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Welcome to Portfolio Perspective: Managing Risk & Seizing Opportunity, a podcast focused on the asset-based lending industry. Join Andrew Pace, Chief Client Experience Officer at Asset Compliant Solutions, as he interviews experts, shares insights, and explores strategies for managing risk, optimizing portfolio performance, and seizing opportunities in an ever-evolving financial landscape. From regulatory changes to technological advances, each episode provides actionable takeaways and deep dives into industry trends. Whether you’re a lender, servicer, or recovery expert, this podcast offers valuable perspectives to enhance your approach and improve outcomes.
When think about this industry, it's not stale.
What it what it is is creative and what it is is forward looking and it's exciting.
And I think there's a lot more room to grow.
Welcome back to ACS Portfolio Perspective.
I'm your host, Andrew Pace, Chief Client Experience Officer at ACS.
Today I'm joined by Mike Togglia, a founder and publisher of Equipment Finance Advisor and
ABL Advisor, two of the most widely read independent voices in our industry.
Mike's career in commercial finance spans more than 35 years.
Started as a credit analyst, held senior roles at GE Capital.
And later served as Vice President of Capital Markets and National Sales Manager at
Textron Financial.
He launched Equipment Finance Advisor in 2011, an ABL Advisor shortly after, and also
served as CEO of NIFA from 2018 to 2020.
This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of Equipment Finance Advisor, and ACS is proud
to say we were one of its earliest supporters.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Andrew.
It's great to see you.
Thanks for inviting me to be here today.
And also thanks for being one of the first ones that ever worked with us.
That was uh we signed you up at the at the conference in 2011.
I'll never forget.
Me neither.
Me neither.
That was that was a special moment.
We, you know, we're booth we were neighbors, booth neighbors, um, at that conference.
I think it was it was San Antonio, right?
That's correct.
Yep.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you've had a really unique journey across the industry, both inside it and now covering
it from the outside.
So if you don't mind.
Let's start there.
So tell us a little bit about your path, starting on the credit side and working your way
through GE Capital and TexTrial.
okay.
Yeah, sure.
Um, well, it's it it has been a bit of a journey.
you know, i I started my career actually as a credit analyst.
I went through formal credit training at what was at that time Fidelity Bank in
Philadelphia.
And that was a very intensive program.
That was about 18 months of intense classroom training and on-the-job training to become a
financial analyst in the industry.
And that sort of was the springboard for me because I spent some time in banking when I
first did that, but really quickly, very, very quickly, within six months, went to the
equipment finance unit that had been started by Fidelity Bank back in those days.
And I was sort of the guinea pig.
I was the first formally credit trained analyst to actually transition to business
development.
And so that was a move that I didn't know what I was going to be doing.
Um
I was fortunate in the standpoint when I did that move that I had a couple of people that
were really mentors to me.
Um, that's something that I I always talk about quite a bit.
Not only was the the extensive training as a credit analyst something that served me very
well throughout my career, but it's those people that actually took the time to train me
to not only be a salesperson, but rigorously working me through pricing models, using
things like Super Trump, things of that nature to become.
very, very uh, you know, strong at at being able to produce uh quote quotes for customers,
go out there, meet with people, learn how to sell, all those type of things.
So I started from there and then from there I actually d decided I was gonna get better at
credit analysis.
I went to analysis and I went to GE Capital at that point as a credit analyst.
I did that for about a year and then again transitioned back into the sales side.
My sales side, uh the sales side of business development really was one where I
uh moved from between uh let's say end user to vendor uh and then back to large ticket end
user and spent some time doing that.
And then uh as time passed and my progressed through my career and things started to go a
little better for me, I was I I was given the opportunity to go to Textron Financial
Corporation as a Northeast regional manager.
things kind of moved along from for me there.
And I ended up being the national sales manager for the equipment finance unit.
And that was a significant unit.
It was producing over 600 billion, 600 million dollars a year at that time in those days.
And that was a long time ago.
And I had a tremendous team there with me.
Uh, and a lot of those people are still my friends today.
And then I was at Textron uh for a little while longer than that, and then I transitioned
over to the capital markets uh team, where I spent time again, using my credit background,
using the business development background.
And started doing things like buying and selling transactions, selling portfolios, large
Textron portfolios, things like that.
And um just spent my time going through the industry from that standpoint.
I learned a lot.
I went from, you know, from credit to a little bit of ops to a little bit of sales to
management, uh, to strategy, PL management, things of that nature.
So that's that's my background really in the equipment finance industry.
Thank you for sharing.
So looking back, how did
Some of those early credit and capital market experiences shaped the way you view risk and
opportunity today.
They totally shaped it to this day.
I mean, we we I had a conversation just the other day where I was talking to somebody on a
on a video interview for ABL Advisor, and they mentioned something called the 13 week cash
flow.
And I started to laugh because I said 13 week cash flow.
I still think about that all the time to this day.
And that was too many years ago that I want to mention, to tell you the truth.
Um but you know
What you learn when you go through those those phases of your career are things that you
take with you no matter where you go.
So when I started my business, I had to assess the risk of starting the business.
I had to project the business.
I had to know when I was going to do what, how I was going to bring employees on, what I
was going to invest money into and what I wasn't going to invest money into.
And I had to assess those that risk.
And so that was part of the business side of it.
But from a publishing perspective, all that training comes into what I'm able to talk to
people about every day.
You know, I I I do interviews like you're doing with me right now.
I do interviews with a lot of people.
And I can put on my capital markets hat.
I can put on my credit hat, my ops hat, my asset management hat, because I did rolls in
each one of those sec sections of of the of the industry.
And so it serves me really well from not only from my own personal life, but also from the
standpoint of how am I going to do my job, present the right content to people by putting
on that hat.
Uh, capital markets, for example, is something that's been critical for me when we go
after private equity type of players, because we do that a lot in ABL Advisor.
And now that we're seeing a lot more private credit players in the equipment finance
industry, that plays into that as well.
So it all kind of comes together.
So you made the jump from operating inside the industry to covering it.
What was the moment or the realization that pushed you to start equipment finance advisor?
You know
I had been in the industry for a while and I I had learned an awful lot.
And I I was really just trying to think about what I wanted to do next.
Did I want to continue to climb, which was a good career, a very good career?
Um, did I want to continue to climb and hopefully do the best I could and get there to the
point where I'd be more s satisfied with running a larger and larger team?
Or did I want to do something different?
And I decided that I wanted to do something different.
I really wanted to leverage everything that I had you learned over the years and somehow
bring that.
To the industry a little differently, where I could help professionals, fine commer, you
know, equipment finance professionals look at data differently, bring them some
information that might be useful to them, make them more adept at what they do, share some
best practices, not just not really just mine, but I'm talking about from the people that
we interview, the people that we get article content from, really wanted to just take my
career from one of doing and somehow the word isn't teaching, but engaging.
with them at a at a different level.
So when you launched in twenty eleven, what gap did you see that you felt needed to be
filled?
You know, I think that what I saw was there was there was really one player at the time in
the industry that was providing information and they were doing a very good job and they
still do a very good job to this day.
But we want to take a little bit different of a stance and that was we were not going to
be a print publisher.
We were going to be strictly an online publisher, one that was nimble.
And one that could bring content that could be shared very easily online rather than have
to read it in a magazine.
So we really wanted to bring something different to the table.
And that was some data points, things related to what's happening in the trucking sector,
construction sector, those type of reports.
We wanted to move beyond what was more of the mainstream of the industry, and that was
personnel announcements.
That was a big part of it.
And we still always do a lot of personnel announcements, but now we have the ability to
bring more into that.
And so the idea was really to expand on what we were going to be presenting to everybody.
So now 15 years in, what are you most proud of?
And what has stayed surprisingly consistent?
But to stay consistent is the people's desire and hunger for information.
I mean, they really every single day.
Want to read what's happening in the industry.
They want to not only know what's happening with their friends and colleagues in the
industry, but they want to know what's happening in the industry that could influence
their position in the marketplace.
That hasn't changed at all.
The delivery of it's changed a little bit.
But what they need every single day has actually grown because there's so much more
information available today.
There's so much more data that we can pull from different sources that we can share.
So the hunger and the desire to learn.
the need to have information, reconnaissance from the field, that hasn't changed at all.
Everything is really remained very, very positive in that's from that perspective.
On a personal standpoint, what am I most proud of?
You know, I'm proud of the fact that 15 years later that we're still highly relevant.
And I can't take credit for that.
I take I give that credit just to my team.
You know, every single day we have a team here that cares.
They're going to scour the, the, the, the, the internet looking for information that's
going to be helpful for people.
They're very dedicated to being the ones that are going to bring something that's going to
be very useful to everybody.
They're very dedicated.
So, you know, we worked very hard to create something that was going to be something you
want to have with your cup of coffee early in the morning because you needed it.
It may not take you long to get through it.
But the fact is you needed it.
And when you have a team that's dedicated to doing that and one that really just
understands that you're serving a purpose, not just collecting a paycheck, that you're
really providing information to people, thousands of people every single day, it feels
pretty good.
Thank you.
So you've essentially had a front row seat to how this industry consumes content and that
has changed quite a bit over time.
How has your readership evolved over the years?
Are you seeing a different type of professional uh engaging now?
Well, we have s we obviously have s a lot of the same people because they've been in the
industry a long time.
Um, we have the old graying of the industry, including me and things like that.
But the readership has uh
has really uh evolved from the standpoint, it's expanded.
We have a lot more young people in the industry, which is really fun, very intelligent,
very desirable, very, very much interested in learning and getting to the next phase.
We have more independent players than we've ever had in the industry.
Now we have the private credit players that are i in the industry as well and they're
bringing a whole different spin to what's happening in the middle market and the lower
middle market as well.
Um
I I think that we're seeing that there the readership is evolving from the standpoint of
saying we we used to have what I would say the meat and potatoes of the industry,
construction, transportation, manufacturing, aircraft, things like that.
And we would that was our audience of readers.
Today it's a much more sophisticated audience.
It's people that are involved in different levels of capital markets.
We now with the private credit players, we have private equity also coming into the
equipment finance industry.
So our readership is evolving with the industry itself.
And if it didn't, we'd be be we'd be left behind, to be very honest with you.
So we have to stay close to it.
And every single day we have see, we see people signing up and people wanting to subscribe
to to the newsletter for a reason.
And it could be that we put something up that somebody has shared with somebody else, and
all of a sudden you see a slew of people join from that company because they're from a
different player I've never heard of.
They're a private credit player or somebody like that.
They're not what I always to call the meat and potatoes players, although they're
incredibly important and they're the still the Star Wars of this industry.
So things have evolved pretty uh pretty much with from the younger people in the industry.
I think the sophistication level has really ramped up quite a bit.
Thank you.
So you described your model as a two minute business.
Can you unpack that and and share why that works?
Yeah.
Uh
I'm not sure everyone in my work with really likes when I say that, but that's the way I
look at it.
You know, um, I'm a metrics hawk.
And so I like to see what our readers are doing.
And that means I watch what they're consuming, how much they're consuming, and how long
they're on it to consume it.
Every day we send out the daily e-news, and it comes out somewhere around 6:45 a.m.
Eastern time.
And every single day we look at it and say to ourselves,
We are going to capture somebody while they before they really start their day.
What are they going to spend their time doing?
And I always say they've got about two minutes.
They're going to get the e-news from us.
They're going to actually take a look at it and say, is there an article that interests
me?
Maybe I'll read that later on.
But I need to know what's going on in the news.
Who moved where?
Who's doing what?
Who did a deal?
What data is available?
Things like that.
So we have an easy-to-follow format on the daily e-news for a reason.
And we haven't changed that.
And we've been asked.
To be honest with you, not to change it, even though we've considered it, because you can
get through it very, very quickly to determine what you want to read.
And then if you have two stories, it takes about two minutes, three, two to three minutes
basically, or about two minutes to read two or three stories.
That's really what it takes.
And at the end of the day, if you think you're going to be more than that, keep people's
attention for that much longer in the morning that early, I don't think you have a
realistic view of what you're doing.
Now, knowing that.
We do watch a metric, see what happens on article content.
Now now those are not two minutes.
Those take much longer.
But we see people coming back later in the day to read those very often, not right away in
the morning.
Maybe a quick click in the morning, say, Am I interested?
But they're going to come back and give it the five, seven minutes, whatever it takes to
read that.
So the two-minute business to me is one where are we delivering everything we can deliver
every single day to capture them, open up the e-news, read it, and move on with their day.
And that's really where I'm coming from.
That's great.
I mean, you just described me, like, you know, but I your reminders in the morning, 'cause
I get two, because I think I had a previous email address and we've updated it, changed it
from first initial, last name, from first name, last initial.
So now I get two emails in the morning.
So I I don't even need an alarm anymore.
I just have the uh equipment finance advisor as my alarm.
And uh you just described me to a T.
So that's exactly what I do.
I wanna see the quick high you know, the headlines.
Is there something relevant?
I'm gonna open it up and and I'm gonna read it.
And if there's not anything else on there, I'll go back to it later in the day when I when
I have when I have some time.
So thank you for those those alarm those the alarm clock.
It's you're welcome.
You're welcome.
You really are.
And you know, I em I think I the fact is I embrace it.
I embrace the fact that that's what we are.
Um now, if I was producing a magazine, I'd say, okay, that's a little differently.
That's a little different than what we're talking about here.
But the reality is our team isn't doing that.
So it it's something that, like I said, we embrace it, we appreciate it, but we gotta
deliver.
Every day.
It it's my morning with Mike, you know?
So uh, you know, my wife will tell me, put your phone on, do not disturb.
I don't want to be buzzed or uh I don't want to hear the dings going off at six forty five
in the morning.
But I'm like, that's that's mine and Mike's time.
Um that's Mike Mike's Mike's waking me up.
That's right.
That's right.
So have you seen attention spans and expectations shift as as the audience becomes more
digitally native?
Yes.
Uh attention spans are shorter.
That's just the way it is.
I think we all know that, especially with the the younger crowd.
Um I and I and I again that's not a that's not a cut at all.
That's just I think in some ways they're just more efficient at getting through
information, to tell you the truth.
yeah, the engagement time is less.
And that's why I say, you know, if you're gonna say to yourself, can we capture people and
get them what they need to get right away, is the headline the right one?
At the very beginning of it, are we gonna catch them?
If we're doing an article, do we have the proper deck in there so that we can tell people
whether or not they really want to read this or not and why they should?
Attention spans are are shorter, people have less time.
And because of that, our job is to be that much more efficient and to the point.
You know, there's a lot of buzz around AI and technology.
What are you hearing from your readers and how are they actually applying it?
You know, that's we've been covering a lot of what's happening in AI.
And there are some really smart people in the finance industry, these, the service
providers, uh, yourself being one of them, that are out there really taking this AI
initiative to the next level.
And it's a it's a big task to do it.
Many companies today
Are trying still to figure it out.
Some have figured it out pretty well.
Um, but many are still trying to figure it out.
And they're trying to figure out how to become more efficient, not about replacing people.
It's about becoming a better organization, more efficient, processing more transactions
with less risk, more portfolio analysis, things of this nature.
The industry is clamoring to get into it.
The biggest issue they have, I think, in many cases is.
A, do they have the time to spend trying to put that together because it is a lot of work,
but there's great specialists in our industry that are serving it right now that can walk
you through that.
The second thing is the expense, because there is an upfront expense to doing like this,
and it's significant.
But the companies who aren't looking at AI today and aren't considering it or investing in
it today are going to be left behind.
And I think that finally came through.
I think for the first couple of years, because we're still in the infancy, you know that,
Andrew.
Um, I think in the first first few years, people were saying, I I don't need to do that.
Everything works just great.
Well, today, if you're going up an in against an independent that has the ability to use
AI in some manner within their organization on their platform, they're gonna process deals
more effec more effectively than you are.
So the industry's looking at it, implementing it, it's evolving.
And the service providers that are doing it are evolving with it and providing more and
more guidance and more and more ability to get people to accept the fact that there's a
way to do this without being afraid of it.
Great point.
How do you stay in sync with the with what the industry wants, balancing analytics with
direct conversations?
Okay.
Yeah.
Um I talk to people every day, quite a few people.
Um that's the best part of the job, to be honest with you.
Looking at a computer is not that much fun.
But uh, you know, I
Been fortunate that I was in the industry for quite some time.
A lot of the people who are leaders of the companies today that we all know about here are
old friends of mine or colleagues.
Um the key, I think, is to stay in communication.
I will contact anybody I can and just say, what's important to you?
What's happening out there?
What are you hearing?
I'm hearing that example is AI.
I'm hearing that AI is out there.
Are you guys doing it?
Why are you doing that?
Um, so
I try to balance that with a couple of things.
I look at the data every single day to see who's engaging on our site and how they're
engaging and what they're engaging with.
Because if we put up content that somebody's not engaging with, why would we continue to
put that up there?
Right.
It's not worth the time.
So we're looking at the data, but then those conversations with people every single day
that I have, the editors will have conversations with people.
I probably have the most conversations with people.
Um
our sales staff has conversations with people, we're hearing a lot of different things,
but you marry that with the data.
And then also occasionally we'll do a survey.
And that survey will be a small survey going to certain people, asking them what the hot
buttons are today in the industry.
So if you don't get feedback from the sta in the standpoint of real conversation, and I
don't mean emails, I mean real conversation.
And if you're not looking at your data to see if something is
Really resonating with readers, you have no idea what you should be really presenting as a
publisher out there.
You gotta stay on top of it.
You gotta stay fresh.
Thank you.
So you sit in a unique position because you're not just servicing or serving readers,
you're also working closely with advertisers trying to reach them as well.
How have expectations from advertisers changed over the last decade?
You know, when we first started the Quint Finance Advisor and ABL Advisor, it was all
about banners and clicks.
Um, do I have a banner up?
Am I getting clicks?
That's evolved.
Um, and today banner advertising is still a very important part of the strategy because
it's a branding initiative.
Clicks are important too.
Branding has become something that's really become more important to people than just the
clicks.
They need to have their name out there.
They had to make sure people were front and center with people all the time.
So that has remained very, very strong with us.
And we have a very high over 90% retention rate for a reason.
And then that's because we're delivering, I think, what the advertiser wants.
But today, they also want other types of delivery and from the advertising perspective,
video content.
They want to sponsor videos.
They want to do direct emailing, for example.
So we never sell our database.
We never will sell our database.
No one can use it.
However, you can use our database from the standpoint if you want to come up with a direct
email campaign of some sort, we will send it out for you.
We'll work with you on the design of it.
We'll do all of that.
And that allows you to get the messaging out that you want to get out directly to mailbox
of people rather than just relying on being on a website.
So website banners, daily e-news banners are strong.
We've introduced things like weekly reviews.
On ABL Advisor we have the the weekly deal um deal uh report.
That is a explosive report.
Never would have dreamed it became that big to be very honest with you.
But the expectations of the advertiser are that you're going to deliver a couple things.
One is if you're not delivering the content, they shouldn't advertise.
And that's the reason they stay.
If we're delivering the content, we're getting people to come to our sites on a consistent
basis, our sites and on our newsletters on a consistent basis, they're going to continue
to run their banner advertisements.
Sprinkle now in also direct emailing, sponsored content where you want to put up certain
content you've put up that is actually more.
self-promotional than it is just subject matter expertise.
There's a place for that too.
People have gone from the standpoint of saying, I want to be a passive banner advertiser
to be uh, you know, engaging with our with the readers very, very closely via these other
avenues at this point.
So really it's changed.
The eng the idea of engagement has changed.
It is not just go there and click a banner, what else are we getting from them that's
going to tell me more about what this company does?
And we're delivering that and that's been a very big
bump for us in what we're doing, to be honest with you.
That's great.
You've built a reputation around trust and credibility.
How do you protect that, especially when balancing both readers and the advertisers?
Well, you know, I think that the advertisers have to trust that we're going to deliver the
right content, right?
And that we're going to make it easily accessible and we're going to make sure that
they're highly visible.
Okay.
That's one thing.
We really have to somehow balance what
they they expect their this platform to deliver for them every single day.
Advertisers are really interesting in that they are they have expectations.
They they consume what we publish just like everybody else does.
Even if they're if they are a service provider, they're still consuming what we're putting
out there because they need that recon.
You need to understand what's happening in the industry.
So you really have to balance what you're going to provide that's going to satisfy them
both.
Are you going to give the readers what they want?
And are the advertisers going to appreciate the fact that you're giving the readers what
they want so they come back every day and see their ads and they're gonna want to see open
up an email or direct email of some sort from us as the source because it's a worthwhile
for them to open it.
The advertisers' expectations have grown.
They don't want you to just tell them that their banner's running and getting clicks.
They wanna know that they're getting engagement.
And so we have to really balance that.
And one of the things it that requires is the trust part that you said is that.
Do they trust us to do that?
And do they trust us to deliver the the information that is uh correct and valuable?
Andrew, there's situations where I get things that are emailed to me that you and this
audience wouldn't believe.
The internal documents, memos, things of that nature that I could easily ask our team to
publish.
And we get a tremendous amount of opens and clicks, and that would destroy our reputation.
As a publisher that's providing the right information that is verified and accurate.
And so if we don't keep that trust, we're going to lose all our advertisers and then we're
out of business.
So trust is really important to us.
And I think that we play with that every day because we do say no to stories on a daily
basis.
Yeah.
I mean, you you you'll go through an exercise where maybe it's time for somebody to
refresh a banner, right?
Or refresh uh an you know an ad.
That that's been kind of on on the platform for a while.
I think we we we're one of those companies.
Um, right?
So And that's it, and that's advice that we should be giving because if if a if a banner's
gotten a little stale, whatever it is, we like to say, you know, it's a good idea to have
two or three in rotation as an example.
Rotate them every week.
It's a good idea to refresh them every quarter, whatever you want to do there, because we
have the ability to run any as many as you wanna run.
And we want you to do that because we want you to succeed.
You know, you've been with us since 2011.
And and you're also an ABL advisor.
And we're very, very grateful for that.
And the only reason I think that we can continue to do that with you is if we're
delivering.
We have to deliver for you.
If the value proposition isn't there, why would you stay?
Right.
Absolutely.
So let's zoom out a bit.
You talk to more people in this industry than just about anyone.
Despite some of the noise in the market, you've remained pretty optimistic.
What
gives you confidence in the next few years.
You know, the way I look at this sometimes is that I think that people tend to say that
this industry is like is the word is always resilient.
Okay.
We said that earlier.
And I don't really, like I said earlier, I don't really like the resilient side of it.
This industry is so creative and so forward looking.
I can't say it always was in the past, but it's become that.
It's not a survivor, it's a warrior, this industry.
And that's really what it is, because it's ready to take on a challenge and win every
single day.
And that that means that they have to come out with new ways to service the customer,
listening to the customer.
Are they going to do provide different models, equipment as a service, subscription
models?
Are they coming up with different types of structures that no one's ever, quite frankly,
thought of doing before and bringing them out to the field?
How can you not be confident in an industry that's constantly evolving?
One that's looking forward, that's listening to both the end user, the distributor, the
reseller, um, the CFO, the company.
It's talking to everybody.
It's digging deep into what's necessary to survive.
We've had supply chain issues in this industry.
We went through COVID.
We went through more cycles than anybody can imagine.
We went through the financial crisis.
And every single time this industry has not only survived it, it came out better and
stronger and more creative to get there.
And more and more companies have launched because of that.
There's a lot of room for growth here.
We've got associations that serve our industry really very well.
We've got people in this industry that are so committed to not winning all the not just
winning, but actually solving problems.
I I just feel that when you look at this from the standpoint of what everyone is looking
at as a goal, are we going to get that?
They all have the same goal to meet the needs of those who need to acquire assets.
Couple that with the fact that I really love how many young people have come into this
industry.
I mean, it used to be about seven years ago, Andrew, I'd go to a conference.
I didn't see anybody under the age of 50.
And, you know, and it was one of those things you'd say to yourself,
Boy, this is really, I'd like to see some younger people here.
And now when you go to conferences, there's a lot of younger people.
And younger people who are not in entry-level positions.
These people are climbing and doing very well.
They're bringing new life, new energy.
They're actually bringing new perspectives.
they're digitally uh advanced, they're so advanced from that standpoint, they can cut
through.
a lot of the noise very, very quickly because somehow they've been had to cut through all
the noise for all their lives.
So we didn't have to do that in the earlier years.
When I sometimes in my somebody my age.
So I I think that this industry is poised to grow more than ever, especially when you
think about the new players, the independence, you know, banks are still very, very
important in this industry.
The industry has evolved.
Banks have taken a different stance in some cases, but we still need them.
They were the leaders, always the leaders.
Now you have independents, you have these private credit players, specialty lenders.
And the companies that are figured out that if you bring in other forms of financing like
working capital to go with your equipment finance product, again, it's a win-win here.
So when I think about this industry, it's not stale.
What it what it is is creative.
And what it is is forward looking and it's exciting.
And I think there's a lot more room to grow.
It's great insight.
So what would you say are some of the core fundamentals you think will continue to anchor
this industry no matter what?
I think that there's gonna be always cycles that you're going to see uh where equipment
acquisition activity changes.
It goes up and it goes down.
And I think that if if companies can find a way to steady that ship and say to themselves,
we're gonna continue to meet the needs of those folks out there and we're gonna continue
to evolve our products, I I think that that's what's gonna get us there.
did I answer that question that you were asking, Andrew?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say so.
I mean, you talked about maybe just maintaining discipline, right?
Would be one of those fundamentals.
Right.
Well, yeah, maintaining discipline is a really good point.
so the maintaining discipline is important.
So today you can say, are there some players out there in the equipment finance industry
that take risk, more risks than others?
And are there those that are really managing risk effectively?
Are those there are some that are too tight and some that maybe are too loose.
The fact is, is that it all comes out in the wash.
And we're going to see where all falls out.
The key is, are you learning from what's in your what's in your portfolio?
Are you learning from your customers?
Are you learning from the portfolio?
If you're not learning from the portfolio, you're not going to get to where you want to
get to.
There's trends in there.
There's backward, backward-looking trends, and there's forward-looking trends that you can
look at.
And and today, when you encompass things such as third parties, ACS is an example,
bringing in a different service that you don't have to do internally today.
To provide information and data that's critical for you to underwrite transactions on a
consistent basis so you can manage risk.
That's very, very important today.
For sure.
So where do you see collaboration across equipment finance, asset-based lending, and
working capital playing a bigger role?
Well, I think today you're seeing that the collaboration between working capital, for
example, and equipment finance is growing.
It's not only just cross-selling the product, but some
Today, the equipment finance industry is facing a different challenge to some degree, and
that is many companies are feeling are experiencing working capital challenges.
Equipment finance can be used as a way to address working capital challenges, not just
financing equipment, sale lease backs, different ways to do that.
You're addressing supply chain issues, timings, things of that nature.
So understanding cash flow.
understanding working capital requirements, whether you have the ability as a bank or an
independent finance company or a private credit player to actually do working capital
finance in unison with equipment finance, that's a great solution.
But if you can't, and you can partner out there with other folks out there in the field
that can, just go out and collaborating in this industry has always been around in capital
markets, everywhere.
If there are deals that you cannot get done on an equipment side sometimes unless the
working capital piece is done as well.
And if you can't bring that to the table, it's important to have those friendships and
partnerships in the industry to bring that with you together because you're at that point
you're not competing, you're actually working together, you are collaborating.
And everyone wins in that situation.
And so does the client, and they're more than likely going to come back for more.
So I think that many companies have said to themselves, can we bring in a working capital
product of our own?
And if not, can we bring one in from another third party?
And also, how do we address the needs of our
borrowers today are less lessees that are looking to acquire equipment, but they have a
cash flow problem.
Can we use our form of financing to actually solve a cash flow problem?
Thank you.
And from your perspective, where do service providers like ACS and others fit into helping
lenders protect and grow grow their portfolios?
You know, I think what's happened here is that the the finance players in the industry
have learned something and that is they can't do it all themselves.
And today the investment to be able to do those things themselves, things like asset
management, as an example, or um technology.
Everyone used to have servers.
They don't have servers anymore.
Everyone used to have everybody in-house to do everything related to asset management.
They have some, but they also use out outside third parties.
The fact is, the service providers are dedicated to making their product that much better
every single day.
They're listening to the lenders, the lessors, and they're saying,
What do you need from us to be able to effectively do business?
And they can the the third party, such as an ACS, can actually invest money in their
platforms to continually evolve those platforms to meet ongoing needs.
And that's, I think, the magic here.
And that is really that they're they're working together, they're talking, they're
learning from each other.
And then the service provider is going out to do what they do best, create that product to
meet the needs of that client and actually have it be able to be up.
dated regularly so that it gets better and better.
And the less or the lessor or the the lender in this situation is also relying on the fact
that there's somebody out there has their back.
They're actually working on a system, on a platform that's going to enhance their ability
to manage, to uh mitigate risk, to manage what's going on in their portfolio at all times.
And I think when when people realize the fact that two heads are better than just one, in
some cases for lack of a better way of putting it,
Everyone wins in the situation.
So the service providers in this industry are one of the one of the engines on the plane
that keeps it going the right way.
Well, well, well put.
Thank you.
This has been a great conversation.
I really do appreciate your time and the perspective you've shared.
It's it's easy to see why you built what you have built has become such a trusted voice in
the industry.
Before we wrap up, what is the best way for our listeners to stay connected with you and
your platforms?
Well, of course you could always thanks for asking that, Andrew.
The best you could always subscribe to the Daily E News.
that's free.
And we encourage you to do that.
Just come to the website.
The other way is you can contact me directly.
Just contact me directly.
You want to have conversation about anything?
I'm happy to have a conversation about content, market dynamics.
If you want to subscribe to our our our products, that's great.
If you want to learn more about our products, just contact me and I'll put you in contact
with the right person if it's not me to do that.
Um
You know, my desire here is to be accessible and I am accessible.
No one should ever uh feel that they can't pick up the phone.
I enjoy phone calls.
I enjoy them a lot more than emails.
that's the old school in me.
And I think that if anybody would like to converse about anything, please just pick up the
phone.
Because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I just want everybody to know I I
didn't leave the commercial finance industry.
I just really kind of just serve it through a different lens today.
And
That's my mission here, and I'm here to help everybody that I can.
That's awesome.
So we're gonna have a little closing debate here to end to before we sign off and have a
little little fun.
You lived on both sides of the business, credit and sales.
So I have to ask when you really step back and think about it, what wins in the long run?
A credit driven culture or a sales driven culture?
Is there a right answer?
Or does that or does that is that the best model live somewhere in the middle?
It's really I I know you're not gonna like the answer, but it's really in the middle.
Um the reality is if you don't have a strong credit culture and you don't have the
business development side of it respecting that culture um and trusting that culture, then
you're gonna fail.
And if you have purely a sales side, a business development side that's running the
business at that point and not paying attention to what the credit teams and the risk
management people are telling you and seeing, you just can't get there.
You know, it's it's kind of like, you know, are we a collateral player or a balance sheet
lender?
Um, how about both?
Because it's a mix of the two.
You know, I came from credit.
Being a credit person made me a hundred times better of a business development person.
It just did, because I could sit across the desk from the CFO and I could still do it
today because you don't forget what you learned, what you learned.
And it brings it to bring it to bear.
And that's why I was sort of the guinea pig, I told you, the beginning of my career, the
first one to do that for that bank.
And so today, if I think if you're building a culture that is purely just sales, I think
you're gonna have a problem.
It's it's today, silos don't have to be they don't have to be silos anymore.
There's a way for them to work together.
And I think most people figured that out.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
I appreciate it.
And to everyone listening, thank you for joining us on another episode of the ACS
Portfolio Perspective.
If you found this valuable, please share it with a colleague and be sure to subscribe so
you do not miss upcoming episodes.
Until next time, thank you for listening.
Thank you, Mike, again for for joining us.
My pleasure, Andrew, and thank you for inviting me.
It's been great.
Thank you.