Welcome to Fix Your Gym, a podcast about keeping your gear in shape. On this show, we have conversations with gym equipment gurus as we share stories on how they serve the fitness industry and community. And now, here's your host, Adam Niffen. 

Alright, welcome to the show, man. I'm super excited about this one today. I got on Jonathan Fodera. I pronounced that right? Fodera, right? You did. 

You actually did. Thank you. 

That's awesome. And he's with Integrated Business Financing. And then you got some other things going on with the Capital Tools Program. But really interesting how we connected. We just realized, came to the realization... We've been working together. I've been working with his company for the last year, year and a half or so. and kind of a mutual friend and over referral. I was working with Jose over at GotCredit and learning about business credit and learning how to scale my business and learning how to fix my own personal credit from a previous failed business. And he referred me over to you guys. And I've been working with your team for a while and you guys have helped us in a lot of different ways, man. From financing our first equipment purchase here recently. We bought a truck for the business and we've got some lines of credit, some good ones. We had to make some sacrifices and do some MCAs, which weren't the best thing in the world. We were able to build our credit though recently and get a consolidation through our bank and stuff like that, because we have good business credit now and, and everything. So yeah, you know, plugging in with Jose and you guys have been, it's, it's, it's really cool to have you on, man, because it just, you guys helped us, helped us so much. And you probably, you probably don't even know that, you know, and everything like that. Thanks for coming on, man. 

Man, thank you for having me. I really appreciate that. And, um, Yeah, I have to say we were talking speaking earlier before we started recording and it's kind of cool that I didn't put it together until about five minutes before coming on because I've seen the name over and over and just to know that like my team helps you and is able to help you when I'm not involved. That's like a, almost like a proud dad moment. So I really, that is the coolest thank you ever, especially going on this three day break here. And yeah, man, thanks for having me on. I'm excited. I think a lot of people, I think we can help a lot of people by working together and putting out a show like this because not enough people, especially in your industry, know what's going on and what to do. It's just brutal. 

Yeah, for sure, man. And how I just wonder how so many business owners just don't know this is like, has this been like a well kept secret type of thing, you know, among the elite and stuff like, but now it's coming out and you're getting a lot of people who are, you know, with the technology and YouTube and so much information, you know, and there's there's good information out there. And this is one of those gems that I found, you know, amidst the conglomerate of bad information, you know, like business credit and financial health and stuff like that. So yeah, very cool. 

Well, they don't teach us this in school, right? And there's a part of it that I think is intentional. Right? We don't learn how to balance a checkbook. We don't learn about taxes. We don't learn about running a business. We don't learn about business credit. And what a lot of people fail to understand is that Building a business is like building a house. You started a foundation, you work your way up, and you just continue to go and grow. And at each stage of building, there are different tools that are required to get you to that next level. But there are certain things that no matter what program or where you are, there's just certain things that you need, right? And to understand what you what is really important to a business, you have to understand what's making the determination if you're getting a loan or getting credit or whatever that might look like. 

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, so tell us a little bit about the basics of what you got going on with integrated business financing. And then we'll jump into the capital tools and the lifestyle and different mentoring programs and stuff like that and so forth. So let's start with the integrated business financing. What is that? How can that help small businesses? How do you guys help us? 

Yeah, I'm happy to answer that. I'm going to give you a little bit of an origin story. And if you guys hear my dogs barking in the background, I really apologize. That certainly wasn't the intent here today. But basically, what happened was this. I worked at a lot of different fintech companies. And I did underwriting and sales. I ran all of sales for a bunch of them. And the problem was this, when people came in, It was, all right, if they're approved, they only had one program for each client. Now, there were some differences in the programs and the structure of the programs, but there was only one program. Same thing with banks. Banks don't have all the programs. When I started integrating, I realized that, hey, I want to reverse engineer it like it's a place that I would want to go if I was an entrepreneur, a place that has SBA loans, a place that does term loans, lines of credit, working capital, equipment financing, invoice factoring. It's taken me 15 years to say this happened overnight. didn't happen overnight, but I built those relationships and I brought everything in one house. And so what we do that's different than everybody is when someone comes in, we actually work with them one-on-one and do a strategy session. What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And then we look at the meaningful metrics in your business in a cashflow analysis, and we send it to our clients. We review it, we get on the same page, Then we discuss what the options look like to help you achieve your goals. Because we have all those options under one roof, we can usually always find best program that is going to help our clients. By doing that, most of our business, almost all of our business up until about three months ago, has all been word of mouth and referral. We have grown roughly 40 or 50% every single year since we've been in operation, which is great. But our mission is just to help small business owners, because guess what? The small business owner, they are the backbone of our country. Without small business, we don't have the freedoms that we have. We can't make the impact in our communities that we want to. And the last three or four years, If you run a small business and you don't feel like you've been under attack, well, I want to know what you're doing and where you are, because we have been at war. At war with inflation, with our government printing away money, and with all this crap that they're doing. What people don't realize is if we do not support small business, we don't have a country. We really won't. You'll be working for big box locations that have this woke ideology bullshit being passed down. And we don't have the chance to impact our communities the way we want to. And so that's why we do what we do. That's why we love doing it. And that's our mission. And for the most part, I'd like to say we've been we've been pretty successful. The only thing I'd like to do is get more out. And even as entrepreneurs don't work with us, but maybe they watch a YouTube video that I had or maybe they watch something that allows them to grow. That's all I care about. 

Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, we live in the age of where information is, is such a hot commodity, you know what I mean? And, and we need it, you know, that we need it. Not, not just, I mean, to save our country, basically, you know what I mean? Like, we got to know how to do this. We need to, we need to understand how to, how to get to the next level. And we need to understand how to, how to improve ourselves personally and start and grow businesses and stop being, You know, there's a lot of people out there and I was one of them for a long time that was stuck in this, you know, warehouse job and making other people rich all the time. I had no idea how to, how to be anything, man. I was really just basically a slave to somebody else's. And yeah, I made decent money or whatever the case is. And you might be making $100,000, $200,000 and still be a slave to a company like that. You know what I mean? How do we really start gaining freedom? And one of the first steps is financial freedom and understanding. And I'm at the beginning stages of it. I'm 34 years old and that sucks, man, but I'm glad I'm learning it now. And I'm not rich or anything by any means, but I feel like, oh, now I have some freedom. I can feel it spiritually. I can feel like, oh, I'm gaining some knowledge here. And that started with, You know, like YouTube videos with Jose at GotCredit and learning about that. And then he plugs me into you guys. And then, you know, my business takes off. And, you know, so it's just kind of this domino effect of you can provide value to the market through information. Yeah, that's, that's awesome, man. 

So, yeah, I appreciate it. I love what we do. It's cool. And here's the thing, working with entrepreneurs, you're working with different, like different people, different businesses. I'm learning more about every industry under the sun. Here's the cool thing. Entrepreneurs are just built different. If you told me, hey, I want to go hang out and go to this party, or hey, do I want to go to this entrepreneurial event, I'll be 10 times happier at the event where I can network and learn from other people and meet other people. Because listen, the bottom line is this, and people don't really think about this. I tell my guys this all the time, you are one relationship away, okay? One relationship away, one phone call away from changing a massive dynamic in your life. And it's the truth, right? Like when I went and joined Aretem, I met Tyler McBroom, our friends, our families are friends, and we have positively impacted each other's businesses over and over and over again. And there's so many of those relationships I can go back to over the years where you're working with other entrepreneurs and most people have been through, we all have similar problems. So to find out and figure out how other people have solved it, and certain techniques or certain things they did. It's invaluable. The more you learn, the more dangerous you are. The government does not want people that want to work hard and are educated and educated about the right things. 

Yeah, absolutely. If they did, they would have structured the educational system different way in the first place, you know, and we wouldn't have, we got to go on and on about that. We wouldn't have all these, you know, these companies pushing out unhealthy products and foods and poison in the water and all kinds of different things, you know. It's like, what the hell is really going on here, man? And everything like that. And you start, yeah, you become a target once you start getting into those types of things. I just started to learn, I'm in Apex, and I think you were at one point, or still are, I'm not sure, but I'm a huge fan of Andy Fursella, man. I'm on 75 hard right now, and I'm on day 40, I think I'm day 38, something like that. Andy, I didn't realize Arte was a thing until here recently, and I watched him and Ed Milet talk a little bit about that, but they don't promote it much. I don't see, but that's interesting. Can you touch on that a little bit more? I don't want to get too much into it, but what is that exactly? 

For a long time, I was in Apex. I was in their top level. Ryan is actually the one that told me to go check out RATEC. I checked it out and did the top level. I've been in it now for going on five years, and I have learned so much and redesigned so much. I got to tell you, I met a lot of lifelong friends in there. It's definitely different than other groups because they actually practice and preach their core values. For the most part, especially at the events, you're meeting people that you probably wouldn't get to meet. Most of the value is actually in the group. Andy and I did great, but most of the value is in the group of learning from each other. Give you an example. I was struggling with ads. I talked to the guys in RTSP2 almost on a daily or weekly basis. We went to the last summit that was in Savannah, Georgia. One of my good buddies, I shouldn't have had to travel to Georgia to figure this out, but I did. He basically changed two or three things on my ads. I have never been able to run ads profitably in 15 years in this business. I am now running ads profitably after 15 years in this business, which is insane if you think about that. 

Yeah. That's a huge problem that has been solved there. Yeah. 

So yeah, that's what it is. That's what it's about. And here's what I would tell you. Any group that you're in, as long as the leaders are strong, and the group is very supportive, you're going to be able to network and learn and learn from others' mistakes. Yeah. And especially when it comes to building your business and lending, people have to understand everything falls into one, everything's looked at one of four ways, right? So you have credit. And now when we talk about credit, there's personal and there's business credit. Most people don't know the business credit even exists. Business credit comes into play for equipment financing. It comes into play if you're bidding jobs and you want to separate your business and personal credit. And then it comes into play, believe it or not, for SBA loans. Yeah. And, um, Yeah, it's a big thing. You have credit, then you have time in business. You can't really fudge time in business except the longer you've been in business, the less risky you are to lending. Then you have cash flow. There's a million things that go into cash flow. You have how much is going in the bank, how many deposits are going in the bank, How consistent the revenues are. Are their revenues increasing? Are they decreasing? Were there any negative days? What's the average daily balances? These are all things that are super, super important when you go to get an equipment loan or to get a line of credit. And then the last one is profitability. And I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs, if I asked you to pull up a P&L right now, it's going to be a data DNL, like how you run your business without looking at your report card and understanding how the business is operating. Right. And these are things that are very important. Same thing, a personal financial statement. If you don't have a personal financial statement, well, how do you know how you're operating your life? No. Okay. What's your net worth? If I ask you, what's your net worth? Nothing to matter. It matters to you. It should matter to you. It shouldn't matter in a conversation between friends. Okay. However, how do you know if, you built from 22 to 23. How do you know where you want to get in 24 if you don't know where you're ending 23? Does that make sense? These are like the stepping stones. First of all, this is what underwriting is looking at, and two, this is how you give yourself a financial report card? Are you building and are you doing the right things to grow that? Are you trying to make generational wealth so you know what, maybe your kids don't have to go through the same shit that you went through? I don't want my kids to do that. I want my kids to have the option. I had a great upbringing, but I didn't have the upbringing my kids had, I mean, fuck. What my kids I bought my kids a fucking 3D printer for Christmas to teach them how to operate a business. Nice. Dead serious, it's right there. That thing can print anything. 

My son's going to learn how to operate a business at nine years old. Yeah, that's awesome. 

Yeah, I mean, what would you rather do as a kid? Learn how to operate a business and print cool toys or get toys? You know, my parents were great, but they did the best they could with limited information, right? So it's about that evolution. It's about growing. It's about learning. And the more you can do that, the more you can have your family do that, the more you can have your team do that, the better, the stronger you're going to be. 

Yeah, absolutely, man. I love that. I love that. With a 3d printer, man, I grew up my family, both my parents, they owned a bindery. When when we were growing up, so instead of preschool, I went to the warehouse and, and boss people around when I was, you know, four or five years old. And, but I saw that, you know, I saw I had that, you know, had that income from entrepreneurs. Yeah, they they so they own a printing and bindery business. Then the technology boom hit in like 1999 2000, whatever. And they ended up... They had bought a house and had all... We had all the toys growing up and everything, and you had all these things, the C2s, the dirt bikes, and all that stuff. But then things changed when technology... When the internet came out and stuff like that, in that business in particular, in printing. Um, you know, and so they ended up going out of business and, you know, kind of witnessed the destruction of my family, you know, and by that time I was, you know, 14 or 15. And so I, I kind of had a little bit of a mature, mature mind to start kind of understanding, at least I later on, I could look back in life when I started my own business and kind of see what, what happened there, you know what I mean? And, and, um, and you know, that, that, that destruction of my family and, and their, their mistakes, um, and things like that. So I've kind of taken that and, and learned from it, but, um, But yeah, so, so absolutely, man, that's, that's great to, to start learning those things. Even just that little bit for me as a kid, you know, going to the warehouse and stuff that it absolutely had such a drastic impact on my life. And my parents were intentionally saying, Hey kid, you're going to learn how to run a business and being really intentional about it. You know what I mean? It was just, I was there, you know what I mean? For, for a few years. So, so being able to be intentional about it and actually teaching and taking that to the different, a different level, man, that's, that's, that's awesome. 

Yeah. And you know, it's cool. I love the fact that I wish I didn't grow up in an entrepreneurial house, you know, and to me, the timeframe, no one really remembers this. And you were probably even young. I'm not that much older than you, but like that was the.com bubble, right? Like everybody was losing their shit. Same thing, like in, in, you know, wait, right. So going through that, you can kind of see how everything can change. in a flash, and what I've been trying to tell people is, again, I think we're at the beginning stages of one of those events. People need to understand that, and they need to know how to bulletproof their business to survive whatever is coming. That starts with credit, starts with having cash on hand, it's having access to cash on demand when you need it, And it's about making the right investments into your business. 

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, man. So what is it? Where do people start? Maybe this is a good time to transition into your capital tools program and stuff like that. 

I'll tell you what I did. And the program's called Capital Tools. It's on the Integrated Business Financing website, or you could just look up capitoltools.com. And what I did was I put together a financial literacy for business owners. I wanted them to understand every program available to them. Wanted them to understand how to build business credit, how to check their business credit, how to create and monitor a personal financial statement. And right now, as it stands, the course is probably 8 to 10 hours, but I continue to add to it. And I go over every program. I go into good uses of capital, bad uses of capital, basically anything and everything you could think of that you need to learn as a business owner when it comes to growth, growth strategies, and debt. And I put it together. I made a private Facebook group. I threw in a bunch of bonuses, like a one-on-one strategy session and some other really cool stuff. And we keep adding to the training. And here's where I struggled with it. I didn't understand. I didn't know how I wanted to price it. Because I want it cheap enough where every single person can afford it. But if you make it intentionally that cheap, people buy it and don't use it. And that's my fear at the price point. I did it at $500. I could have made that program too great. Okay? I just want people to go in there. I want them to use it, learn, ask questions, and then build their business from the ground up. And then if you need help, you're in a private group, ask, like, hey, how do I do this? Or how do I do that? Because when I tell you my goal really is just to support small business, and I don't care if you work with me at Integrated or not, I mean that. Okay? Because I hate, I love our country, I hate our fucking government. That's the only way you can put that. 

I'm right there with you, man. 

I know you are, based on our conversation prior. I feel like me and you wear the same type of hat, and I'm not talking about the got credit hat on your head. 

Yeah, for sure, man. Well, we gotta stand up against this shit, man. We do. Or else it's our own... It's our own fucking doom. Yeah, it's our own... Our kids are... Man, it's just crazy to think about the possibility of... You said there's another fall or economic kind of disaster. This one, though, is different, man. It's different than previous times. 

I'm gonna tell you something. Right now, it's the 22nd, right? When Epstein's list comes out, I wouldn't be going fucking anywhere, because there's going to be some shit that is going to go down. It's going to be completely intentional to distract most people. I think it's going to be very, very, very bad. I don't want to get the show blocked, so we should probably not talk about this shit. 

Got to be talked about, man. It does. And if we just talk about it, you know, with just a couple of us and nobody hears it, they got people got to hear the conversation, you know what I mean? It's got to get out. Because, you know, there are a lot of people and no matter how much we talk about it, there's still going to be a large group of people that are going to be hit unexpectedly, man. And it's going to be rough, rough times, you know, so. But, but it's not all doom and gloom, man. It's not. And there's a certain freedom and responsibility, a sense of responsibility one takes on when you start to understand these things. And not like, oh, you know, people say, oh, you're, you know, you're just being negative all the time. Like, no, you don't understand. This is positive. Us talking about this and the truth. is a positive thing. It's a great thing. It's not to be negative. It's to protect. It's because we care about our country, care about people in it, care about our families. Care about our freedoms. 

I'll tell you right now, if they ever do central bank digital currencies, pack it up. We're done. Yeah. And people want to come in on that UBI, well, guess what? How do you think they're going to be forcing the central bank digital currencies up our ass? Well, they're going to promise everybody $2,000 a month. If you don't think they're going to keep printing whatever bullshit central bank digital currencies they're going to put out, they are. That's going to get devalued, and they're going to give you some BS, 1,000 or 2,000 bucks, universal basic income. All these things need to be rejected, because that's the one That is their one last remaining thing, because I don't think they're going to win the chip. No one's going to say, oh, yes, I'll take a microchip, please. Give me one. People will take free money. If the mass population can openly reject central bank digital currencies and UBI, I think we have a much better chance. Guys, by the way, nothing Adam and I are saying I'm not guessing. I want you to know I'm not guessing. I'm also not Nostradamus. If you guys actually want to learn about this stuff, and don't think that we're full of it or that we have tinfoil hats on, I would tell you to go to weforum.org. World Economic Forum website. These guys are so pompous that they tell you what they're planning on doing. 

They'll tell you right in front of your face, man. Yeah. 

Right in front of your face. Yeah. You know why? Because they look at you like a fucking peasant. Like you're nothing. You're just in the way. 

They know that they've wiped you and your family out a hundred years in the future, even more anyways, in their mind, they know what they, these are very wise and powerful people, you know? Evil too. Yeah, absolutely. And so they've planned this out for a long time, you know? And so will their plan work or not? That's the question, you know? 

Well, here's what I would tell you and I would leave you dead with. Guys, I hope you join Capital Tools, but look at the website. I actually care more about this part of it. Go to the World Economic Forum website, look at what we're talking about. Also, remember that in a bug's life, there's a reason the grasshoppers didn't want one to stand up to them. Because when we figure out that there are billions of us, There's only about 1,000 of these people. Right now, even with all the technology they have, it wouldn't make a difference. Yeah, they might kill a lot of us, but we will get every last one of them. There are certain things that with AI and robotics, and how far we're advancing, we have to make a stand sooner than later, because we might not get another chance. 

Yeah, absolutely. And business is the battlefield, man, as for right now. And so I think, you know, we got to we got to each figure out where we bring value to the market. I think you bring a lot of value, a lot of value in your expertise, man, to small, small business owners and all kinds of different people. Um, so yeah, I definitely encourage everybody. Uh, I can, I definitely plan on continue to work with you and maybe different, different capacities and everything like that. You and your team, um, has been, been helpful for me. So I appreciate you coming on, man. It's, it's great to connect and great to talk about real, real shit and real life stuff. You know what I mean? It's all, all good, man. 

So thanks for having me. Um, this has been a blast. 

Yeah, absolutely. 

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