Adam Torres and Bradley Kissler discuss financing solutions.
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Show Notes:
What does it take to create financing solutions that help businesses succeed? In this episode, Adam Torres and Bradley Kissler, Transformative Financing Solutions Serial Entrepreneur, explore Brad’s current ventures and the creative process he uses to create financing solutions for businesses.
About Bradley Kissler
Proud Dad, Social Entrepreneur, Angel Investor & Thought Leader
With over 25 years of experience in the world of finance, He has been able to learn firsthand from entrepreneurs and businesses all over the country about the many challenges they face acquiring essential capital. He created STRADA Capital to solve for the inefficiencies and barriers in access to capital he saw these small businesses encounter when searching for business financing and equipment leasing services.
As the Founder and CEO, he developed a deep understanding of the leadership required to take a company from concept and formation all the way through various stages of growth and expansion. He saw a need for guidance and support through all aspects of company and business development, especially providing or raising the capital needed to execute on a vision. Personally driven to share my expertise and resources with others, he started to invest in amazing entrepreneurs from a range of industries and equip them with the strategies and knowledge to build, grow and scale their businesses. He look hardest for opportunities to work with people of integrity who are passionate about their mission/purpose and have a unique approach to their target market.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Bradley Kistler. He’s a transformative financing solutions, entrepreneur, and a CEO.
Serial entrepreneur working on these solutions. And we’re going to get into some of the companies and things that he’s working on, whether it’s Maslow capital solutions, Vanguard capital management, and some other things as well. So , we got a lot to cover today. But first off Brad, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Good morning, Adam. All right. So man, I’ve been bugging Jeff to get you on the show for quite some time now, I’m like, come on, Jeff, , get Brad in the game. I need to hear the stories behind this. He’s tells me so much about the companies and otherwise, and I’m happy to bring this content , to our audience and also your team as a resource.
So it’s great to finally line this up, but just to get this. Episode kicked off. We’ll start it the way we start them all, Brad, with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do.
Brad, what mission matters to you? Adam, thanks. Well, the mission that matters to me is, transformative finance. I believe that financing is, access to capital , is really at the core of, of what makes this country great, what makes our capitalist system work really well. I never intended to have finance be a career for me. thought I was going to be a broadcaster, had a broadcast journalism degree coming out of school and, or I thought I was going to be doing investigative journalism. So it’s your style only. , with an attitude. , I thought that was the path.
I kind of fell into finance out of college working at a company called Balboa Capital and I got into it at first because I thought it was a way to make some money before I would start moving around the country to do my broadcasting thing and wanted to put a little money in the bank.
And I got involved with providing small business loans and working with entrepreneurs and it became apparent to me really quick that there was something pretty special, pretty magical about this process. I grew up a situation where there wasn’t a lot of capital and, or access to capital, didn’t grow up with a lot of money.
And I know the limiting factors. When you can’t access it and was really blown away by the system, the process the creativity to sort of orchestrate what was various ways of, of providing capital to folks that, need access to make their, their possibilities come true.
So , , that has sort of been an underpinning from the very beginning, I think I appreciated being able to work with folks that maybe didn’t think that capital was available to them and then see the possibilities , and what that unlocked for them. And today , I think I’ve really kind of dedicated my life’s effort now to unlocking capital for Those that, are still blocks for one reason or another.
So so whether it’s creating something that’s, that is a different sort of spin or finding different capital sources, unlock capital, different constituents is sort of, what I’m passionate about and what gets me up every morning excited to see if there’s difference that can be made.
I like that you bring up this concept of access to capital and really what that means for business owners and otherwise, and I think it’s interesting that you focused your career on this because it’s always evolving, right? The markets are evolving where the capital is coming from, how it’s coming, what it can be used for, like, all these things kind of change over time.
But I feel like that, general rule of needing, whether it’s debt or otherwise, but access to capital in order to grow your business. I mean, it’s fundamental. And I think that those, that kind of business owners, executives out there that, That kind of master the use of capital. I feel like they almost sometimes have an advantage over those that don’t from the standpoint from many different ways.
Could you speak to maybe just the the relationship for between capital and access to capital and business owners and the importance of that? Could you talk to that for a bit? Yeah. , sure. , I would love to actually, and, , I’m gonna apologize in advance for geeking out a little bit on this geek out.
Come on, man. I asked because I wanted to open that can of worms, Brad, do it. , Hey, this is the space that I live in, right? Mm-Hmm. . So I am, , look, I think access to capital is, is really. The magic that makes everything work. I think it’s as essential as fire as essential as electricity. We take it for granted.
It’s easy to take for granted in this country because we’ve got a lot of different avenues to acquire capital, but there’s no mistaking the fact that we’ve enjoyed so much prosperity in this country relative to. , you look around the world where access to capital is not there. , maybe there’s just the the National Bank or wealthy family members.
And that’s about it. And you can see what that does in terms of unlocking people’s dreams or their ability to create their own financial freedom or for them to pursue , a path that they choose when you don’t have that access to capital. So those limitations are, , pretty, pretty high.
Pretty defining. And so, when I say I think it’s magic, it’s a special force. It’s just unbelievable. Enabler of great things. I really believe it. I am a student , of, , financing generally and historically looking back at, at , where access to capital is available, where great societies were built and where capital is not available , and, , where things might feel a little bit more like the dark ages.
Indentured servants and, and those types of things where there’s really, , , in a time when you can’t receive capital, you can really be, it’s another form of slavery really is this, this ability not to, to acquire capital, you can control folks just by limiting their access. And so.
I do believe it’s magic. I do believe it’s powerful. But even in this country you mentioned business owners and their ability to access that capital. Well, it’s easy to take it for granted. There’s still large swaths of groups, businesses industries that are challenged, are challenged to get the capital.
And if you look at, , Which industries do the best and where the, entrepreneurs and employees do the best? , it’s almost without exception. can follow the money. Where does the capital flow? Sure. , most recently. , we’ve all experienced sort of what’s gone on in Silicon Valley.
And, , we know those to be some of the wealthiest people in the world and some of the most advanced businesses and some of the greatest sort of micro economies. There’s no, there’s no separating the fact that capital has slowed. So well, there we love to talk about the fact that , the United States is the envy of the world in technology and in innovation.
And again, you can’t disconnect that flow of capital with that outcome, right? That there wasn’t that flow of capital. If you look to industries that have trouble accessing capital you’ll see that there’s just not that same level of opportunity and innovation. So. Anyway, we don’t think about it very often.
I do all day long. So I get passionate when someone asks me about it. And I have a tendency to geek out a little bit. So, and I think that one of the things with capital for the guys that live at like yourselves is that there’s a tremendous amount of creativity that goes into this. Like whether it’s creating new models, whether it’s creating new ways to fund, whether it’s whether it’s evaluating risk, whether it’s making decisions, could you talk, I think sometimes when we think about creativity, or we think about the creator economy, like I, I come from finance roots and I think about like what you do and and how, and some of the things that I know of that you’re doing and I’m like , the way to be able to, to solve problems and find solutions for clients, I think it’s amazing.
Sometimes when we think about creators or the creative economy, like, I guess sometimes we’re only thinking about like media , , or artists or this or that. I’m like, no, the finance guys are creative. Like how’d they get that deal funded? Like what’s that? I interviewed the economist from the Milken Institute.
He was talking to me about, this is maybe a year ago and I still remember it. And he’s talking to me about how. CNN was originally funded and how, like, everybody thought that, like, that’s the craziest idea ever. Who’s going to fund a, , why would you have a 24 hour news outlet? That could never work.
That can never happen. Could you, and I’m. Sitting there like wanting to fall out of my chair because I’m so excited about what he’s saying. Cause I, I get excited about the creativity of financing and business and like people making things happen. Talk about your process. And I don’t, and it doesn’t have to be a specific loan or anything like that, but I just mean in general, even how you’re developing these companies like Mazel Capital, like your process of what goes into your creativity of creating solutions for your clients.
Okay. Thank Okay, excellent. Well, let me say that. Let’s start with, , like every industry , there’s paradigms and , if you look at sort of the basic underpinning formula credit and risk and financing, right? Those things kind of go together. And there is an element , of you can only lend money where you have the ability to, to see a return, where you can evaluate the risk.
And , you can accept the amount of risk and that you can. Find the appropriate cost for that capital. , where there’s that intersection, right? Market forces like , we all know to be in every, every other aspect of capitalism. Well it’s too often. I believe there’s.
While we say, okay, capital is magic, and it’s a difference between CNN starting and not starting, right? Capital’s magic, and it’s the difference between, , being successful and not being successful. I mean, look, even Apple and Tesla, right? They go to the public markets to acquire capital because without capital, right?
It’s like without oxygen, , businesses don’t, don’t succeed. And so they’ve got to access capital one way or the other. And for a lot of small businesses and individuals, it’s through these channels that we’re talking about today, which is, , typically the debt market versus the equity market.
But. So we talk about creativity is I have seen a number of roadblocks in my career and it started early. I think , the probably earliest example was the 2nd transaction. I was ever structured was for amazon. com back in 1994. And I remember bringing that transaction to my underwriter and saying, Hey, this is, you was really new.
I didn’t, it’s a bookstore at that point. Right? It’s a bookstore. Am I wrong? It’s a bookstore at that point. It, well, it’s not, it’s it’s an aspirational bookstore. It’s not even there. It’s an aspirational. Okay, got it. Yeah, it’s go please. At this, at this point, Jeffrey , had left New York was kind of, a stressed out stockbroker and he and Mackenzie, his wife, moved out.
Move to Washington to start a different life than the one that they had in New York. And, , maybe a simpler life, which is ironic. And they were, , I hadn’t really heard about the Internet at this point. A lot of people hadn’t really talking about it. Certainly the commercialization wasn’t there.
And so , I get this, this opportunity to work on a transaction and I take it into my underwriter. And I say well, let me, let me tell you a little bit about this business, right. And about the people and, and, , what they’re doing. And of course , just rejected out of hand, right.
This makes no sense, right. We, we don’t, we’re not interested in, in, , technologies. We don’t understand their names even wrong, right. I remember my underwriter, like basically grading me like a professor, like crossing out the. com and putting. Comma ink behind it. Come on, I’m serious. I’m serious. No, no, no.
Melissa Fisher, you got to interview her one day because it’s probably the only time I’ve been right in my entire career with, with her. Cause she always. Tended to beat me on stuff, but, but I said, Hey, , I submitted the deal. And she’s like, Brad, you can’t even get the submission, right? It’s not a dot.
It’s not a period calm. It’s gotta be a comma ink or, , something spelled out right LLC at the time or LLP, , LT partnership. Anyway. I’m like, no, I, this is, I, I checked corporate status, , Secretary of State, that’s a legal name, , anyway, so I submit the deal and of course , the internet was a no go selling books didn’t, didn’t inspire anything on the underwriting side to, to understand the return of, I think these transactions were I did a couple transactions in the neighborhood of 40 to 60, 000 for for servers.
And so that got blocked. I was tenacious. I had, I was with Mackenzie Bezos where she, implored upon me. So, like, you’re not understanding what we’re doing. You’ve got to explain it this way. And, , the new underwriters will get this. And so Ultimately I found a way to get those transactions accomplished, but it took a long time.
I remember a manager saying, don’t do this anymore. He wasted a lot of time trying to get, , the obscure deal done when I’ve given you a, , a playbook of the types of transactions we’re looking for. And then I realized, , this is, All too common all across the board, , whether it’s because of credit profile, or it’s because of industry, or it’s unknown, right?
Again, access to capital was challenging. And so and in fact, the, the, Adam, the joke there is like, if I had just not charged any interest on that deal and just taken A few shares of stock, I’d be a billionaire and we’d be doing this. And if you want to buy somewhere, I didn’t have that foresight. And it’s an amazing example though, because it is one that could you imagine like in general, if how many other business owners out there , that great ideas that could be the next Amazon could be the next, whatever it is in their space.
It doesn’t have to be online or retail or anything like that, but whatever it is. Like, because they don’t get access to capital because they don’t figure out or can’t get , that deal through eventually, like lucky that, , , he had you, I mean, honestly, like if somebody else at your firm or otherwise, like that’s who knows, right?
Like if you would have been focusing on the other things and not the obscure deal and not believing in it and not doing the other things, like who knows but that’s a good example. He was really lucky. Could we send this podcast again? Because I, I think you’re right. I think I’m in and I am speaking up on a boat.
Yes. He has one that I don’t, I wouldn’t mind. I’m, I’m just throwing it out. Yeah. One of us got the boat. You heard it here. How did Amazon Brad, Brad, good job, man. Oh, well, , what’s funny too. Right. And this is, I’m not going to go down the sort of, yeah, it also drives me. Crazy and passionate about this stuff.
But, , there’s also, if you look back historically, right, there’s always been some types of sort of lending and , the advancing of money as, as something that had to be watched or was not even correct to do at all. Right. You shouldn’t be charging interest. Right. And so here, if you look at the difference between what I’m doing, working every day, advancing money to people, and you look at where Jeffrey is right now out on his boat, right?
Mm-Hmm. you would say, well, , which one’s getting the better end of the deal, right? Yeah. Is it the person that’s getting the capital? Is it the person lending the capital? And that’s why I say it’s like magic and I, it’s akin to fire, right? It’s been one of the most powerful forces in the world.
You can use it to accomplish great things but you can also burn yourself. Any of any, , anything that is of great value. Mm-Hmm. is a true. Force of nature. , you’ve got to, you’ve got to use it the correct way. And of course, sometimes you can get hurt if you don’t use it the right way.
But that’s where, , forever, , we’re talking thousands of years of, , different attitudes around this capital has slowed and not flowed based on different people’s view of whether they focus more on how things could get hurt. With in a system where capital was made available and versus how people could benefit in a system where capital is available.
, but I think it’s tantamount to saying, well, you can get burned with fire. So we’re not going to use that anymore. Right. More fire. It’s the same way as we’d say, well, , no more lending money. We can’t do that. People can’t be trusted. You can’t charge an interest rate. That’s immoral. Right. Anyway, it is.
, you take that from businesses, just real quick to the consumer side of things, right? , there’s a real democratization there of access to things that we need, right? Only because we’ve got these great capital markets. I mean, and we have this efficient flow of capital and financing available.
You couldn’t, , people need things and if you, if you look at whether it’s buying a home or a car or a medical procedure their availability. Their ability to accomplish those things are, cannot happen without financing. Could you imagine what the home ownership rate would be in the U. S. today if there wasn’t financing?
Oh, forget about it. , we’d all be in Potter’s Field. Right, right. For sure. Exactly. And living in Los Angeles. I’d probably be okay , with no financing data available to autos, right? Because I don’t like the traffic. But again, , the whole thing doesn’t work as soon as you, you, you take away the capital.
And that’s why I think it’s magic. The thing is, the reason it never gets the credit it deserves is because capital is never the thing people want. It’s something else. And the capital is how they get there, right? They don’t want a loan. They want a house. Right. They don’t want a debt for a car. They want mobility.
Right. They don’t want. So , it’s the capital always sort of gets this bad rap, but, but you can’t have any of those things, , without someone providing the capital in a responsible way those advancements , to be possible. What keeps you in the game? A lot of things you could do a lot of, I mean, you’re, you’re a serial entrepreneur. You’ve made, , helping business owners and helping the advancement of business, , your mission, and I can see it through your history and body of work, just looking through your career and even the companies you’re working on now, like what keeps you motivated and what keeps you inspired to continue to, to, , go out there and help these businesses and business owners.
It’s that there’s still holds, right? There’s still new challenges. And, and that’s why I’ve, focused on, for me, the fun is solving the unsolvable. Mm-Hmm, there’s these, these blocks. Don’t wanna go back down the historic road, so I won’t, but I will say that. , understanding redlining and the challenges with lending relative to mortgage industry in the fifties is the perfect example of where something had to be corrected.
It didn’t get corrected and we still are dealing with those inequalities here today. And I see these things pop up in different areas as it relates to business. Oftentimes the David and Goliath challenge that I loved is You have these very large corporations, these companies. Companies that have tremendous access to capital either through the capital markets or their own, they’re just rich with cash and they form these things called captive finance companies and you can see that a GMAC or a John Deere or a Caterpillar has very distinct advantages over, , their competitors, right?
There’s thousands and thousands of companies that make up , these areas and yet. There’s the, , 20, 000 pound gorillas that seemingly can kind of do whatever they want and The magic isn’t in their product. Their product is a good one. That’s how they got there. But the magic is in their ability to Make it available and they have these crazy finance solutions are the ones that have the , no payments for a period of time or zero percent or , you can new every 2 years, trade it, , you can do a lot of powerful things when you have this.
And so a lot of manufacturers who don’t have access to those types of things, find themselves challenged to compete, but there’s a perception out there that by most manufacturers that the only way , they can get those advantages or to have the money that a Caterpillar or a Toyota Motocredit, , it has access to they have to have a lot of capital.
They have to have a lot of financial acumen. They got to set up a business almost as big, right? The GE capitals versus GE, right? You set up , these financial considerations that are, that are, Take just as many resources. We’ll take more resources because they take a lot more of their capital intensive.
Obviously, they’re lending money. Yeah, but take people and business plans and all of those things. So there’s this perception that that’s the only way to get there. And so, , , I’m really focused right now , on providing the same type of captive like financial advantages, right? Same type of programs , that, help the big boys sell more of their equipment , and bringing that to smaller captives and doing it without the costs of, or the risk or the resource drain that’s typically associated with building out a, a financial company to support the, the sale of your products.
And again, that’s where the whole economy goes, right? Because it’s like, you gotta, the manufacturers gotta provide these things. So the dealers have incentive to be able to. So the equipment they can’t buy more and so they’re able to, , make this affordable to the end user, , and so again, this, this whole magic again, it’s like, we all think about the, , I want, , if it’s yellow iron, right, we want the, the tractor, right, or we want to, , Piece of earth moving equipment.
And we know very clearly how someone’s going to make money with it. But the whole economy stops if you don’t offer a financial means to get there, right? Because they just don’t have the ability to pay for these, these things , all cash up front. So , that’s one of the areas I’m focused right now.
I’m also focused on solving consumer debt and consumer issuance of financing where there’s today, no, no availability. And that might be for challenge credits or for folks that, that are, they don’t meet that paradigm again, that formula, that, that list. And, cost to capital return.
And so they’re just sort of left out. And, , again, it’s, , when you think about medical services, it does not seem right that in this country that, , 2 people both have a need for a root canal. 1 gets out of pain and 1 doesn’t just because of their access to capital, right?
Whether they can finance that through a care credit for 0 percent versus not be able to afford it. So it’s just, , there’s a lot of work still to be done here. It’s a magical, powerful force, but it’s still not available in all areas and there’s still lots of holes and, and, , Areas where people say, well, this is not a good spot for financing.
So they just kind of leave the area. And for me, that’s a challenge. It’s like, well, wait a minute, , there’s got to be a way to do this. That’s where you smell opportunity, , candidly. That’s yeah. And that’s where I smell opportunity, right? Yeah. And solvable, right. That there’s, , where everybody else is, decided it’s too hard.
And they’re going to focus elsewhere. That’s where the real opportunity is both financially in terms of outside as well as for me rewarding because now we’ve created a solution where there wasn’t one. So , that’s what gets me out. It’s me excited.
Amazing. And go make something happen. Brad, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show. And, and just getting to know more about your background, what you’re doing, what motivates you, what drives you out there , to make solutions, Amazon solution. That made my day. Love it.
And I, I said it and I, and I’ll say it again, like , it just goes to show like, that’s a great example of access to capital, like what it can do. , , and those that maybe give up either give up on their dream or just never give Take the time to master or to develop those relationships with those , that are in the business and all those things.
I mean, , they just, to me, they work in moving the businesses forward, but also society for like the benefits of it. So that being said, Brad. Final question. If somebody is listening to this or watching this and they want to follow up and follow your journey or any of your companies how do they do that?
Probably the easiest is LinkedIn or Twitter. And in both cases, it’s at Bradley Kessler. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so , you know,, we’ll put the links to LinkedIn and all that good stuff in the show notes so that you can just click on it and head right on over and speak into the audience.
If this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re releasing a new episodes to hopefully inspire you.
Fire you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Brad, again, thank you so much for all you do and for coming on the show. Adam, thank you.