FDIC study, the underbank study, and said that what was always interesting to me one because I'm a nerd was like, okay, we keep saying like we should meet the customer nine to five or doing traditional business hours, but there was always inside of the study this, this concept of the underserved population was monitoring their bank account, and and so let's translate that just a little bit monitoring your bank account means they're living check to check and it's extremely important that that check comes in so that they can pay their bills. So, naturally, my curiosity just went to well, how are they checking their bank account? And I think we did a very good job on the consumer banking side of developing apps and giving people that opportunity to be able to see their bank in real time, whatever that meant Automatic bill pay, to be able to see their bank in real time. Whatever that meant Automatic bill pay, being able to pay bills, being able to send money, different things like that.

Everett K. Sands: 17:51

But on the commercial lending side, we didn't really adopt it right. So the business owner it's kind of hard for them to track their finances without an accountant, a financial professional, a CFO Cash flow report, exactly Like I mean they're pulling 100 reports where the customer I mean the individual just says let me just log in, right. And so that was one thing. The second thing was the bad guys were showing up in a really high quality way, right, and maybe I shouldn't say high quality, but in a really like they were meeting the customer where they were at. So the predatory lenders were there and you know they were quick, they were fast, and I don't know that they always gave people money fast as much as they gave them hope fast, like answers. And so that was that was troubling me too, like why can't the good guys show up in a high quality way? Why can't we meet the customer where they're at? And so that's what led me into FinTech saying look, it's not a silver bullet.

Everett K. Sands: 18:49

There are some people who still want to sit down with people and there are some people who want that financial guidance, but there's a lot of people who just don't have the time doing business hours, and my classic example is nine to five. She's running her business Five to nine. Five she's running her business five to nine. She's taking care of her family. When is she supposed to play for a loan, apply for a loan, except for a 10 pm right or through the night?

Everett K. Sands: 19:10

And technology does two things. Number one it gives you the data to actually see that. I'll give you an example. We were running a program for the state of california and contractually, we were allowed to do our updates, our technology updates, from 12 am to 6 am. The data was coming in and the amount of people, chris, that were online applying or uploading things from 10 pm to 2 am. We had to literally go back to the state and say, could we alter this contract? And they let us because, of course, they wanted to help people out as much as they could. And they let us because, of course, they wanted to help people out as much as they could.

Everett K. Sands: 19:46

Now, circling back to your question about our kids, I think our kids have to understand, like, exactly where the opportunities are, and I think they got to understand where to meet the customer at. And I think what they're going to see and where to meet the customer at, especially in their generation, is there is no way you don't embrace technology. There's no way you don't embrace technology. There is no way you don't think about the speed of deliverance, and that doesn't matter what industry you're in.

Everett K. Sands: 20:09

Two things, because now the customer can go around you. I mean, we talk about there's all these conversations right now about tariffs. What are people saying? Could we just buy direct? Or could one country buy from another country and then ship it over? Yeah, that's what they're doing. Businesses are resilient, they will figure that stuff out, and so if you want to be a servant to the business, in whatever category you are a seller, b2b, b2c, whatever you're going to have to figure out how nimble they are and how your customer really is thinking about things, and I don't know how they avoid that without thinking about artificial intelligence and other things that are going to be prevalent by the time they're in business but I think a lot has to do with you as a character too.

Christopher Luna: 20:49

I mean you have your mission front and center. I mean you found you saw that early on, right, and I think that a lot of people may not embrace technology as a whole, right, but at the end of the day, it's who you are and who you become. So how do you teach that to our younger generation? Because you're a leader, I mean what you've, what you've grown with your company, I mean I'm just thinking of the, the magnitude of your staff, right, like how do you manage that and how do you experience that leadership? Like how do we teach that?

Everett K. Sands: 21:20

yeah, I think you always have to think about the with them. What's in it for me? And so when I'm teaching, I teach a couple classes a year where I just try to go in as a guest speaker. So it could be a university, like I've done barely a university. It could be a local prep school, like I've done a couple here, and I try to put it into there.

Everett K. Sands: 21:42

It's like what are you trying to get to? Or what do you like and and it could be a conversation on marvel and how marvel uses technology to. They want to be rich one day, and and so we start breaking out rich and we start talking about how to get there. Um, I said, do you want to play for the team or you want to own the team? Because those are two different conversations we should have right now about and and and some of those things are already helped by society, like you think about the way lebron jane takes care of his body, and I'm like we you know we could, we could build a tool that could tell him right away like you should sleep this time, or you should do this.

Everett K. Sands: 22:12

I mean that's tech, right? I mean uh, or you know, we talk about the different ways that money is moved and and how everybody needs it. I mean, sometimes I'm literally sitting there to the kids I I'm like, look, I sell something that everybody needs. Tell me what you want to sell. And they're like, well, I didn't think about it like that. I'm like, yeah, everybody needs money, like everybody. Fine, like it could be on an individual level, it could be a country and everything in between. Everybody needs it.

Everett K. Sands: 22:46

And so I think the other part of that is just opening their eyes up to obviously different fields and different industries and how money works as opposed to, which I think is very, very valuable as well, obviously teaching them the consumer tactics that they need of savings and applying for credit and different things. How big is your team now at lendistry? Yeah, so lendistry, right now we're carrying about 280 people, not including contractors nationally. Nationally, we have seven We've taken. We're about to hit 1.9 million applications. So I'm excited, over $10 billion deployed, so excited to see that get to its next level Lendistry was founded in what year?

Christopher Luna: 23:16

2015. Okay, think about that.

Everett K. Sands: 23:18

So we're not quite at 10 years yet.

Christopher Luna: 23:20

That's only 10 years.

Everett K. Sands: 23:21

I know.

Christopher Luna: 23:21

It's like how did you grow it so fast and how do you assemble the right team? Because a lot of issues in a company, any company is team and managing a good staff.

Everett K. Sands: 23:34

I think for leaders, you got to first train your brain. You got to recognize that your brain is a muscle, so similar to how we might work out or we might jog or we might go on a marathon. We really have to start thinking about our brain. That way, the brain never sleeps. I'm going to get a little scientific on you on my pre-med, but there's something called a reticular activating system and you can literally train it, good or bad, to do what you want to do. I'll give you an example you buy a car and all of a sudden you see that car everywhere. Well, that car was already there, but all of a sudden you see it now and that is actually a part of your brain called the reticular activating system. So the reason why you want to listen to positive messaging, you want to think about what your feet in the brain is, because it literally is always on and it literally is a trainable muscle, no different than if we were trying to be an amazing marathon runner. We might jog every day or we might do a half marathon or 10K, 5k, whatever, beforehand. So the first thing I would share is to start, as a leader, thinking about what is the training exercise you're putting your brain through, and I think positivity is really really important, just because of the world we live in. And I think the other thing that's really really important is listening to other people who have overcome big challenges. Now that's going to take me to my next thing Add a zero. So, whatever you want to do, just add a zero. What do you mean? Just keep it simple. Like, I want to make this amount of money, add a zero to it. I want this revenue, add a zero to it. And believe it or not and you see me say it casually so when I'm asking for a million dollars, it's just, that's for 10 million. I I just, I firmly believe it because one, as minority individuals, we have been taught to go completely the opposite way. It's true, and we have to recognize that, like someone has taught us historically that we are lesser than and and and if you are a minority woman, it takes to a whole another level. But with someone constantly teaching you that you're not qualified, what are you doing to balance your brain to say you are qualified? And then what are you doing to balance your brain to say completely the other way. And so I try to keep it real simple. Again, I just say add a zero. And then people just, you know they'll freak out like when.

Everett K. Sands: 25:43

I remember when I was talking to teams like, oh, we're gonna do a billion dollars, and they said whoa, whoa, whoa, you just skipped over 100 million. I was like, well, honestly, I was thinking 100, man, I just added zero, right. But I think it's important because, again now let's go back to the brain if you teach the brain to look for something similar to what you do when you get that car, it starts looking for opportunities and it starts to think about that. And I literally do that, whether it be the team member, I'm looking for the opportunity, I'm looking for the location we're thinking about. I put it to my brain and say you start working on it first, this is, this is what I'm looking for.

Everett K. Sands: 26:21

And then, you know, some people will say the universe opens up. Some people say, god, I just think honestly, just train your brain. And your brain starts to say just like, oh, I just bought that new Honda Accord and you see a hundred Honda Accords. Your brain starts to say, oh, that person you're looking for is right here. You just didn't see them or you didn't notice the skill set or you didn't notice the opportunity. Um and and I think that's really fundamental to leadership and how? How do you.

Christopher Luna: 26:46

How do you convey this to your team, though? Because you have 200 plus people right, so you can't have these relationships with everyone on your team. So tell me about your growth, though, when you're in the early stages of your company, like how did you build that right team to allow you to?

Everett K. Sands: 27:01

propel. Yeah, I think the first thing you do sorry about that I think the first thing you do is you. You, as a leader, you have to realize that what makes you great is what makes you scary. Leaders have vision and, more importantly, they see things in the future. And you have to kind of recognize that. And it's not like a fable or wise thing, like that is literally what a vision is. A vision is that you see something before it happens, and so what I try to share with leaders is you have to understand that. And now you have to think about how to convey that Right.

Everett K. Sands: 27:36

And when I talk to a team, so there's a couple of disciplines. The first is team structure. So a leader should only manage eight to 10 people and you should hire another leader Okay, another eight to 10. And so that's corporate structure for me, okay. And then, when I think about the corporate structure for me, I want leaders to provide solutions. So I give them the vision they go out and their job is to execute, and then I'm asking them for solutions. So I try to include them in that thought process. So right now, literally, I'm talking to a team about something we're going to do three years from now and I'm saying this is how I think we should execute it. Now you start to go and you process it and you bring it back, and leaders are in different forms. I mean, I have some leaders that are like, if it is not blueprinted A to Z, they literally freak out. And so I'll sit down with them and say I'm about to freak out and we have like this, but they we've done it enough times.

Christopher Luna: 28:29

The first couple times it takes a while, but you're you're. You trust them. I trust them, right? I mean, I think a lot of leaders have a hard time trusting.

Everett K. Sands: 28:33

Yeah well, I do a couple things. I try to find people who've been there before. I'm not afraid to hire consultants who've been there before to support my leaders and then I try to hire leaders that are better than me at an individual craft. So if I think I'm really really good at sales, our sales leaders generally almost all of them were had a higher position at a bank than me. They were higher up in terms of title and in terms of number of people that they manage. Because I'm trying to project where the company is going as opposed to where we're at right now, same thing that that I do with our CFOs or anyone that's inside of the company. I'm saying look, your job is to put us in the right place two to three years from now and if, for any reason, you have kind of outlasted yourself, then you've got to go hire the people underneath you who are also farther along.

Everett K. Sands: 29:25

Another way to say it is business is actually very simple if it's growing. So let me put it in common terms. Let's take an individual. A business that is growing is an organism. It will eat you alive if you let it. So. And I tell people this and I say okay, let's just treat it as if we're just like we're people.

Everett K. Sands: 29:43

Would you wear the same clothes that you would wear when you were three years old? When you're 10? And they're like no way. And I'm like when you're 10, when you're 20? They're like no, I'm like okay. Well, that's the business. The clothes are the infrastructure, the tools and the leadership. Good metaphor. So if we don't figure out a way to change those, those clothes, the business is going to eat your life. And then what happens is you have to move on Now. I think business leaders have to have this conversation up front, because there are good people who only feel comfortable in a certain segment. Said differently, you're building your business to $100 million, so from zero to 20, that could be an amazing person, but as soon as it gets from 20 to, say, 50, they're uncomfortable.

Christopher Luna: 30:27

They're outgrown.

Everett K. Sands: 30:28

Yeah, cause they feel very, very good.

Christopher Luna: 30:29

How do you have those conversations with them, though? Have it as upfront.

Everett K. Sands: 30:32

This is where I'm headed. This is what my plan is.

Christopher Luna: 30:35

Where do you think you fit and some people, okay, I mean you're, you're, you're a're loyal to them at the same time, because they've been loyal to you yeah you just reposition them or realign them, or I think it starts with you.

Everett K. Sands: 30:53

first, as an individual, I'm very, very comfortable change management. Now, when I was a little bit more junior in my leadership journey, I would take my watch and I put it on the other wrist, like I try to do little simple things that make me super uncomfortable and like if my legs are folded, I'll fold the other way and it will be like I got to sit there for five minutes with my leg the other way.

Everett K. Sands: 31:11

And it's not natural for me right. Change my routine, change how I try to work. I was really focused on like how to get myself comfortable with change. Then I go to the leaders and I literally kind of practice the same thing. So we have the conversation. I've told them up front, they understand where we're headed, and then I try to get them comfortable with change and what I have found is that for some leaders it works. They are very comfortable. I mean, many of our leaders have people technically underneath them that are rock stars and and as we grow the business, that rock star ends up running a department they end up running, so they're under only for a short period of time. But we've also communicated to them where we're headed.

Christopher Luna: 31:56

But a lot of management is afraid to embrace that right. They don't want to be outshining Absolutely, but the way I look at it is like look, you recruited this person. That's right. You should be proud of that right. Let's now lift them up and put them in the right position. So it's hard to convey that as a leader, because a lot of people want to be and continue to be your right-hand person and they feel that need to be close to you.

Everett K. Sands: 32:15

Yeah, and I think the leader's job is to create a path or to say there's not a path, right, and so not a path there's. Sometimes we will take on an initiative and it doesn't pan out. I mean, you know right now where we're sitting at in terms of administration changes and things like that. Every administration has a path they want to go, and so we have a tendency at lenders to kind of follow the money because we know the small business is going to follow the money. But if an administration shifts, the money will shift right. And so generally we're we're gearing up a department or we're gearing up something. We're saying, look, we're going to go this way, and then it shifts right, uh, and so we also recognize that now we do try to save the team members and say, look, you can go over here, but it does.

Everett K. Sands: 32:56

Sometimes people have a very unique specialty and you know we're building a building and we decide we're not building anymore and they're going to say I'm not doing that anymore. Right, trying to give you like a traditional example building a house versus building and building two different specialties. Both are really really good at what they can do. But what are we doing right now? Are we building a house or are we building a commercial building?

Everett K. Sands: 33:15

So you're not afraid of fire, I am not afraid at all, as over their team pretty regularly. And changeover again doesn't necessarily mean firing. A lot of times it does because we're helping that leader get another position somewhere else. That could be internal or external, but I would say the changing of the team or changing of the guard extremely important because you have different market conditions, you have a different environment and you have different growth strategies. That should be a play in every business. So, for example, in your business you talked about wholesale and you talked about trading overseas. That's completely different in retail, right, and the leader that's great at wholesale is probably not the leader that's great at retail or vice versa. And so wherever that strategy might have been at the moment, that's where a lot of the energy is going to be spent.

Christopher Luna: 34:04

Yeah, it's incredible. I think a lot of these companies have such a hard time being agile. They have such a hard time making quick decisions and I feel like, as you grow, the bigger your team is, the harder it is to implement these changes right.

Everett K. Sands: 34:24

That's right.

Christopher Luna: 34:25

So making sure that you're leading this, you're able to supply them with the ability to make these changes right. That's right. So I think it's good that you continue with that mindset, because you know, I think we've all worked for these large companies and it just takes forever to implement something.

Everett K. Sands: 34:40

You're like an aircraft carrier versus a speedboat.

Christopher Luna: 34:43

You're like an aircraft carrier versus a speedboat and having that small business mentality, family-owned business mentality, you're very action-driven, you're very actionable and you're not going to wait for things to happen. You're just going to call the shots and make it happen, and you need a good leader, your good VPs, to be able to do the same thing as you and follow that. That's right.

Everett K. Sands: 35:01

And you have to decide what type of business you want to have. Look, if you want a really small mom and pop, this is probably not the lesson you have to worry about. But assuming you want to have kind of a mid-sized, large-sized growth company, you have a responsibility to constantly think about growth, to constantly think about pivots and where your leaders fit. And I've had leaders where I said, look, I think you should take a step down, you know, to take a step forward later, Because there's this skill set we're going to need and you've got to be up under someone to learn this particular one. And some leaders say yes, some leaders say no. But it's not my job to paint a rosy picture and not tell them the truth.

Christopher Luna: 35:39

When you're like how do you step away from the industry personally? How do you I mean the industry personally? How do you I mean because I mean when I had the family business, I was never able to turn off my phone. You know we're on vacation, we're in the pool and my phone's right there and then I'll have the damn public health department show up something always happens, right, you're always putting out fires. So how? How do you step away from that right?

Everett K. Sands: 35:59

now. So I think you have to understand what you like. And then you got to have small and large bites. So I love football. Um, that's my small bite, right I can I? If it's a saturday or sunday, I'll step away. I'll watch a game at a bar, at home, wherever I'm at, just recognizing that I need a little bit of that. Um, football is now on tv every day so it used to just be a saturday.

Everett K. Sands: 36:21

I guess now it's thursday through monday, but you know I try to take those moments. And then to your point about the larger kind of travel and vacation which I love to do. I just make sure that I'm set up for a couple hours a day, as opposed to saying I'm going to turn off all the way. To your point, I'm not a turn off all the way guy and the business won't let me. So I embrace them and just say this is what we're going to do, we're going to structure the day, say, okay, this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna structure the day. This is when I'm available. Tell the team the same thing.

Everett K. Sands: 36:46

Team does a very good job of saying no, go away, go away, but inevitably there's something they gotta pick up the phone on. I try my best to say look, from this couple hours I'm gonna be online every single day and of course I try my best to go places that allow for that. I just went, just uh, to kenya and just did a uh, a uh safari nice, and so that was a little challenging the first couple days you have no, no reception.

Everett K. Sands: 37:10

I'm about to get eaten by lions you take a satellite phone I didn't, but a friend had one, so thankfully, um but, uh, um, but you know. So again there's.

Christopher Luna: 37:19

I try my best to do that on like a friday, saturday, sunday or saturday, sunday, monday holiday I mean, but when you go on those trips it kind of reminds you what life is really about. Right, Of course I mean you're not.

Everett K. Sands: 37:29

I mean, Africa is just one of those places to me, and I'm not saying the whole, but the places I went, where you kind of see Mother Nature at her best right, and you're like, oh, this is the.

Christopher Luna: 37:47

This is a different jungle behind us, but you know, you roll with it. You're pivoting right now. I mean, how do you see yourself, or what do you see Lendistry in the next 10 years? Because I mean man, 10 years is a long time for you.

Everett K. Sands: 38:11

But I mean just comparing what you've done in the last 10 years. What do you see for the next 10 years for the industry? Yeah, so my journey right now is to simplify it first is I really think about product process and policy. Historically, minorities specifically and underserved and undercapitalized communities have not really had that opportunity to really benefit from credit to the full extent. And so when we think about structured credit and we think about the different things that have happened with structured credit that have put us on the outskirts of access to capital, I kind of have put those, put the solution that we're working towards and there are many towards those three. So so, having the right products, they meet the moment. So when I think about things like world Cup, olympics, super Bowl and all these different opportunities, construction and different things like that, what we're really talking about is a short-term financing situation where you need money to execute and you need it to be flexible enough or adaptable enough for it to allow you to take on more contracts.

Christopher Luna: 39:03

Okay, but let's pretend I'm in one of your leadership meetings. How do you convey this to your VPs and to your leadership? What's your vision for the next three, five years? Absolutely, what are my instructions?

Everett K. Sands: 39:14

I say we're going to create two or three products and this is the problem we're trying to solve and then we're going to take in our war room. We create the products first, optimization second, and then marketing third. Right Now, everybody's involved and there's experimentation that goes along with that, but we're constantly working towards that. As an example and the reason why I gave you the Olympics is because I was trying to think of something that was farther away right, but that's generally what's happening inside of that world. Now that product might get designed right away, and then we go through some experimentation. There's a lot of different things you have to think about. So we have to think about not only how the simple things in my mind how the products are going to be marketed, who's the audience, but what are the little tweaks that we need that technology can provide. So I'll give an example.

Everett K. Sands: 40:10

When we think about financing for a contractor we had to build, the risk issue was is the contract truly collateral? And the solution when we did our research was well, it is the capture of the funds related to the contract. That is really the collateral. Said differently, you don't know if the person is actually going to complete the job, so if you can get inside of the flow of the money, then all of a sudden you de-risk the situation. Factoring guys have figured this out very well.

Everett K. Sands: 40:44

They say pay into a lockbox, you'll know that, as a banker right Pay into. Very well. They say pay into a lockbox, you'll know that, as a banker, right Pay into this bank. We don't want a lockbox To us. It's a lot of paperwork, it's extra costs. We're trying to benefit the small business with their admission. So what we did is we created a virtual wallet, virtual wallet. You've seen it before in Venmo and PayPal and Cash App Said, and Venmo and PayPal and Cash App said differently A business is not sophisticated enough sometimes or big enough to go out and get like a deposit account control agreement or something like something that takes a legal structure inside of making you get what I mean.

Everett K. Sands: 41:16

So now, if you created right, if you created the opportunity for a virtual account, like an account they can't see, but it is separate, and you can control the money through that account, and we're talking about creating something in milliseconds, not really transparent to the customer, but what it allows us to do is now have a risk-based structure. We can literally, in our technology, we can create 500,000 accounts in an hour.

Christopher Luna: 41:39

Well, so just I mean we're not there yet. I mean in a digital, a digital world. So I'm thinking to myself okay, so my payables if I'm giving this Zelle account or whatever, and it's managed by Lendistry, so they're able to secure the collateral right.

Everett K. Sands: 41:55

That's right.

Christopher Luna: 41:55

Whenever the loan is similar. So I mean similar to like a lockbox basically, that's exactly right, just digital.

Everett K. Sands: 42:01

Wow, okay, that's cool, but again and again. I'm not necessarily expecting everybody to understand it, but the punchline is more access to capital to those who but for this little thought process wouldn't have had access.

Christopher Luna: 42:14

I'm just thinking of Treasury. Here in downtown we had a cash and carry right.

Narrator 2: 42:19

Yeah, sure.

Narrator 1: 42:19

It's a storefront where businesses would go.

Christopher Luna: 42:22

usually C stores or small food trucks would go and buy merchandise wholesale, and a lot of it was cash-based. Right, that's right. So instead of running to the bank all the time, we would have our treasury safe deposit box I forget what they call it there, but you would deposit the cash into the vault and that's in the store. Back in the day you would have to wait for, you know, the armor truck to come pick it up, make the deposit. So you literally got that concept and digitalized that that's right.

Everett K. Sands: 42:54

And then to the second thing process. How do we make it easier on the business so they don't have to wait for the armor truck, so someone doesn't have to count out the money, so we can put it in the digitized format. But, more importantly, they can automatically report it to us and we could send them a text that says you need more money, boom. Or or send them education that says your business is growing. This is what you do when your business grows. Your business is not doing well, your business is suffering or equally catch it fast.

Christopher Luna: 43:23

That's the thing is, you're catching those issues fast, instantly, because I mean, like our business, you know you're waiting to your tax returns are coming due and you're like man, this this year was horrible or this year was good I mean, sometimes are good years but you know you're trying to position yourself, so your your liabilities and that's to your taxes, to your point.

Everett K. Sands: 43:43

I mean that's that's part of to your question of the 10-year roadmap. I want to be at a certain point where we have whether it be apps or whatever the latest technology is we're delivering this information in real time to the business owner, so the business owner can pivot. That's not the best customer for me. That's not the best revenue source. That is the best revenue source. We get paid more on Tuesdays and Wednesdays than we do on Thursdays and Fridays, so I need to shift how I'm doing something.

Everett K. Sands: 44:06

I want to give them all that data and all those tools and that information up front.

Christopher Luna: 44:10

There's a lot of videos and interviews that you've done that talks about your partnerships with banks. But if you can give me just like a one minute for those who haven't heard that, but you work a lot with banks.

Everett K. Sands: 44:22

So I think, as you know, when you're part of the banking system, you start to realize the things that banks don't do generally because of operational efficiency, right. And so we have about 58 different banks and financial institution partnerships and our real role is to be there when they can't be, and it's not that they don't want to. And I'll give you an example. One of our partners is Goldman Sachs. No-transcript, thinking about the community. A lot of times the community doesn't understand the continuum of capital. Like if we were in school, you'd say junior high school, high school, university, secondary degree, but when it's when it's your business, you're like well, what's my equivalent of high school, what's my equivalent of university? Let me go to this bank. Well, the bank is like an mba, right, in terms of where you should be going for your financing and what are those incremental steps before that you need to do to get to the mba.

Christopher Luna: 45:36

And that's where we think we feel we feel that role do you, do you see lendistry ever having a place like a branch where clients are able to visit and I mean, we, we technically a client can come into our office.

Everett K. Sands: 45:48

I mean, ultimately, we will never probably get into the banking business. I'm scarred, um, from you know what I think is kind of the regulatory environment as a whole, regardless of you know any politics, uh. But, as you know, it's a very good deposit source, and so one of the things we're looking at we've been studying private credit. Private credit, for those who don't know, is basically non-bank lending. At the end of the day, that market is supposed to be $7 trillion, and so we are looking at insurance vehicles and other ways that we can get into what I would call a cheaper source of cost of capital. We're looking at different ways that we go into there outside of banking. But, that being said, I think we're also thinking about how to serve the customer better, and using technology and apps is really really good, but it is not the silver bullet. Some people do want to touch us, some people do want to talk to us, so we're thinking through other solutions.

Christopher Luna: 46:47

And you work a lot with community partners. I mean, that's a, that's a big Avenue, absolutely.

Everett K. Sands: 46:52

I mean, I think, community. I think we're give or take about a thousand of them now.

Christopher Luna: 46:57

Wow, Nationally, nationally, yeah, nationally.

Everett K. Sands: 47:00

Yeah and yeah. And so we're thinking about how to help them deploy capital, loans, grants, different things like that, how to help them support their membership and different things. And then, because technically, a lot of them are better technical assistants than actually we are, and so when you're thinking again about the ecosystem, sometimes you want to do it all, but sometimes you don't because there's just a partner who's doing it better and we could just help give that partner a little extra boost, and then we think it'll help the community. I also think about that in terms of culture and languages. I mean, you take the Spanish language. I mean think about the diasporas of the Latin American community, right? Like I'm not going to be able to conquer that anytime soon, so why not do it through partnership? Same thing with the Asian dias diaspora, right.

Christopher Luna: 47:47

And so we think about some of these things, like the cultural competency that's needed to build that rapport, and the thing is that you're able to do this even faster because a lot there's a lot of compliance behind the scenes in a financial institution where it takes some years to print out one a one-page sheet in another language, so I'll I'll figure out how to create the application in a different language.

Everett K. Sands: 48:05

let them figure out how to continue to build community rapport and then together, you know, the community really gets served well.

Christopher Luna: 48:12

Yeah, you're in a really great position. Like I said, you have that small business mentality. You've grown this business, you know, in a short amount of time, but you're as big as a bank, right. So, again, I think it's nice that you're able to compete but at the same time change, if you have to, in a flip of a dime.

Christopher Luna: 48:35

Not everyone's in that position. It's very hard to be in that position, but that goes to your leadership skills and to this program, la Leaders. How do you continue to build this? What is your legacy? How do you plan for your succession? You know like, how does that look like as a leader?

Everett K. Sands: 48:51

You know, it's hard for me to think about it because somewhat it's morbid. Right On one side you're like I want to be here forever and I want to be young and I want to keep going, but on the other side, you're absolutely right, I and what I'm hoping, through our partnerships and through our future leaders, is that we create more Lendustries Obviously that person's version of it, but there's no way one Lendustry is going to be able to solve what I would argue is about a trillion dollar issue, and so I'm hoping that through the different things that we're doing, the last one that I mentioned to you was policy. I mean we have to have partners in policy that say this is how we do it. And I don't blame any politician or anything like that, because I think that politicians job is to create the legislation. The, the kind of mainstream job is to help them think about how the execution of the legislation goes about.

Everett K. Sands: 49:41

So sometimes you need to have conversations in the front to say, hey, design it this way. And sometimes you need to have conversations in the front to say, hey, design it this way. And sometimes you need to have conversations afterwards to say this did and did not work. But I think, when I think about legacy, it's things like that, like how do we make changes to structural credit? Historically has been a bad thing. Let's make it a good thing, right, because we're not going to change the way the US runs laws, or the state runs laws, or even the city, but we can think about the structures that could be influential to a tremendous amount of capital flowing.

Christopher Luna: 50:11

Have you? Have you've gotten into policy? I know you're from DC. I mean how you have close ties, because you have to keep track of all policies federally state and locally Right.

Everett K. Sands: 50:26

So we have, we have a couple lobbyists, both federal and state, and couple is probably the wrong word, but that's OK. And and the pandemic really brought me into the forefront I think I've now spoken to Congress four times. I've been four or five congressional hearings.

Everett K. Sands: 50:35

And you can catch those videos online. You can catch those videos online. Hopefully I didn't say anything too crazy and I think I go through what a lot of leaders go through in my state, which is a bit of imposter syndrome when you're going through that, Because you're realizing that you're influencing not only the individuals that are sitting in front of you but literally lawmakers and I never signed up to be anyone that would influence law at all, Like that was not that was farthest from what I wanted to do.

Everett K. Sands: 51:10

But I think it is really, really important that those of us that are leaders take not only that we vote that's, that's to me kind of the obvious but we do take the time to sit down with politicians and say here's another way of doing something, that benefits.

Christopher Luna: 51:15

The thing ever is you are the voice for small businesses like you. You carry such a strong influence and weight because of your business and what you've done so far and your leadership and your voice is very meaningful. So you being a part of that conversation and representing such a community is very impactful, because businesses like ours we don't even think that way. Like we don't, we don't have the time, the energy or the money to to be out in the front of those of those communities and those politicians. So it's nice to have you as a partner in that sense because, I mean, most of our city is built by small businesses right always, and you being in the forefront is is important.

Christopher Luna: 51:56

so thank you for everything you do when it comes to that, because, yeah, and definitely continue doing it, because we need that voice, I appreciate it. We in in every level. Right, I mean, yeah, totally. I mean, look at Los Angeles right now. We're going through a lot, yeah, but that's what drove me to work for this organization is just the impact and what we do as a whole, as a community, because, at the end of the day, it's not about big business, but it's about bettering our community. It's about making it easier to hire, making it easier to open a restaurant or whatever it is so.

Christopher Luna: 52:29

I think that if you continue to lead our community, it's greatly appreciated. Yeah, no thanks for that, I plan to. Yeah, definitely, going back to you, kind of the horizon, you mentioned that you're thinking or I'm not sure how close you are about doing a podcast and you're calling it small business, unscripted. Tell me a little bit about that.

Everett K. Sands: 52:51

Yeah Well, I mean to your point with leaders. I think when we think about things like cultural competency, I think leaders need to hear from other leaders that go through the same things as them, right? So I'm a restaurateur, I should hear from a restaurateur. I'm a woman owned business that's a restaurateur. I should hear from another woman that's run a restaurant.

Everett K. Sands: 53:11

And so the thought process behind the MOP podcasts and, quite frankly, any marketing is how do we get into the fabrics of society? For example, we're partners with la sparks. We're the small business lending partner. Well, that deals with women, inequality and pay. That deals with trying to help athletes be able to get into small business and feel comfortable that they could talk to someone that's going to give them, you know, advice, without trying to charge them or take advantage of them or different things like that. Because if we solve the pay issue, guess what? They're going to make a bunch of money and so now they got to make sure they invest it correctly and do those things correctly. So we're trying to be really intentional, both in the messaging and then the marketing and then, obviously, how we deliver on the mission.

Christopher Luna: 53:53

Yeah.

Everett K. Sands: 53:54

Cause.

Christopher Luna: 53:54

I mean, it's it's true, as a small business owner, you're, or any, any organization, you're kind of alone at a lot of those conversations and it's hard to find someone that can relate, right Um.

Christopher Luna: 54:05

So if you're, you create this platform where you're able to discuss kind of openly, like those situations and what we're going through. I mean talking about my family business and what we went through with COVID. I mean, man, if I had you to talk to during that time, you could have advised me of something different, because in reality, we became a bank. This is our business, because our receivables are so high. You know, we're waiting for our vendors to pay us and a lot of our merchandise is in the ocean.

Everett K. Sands: 54:29

So there's a there's a lot that I could have learned and kind of you know, yeah, and if you think about a small business owner the other side of that, some of what I kind of described in an application, when you have the free time to even think about it or study it or talk to someone a lot of times it's really late at night or really early in the morning, maybe. Maybe you're lucky enough to listen to someone you drive to work, um, and so trying to give that small business owner access on their time, which I think podcasts are very fortunate in giving them, that it's really, really important to me too, because the data is saying they need it to be off hours, they need a YouTube university-like scenario where they could just listen whenever they want, and so that's really important to us.

Christopher Luna: 55:09

That's how I am. I'm at home late at night, 11 or midnight or whatnot, and I'm listening to something and just learning.

Christopher Luna: 55:16

I'm constantly learning and my wife's like when are you going to bed? You know, but that's to me. I'm like I'd rather listen to these interviews and kind of learn from one another than watching a TV show. So you know, it's good that you're creating this platform for the community again, that's right. So it's just some final thoughts. I mean, if you were teaching a leadership course right now because I'm in the works right now I'm not sure if you ever met Rick Gibson. He's a retired senior vice chancellor of Pepperdine University. He was there for 30 plus years, or about 30 years, and he used to sit on our board and he recently retired and I came to him with this idea. I'm like, hey, with your educational background and with emerging leaders like myself and you know we're wanting to learn let's create this workshop, sure, so we're in the process of doing that right now. But if you're a special guest on this workshop, what are like three to five things that you would think these leaders need to know as they're growing in their careers?

Everett K. Sands: 56:16

I mean, of course I'm probably going to lean a little bit more towards finance, growing in their careers. I mean, of course I'm probably going to lean a little bit more towards finance. And I think it's really understanding kind of when to borrow, how to borrow and the various stages and elements of borrowing, right. So sometimes we use words very cavalier angel investor, more PE, private equity, more banks, and just understanding. I mean you'll know this because you're a banker. But there's some banks that finance boats, right.

Everett K. Sands: 56:40

And so you, you three things I tell people is you gotta make sure that when you go to a bank you ask do you finance my loan amount, do you finance my use of proceeds? And do you finance me? And it's not literally me, it's not like a black man or anything like it's. I'm a c-corp, I'm a non-profit, I'm this, this is my nasus code or my industry, that's the finance me. But as you know from banking banks are all unique. There are banks that finance boats. So you walk in there, you want a home loan or you want a small business loan and then unfortunately, because of federal law, they have to actually give you an answer, because you applied and you get a decline and you're like oh, it's not me, it is me and it's not you, it's because they finance boats, but there's no sign on the door that says we finance boats only, right.

Everett K. Sands: 57:24

And so I think, when you're thinking about education, that's still a foundational misconcept for us in terms of running our businesses. Then I think, from there it's the leverage and how to take your business and grow to the next level capital reserves and different things like that. I still think that that's something that, if we can get that right, I think, one, it'll create a lot more R&D, said differently, a lot more growth. And two, I think it'll take away some of those pains and headaches that the business owners go through as they're managing finance. I was describing it to my team the other day.

Everett K. Sands: 57:56

You have someone that is the pro. I mean, if you think about the, the executive, they're saying yes, they're saying no, they're doing everything. I mean, they are the pro at their job, they are the main person, and then there's this obscure thing called financing, and this is where they have 100 potential for rejection. So you take the pro in their normal element all day long they're the best, they're the amazing, they're the one that's answering all the questions, and then all of a sudden they go into this place where it's like fear, rejection and all that, and so I think it's really important that we start to break some of that down.

Christopher Luna: 58:33

Yeah, yeah. No, I think there's definitely a lot that we can learn from you. I really do appreciate you coming over here and taking the time to sit down with me. I think that if anyone wants to continue learning from you, just follow you on Lenderstreetcom. You do a lot for the community. Just before I let you go, what is Everett before work like? What's your morning routine?

Everett K. Sands: 59:03

look like like I'm trying to capture um, the personal side from yeah sure, about 4 30 in the morning. I wake up naturally between 4 and 4 30. I do have an alarm clock just in case, but I work out. I think it's really really important, as I mentioned before, kind of that brain training and obviously the physical trainer really really important. So something positive in my ears mixed with the training um, generally 30 to are you listening to motivational podcasts?

Christopher Luna: 59:27

motivational podcast. Are you listening to music? Motivational podcast.

Everett K. Sands: 59:30

Well, well, I give myself flexibility, okay, uh, because sometimes I need to hear like classical music, because I'm like I need this brain to stop with the ideas and kind of to kind of slow it down. Sometimes it's like hip hop, because I'm like I want to dance and I want to do something, and sometimes it is some type of motivational speaker, maybe industry concentrated or not, that's what amazed me with you is you're that leader, but you're still listening to some other leaders too.

Everett K. Sands: 59:56

That's right. So this morning it was motivational speaking. I believe it was Tony Robbins, carrie Wood I think it's Carrie Water Chopwood was the book I listened to for 10, 15 minutes and then I had to put on a little Kendrick Lamar.

Everett K. Sands: 1:00:12

So it was like all three things were going on at the same time. And then I'm trying to get into my day pretty early so I try to do emails kind of right away. I call it the fluff of emails. Like there's just a group of emails that you kind of get rid of like in the first hour so you can start to get to the meat of the emails. So I get rid of the fluff, then I get into meetings. First meeting this morning was 6.30, and then just rolls from there. Do you get your emails scrubbed? I do sometimes, but I like to just touch them just because you know the scrub. Sometimes you never know what's marketing versus what's something real, and nowadays because of chat, gpt and other things, they can kind of look the same, so to speak, to some of the tools out there. So I do it. I do a good 15, 30 minutes. I can do it really quickly. I've gotten that down pretty well.

Christopher Luna: 1:00:58

Do you have a special email for some of your VAPs that need a quick answer? It's.

Everett K. Sands: 1:01:06

Everett at Lendistry. Don't say it out loud. No, it's all good. I can't imagine how your inbox looks. I got a lot of protectors at Lendistry that do different things and then hello at Lendistry. If you really want to get to the team, that's the better one.

Christopher Luna: 1:01:19

Sounds good. Well, thank you again for sharing the insights. Again, visit Lendistrycom. Keep an eye on your podcast. You're coming up Small Business Unscripted. Again, I really value your time. I know it's not easy to get you for an hour or two from your day, so thank you again. I appreciate everything you do for the small business community. Um, I look forward to working with you and growing with you more. All right, um, I was at the mexican consulate just this past week and I met this company who represents a lot of alcohol brands. Okay, and they're going to be um supporting an event of ours. But they she gave me this bottle. It's called the solo. Um, it's from a very famous Hispanic artist. You'll find him, but there he was all over the news and Costco, whatnot. His name is Marcantonio Solis. So they gave it to me because they knew I was going to meet with you and they wanted me to give it to you.

Everett K. Sands: 1:02:09

Okay, I appreciate it.

Christopher Luna: 1:02:09

So a little thank you gift for for showing up. That's nice. And for being with us today. So thank you, I'm curious to see how it tastes, so maybe one day we'll drink it together, but if not, we'll get another one. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Narrator 1: 1:02:34

Thank you again, inspiring as we did. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us bring more of the content you love. And be sure to follow us on social media for updates behind the scenes content and to join the conversation. Until next time, keep leading, keep innovating and keep making a difference.