In The Thick of It

Entrepreneurial journeys often take unexpected turns, sometimes leading to extraordinary success.

In this episode, we explore Robert (Bob) Bowden's transition from landman to thriving business owner. Bob shares his experience founding two distinct companies: Verity Advisors, which assists in unclaimed property recovery, and VerityPay, offering text-based payment solutions for B2C businesses. He discusses the hurdles and victories encountered along the way, including managing market fluctuations and investigating cross-state expansion opportunities.

This conversation offers valuable lessons in resilience and flexibility, relevant to both established entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners.

***

About Bob
Robert Bowdon is the President and Founder of Verity Advisors, LLC. His passion is the timely and complete return of all outstanding assets to clients of the business. After more than a decade working in the oil and gas industry as a petroleum landman, Robert founded Verity Advisors to address the growing issue of returning dormant assets to their rightful owners – and it starts with a deep-seated understanding of estate entitlement and corporate ownership. Through a dedication to simplifying this complex process, Robert has successfully facilitated thousands of recoveries totaling tens of millions of dollars and spanning across a wide array of asset types and ownership complexities. Robert has implemented a team of professionals who are experts in their respective fields to grow the business and provide the absolute best experience possible for Verity clients.

Outside of the office, Robert enjoys spending time outdoors and raising his two boys and daughter with his wife, Dee. Robert and his family are active members of Bethel Church of Houston and enjoy volunteering and supporting various organizations including Patriots for Veterans, the Archibald Project, KSBJ, Food for the Hungry, and the Wounded Warrior Foundation.

Robert holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of West Florida. He made Houston his home in the early 2000s and has grown a deep appreciation for the city and Texas as a whole.

About VerityPay
VerityPay is a web-based SaaS platform which quickly and easily delivers payments from your business operating system to consumers via their mobile device, with instant reconciliation.

About Verity Advisors
Verity Advisors is a Class A Investigations company focused on the recovery and return of various assets to our clients. The firm creates a collaborative recovery strategy where our mission is single-minded: we are focused on timely, safe return of what is rightfully yours. Our clients rely upon us to successfully navigate the complex process of proving ownership on their behalf.

***

If you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us

Creators & Guests

Host

Scott Hollrah

Founder & CEO of Venn Technology

Guest

Robert (Bob) Bowdon

Founder & CEO of VerityPay and Verity Advisors

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

Businesses need a better way to pay consumers because all

of these accounts are business to consumer payments.

There's about 10,000 different ways you can buy a cup

of coffee at Starbucks with your phone, all kinds of stuff.

There's virtually none when it comes to B2C transactions.

And so let's digitize that process and let's make it really cool.

Not only really cool, let's make it relevant to the business

so that, one, saves them money, two, reduces fraud.

Three, eases the burden on the back office so that there's

not so much recordkeeping and reconciliation and that kind of thing.

Welcome to In The Thick of It.

I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.

If you're a frequent listener, you know that the path

to owning a business can be winding and unpredictable.

But sometimes the most unexpected paths

can lead to remarkable opportunities.

Today we're joined by Bob Bowdon to hear his journey

from working as a landman to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

He walks through the challenges and triumphs of founding not one,

but two companies, Verity Advisors and VerityPay.

Verity Advisors specializes in helping individuals

recover unclaimed property,

while VerityPay helps businesses send payments via text or sms.

Bob also touches on the trials of navigating cyclical markets

and exploring opportunities for business expansion in other states.

Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting out,

you'll find valuable insights

from Bob's story about perseverance and adaptability.

Joining me in the studio today is Bob Bowdon.

Bob, thank you for making the treacherous

drive up 45 from Houston to Dallas.

Yeah, man.

Pleasure to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, we'll start in the beginning.

You moved a lot as a kid, right?

Yeah, I grew up in a very nomadic home.

My father was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps.

And so, yeah, I've lived Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina,

Virginia, three different homes in California, New Orleans.

I thought I hated moving, and then I moved,

like four or five more times after I got out of college, so.

But I landed in Houston in 2007 and I've been there since.

And I love Houston.

It's great.

Welcome to Texas.

Yeah, man.

All right.

So being the son of a marine pilot, what was that like?

Was the house pretty regimented and a lot of rule and order?

It was, but not for the reasons you would expect.

So my mother ran a very tight ship.

She was awesome.

She's one of my.

One of my heroes when it comes to business, too.

Just an incredible business mind.

My dad's very regimented, but my mom ran the tight ship.

But I'll tell you, you know, my dad is a guy who, you know,

fighter pilot, general officer in the Marine Corps, you would

think just as regimented and straight sharp, squared away as

they come, but probably one of the most laid back individuals

that I know.

After you get off work, you probably need to chill a little bit.

Yeah.

Especially in an intense environment like that.

You said your mom had a great business mind.

Yeah.

Talk to us about that, man.

So growing up, she was at home, of course, we moved a lot.

Right.

And she was at home with my brother and I,

you know, through our childhood.

But as we started going to school and my

brother could drive and that kind of thing.

She took a job when we were in California

for a dermatologist, guys named Jeff Klein.

Great guy.

And he owned a surgical supply company,

and it was bleeding upside down, negative cash flow.

I mean, it was bad.

The guys who were running it, father son team, apparently there was

some back office things going on that shouldnt have been going on.

And she took that from a negative earnings business to,

I think, three or $4 million in revenue.

She just gets it right.

Shes one of those people that just understands

the way that business needs to be run.

Inventory, sales, the whole thing.

And shes the kind of person that says if shes going to put her mind

to something, she just won't quit until it's done right.

But she's always been a huge advocate of mine and just somebody that,

that's just, you know, huge champion and always been in my corner.

You had siblings?

Yeah, one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Older brother.

Four years older than me.

Great dude.

Business owner as well.

Sold his company almost two years ago.

Now I've had the privilege.

You know, I always thought being a younger brother was kind

of the short end of the stick,

but as I got older and kind of gained some wisdom,

I've had the advantage of not having to go first in a lot of things.

And being able to watch my brother do some of the things

that he's done has been a huge advantage for me.

I'm the oldest of three.

Yeah.

And my, my parents certainly learned a lot with me.

I was the practice child.

Right.

And by the time it got to my brother,

who's the youngest, like, curfew.

What's a curfew?

Like, the rules totally changed.

And anyway, so I think there definitely are some benefits

to being the younger, the younger sibling.

Absolutely.

All right.

With all the moves, were there activities,

were there sports that you were able to, like,

really put yourself into or with it changing constantly?

Did that prevent you from that?

So it kind of came and went.

One thing that was always constant was, you know,

my dad was born and raised in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Hunting and fishing is part of our family.

That's what we do.

And so we hunted and fished everywhere.

Right.

Loved a duck hunt.

And when I say everywhere, I mean, like, we shot limits of ducks

5 miles from the Pacific Ocean on Camp Pendleton.

You know, we just wouldn't stop on base.

Yeah, well, when your dad's the CG,

you can do whatever, whatever you want.

And I don't mean it that way.

I just mean, like, my dad would go to NWR, the marine welfare

and recreation, and say, hey, we'd like to duck hunt on that pond.

And they'd say, sir, you can do, you know, sure, sir.

Yes, sir.

And so we went.

It was Christmas Eve, which is my birthday, so I'll never forget that.

But my brother came home from college,

I would think was a senior in high school, and we shot 18 ducks.

Limit was six.

We shot 18 ducks in, like, 30 minutes.

I mean, it was crazy.

Wow.

Yeah.

Where you would least expect to find ducks, and they just stacked in.

So that was always something.

But, yeah.

So sports, team sports would be different everywhere that we went.

Played baseball a little bit as a kid.

Football.

I started playing tackle football when I was in kindergarten

and played all the way through high school.

I think there was a couple of stops there, fourth or

fifth grade, that we just didn't get into the rec leads

and then inhabited school, but did high school in San

Diego and spent all four years at David Jeremiah's high

school on the campus of shadow Mountain church Christian

high.

Played football there.

Had a fantastic high school experience.

It was a great place to learn and grow and.

Yeah.

And then went off to college there

on a seed scholarship that never, never turned into anything.

Was San Diego the place you lived the longest?

Yes.

So we did three years at Miramars my freshman,

sophomore, and junior year.

And then my folks moved to, when my dad was transferred

to Camp Pendleton, which is just about an hour up the road.

And so I was able to stay at the same school,

had a longer commute, but I'd spend the night

at friends houses during the week and then come home.

You know, I was at home probably four or five nights a week.

Okay.

All right.

So after.

After high school,

you went off to Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri.

Yeah.

So, seed scholarship.

They said, we're going to red shirt you.

I said, you can have your $600 back.

I'm going to go Deer hunt instead.

And so that's what I did.

And private school tuition is not cheap,

especially for a military man.

So that lasted one year and then ended up

at University of West Florida, Pensacola.

Majored in criminal justice because I thought it was interesting.

I wanted to be a cop.

And so spent some time in Pensacola,

did a year in Fort Walton beach after that,

did Baton Rouge for a year and then Baton Rouge to Houston.

Did you do any school in Baton Rouge?

Did you spend any time at LSU or just one day?

One day.

One day that was.

Yeah.

So LSU is a family school.

Go Tigers.

Big, big LSU fan.

But when I got there, it was just overwhelming, right?

I came from a small high school background.

We graduated 72 kids in my graduating class.

And there's like, at the time,

I think there were 40 or 45,000 undergrads at LSU.

I got in a car wreck.

There was people everywhere.

You got in a car wreck your first day?

The first day, orientation day.

And I was like, I'm done.

So I called University of West Florida and I said,

hey, is my application still good?

They're like, bring it, I'm coming.

I load it up to you all.

I'm out of here.

All right, so your degree was in criminal justice, and that will, as

we get a little bit further into your story, that will play a pivotal

role in getting you into the businesses that you've been a part of.

I don't want to get too deep into that.

But you didn't become a cop right out of school?

No.

Or ever?

Actually, no.

Out of curiosity, your classmates that were in this program,

how many of them went on into law enforcement?

You know, there's a handful of them that I keep up with,

and one of them who, who I was probably closest with in college,

I didn't do the fraternity thing, I didn't do the dorm thing.

It just wasn't my deal, you know?

And so I really don't keep up with a lot of people from college,

but the guys that I do are all in law enforcement, right?

And I keep up with them to the point that, like,

we're friends on Facebook.

You see their vacation pictures, I see their vacation pictures,

and we see fishing and hunting pictures.

We go, oh, man.

And we gotta get together.

Talking to one guy named Alex Bell a few days ago,

and he's like, I've never been to Texas.

And I was like, ah, we're going to have to fix that, dude.

Right?

Yeah.

But, yeah, the guys I went to school with, one of them's doing great.

He was there, Scambia county sheriff's office.

Now he works for the Florida Department

of Law enforcement, kind of their.

Their Texas equivalent of state troopers or.

I don't know if he's, like, on the ranger side now,

but I know he's a fairly highly decorated,

you know, investigator in their office, so.

Yeah.

And then there's other people who went on.

Criminal justice is kind of an interesting, interesting field

to study because there's a lot of different ways you can go with it.

Right?

You can go the law enforcement cop route.

You can also go into, like, counseling and psychology.

A lot of the courses intertwine with each other,

so we were in a lot of the same courses with criminal psychology.

What drives people to do certain things,

which is all very fascinating, but there was a lot of the.

I mean, I think 90% of the girls I ever knew or talked to.

What are you majoring in?

Psychology.

And you're like, oh, yeah, that was not on your list.

Huh.

So you said you didn't do the fraternity thing.

What, like, outside of class, was it?

Spent a lot of time hunting and fishing.

Were you spending your weekends on the beach?

Yeah, hunting and fishing.

A lot of the guys that.

So I was interning at Pensacola Police Department.

And so police departments are a real tight knit community,

and if you can kind of get in with them,

then that kind of becomes like your fraternity.

Right?

Your friends, your family.

In fact, after college, I roomed with a guy who was a deputy

in Okaloosa county, but I'd hang out

with those guys and hunt and fish and do that kind of thing.

And being an intern with them meant a lot of ride alongs,

you know, and that kind of thing.

And at that time in Pensacola, it was a great time to be a cop

because there wasn't, like, this vibe that you have today

with the negativity towards law enforcement.

There's a lot of cat and mouse type.

I mean, we get in a car chase,

but you never really had to worry about getting shot at.

And the guys who were running patrol would have a lot of fun with it.

Right?

So as a ride along, I look a little older, at least I did back then,

than, you know, your average college student, and you're required

to wear khakis and a button up shirt to go on a ride along.

I'd bring a mag light with me, and they would all call me Sarge.

Right.

So we get out on, like, a traffic stop or something, and I'd be

shining my flashlight in the back window of somebody's car.

And they'd be like, hey, sarge, you got anything back there?

You know, I mean, just hilarious, right?

And we'd all laugh about it later, but we had some.

We had some great times.

One of the guys I don't keep up with was,

I'm trying to think of his name.

He was one of the characters in real life in Blackhawk down.

Oh, wow.

The guy who fell out of the helicopter.

At first, Todd Blackburn was his name,

and I rode with him, one of the coolest guys.

And I'll never forget, you know, I got in his car for the first time,

and we kind of got used to hanging out with each other.

And a couple hours into the ride, I said, well,

todd, you gotta tell me, man, is the movie accurate?

And he goes, I don't know, Bob.

I wasn't there.

You know, I fell out of the helicopter

and I woke up six or seven weeks later.

I mean, I was.

I wasn't there.

But what's cool about his story is, so while he was in a coma,

he had this recurring dream that he was floating down a river

and there was this asian woman who was following him down the river.

He wakes up out of his coma and is his nurse.

She's now his wife, and they have seven kids.

Seven kids.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

You had the internship.

What was your first job?

Was that.

Was that your first job, or did you work prior to that?

No.

So I did a quick stint for the same doctor

that my mom worked for out in California.

He owned a website, and I was selling advertising to plastic surgeons.

And it was just kind of a.

It just wasn't the right fit for me.

Right.

I went to all the, all the conferences and that kind of thing,

but, you know, there's not a lot of money in that.

We're trying to sell them on just getting their practices

up on the website because it had a great domain name.

But very quickly after that, you know, I was visiting with my brother.

He started working in oil and gas, and I was a landman.

And, you know, I'm thinking about, do I want to be a cop?

Do I want to apply to the academy?

What do I want to do?

And he's like, man, I'm making this much money being a Landman.

And I was like, that sounds pretty good right now.

And so I went to, like, a three day Landman course, which,

in retrospect, it was kind of a joke, right?

In Baton Rouge.

Learn the basics, which I think was good,

because if for nothing else, it gave me a sense of confidence.

Right now, I know everything I need to know.

I didn't know anything.

Right.

There's an old joke in the Landman world that, like,

your first two years, you think you don't know anything.

From years three to five, you think you know everything,

and then you get to year 30 and you realize you never knew anything.

And so.

And it's very true.

It's an ever changing field.

There's always something new coming up.

But anyway, I took that course,

got a job with a small norwegian back company down in Houston.

So there was a lot of stability there, which was great.

Did that for, man, I was with them for probably six or seven years,

and then went out on my own.

From there, they bought an oil field in California,

didnt have any more acquisition work.

And so I said, hey, you can come be our HSC out there if you want,

or you can go out on your own.

I said, ill just go out on my own.

I dont want to go to Bakersfield.

What's an HSE?

Health, safety, and environment.

Okay, so, HSC manager, you're basically facilities,

you know, and real quick.

So we've had at least one other person

on the podcast who was a landman at one point, Clayton Flurry.

And we may have had one other, but for people who don't know,

like, what does a Landman, what does a Landman do?

Yeah.

So a Landman is basically the intermediary between

an oil company and the landowner.

Right.

So we do all the title research at the courthouse, all the

negotiations for leases, and then later in my career, I was

working a lot with midstream companies, pipeline companies,

and we were doing all of the title research on surface

properties, as well as the right of way acquisition for land

pipelines.

Okay, and walk me through again,

geographically, where your landman jobs were.

Yeah, so I always based out of Houston, but, man, I did

everywhere you can imagine in Texas, south Texas, the Panhandle,

West Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, California, New Mexico.

Is there oil in Kentucky?

Oh, yeah.

In fact, there was a tv show called Backyard oil barons

with the guys that I used to work with, like, with their wells.

But you can.

It's shallow oil, right?

So, like, think, like 1200 to 1500 foot wells.

So the pump jacks look like dogs.

They're like, tiny, tiny.

You can drill those wells with an air rig.

And so the well cost drilled and completed was like 20 grand.

Right.

But we drilled, I don't know, like 50 dry holes in a row.

Wasn't the land man's fault, but they did.

And so they pulled out and decided that we're

not going to go down this road anymore.

All right, so you do the Landman thing

and you weren't married in the early parts of that.

Somewhere along the way, you met your wife.

Yeah, yeah.

So we met in 2012 right away, right?

I mean, it's 28 years old.

I dated a few times, and right away was like, this is it.

We're just going to go ahead and lock this down.

She's phenomenal.

Best thing that's ever happened to me.

So we got married in 2014,

you know, and after working on the road for quite a bit,

it was nice to be at home while we were dating and all of that.

I had the good fortune to work on a pipeline project that

was literally from college station to Mont Belvieu, Texas.

So I was home every night.

You know, I'd leave the house at five every day,

but it was home every night.

And so it gave us a chance to really enjoy that time together.

And then after we got married, we were actually at a marriage retreat

one weekend, and she starts talking about wanting to have kids.

And I was like, oh, I don't know.

I mean, I'm a landman, right?

I mean, if the oil price drops below 75, I'm the first man out.

And then I've got children to look after, you know, that's tough.

And so I was kind of praying about that and it was like,

almost audible, Scott, like, God just told me, hey,

you just be fruitful and multiply and I'll take care of the rest.

And so I was obedient to that call and told my wife, okay,

I'm ready, you know, let's pull the trigger on this.

And so we started working towards building our family,

and literally three months later, we got a note in the mail

that said, hey, you know, you're, it was from USAA.

And they said, we sent you a check like three years ago

for $200 and you never deposited it.

Well, of course, I didnt know I was working on the road.

I would come home and pay all my bills online.

Id, come on, just throw all my mail in the trash.

And so they said were going to turn it over to unclaimed property.

So I went to the unclaimed property website and typed in my last name,

which id always been told anybody with b o w d o n was family.

Theres like 50 other Bowdens on this website who id never heard of.

We may be family, distant cousins or whatnot,

but thinking, how many Smiths do you all have

on this website and how much money are they owed?

Right?

And so I had the idea for just kind of a little side hustle, man.

I can go find these people and.

And get their money back for them

and maybe make a fee on doing the work.

And come to find out, it's a regulated industry.

You have to be a licensed private investigations firm

in order to do that type of work.

At least here in Texas, you do.

And so I went, okay, well,

how do I get a private investigators license?

Well, you can go to work for somebody else

for three years and work under their charter.

Or if you have a bachelor's degree in criminal justice,

then that counts as your experience.

You can study for the test.

Go take the test.

And so.

And there it is.

How crazy is that?

I mean, there's only one way,

right, that you can kind of piece those together and go,

God's had his hand in this thing from the very beginning.

And so it was a very comforting feeling.

But I went and took the test.

Aced it.

I never really aced anything.

As we were talking about it at lunch today,

you know, I was always kind of a.

A B or a C student, but this just all came very naturally to me.

And all the skills that I had as Landman

kind of played right into doing what we do.

Right, which is research and figuring out who's entitled to what.

And then cold calling, negotiating, that kind of thing.

And so I just started doing it as a moonlight

and was really having a lot of fun with it.

I mean, there's a rush that comes with picking

up the phone and saying, hey, my name is Bob.

You don't know who I am.

I'm with this company.

We've identified an account that we believe belongs to you,

and it's worth x.

And we've been hung up on, cussed out.

You name it.

I'm sure you're like the nigerian prince.

We are just one degree off the nigerian.

Give me your banking information,

and there will be millions of dollars in your account tomorrow.

That's right.

And it's a tough road to walk in.

A big hurdle to overcome.

Right.

To prove your legitimacy, you know?

But that's our job.

And that we have to do that.

Right.

And so we don't expect anything

from anybody until we cross that hurdle.

So Verity Advisors is born because you got a letter in the mail

saying, we've turned this thing over to unclaimed property.

Right.

As a quick aside, you talked about just, like, throwing your mail out.

I've got to the point now where when I get the explanation

of benefits documents from the health insurance company,

I typically just put them straight in the shredder a year or two ago.

Im like, im not just for grins, like what was this for?

And sure enough,

there was a check in the envelope and it wasnt for much.

I dont know, its probably 25, $50, something like that.

Im like, im not throwing these away anymore.

Im going to start looking at these.

So if youre throwing your mail away, you might want to look through it

really, really quickly, at least before you just chuck it in there.

Yeah.

Or just get married and then your wife will look through all the mail.

At least mine does.

There you go.

Yeah, thats all right.

So you were doing this as a side hustle, your moonlighting?

Yeah.

At what point did you transition away from the oil company?

Yeah.

So I did this for about 18 months

and met some great people along the way.

Just, you know, every person, every client that you work with,

you build a relationship with.

It's a long sales cycle.

The shortest sales cycle we have is 90 days.

Right.

Some of them go 1824 months.

And so there was one lady who, who I had called on,

she had been called on by every other competitor of ours.

And this is like twelve months into doing this.

And I thought it was about $80,000.

Come to find out, it was significantly more than that

because there was securities tied to this $80,000.

And this was stock that her father had earned

at a company that he worked for down in Florida.

And when I got this back for her and was able to tell her like,

what this was about, one, it was super rewarding just

from like an emotional fulfillment standpoint.

But two, from the standpoint of making a career and a business out of

my little side hustle, it really illuminated that opportunity for me.

And so once that invoice was paid, I basically put my two weeks in

with the land company that I was contracting for at that time.

And it was the right move.

I may have gone about it the wrong way.

Thats another story for cigar and whiskey.

But looking back, I dont have any regrets.

I did it my way.

I did it on my terms.

And so from there,

I was doing it myself full time for about six months.

And then, surprisingly,

my father in law called and said, hey, im kind of bored.

Retirement, looking for something to do.

Tell me how your deals going.

And we had talked about it kind of here and there,

and the conversation kind of came and went.

Right.

And then a few weeks later, he called me back.

He said, I'm thinking more about that deal you and I talked about.

And he said, tell me your,

how much you did in revenue, your best month.

And I said, well, steve, I said,

in January I did this, in February, I did that.

And here's what I've been doing so far in March.

And he goes, sonny beaches.

He said, I'll be at your office tomorrow.

And he showed up and he's still there with us.

I mean, we're going on eight years now.

I want to back up a little bit.

One of the things I always love hearing is the story about when you

discussed with your wife, like, hey, here's what I want to go and do.

Do you remember having that conversation

and what her response was like?

You know, she's always been a huge supporter of this.

Even when I was moonlighting doing this, I had a lot

of latitude the last couple of years as a land man because,

you know, they gave me a job, I got the job done.

I did it to the best of my ability.

And if I had extra time, that was my extra time.

And so it didn't really take away from our marriage at all.

But she's always been a great supporter of it.

And I think the more that, you know,

it's always a little bit, I wouldn't say stressful, but concerning

to say, I'm going to go do something new.

But at the same time, with my business,

it wasn't capital intensive to start.

It just required a lot of elbow grease and focus and drive.

And she was all on board when I decided to quit doing land work.

I think we had enough of a buffer at that point from some of those,

that deal that I mentioned and a couple other deals

where we felt comfortable enough to do that.

But honestly, it was pretty naive, right.

Because it put me in a position to where

I didn't realize how cyclical the business would be at first.

Really.

It was very cyclical.

And so when you talk about it being cyclical, is it because

you would spend all your time trying to get somebody that

would engage you and then you would go into the mode where

you've actually got to do the recovery, you're not selling

new work.

That's exactly right.

Okay.

So I would spend a month doing research, I'd spend a month doing

sales, I'd spend a month doing recovery, and then I'd get paid.

And I might get paid six figures in one month,

and then I got to go do it all over again.

So for one month, like, man, I'm doing great.

But the other three months, I'm grinded.

But that's where the kind of.

The growth comes in.

Right.

And you start bringing on more people,

and you can kind of smooth that out a bit.

It's a cyclical business to begin with.

Like, we're just now getting into the busy season.

It'll be busy, super busy, with new accounts that need

to be vetted out and call it on and that kind

of thing for probably the next six months.

What's that like, what causes that aspect of the cycle?

So there's a deadline for companies

to report their dormant accounts to the state.

Right.

And that's July 1.

And so from July 1 through October, November, December, it's go time.

So just like a CPA, February through April.

Like, they're just on lockdown because they've got that deadline.

Yeah.

It's the state filing requirements for these institutions.

Yeah.

And every state's different, but we're focused here in Texas, and so,

unfortunately, our busy season also coincides with hunting season.

But maybe I need to talk to Glenn and tell him,

why don't you just make it January 1?

Be normal, you know?

Right.

When you started doing this, when it was your side hustle, did you go

into it immediately thinking, hey, I think I want to build something.

I want to turn this into something.

No.

Or, okay, so, not at all.

I went into it thinking, Im making 350 a day as a landman.

On a day rate, Im at 1099.

And if I can find $3,000 a day and charge 10%,

then I can almost double my income.

That was my thought.

Right.

I had no idea that there were balances out

there that were exorbitantly higher than that.

But it is what it is.

People lose money.

We still chase the smaller deals,

but obviously we focus on the larger deals first.

Yeah, but they're also a lot more complex.

I mean, you get into some of these probate deals, and you're dealing,

one, with people's money, but two, with just a heavy,

heavy load of emotions tied to the loss of a loved one.

And we see all this stuff with,

you know, there's people who write off children in their will.

There's people who have committed suicide.

There's.

I mean, and you just.

We see murder stories.

They own money, too.

They were alive.

They had assets and accounts, and they were murdered,

or they're in prison, or they're.

You see it all.

Wow.

So that's why I just love our business,

because every single day is a new story.

Yeah.

So just kind of walking through one of these situations

you talked about something getting tied up in probate.

So somebody's passed away.

They didn't have a will, they didn't have

an estate plan that said, this is where this needs to go.

And after a certain amount of time, the bank, the investment house,

whatever, they are required to turn that money over to the state.

Thats right.

Okay.

And when you see that big old outstanding balance,

you go, you track down the family and you try

to convince them to use you to go get the money.

Yep.

Man, at what point you talked about the smaller deals.

In fact, as I was preparing for this,

I went out and I searched my family name.

I didnt have anything but like,

you know, my grandmother whos been gone for about ten years,

shes got like, I dont know, 1500 bucks out there.

At what point does it become worth it for you to pursue these?

Yeah.

So great question.

A lot of it depends on the structure of the deal.

And so we have a fantastic research team who vets out every deal.

And so if its a deal that belongs to Scott, right.

And its Scotts money and its cash, if its ten grand, thats

about as low as well go as the value of the account starts going up,

then we'll look at what are the complexities here.

Right.

So, for instance, if we have to do probate,

that's going to add six months with the best attorneys.

If there's securities involved, right.

It's an investment account.

It's from e trade, Ed Jones, whatever.

That's going to add some time.

There's research that has to go in there on,

not only on our end but also on the end of the state to learn.

Okay, this was turned over in 2018.

It's been six years.

Theres six years of dividends here.

Has the stock been sold?

You have to count that into, I mean, in the beginning

there were deals that we did where I thought we were

getting back $75,000 worth of public storage stock

for one lady who lives in Walnut Creek, California.

Now, she used to live in Houston.

We thought it was about $75,000 worth of public storage stock.

But it was from like 2005.

Of course, were doing this recovery in 2017.

So its been with the state for twelve years.

Well, the state sold it at a twelve year low

and she got a check for twelve grand.

That was it.

Right.

So I'm counting on x for payday.

It just got demolished.

And you're 100% contingency, right.

If they don't get paid, we don't get paid.

Yeah.

Wow.

As an aside, talking about probate,

please go check out our episode with Candace Sandiffer.

It's one of our toolbox episodes on estate planning.

Make sure you've got these things in order.

Just, you're reminding me just how critical that is.

You never know when your time's going to come.

That's right.

Not trying to take business away from you.

But I think it'd be better for everybody,

you know, if we had these things buttoned up 100%.

Well, we've, and that's the other thing.

We don't make any money on our probates.

Right.

It's in our interest to get paid as fast as possible.

And so we've got about a dozen attorneys that we work

with across the state who are the best in the business.

Right.

And we've gone through about, I don't know, 30 or 40 who just said

we're not using them again to figure out who are the best.

Twelve.

Right.

And we'll have a handful of attorneys in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio,

Austin, and then two or three in the panhandle.

But there's a bunch of them out there that we're

having this conversation at lunch just about.

Attorneys are like doctors, you know?

I mean, there's good ones and there's not good ones,

but there's a handful of them out there that are really, really good.

You find a good one and you have a fantastic asset for your business.

A bad one, slow your way down.

Yeah.

And having a good one, it's worth paying them totally what they need.

All right.

You've got some crazy stories, right?

Like what's the craziest one of these that you've experienced?

So, all right, I'm going to tell you the story of Alexander Almer.

Okay.

This was a deal that I looked over.

I had to have looked it over half a dozen times.

It was 83,000 shares of something.

Right.

And it came across my desk a lot of different times.

And when we look at these lists, at least for the first couple

of years, we cant tell if its securities, we can tell that

their securities there, but we cant tell what they belong to.

It couldve been 83,000 shares of ExxonMobil.

We have no way of knowing.

But in every instance, if its more than 10,000 shares,

its almost always like a penny stock or whatever.

I just ignored it for the longest time.

And then all of a sudden a bunch of dividends

popped up as being associated with it.

And I went, whoa, wait a minute.

Let me see what this is about.

And so there was like $70,000 in dividends associated with these

shares that had just accrued since it had been turned over the state.

And so come to find out, it was actually 83,000 shares of

Micron Technology, which today would be worth about $11 million.

Oh, my gosh.

So this is 2022.

At the time, it was worth about seven.

And so I said, man, let me look this guy up.

He had an address in Houston, and I could find nothing on him.

And so almost kind of a unique name.

There's not a lot of almers out there.

And I thought maybe it was an immigrant.

We go to the immigration office, and so went down to the immigration

office, went through their files, and sure enough, I found paperwork

for him where he had immigrated from Austria in 1969.

And so I made copies of all that,

took it back to my office, and I got on Google Maps.

When you found him in the immigration office,

is your heart just racing?

Oh, yeah, Mandy, you'd found the ark of the covenant or something.

Yeah.

Well, and I knew he was dead.

I knew that much.

I had information through some of the tools

that we used that he had been ceased.

But there was no probate, no other information there.

And so that big moment for me came when I got back

to the office and I had this address from the sixties

in Austria in a little town called Palau.

And I pulled up this address and zoomed in, put it on Ariel.

And I could see a structure there, right?

Like a house.

And I went, wow, theres the house.

I tried to get on street View, but I couldnt see anything

because they hadnt driven down this street,

were in a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Austria.

So the next closest street cross section I could get on that.

And so I got down on street View, and I turned back towards the house.

And its like a mile down the road.

As I turned around back towards the house on street View,

I see this big sign that says almer this way.

And the street view camera was taken in 2017.

So im like, he's still got family.

He has family there.

That's crazy.

And so I called the mayor of the town on his cell phone.

How did you find the mayor's phone?

This little town's got everybody's phone numbers on their website.

Wow.

And so I called and he hung up on me, and I called him back.

I'm like, look, I'm not a scam artist, right?

I'm trying to find this guy's family.

Can you help me?

And he said, yes.

He said, all right, fine, send me an email.

I said, great, what's your email?

And he said, well, you're an investigator.

You figure it out.

And hung up again.

I was like, oh, my gosh.

So I went back to the Internet, found his email,

emailed him, told him, thanks again for your help.

Here's who I'm trying to find.

And he told me, hey, call the registrar's office tomorrow.

I'll tell them to expect your call.

And so I did that.

She was so nice.

At the registrar's office, opposite of the mayor.

Opposite of the mayor.

And in his defense, he has no idea there's a guy calling from

an american number like he barely speaks English.

I was going to say, is he speaking German or.

Yeah, mostly, yeah.

And so she said, we know the family you're talking about.

I think he still has two brothers who are alive.

Here's their addresses.

And I was like, awesome.

So I wrote them this long note.

What I usually do over the phone, I had to convey in a piece of paper.

And then I had to translate it to German and hope that

the translation came out right with the right tone.

And so it was a Hail Mary, but I overnighted them via DHL.

These letters to both brothers, I'm watching them like a hawk.

They get delivered, and within 30 minutes of delivery,

I had an email from his youngest brother.

No way.

Yeah.

And he was like, man, I'm so glad you reached out to us.

He's like, we haven't heard from Alexander since he left 1969.

We thought he died.

We never heard a word.

And he lived till 2011.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

So what gets weirder about this is wait for them.

The connection and the reason that they were excited

to reach out to you was less about the money and just the fact

that you had this information on their family member.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I felt a sense of responsibility to really figure out as

much as I could about Alexander, became less about the money.

Like, as you were saying, unsolved mysteries.

Yeah.

And so I really dug deep on contacting everybody who I

could find who had anything to do with this guy while he

was alive so that I could take it back to the family.

And I offered to come out to Austria and visit with them.

They accepted my offer and said, we'd love to meet you.

So we set up a translator.

They don't speak any English at all, all German.

So we set up a translator to come and facilitate the meeting.

They brought their attorney, and it was Mother's day of 2022.

Of course, my wife is, like, eight and a half months pregnant

with our daughter, and she's like, go, but go quick.

Get back, right?

And so I called my dad and I said,

hey, I got a really cool deal Im working on in Austria.

And he was like, what?

I said, yeah, Im going to fly out and meet these two brothers.

Do you want to go?

And he was like, man, that sounds like a great adventure.

Lets go.

And so I bought us two tickets.

We got on a plane, flew to Austria,

met the family, had a phenomenal time.

And over the course of my investigation on this deal, I spent a couple

of months working on this to kind of bring it to where it was.

What I figured out.

A lot of the folks who come in contact

with this guy Alexander had also passed away already.

But the folks who are still alive gave us some details that we just

kind of go, what I mean, he was very reclusive, had a $7 million

stock portfolio, never owned a car, rented a room from a widow in

Montrose in Houston for $150 a week that he paid cash, rode a

bicycle everywhere, and worked as a security guard in the museum

district.

He just liked trading stocks.

He always liked trading stocks from what little money he had.

He was super frugal, saved it all so that he could trade stocks.

And just, that was his deal.

And for him, winning wasnt going and buying a boat or anything.

For him, winning was just making money on the stocks.

Wow.

I picked the right one.

I bought and sold at the right time.

That was his deal.

So we went to Austria, had the most amazing schnitzel.

Back up when we get there,

had a chance to visit with the family, learn about their background.

They've been on the same property, farming apple, since 1380.

Oh, my gosh.

They weren't going anywhere.

We build things to tear them down in 20 years,

and over there, it lasts centuries.

It's amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

His two brothers, Johann and Franz,

surprisingly, the nicest people you can imagine.

Johan's wife made this incredible schnitzel

lunch on Mother's Day, Sunday.

We had a nice spread at a table

with white tablecloths in their backyard.

Very small, quaint house in the countryside, local beer and wine.

It was just unbelievable.

I told, they asked me, what's the easiest way to get this completed?

And I said, I need to be the executor on your brother's estate.

With you guys being out of the country, that's a train wreck.

That's a big ask.

It's a big ask.

In this business, you do it thousands of times,

and I don't mean being an executor.

I mean, building rapport.

And so I had two days to build rapport with this family.

And they said, okay, we trust you.

Go get it done.

Had they ever been contacted by somebody else?

Nobody.

Back to the immigration office, like,

finding that information was key to the whole thing.

And I think a lot of our competition

probably did the same thing that I did.

And just blew right over it

for the longest time until it was too late.

It was kind of one of those deals that when you realize what

it's worth, then you drop everything, just go to work.

And that was kind of in the middle of launching our new deal,

which we'll talk about later, but it was worth it.

While I'm spending the majority of my time doing something else.

Working on Verity Advisors rather than in Verity Advisors.

It was the one time that year that I worked in Verity Advisors.

And I miss it now that I'm doing something a little bit different.

I miss it.

But came back home, got the estate done as a dependent administrator.

So I'd post a bond.

And we ended up selling the securities at the state level.

And, yeah, wired $5 million to Austria.

Unreal.

Yeah.

So much fun.

And I still keep up with that family.

I email them, I don't know, once a quarter.

Hey, how's it going?

I type up my whole email, translate it to German, send it to them.

The older guys, right?

They don't know how to do all that.

So this.

They write me back in German, and then I have to translate that one.

Cool things about Austria that I didn't realize.

One, there's zero trash.

There's zero trash.

I mean, there's maybe a little bit in Vienna.

We didn't spend much time there.

But when you get in the countryside, there's no littering at all.

Clean as can be.

We were driving down the highway in a rental car on, like, no sleep.

Because going to Europe, like, you don't sleep.

You try, but you don't really sleep.

We're passing all these ag fields.

And we look out in these fields and there's, like,

deer shooting houses.

Like you see in Texas.

Right?

And they shoot deer over there.

Like they're required to if you own property, open season.

I mean, I think they probably have, like,

dates on it, but I think they're required to every year.

Like, you're required to shoot a certain number of deer.

When we were at Johan's house, he was showing me his gun collection.

Of course.

I got this translator there from Vienna.

And she is like.

Her eyes are as big as saucers.

She's going, oh, he's showing me all these old guns from like the war,

right?

And seeing all these memorials that they had from

world War two and that kind of thing, which is really eye opening

for me because in the states we have so much respect.

The greatest generation, all that.

My grandfathers a world war two veteran in the Pacific,

my great grandfathers a veteran in world War one.

Obviously, my father was in for 34 years.

And so those guys had the same thing.

They were on the other side of the trench,

and you kind of go, wow, look how far weve come.

But at the same time, its a really interesting dynamic

over there because you dont see the memorabilia of

the army that they were a part of on any of that.

Theyve ridden themselves of all of that.

But they were also annexed.

Austria was annexed into Germany.

And so they werent really part of that regime to begin with.

But theres still big memorials and that kind

of thing around town, but just a beautiful country

and some of the nicest people ive ever met.

But, yeah, I mean, taxidermy, all the stuff.

I mean, in his house, it was crazy.

Very, very cool.

Such a cool story.

Let's go back to kind of building the business.

Your father in law was effectively the first person to join you.

Yeah.

What's that like working with your father in law day in and day out?

Jeff, man, it's, it's a treat.

He's a bigger than life personality.

He's fantastic on the phone.

He's got a lot of experience in a lot of different business

and businesses and industries under his belt.

And so for me, it's a huge treat.

People grumble and gripe about in laws all the time,

and there's not very many men who can say,

I've had the privilege of working with my father in law.

I feel blessed and fortunate to be able

to say I've had a great time working with him.

I was saying around my office, nobody works for me,

everybody works with me, and it's the same for him.

It can be very easy to kind of blur the lines of who's the boss,

who's the contractor, employee, or whatever.

I don't treat anybody in my office that way.

And so it was never an issue with him, but just a ton

of wisdom that he's brought to me into the business.

And, and he's always been really respectful about,

even if he saw something that he would have raised his eyebrows.

He might say something about it, but he's going to say it in a way

that's like, hey, Bob, you might want to take a look at this.

That's all.

And then he'll walk away, but he'll leave you chewing on it

for a week and you're like, yeah, that's probably a good idea.

We have very respectful boundaries with each other.

And I'll tell you this, we delegate deals based on demographics,

and we get real detailed on our demographics.

Who are we calling?

How much money is their house worth?

Where do they live?

What city, what state do we know?

Are they on LinkedIn?

What's their occupation, gender, marital status?

All of those things we want to know, right?

Because if there's a widow out there whose husband passed away

in the last 60 days,

I have to know that information because if I call, I'm going to fail.

If any man in my office calls, they're going to fail.

They don't want to talk to a man right now.

Right.

But we have a female sales team, right.

Who, any one of them would be a great person for that.

And so that really came to the forefront of my mind

when Steve and I started working together.

There was one deal I never really had luck with younger calling

on younger people because it was just always, I don't know if it

was a mental thing or what, but cold call these younger people.

And in my mind I was thinking theyre

just going to do this on their own.

So there was one younger man,

his parents passed away at a young age and left him some money.

And I guess he didnt know that the money was there or

these were investment accounts.

So I said, heres Steve.

Have fun.

Steve closed it in like 15 minutes and it was done.

Its so interesting.

And I think about in my business,

sometimes you kind of have to do that personality matching and figure

out what do you think is going to be the best approach.

There are some partners that we work with,

and if I'm going to put one of our salespeople on

that partner relationship, I'm thinking through, okay,

whose personality is going to match best with this person?

And for you, I think you told me you've understood that

your father in law does better talking to younger people.

Yeah.

And you have greater success with older people

and women are going to do better with the recent widow.

That's such an interesting observation,

but one that's obviously been key to your success.

Yeah, absolutely.

As, and some of it I think you can kind of back into and go,

well, that's just common sense too.

Right?

If I put two people over the age of 65 on the phone, they're going

to have a difficult conversation trying to figure anything out.

Somebody needs to run that conversation.

Right.

And they might go round and round and round and round around.

And so there's some people who are kind of falling in the middle

of all of those categories who can just do whatever.

Just give it to them, they'll make it work.

And we've got a few of those, too.

So having the demographic there, nailing the pitch,

I mean, has all been very instrumental in helping us succeed,

and we're proud of where we've.

What we've been able to achieve.

We're at a place now where somewhere between ten

and 20% of everything that gets paid out

of Texas unclaimed property comes through our shop.

Your father in law was the first person.

Yeah.

And he almost kind of put it on you.

Right?

He's like, can I.

Yeah.

But at some point, you had a realization that

you needed a third and a fourth and a fifth.

Yeah.

What was your mindset going into

bringing additional folks into the business?

Was that nerve wracking or was it exciting on the sales side?

It wasn't nerve wracking at all.

So the second person we brought on, uh, her name was Lauren Weller.

She's a great friend of mine.

Her husband's a great friend of mine.

They were in the same neighborhood as us when Dee and I got married.

She's got the right background and cv for this type of thing,

and she was working for a roofing company or

something and just looking to do something different.

Wanted to kind of have the flexibility of being a stay

at home mom, but also to do something different.

And I said, why don't you come try this out?

And so that worked out very well.

And with Lauren and Steve on board, it allowed me to kind of build

out a process on how do I delegate deals, because now I'm putting

the deals together, but I'm delegating some of them to them.

But it also quickly became evident that

I've got to have more support staff.

And so 2018, when I called a gal who I'd worked with in

oil and gas at the norwegian company that I started with,

seemed like a lifetime before, and she was the office

manager there, and she's just one of those rock stars,

right?

Her name's Crystal.

She's one of those who just,

we call her Doctor Crystal Johnson, attorney at law.

She does everything.

Doctor, attorney at law.

I love that.

Yeah.

And so I called her and said,

what do you think of coming to be an office manager?

And she was in big corporate environment as an.

As an om and.

And was kind of burnt out on that and said, this sounds good to me.

I've got a cousin.

Can I bring her along?

And I said, sure.

And so they've both been there for six years now,

and we just built a great process.

Company is only as good as the people that you have on board,

and we have the best hands down.

I mean, our team is phenomenal.

We have team call all hands every Monday for an hour.

We all pray together.

It's a great environment to work in.

It's a great environment to play in.

We laugh a lot, but we work our tails off, too.

You've got some great success stories, and,

man, I love the story about going to Austria.

That's just incredible, man.

What have been some of the harder moments from a business perspective?

The most difficult decision I ever made was

when I first leased an office.

Right.

Cause I'm, like, wonky.

Very cyclical in my business,

and month to month, and is this really going to play out?

But I knew that in order to do it, like, I had to get out

of the house, and I had officed with two attorneys for a few months.

Was that just friends of yours?

Yeah, I've got a space.

Yeah.

Two guys trying to start a law firm,

and we were friends before that, and they had an extra spot,

and I was a notary who wasn't involved in their law firm.

So they're like, bring it.

You got the spot in the stamp, so come on.

And so that was kind of me leaning out there a little bit,

but I didn't.

I wasn't obligated at all, right?

Even with them, it was just month to month.

Coming out for as long as you want.

So when I signed my first three year lease,

it was a very small space, 618 bearing.

And I was like, now it's real.

Now it's real.

Now it's go time.

But that kind of thing motivates me.

I'm a big fan of, like, commit now, figure it out later.

And so doing that, and then right on the heels of that hiring crystal

and Jackie, we outgrew that office space in six months.

And he had a three year lease, and I had a three year lease.

How'd you navigate that?

There's another God story.

We sublet a space that we're in now

at 800 bearing, where it's all entanglewood.

And the guy who came to move our office

to the new building had a nonprofit.

Son was murdered.

It was a tattoo artist, Desmond Graydon.

And so his father started a nonprofit called Desmond's heart,

and he said, what are y'all gonna do with this office?

He's phenomenal human being.

And I said, well, we hadn't figured that out yet.

Why?

He said, well, I got a nonprofit.

He told me the whole story, and he said, we're looking for a spot.

And I said, how much money are you willing to pay?

And it was a little less than we were paying, but I was like, done.

And so what would have been a $3,000 a month hit

was much, much less than that.

And they used that office and grew their nonprofit,

and it was perfect.

That's too cool.

And that guy, we built such a great relationship off of that, right.

That he's moved our office again since then to a new suite.

He's moved my house three times.

Wow.

I mean, he's my moving guy.

Yeah.

But we have a great friendship.

We support his nonprofit.

It's just a phenomenal guy.

That is too cool.

You talked about leasing your first office,

and, man, that was a oh, wow.

Moment for me, too.

We leased our first office, and I think ours was

definitely less than three grand a month.

But the thing that gave me peace about doing it was we built

up some recurring revenue from something that we were a reseller for.

And I was like, okay, well, if all this falls apart,

ive got at least this much coming in every year that I can count on.

And it was just enough to cover the rent.

Yeah.

And then when we went to our second office, that was a lot more.

Again, wed built this recurring revenue base that was like, okay,

we can do this.

We can take this risk.

And so, anyway, yeah, when you sign that lease

and youre setting yourself up for a big monthly commitment like that,

its a wow, this is real moment.

Yeah.

Cause you start thinking about, man, I mean, if you get regulated out,

you could get, I mean, there's all kinds of things that can happen.

That's why we do what we do.

We take those risks, and we roll the dice,

and we work as hard as we possibly can.

And statistically, for 95% of us, it doesn't work out.

But you have to make calculated risks,

and you gotta do it at the right time.

If I started in an office when I thought, man,

I could do this and I could charge a fee, and I can,

I'd have been on the street in six months.

You have to learn your business first.

How do those cycles look?

What do they look like?

How much money do you really need to get in the door to make it work?

And how many years into the business was

it that you signed that first lease?

Uh, three years.

Yeah, three years into the business.

And so the first 18 months were out of my house nights and weekends.

And then I a little over two years.

And then I did the next six to nine months with the attorneys and they

made a move to a new office and it just wasn't the right spot for me.

And with the growth and that kind of thing,

it was like, all right, it's my time to go.

So, yeah, it was in 2000, early 2018 that I signed that lease.

Going back to sales and building the business.

Obviously there are other people out there who do what you do,

but if 20% of the recovery is going through, you,

y'all are doing something right.

What makes Verity Advisors different from the others out there?

Id say first and foremost is the nature of our research.

Right.

So we are detail oriented to the max.

We have an idea of exactly the size of an account

with all of the assets that belong to that family.

Before we ever pick up the phone,

some people are going to call up and say, we found ten grand.

Well, its not ten grandd, 120 grand.

And so there's that.

Number two is, look, we have our staff encompasses those who are

in the office, and there's a few people who work remotely.

But outside of that, we have vendors in Austin,

lobbyists, that kind of thing, who go to bat for us and help

us get our turnaround times down significantly.

The problem with doing this on your own, like,

if this was Scott's money, I'd tell you, Scott,

if you're nothing crazy busy and you got time, go.

Go ahead and do it right.

The problem with this is it's time

consuming and you have to stay on them.

Imagine going to the DMV and being there for nine months.

That's what it is.

And so we have a great process in place,

but we also have ways to expedite that process.

And through our processes internally, we can reduce the amount of time

that it would take the average person to get their funds back by 90%.

Just based on averages.

Right, what they're quoting as their averages,

we can significantly reduce that.

Why is that one?

A lot of people who end up in this position

in the first place are naturally procrastinators.

And so it's.

Some days it's like pulling teeth to get the documents that you need,

but we'll get in the car and go drive to them.

I flew to Austria to go get the documents I needed.

I've gone to Mississippi.

I've gone to California, all over the place.

We know we need them in a certain format, in a certain way.

The documents that we need from the courthouse,

every t has to be crossed, every I has to be dotted.

And unfortunately, when you submit that information, right,

if it's not the way that it needs to be, it'll get kicked back.

And then you go back to the back of the line and the whole thing.

And so I learned those lessons the hard way in the beginning.

There were deals that I did that should have taken 90 days,

that took eight months.

There were deals that should have taken six months, that took 18.

I just didn't know any better.

I learned it and figured it out and never made the same mistake twice.

I imagine your job looks a lot different today than it did back then.

And specifically in the context of Verity Advisors.

What's the biggest change that's happened over these almost ten years?

The individual growth of our team has been instrumental in this.

Right.

I grow every day.

Our team call every Monday morning for an hour

of just getting feedback from the team.

We have 26 culture habits and we go over them.

I just assign them out.

Right.

And I put a six month calendar together and I say,

Scott, you're in charge of knowing your role.

Know your role.

Here's your culture habit.

It's know your role present on this

for five minutes on Monday morning.

It's the first thing that we do.

We go over those 26 culture habits to where

everybody knows them backwards and forwards.

It's like the Ritz Carlton model.

I forget the exact number, but it's more than just core values.

It sounds a lot like what you, you talked about, the culture habit.

And every person at the Ritz Carlton, everybody that works there,

from the custodian to the cook, to the maid,

to the Gmdeh, they carry this card in their pocket.

And every day at the start of every shift,

the shift leader reads off one of those values and they go through it

and everybody has these things just ingrained in their head.

And from what I've been told, I don't know I've ever stated Ritz.

Maybe once.

If you ask any employee of the Ritz, hey, show me your card.

They have to have it on them and have to be able

to pull it out and talk through things.

So anyway, you're doing what they're doing.

You didn't even know it.

Didn't even know it.

I'm a big fan of ripoff and repeat.

If it works, a hundred percent.

Yeah.

I mean, just do what they do.

But going back to your question, I think that the biggest thing

for us has just been the individual growth

of our team has enabled me to step aside a bit.

It's super cliche when people say you want

to work on your business, not in your business.

Right.

But the ability to do that is directly related to

the competency of your team.

And if you equip them well, you train them well

on how you want things done, then it works out.

It works out well to be able to look at it from a higher angle.

And some of that comes down to reporting.

We recently just implemented reports, and it's like,

I need this report every week.

If you can't give it to me every week,

like Grant Cardone, man, give it to me every day.

If you can't give it to me every day, I want it once an hour.

All right.

Well, this is kind of the point where we start

to wind down and I ask the question, what's next?

But really, for this episode, whats next is kind

of ramping up into the second part of your story.

So lets talk about your other business, Trey, man.

Yeah.

About three years ago, we were looking at how do we grow from here?

We spent some time in thinking about moving

into other states and that kind of thing.

We have such a great relationship with

the comptrollers office here in Texas that well never leave.

Right.

Venturing out was attractive for a little while

until we started learning, well, how does that state work?

How does that state work?

And none of it looked good.

Ive always had ideas and thoughts

about innovating and doing something different.

And so we went back to the drawing board

and looked at the data that we had.

Right.

Look at unclaimed property.

So lets put some context to that.

Theres about three and a half million accounts a year

just in Texas are sheeted or turned over to unclaimed property.

Three and a half million million individual accounts.

Right.

$150 belongs to Scott.

3,000,400, 900 million more of those.

And so the majority of those right, are not $10,000, $1.92.

Coming back to you from something, the minimum is 25, right?

The minimum is $25, but the average is $168.

And so theres $168 account, 85% of those.

And weve done all the research through the data

that we have internally in our office.

This is not just stats that we got off of some other website.

85% of those belong to folks who are still alive, which should

actually preclude them from being involved in unclaimed property

in the first place because the statute reads if someone is

deceased and they have no heirs, then their property is subject to

a sheetman.

The problem is businesses don't have the internal audit capability

to know is that person deceased?

Are they still alive?

How do we find them?

How do we get a hold of them?

They don't have that.

The threshold for due diligence before they're required mandated

to a sheet is one letter of due diligence sent

to the last known address of the owner of that account.

And so if you've moved or if you just were like me

and threw your mail in the trash, youre out of luck.

So he said businesses need a better way to pay consumers because all

of these accounts are business to consumer payments, right.

And theres about 10,000 different ways you can buy a cup

of coffee at Starbucks with your phone, all kinds of stuff.

And we said theres virtually none when

it comes to b, two c transactions.

And so lets digitize that process and lets make it really cool.

Not only really cool, lets make it relevant to the business

so that it, one, saves them money, two, reduces fraud,

three, eases the burden on the back office so that there's

not so much record keeping and reconciliation and that kind

of thing.

And then on the consumer side, let's make it super relevant, right.

Let's use what the consumer wants to use.

They don't want a paper check to go.

They gotta go drive to the bank or take a picture

of it and convert it digitally on their phone.

Let's use venmo, paypal, zelle, whatever, apple pay.

And let's do a delivery by text.

You know, nobody's doing that.

There's a thousand different ways that you can communicate by text,

but they're not delivering money by text, which ironically,

when you look at PayPal's early days, they were doing it by text.

And it was palm pilots, palm pilot to palm pilot.

Oh, man, you had that little ir,

the infrared thing and you could beam stuff across.

I remember, I remember in the early two thousands

thinking that was the coolest thing ever.

Yeah.

But the problem was they had no market,

right, because there weren't enough people with palm pilots

who had a common marketplace to trade money.

And so they hadn't, until they found eBay, they had nothing.

And then they completely pivoted.

But again, that's peer to peer.

And so what we wanted to do is flip peer to peer on its head and go

from business operating account to peer to peer.

So go from business to consumer.

And so right away, we thought we were onto something.

We did a prior art search with our IP firm out of Seattle.

We currently have four utility patents pending.

And so we started that software development process completely green

in the space, not understanding kind of the lay of the land.

Our original idea and what we built on was that we were going

to be initiating the payments for them, right.

So take a utility company for example, we're here in Dallas, TXU.

TXU probably does, I don't know, 250,000 utility refunds a year.

They would give us those funds and then

we would do the disbursement for them.

The problem that we didnt foresee with that one,

it would require us to have an MTL money transfer license,

which you have to have one in all 50 states that whatever state

you work in, two, the companies just dont care enough.

I would rather just a sheet.

And we were thinking, give us your dormant accounts.

Well, we also didnt factor in theyve already

spent the money on issuing a paper check.

Its come back to their office, like all the expenses gone,

theyve already spent it.

And so now all they have left to do is a sheet.

They might as well just sheet.

Why would they pay us efficient thing for them to do.

Yeah, at that point.

And so we're like, let's completely change this about 18 months ago.

Let's just completely change this.

We'll rebuild the whole system.

And what we'll do is instead of doing dormant accounts,

we'll focus on payments in general.

Any business to consumer transaction,

we want to be involved at the beginning of that to reduce the number

of paper checks that are in circulation.

And so we built a system that's just that, right, it's operator run,

we have individual seats, businesses log into their seat, they can

operate their own system, the money never comes into our possession.

So we dont need an MTL.

Were just facilitating that transaction

through the communication portal via text message.

We finished our MVP in Q four of last year

and it took a little capital.

We had to raise some money to get to where we are

on the development side.

But we finished the MVP in Q four and started the sales process.

And two things that we quickly recognized were, one,

were not the trusted advisor when it comes to treasury, right?

The banks are.

And two, as much as these businesses hate paper checks,

they hate change management more.

And so we start navigating that.

How do we get around that?

And the whole idea is banks as a distribution channel is huge

because if we can implement into treasury management platforms,

then we can also partner with the relationship managers at the

banks to walk us into their companies who trust them and say,

hey, heres my friends at VerityPay were in partnership with

them.

They have a great solution.

You guys are doing 10,000 checks a month right now to consumers.

We think this would be a great way to one,

save you a ton of money because checks are like seven to $20 each.

And when you start adding in, I mean, not just

the check printing and the check stock, but youve got envelopes,

youve got personnel, youve got postage, youve got reconciliation,

youve got return mail, youve got fraud.

And so on the business side itself, bank of America comes

out and says seven to $20 unless you went pen to paper on

each individual business, you have to give it a wide swath

because some people just run in leaner than others,

Preston.

But even on the low end,

at $7 a check, you talked about TXU doing 250,000 of these a year.

Seven times 250.

I mean, thats what million?

I cant do the math.

Million and a half million, 75.

Yeah, thats a lot of money.

Thats a lot.

I was in a meeting the other day, im not going to mention the name

with a title company who said our checks cost us $10 each.

We know they cost us $10 each.

We do 1.8 million a year.

Right.

And heres the other thing thats undelivered.

All of our checks have to be delivered with tracking

and were at about 20 million a year in delivery.

Unreal.

This solves a problem of reducing cost

for the person that owes people money.

You prevent fraud.

And customer, the receiver,

I would assume theyre happier at the end of the day because

theyre getting it faster than they would otherwise.

Theres not so much risk that its going to end up going to the state.

And because you're doing this all electronically,

it's instantly in their account.

Yeah.

It takes about 90 seconds.

So customer experience is through the roof.

We're saving the businesses a lot of money.

Reconciliation is immediate.

Right.

There's nothing to do.

The system just talks to the other system and says,

this has been paid.

Right.

So that's a big plus.

As far as our distribution channel.

I mean, we're on the very front end of this and the conversations

that we're having, we're really just getting started with that.

A lot of businesses that you see succeed and really make an

impact, they have a great idea or a great product, but then

something in the market happens that causes them to just

skyrocket and you go, whoa, that was total luck or an act of

God or whatever.

And so, but the last two years really,

I mean, its probably been longer than that,

but its really started to kind of get on the forefront.

The last two years is just check fraud.

Check fraud has gone, it doubled last year from 22 to 23 and 23.

There was $21 billion in check fraud and about $3 billion,

or, excuse me, 3 billion checks in circulation.

And so as we reach out to these banks, theyre like welcoming us

with open arms, because for every check thats issued by one

of their business clients, it cost the bank $7 just in fraud.

Right.

I mean, theyre going to make a treasury fee on that, but its not

enough to then offset, its not enough to cover that fraud expense.

Theres a massive need for how do we get away from paper checks?

And I was listening to your conversation.

There was somebody else on here the other day

and he had mentioned when he was in school about some professor,

I think it was somebody from JP Morgan or something like that,

that said were getting away from paper checks.

And this was like 25 years ago and it still hadn't happened.

And it still hadn't happened.

And I don't think it'll ever happen.

Right.

But if we can give businesses the option

of doing something else and make it relevant, right.

I mean, even when it comes to fraud, like positive pay,

positive pay is a headache for everybody who uses positive pay.

I mean, the ABA, I think, quotes 65%

of businesses are using positive pay.

But the bankers I talked to say is way less than that,

way less than that, just because its so cumbersome.

Our goal is to get away from paper checks, to move as many out

of circulation as possible, to save businesses time, money expense,

to reduce fraud, provide a better customer experience,

and then see where that goes from there.

You had the idea a couple of years back, two, three years

back, I think you said, when you look at what has

materialized, the conversations that youre having with

banks and kind of where you see this going, how different

is your vision today from what it was when you first

conceived the idea?

Thats a good question.

Its at least 80% different.

I mean, the core basis of moving money in this manner is the

same, but the points that we sell around are totally different

because its not until you get into it and you really start to

dig into, here's how the system works and here's how it works

for this customer, this client and their consumer customer

base.

Do you really understand the benefits?

And we're still uncovering that, and I hope we never stop uncovering

that because we want to be a business that doesn't just have

a product that comes out of the box and we say this is what we have.

We want to be a business that has a product that solves a problem that

we can customize for that particular business and their customers.

And if their customers mostly speak Spanish,

then we'll deliver in Spanish.

If their business says this needs to be integrated into

this particular operating system, we want to be able to do that.

We're always going to be tweaking this to make it

not like an Amazon of payments, but kind of right to where there's

a lot of different optionality and customization that can happen.

And that comes in our core with, when we send a text message,

it's not just here's your payment.

We could do, anybody could do that, right?

This is, hey Scott Holrah, this is XYz company.

We have a payment for you for X, Y and Z,

and here's the amount that's owed to you.

Click on this link, verify who you are.

And then we're the only payment system out

there that puts the onus on the recipient.

But on a digital transaction it should be that way.

Because if you're doing high volume, low value transactions

and you're trying to gain financial information

in order to pay someone, ach need routing and account number.

If you're pushing to sell or what have you, you're going to need some,

some PII, right, some personal identifiable information, whether

it's banking information, account information, that kind of thing.

We're the only one out there that when we send you this message, you

have a list of options and then it's on you to fill in the blanks.

We don't need that information.

We're going to leave that between you

and the company who's paying you.

But were just here to digitize that process

and speed line and streamline that process.

You talked about raising money for people that are listening,

that are thinking about raising capital.

What advice would you have for them?

I would say absolutely no.

Exactly what you are going to spend the money on

is the first thing to talk to a lot of different people.

One of the things that I learned

through this process is that its pretty rare.

If ever do you need a million dollars and you go to one spot

and they say we'll cut you a check for a million bucks.

It just doesn't happen that way.

They're going to say we'll cut you a check for 500, they might be able

to cut you check for 100 million, but they'll say we'll cut you

a check for 500, we want to see who else you get the other 500 from.

And it might be 50,000 here and 20,000 there and whatever it is,

but you have to go grind to put that pool together.

And every single person's going to going

to want to know some key information.

What are you going to spend the money on?

What are your financials right now?

What are your projections?

How much is it going to cost to build what you're trying to build?

Who's on your team, who's your first customer, those kind of things.

And so having that information dialed in is, I would say,

figure that data out before you have your first conversation

and it's going to change along the way.

Every conversation you have, you know, if you're talking

to the right people, everybody's got ideas and some are good ideas

and some are not good ideas, but take the good ideas, I love that.

And talk to a lot of different people

and the perspectives that you get.

I imagine that along the way you probably got pushback

from people that are like, well, no, what about this?

And it probably helps you tell your story better,

not just to the next investor, but to that next bank that

youre trying to sign up to get onto your platform.

Preston, totally.

Preston, were there any potential investors that you talked

to along the way and you thought after the conversation,

I'm not sure that we're like the best fit to work together?

Yeah, I mean, look, I've talked to a lot of different investors,

but most of them, and I'm very appreciative of this,

they know exactly what they're looking for

and in a 15 minutes phone call, they'll figure that out.

And if I'm not what they're looking for, I don't take it to heart,

because if I'm not what they're looking for,

I don't want to work with them either.

Sure.

The folks who kept coming back or who were willing to have a long

term conversation go to lunch, want to go to lunch again?

Let's go get grab coffee.

Let's talk about this again.

Hey, can you send me this?

Can you send me that?

Those are the people that I want to be

in contact with and be in business with.

Right.

And ultimately report to and let them know where we are.

We have not had any issues with any of our investors,

and we're kind of at a place where we raised some

institutional money, but everything outside of that was

friends and people that I've known and family.

You know, my mom and dad put some money,

my brother puts them after he sold his company, put some money in.

One of our guys, our retail sales manager,

Verity Advisors, put some money in.

He's a big believer in the whole thing.

His name's Chris.

He's awesome.

And so we kind of raised that organically

and I think that's par for the course.

Right?

We're pre revenue, right on the cusp of launching.

Honestly, I don't know that we'll need to go raise more money.

I hope we don't.

That's a great place to be.

I hope we don't.

What lessons did you learn in the—

Verity Advisors, that you've taken into VerityPay?

A ton about money and payments, right.

About the fallacies of business to consumer payments.

And there's some that are out there that people,

to this day, very well respected people, and a lot of different

outlets still hang their hat on that I think are wrong.

And I'll just tell you, one of them business originated checks.

So 95%, maybe 90% of all checks in circulation

are originated in businesses.

Consumers aren't writing checks anymore.

They just don't, which is a great transition.

That's good.

But I think that most financial institutions

assume that the business originated checks are going to businesses.

I think that that's completely opposite.

I think that the majority of the business

originated checks are going to consumers.

Business to business transactions have also digitized

and gone into ACH and wires where wires are needed.

There's so many digital options out there for that much of what is

thought of, and for good reason, there's a lot of volume there.

But card transactions are still,

and probably forever will be the retail giant, right.

You go retail, everybody's going card.

But in the other instances where you have service companies and

telcos and utilities and healthcare providers and that kind of

thing, where the person's not right there with you and you

have to pay them back, that business is going to issue a check

and there's going to be a lot more volume there than there is

when that business pays another business who's a vendor of

theirs.

But just seeing the data, the data has always been interesting to me,

and I've always based my ideas off of data.

It's not like sitting in the backyard one day and I go,

you know what this world needs?

This world needs a new toothbrush.

But it's always been a derivative of the work that I've done or

something that I've seen and feel like I have a good grasp for

whether pick doesn't matter which business, but what's something

that you went into that didn't work out quite like you hoped it

would.

There's been a lot of businesses that didn't work out

the way that I would have hoped, but I'll tell you one.

So also, when I was a landman, before I met my wife,

I had several buddies in the pipeline world who were in the,

what they call the PVF industry, pipe valves and fittings.

And I was like, you know what?

I want to.

I want to be in the supply business.

I want to be the pipe valve and fitting supply business.

So I went on a trip to help out some wounded veterans one weekend,

and there was a guy there named Scott.

He's a great guy.

Took him fishing a few times.

We kind of lost touch over the years, but Scott was going to work

for this industrial company who was doing a big overhaul

at a complex in one of these refineries or something out in Baytown.

And he said, man, if you want to start the supply company,

I think you're a good dude.

I appreciate you being here helping the veterans, doing your thing,

and I'll buy all my stuff from you for this project.

And I thought, wow, awesome.

Let's go.

Green light.

I just couldn't make it work.

That industry is so cutthroat.

I started the business, and what I was doing,

before I could get cash flow right, was he would send me

quote for request, request for, quote, rfqs.

I would send them to wholesalers.

Wholesalers would send me back the information.

I put together the quote, id send it to him.

And he was nice enough to tell me, like, these numbers are way high.

I'll pay it this time, but these numbers are high.

You need to work with them.

And what was happening was the wholesalers,

like, working with a different supplier.

And so they would send me, even though I had the contact

for the end guy, they would send me one number and send

the other guys better numbers because they were doing more.

I mean, the most cutthroat thing you've ever seen.

And I just said, I don't want anything to do with this.

It's a good old boy network, and they're going

to help their, their friend,

and they will make sure you do not step foot in that industry.

Yeah, it was a blessing that it didn't work out,

but I've got a bunch of stories like that.

But I always knew that I wanted to do my own thing.

And some of the things like you just grow out of, right?

I mean, I started cutting grass and doing

all that kind of stuff when I was.

I don't even think kids can, can cut grass anymore.

There's so many people who cut grass now.

I don't think high schoolers can compete anymore.

What's been the biggest surprise over the years?

I've always done difficult things.

Right.

Playing football was a difficult thing.

I was captain of the football team when I was a senior

in high school, and I finished college in three years.

I've always strived to, like, challenge myself,

constantly doing that and watching.

Not just myself, but I, my family, and my team

rise to the occasion each time, hey, we have a new step.

We have a new step tomorrow.

Were going to have a different step.

Consistently raising that bar.

And at some point you just go,

I shouldnt be surprised that we did it again, but you kind of are.

I mean, I remember I was going through the SBAs emerging Leaders

program in 2018 about the same time that I hired Crystal and Jackie,

and I remember being in there.

The company at that time was probably doing,

I don't know, five or $600,000 a year in revenue.

And there was another gal in there that owned an AV consultant shop

that set up people's conference rooms and that kind of thing.

And she was like, oh.

And she said something like, we have like 180,000

in the bank and our revenue is like 120 a month.

And I thought, man, 120 a month.

That is.

I would do anything for that.

And then next thing you know, there you are.

Now I look back at that and I go, at that time,

that really meant a lot to me to get there.

And now I'm looking at a totally different

number that's completely different than that.

And we've surpassed that number multiple times over.

I think I'm just surprised at how well everything plays out.

Im surprised and not surprised.

I mean, when you put your mind to it,

thats the way its supposed to work.

If you just dont quit, youve had ups and downs.

Youve started a second business that came out of the first.

Looking back on the years,

are there any moments or any things where you would go back and do

something differently than youve done it today?

I wouldve started ten years earlier.

I say that, but at the same time, I'm glad for the experience.

I'm thankful for the experience that I had as a Landman.

I think back to it, I'm like, man, if I had just known I

could have done this, I would have started way before.

There's nothing that I regret.

I wish I would have met my wife earlier.

Yeah, I try to live my life and run my business and make decisions

from the perspective of filling the blanken, laying on your deathbed,

sitting on a rocking chair at 90 years old, what is it?

And asking myself that same question, what do you regret?

And I know that if I don't swing the bat,

I want to regret it, because I'll always wonder.

I can fail all day long, but at least I swung to bat.

Yeah.

If it means that I lost a lot of money in the process

trying to make something happen, you just go make more.

Go get a job, go work for somebody else.

If everything came to an end tomorrow and I had to go work

as a w two for somebody, it wouldnt be ideal, but id figure it out.

But id be glad I did what I did.

Two things there.

When I think about things in my life that I wish I

could go back and do different, almost everything is

I wish I had done something that I ended up not doing.

Its the things that you dont do that you regret.

Certainly there are people that have done things that they regret,

things I would want to change or the things that I didnt do.

The risks I didnt take.

Talking about, though, starting the business ten years earlier,

and id probably said this a time or two with other guests,

but when I gave notice to my old firm and said I was leaving,

somebody came to me and said, youre young.

Youve got a family.

This is risky.

Why dont you stay here for five more years and get

more experience before you go off and do it?

What went through my mind at that point was if I wait five years,

im going to look back and go,

where would I be if I had started the business five years earlier?

And so I think its important to kind of have that sense of urgency.

Thats not to say that people should be

foolish and just go rush into things.

Youve got to really think through it.

And you talked about you got a lot of good experience being a landman.

I had some jobs in my early career that I did not like.

But you know what?

I learned things that were really, really important, that things I

was learning that I didnt even know would be important down the road.

But it's that right mix of urgency and having enough experience

so that you set yourself up for success.

Yeah, that's right.

And the other thing that I'll add to that,

Scott, is be careful who you talk to.

Right.

I mean, there's people within your own family,

in your own inner circle who will put doubt in your mind

on something that you, with the confidence that you have

in it now is probably all that you need to do something.

And even if it hasn't been done before, right, I mean,

do something new, what's it gonna hurt?

But there are people who's gonna buy that?

Who's gonna do that?

Why would they do that?

And just plant seeds of negativity that will give

you a momentary hesitation that when the going gets tough,

you don't need any of that in your mind.

You need, I got confidence in this.

This is gonna work.

I'm gonna talk to every bank.

I'm gonna talk to every fill in the blank.

Im going to talk to every single person out there who could use this,

and somebodys going to tell me yes, and then well prove it.

Evan, Im going to paraphrase a little bit here, but having

the right voices speaking into your business and your life,

have you had mentors along the way?

Jeff?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So I was very fortunate in 2019,

again, as were kind of looking at how do we grow.

And some of these banks were sheeting

large volumes of cash that shouldn't have been right.

I mean, I remember coming across a six

figure account that belonged to a lady.

It took me five minutes to find her phone number and call her.

She was rightfully so said, I'm not going to use your services.

I'm going to go do this on my own.

And I said, great.

So I called my bank at the time, they're no longer a bank.

And I called my banker and said, y'all got a problem?

I'm not sure what the solution is or how I fix it,

but I know I can help you find these people and keep these deposits.

And banks are always fighting for deposits, right?

And so he said, great, why don't you come

into the office and sit down with a guy named Mark Montgomery.

He's our market president here in Houston.

And I was like, great, I'll do it.

And I was so nervous, man.

I mean, I was going into this.

Me, I was sweating bullets.

I don't know what.

I'm putting together this package.

It's a three ring binder.

I've got clear sleeves with stats and figures and that kind of thing.

And we had a great lunch.

And right off the bat, another guy who's also a believer.

Hey, you should come to my Bible study sometime.

And I was like, what?

And so I kind of put that off for a while.

Long story short, four, five months later,

he ended up leaving the bank and called me and said, hey,

I think you got a really interesting business.

You got a really interesting idea.

Maybe we should talk more about that.

Well, we've worked together ever since,

and he's kind of my number two there.

Fantastic friend, unbelievable mentor,

somebody who I trust tremendously.

I ended up finally going to his Bible study with him,

and I'm the youngest guy by probably 20 years in that group.

So tons of wisdom in the room.

I consider all those men mentors.

And look, those are guys who have been doing life together since 1998.

Every Tuesday, same room.

Just incredible, right?

Incredible bond.

So I'm the new guy, but also the youngest guy.

There's been those folks.

My parents, incredible.

My brother, incredible example set by him.

I think the people that we are,

the sum of the people that we surround ourselves with.

Right.

And so I'm very particular about who I choose to spend my time with.

And some of that has meant,

man, I just don't have time for that relationship anymore.

That's not feeding me into the path that I want to go down.

And those are tough ones to walk away from as you kind

of mature and, you know, and that kind of thing.

But I'm thankful for the.

For the time that I had with those people and the.

The experiences that I had.

And I'm sure that they probably feel the same way about me.

That was fun, but now it's time to grow up.

But, yeah.

So, Mark, it's been great.

My parents, my family.

Got all those guys on Tuesday morning.

All right, well, I'll ask it a second time.

What's next, man?

That drive back to Houston, I guess.

Well, on that note, man, thanks so much for coming in today.

Thanks for having me.

This has been great.

Just so many things about your story just make my mind go,

oh, my gosh, this is incredible.

And one of the things I love about doing

this is just hearing people's stories.

There's no one path to entrepreneurship and the serendipity of getting

your degree in criminal justice and how that would come back around.

Even though you didn't go into law enforcement and this check

that you get in the mail or didn't get, then threw away.

It's just amazing how all these things can come together

and build something incredible, and that's what you've done so well.

Thanks, man.

It's been a great pleasure to be here.

I appreciate the invite and just appreciate the opportunity.

Absolutely.

Thanks.

That was Bob Bowdon, President and CEO of VerityPay.

To learn more, visit veritypay.com.

That's V E R I T Y P A Y.com.

if you or a founder, you know,

would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It.

Email us at intro@founderstory.us

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