As a business owner, you know that every dollar counts. And, there always seem to be small fees on everything, taking away those dollars that you need to grow your business.
That’s why I invited my friend, Jed Morley, from Platinum Payment Processing, to talk about his service and how they help eliminate costly transactions for your sales. The small costs really add up and Jed will reveal how in today’s episode. Listen now!
Jed’s website – https://platpay.com/
Want to increase your cash flow? – https://bit.ly/3v1Yi9P
Listen to the Apple Podcast: CLICK HERE!
Watch on YouTube: CLICK HERE!
TRANSCRIPTS:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashwell expert and anti Financianal advisor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Chris Miles was able to retire twice by the time he was 39 years old, but he’s not content to just enjoy his own financial freedom and peace of mind. Chris wants you to have your own ripple effect so you can live free today. He’s not the financial advisor you expected. He’s the non-financial advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles
Speaker 1 (00:38):
One. There are Schultz for you. Those that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom. You want the cashflow right now, not 30 or 40 years, but today so that you can live that life that you love with those that you love. But I know if you’re like me, it’s not just about getting rich, it’s about living a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to create a ripple effect and bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in because that’s what allows me to create a ripple effect in your life and of course the lives that you impact as well. Thank you for tuning in. You’ve been binging, you guys been sharing, as I’ve mentioned before, you put us in the top one half of 1% of podcasts worldwide, so thank you so much for being such a loyal listener or watcher or whatever you are.
(01:22)
Wherever you’re at today, Hey, if you haven’t done so already, if you haven’t subscribed to a YouTube channel, the Money Ripples channel, there’s also a Money Ripples podcast shorts channel that we have as well. Be sure to check that out. We get a lot of extra little bonus materials that we throw on that channel as well, so be sure to subscribe to both of those right now. Alright, so I’ve brought on a guest today, Jed Morley, Jed’s, somebody who actually I’ve gotten to know in a mastermind group that I’ve been a part of over the last year or two. And man, this guy, not only a wealth of knowledge when it comes to payment systems and things like that and how to actually improve your costs and especially if you’re a business owner, listen up, this is a big, big deal. But this guy is like the serial entrepreneur.
(02:00)
I mean, this guy is got his fingers all over the place in a good way and definitely doing some great work out there and just a brilliant business mind as I’ve gotten to know him more and more. Definitely recommend you guys check out his company. We’ll give you some more information about Platinum Payment Systems as well as some of the other projects he’s working on as well that can really help you, especially if you’re in the coaching industry or you’re a marketer right now. You definitely need to listen to this and heck, if you’re somebody who’s a business owner just needs to free up more cash so you have more to invest to create passive income. Listen in right now. So Jed, welcome to our show.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Hey, Chris, thanks so much. I am super excited to be here and to find out more about how Money Ripples with you, so thanks buddy,
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Man, it’s been such a pleasure. Always. Yeah. Well give us more of your backstory. Tell us more about who Jed Morley really is.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, it’s a great opportunity to be here. I always start out with just a little bit unique perspective because I’m kind of a numbers guy. I’m around payments and I see real numbers, things that work and what doesn’t work in business because every day we all look at that balance sheet and we see what’s converting, not what’s the lifetime value of a customer and so on and so forth. But I’m number eight of 13. I have 12 siblings, big family, and I bring that up for one simple fact, being the number eight child, I sit almost in the middle of a big family and I’ve got brothers and sisters that are entrepreneurs, that are attorneys, that are doctors, dentists, contractors, just about every kind of business that you could look at. And so watching them grow their business and seeing how they’ve taken companies through an investment cycle and some wins, some losses, good deals, bad deals, everything together, it’s really been super valuable. And so I’ve seen it from the family side of it as well as we have a family office, we invest in a lot of different businesses and technologies and things. And so I think that gives me the unique perspective is I’m a business owner first. I didn’t start out as a banker, as a payments guy. I started out with construction and development and real estate, and I developed for national credit tenants all over the country and did a lot of different properties and developments. And so I bring a unique background and perspective to payments,
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And that’s something that is interesting, right? Because like you said, you’ve seen all these different industries. What got you into the niche that you’re in today?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
So in 2006 and seven, it was kind of funny. I was down doing Napa Auto parts stores, buying ’em, building them, owning them, and leasing them back to genuine parts company. And I was doing it in multiple markets in Denver and Phoenix and Salt Lake, and I’m buying ground for cheaper than they’re buying property to put houses on in Utah. And I thought, that makes no sense. Here’s the traffic count and I can buy this piece of property to put an 8 billion back company on here and these guys are speculating to build a house on it. And I told my wife, I said, this makes no sense. And so to be honest, it was funny. I started flying around and I was looking at Oklahoma and Texas and I was going to buy car washes or storage units because I wanted cash flow, I wanted that residual income. And my brother-in-Law, who’s an attorney, came to me, he says, Hey, we can buy this payments company. And the only question I said is, does it have residual income? And he goes, yeah. And I’m like, okay, I’m in. And I didn’t even know what I was doing when we bought this thing. I just knew I could grow and scale something that had cashflow and that’s was the start of my payment space. Just you’re the first ones that have probably heard the whole story, but that’s kind of how we got started in this.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
That’s fascinating. Well, and I bet you coming from outside the industry then coming in, right? I mean assu is very eyeopening. You probably learned a lot. Where are some of the things that you learned and maybe even bad things in the industry, maybe just things that were kind of crappy that you realized we got to fix this?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Great question and I’m glad you asked because that’s exactly what happened. I came in and I’m like, okay, if I’m looking at a development, I control all my numbers, all my costs, and there’s always that range of margin. The worst thing that happened is we get into multiple accounts. And so I kind of got in 2008 is when we bought out the partners and brought Plat pay together and that kind of thing. But what was really unique about it was I realized in a hurry that companies, one of the death cycles was they grew too fast and they did not understand payments. And so everybody’s like, Hey, I can jump in and I’m going to start something. A slow grow is easy for a bank to understand, but a blow up overnight or over a weekend or something, a launch is really tough. They don’t understand fraud, they wonder if it’s
Speaker 1 (06:38):
A fraud the pan.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Exactly. And they think it’s just some fraud. Somebody stole cards and hit a whole bunch of accounts. And so I’ve seen every one of those from literally the fraud where we’ve had hundreds of thousands of cards hit. You know what I mean? Because somebody got a batch and this is years ago and pinged cards, and then they would find the ones that they could steal the data on and hit numbers and stuff. So I mean, I’ve seen about everything you could see inside of this business, but I realized that it doesn’t really matter if the chargeback process is, Hey, I’m going to make money whether you get a chargeback or not, if you win it or fix it, and all those kinds of things. So there’s certain things in the industry that didn’t necessarily make sense. And so we started our own merchant lifeline, which was one of the very first chargeback represent centers.
(07:27)
We flew back to New York and Washington, we looked at all the different groups that were doing them and how they were being done. This is back when you faxed everything in. And so we really started to break down the entire system. We started a company called Merchant Reserve Recovery where companies, especially in the Nutra space, acai berry and whatever else was a big deal time and they would have all their money held and there was no reporting and no way to get your money back. So my brother that’s an attorney, we partnered and we started Merchant Reserve Recovery where we could go in and recapture their money being held by the credit card companies. So I’ve seen a little bit of everything in this space because I came at it from a different way of looking at it. How could you control, like I did in development, every step of the process from the data, the lead flow, the software, and since that day to now it’s 180, the technology that’s available, the fraud tools that are available, all kinds of things. And so it’s been really fun to watch this whole industry change and it continues to evolve and change every day. It’s what I love about it.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, and that’s one thing I know it can be really confusing. I know I’m currently in the process with your company to see, analyze the charges and things like that to see if there’s ways to improve those costs because all things being equal, we like paying less, right? I mean, let’s be honest, we definitely don’t. I mean, if I can have more profit, more money, my hands than I can control and then I can do something with it. But yeah, I got to create a lot of velocity of money. I like that. I’d like to have improved costs and not overpay, but I also know with my industry, especially when you do any kind of coaching or consulting, it’s a landmine. It’s really tricky because I remember there was a merchant that never had a refund, never had any chargebacks. In fact, even now going on almost 13 years, never had one. But it doesn’t matter if they don’t like your industry, you’re gone and then you’re scrambling trying to find some other way to collect payments. What are some tricks or some things you’ve guys have learned to help avoid that?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Probably the biggest thing that we’ve done is we look at every merchant account and say, it’s almost like insurance. How do you have redundancy to say that, look, we want best fees that we can get. How do we save you money, save you time, and let you sleep at night? I think those three things kind of go hand in hand because I know a lot of guys that are like, Hey, I don’t care. It’s working. And I’m like, oh, that’s great, but when you need me, I’ll be here. And the other guys may not, right? So I think the thing that, and Chris, here’s something I came up with this last week. Somebody was asking me what’s the difference between us and say Stripe? And I said, it’s kind of the difference between homeownership and being a renter. One, you’re renting on Stripe, the big nameless, faceless company, these ones that you don’t really have a relationship with, they have a shared bin, and so they take on some of the risk, but by so doing they have an easier underwriting process, it’s because they’ll say, Hey, start doing it now.
(10:28)
And then as transactions come in, we’ll then evaluate is this higher risk, lower risk, whatever. And so I said, the difference is in a merchant account, you own it kind of like a homeowner’s, but it’s a little bit harder where the qualifications mean I’m going to go through and I know my anti-money laundering and the know my customers and all of the guidelines upfront, but when I do that, I know your business and I know what models and I know which banks and how to put it together. And then what I love about my industry is I can say, okay, once I’ve got you set up now, if you ever need to change anything or fix something, I’m your advocate. At the same time, I can get you multiple accounts. So you have redundancy that says, Hey, if just the example you used, the guy hadn’t had a chargeback, no issues whatsoever, been with him for 13 years.
(11:15)
I hear this all the time because see what’s happening is as when Silicon Valley went down or any of these other banks and as their budgets tighten, they’re acquired by someone else. Well, that new bank or that new group or that new board of directors may not like coaching, may not whatever industry you’re in, or they’re too heavy, so they’re going to try to balance their portfolio. So you could just be a casualty of that. And it happens all the time where exact same use case, somebody calls me, I’d been trying to get ’em for five years, and I was at least top of mind when they got that 30 day move letter. And so now today I do all of their payments and they’re sending me multiple associations and groups that they’re involved with because they’ve loved the experience. We’ve been able to lower their costs almost by 50% of what they were paying literally from understanding their business, knowing what it is. And we started off at the same higher rate, but then just slowly were able to work it down. And so it’s thousands and thousands of dollars a month and they’re just so grateful and so are we because it’s a win for both of us. We have a great customer for life, they’re bringing us tons of partners and we all win. So to me, that’s kind of been the benefit of creating a simple way to work together, save money, reduce risk and stress. It’s been great.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
What would you say is really your niche? Is it industry specific? Because I know there’s other people out there to, they’ll try to say the same thing you’ve said, right? Hey, we really try to help you. We try to do that. But what would you say really does set you apart?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think the difference between us is the way we’ve set up our business. We’ve got teams that focus in different verticals. So we have the coaches, the gurus, the marketers. We’ve got the Nutri team that can actually take care of any nutraceutical type products. We’ve got a team that does pos and we built a pay fac when you’re looking at that. So if you need all the tools of Stripe, we have all the same type of tools, payments, pay in payout, all that stuff. So I really think the difference is we call ourselves money experts because we’ve looked at it and said, however money flows, we can help you get it done. And I think the deal is this. Another analogy is like, okay, the hard part is if you work for a bank or a credit card processor direct, you’re limited on what tools you can sell.
(13:40)
It’s like, Hey, I can only do, I kind of do this one. And so that’s where probably the diversification is our strength because I can say I’ve got 50 banks. Yes, there’s probably five that we do the majority of our business with, but when somebody calls me and says, Hey, can you do this? Whatever that is, we have an outlet for it. And so it really kind of makes it nice to say, Hey, in this event today, this is where I would put you, but if you want to change your business or something else is adding or you acquire something else, we have a place for that. And I think that’s probably the uniqueness of us is saying, what do you need done? Last kind of analogy I’ll use is I tell people, I’m a payment architect. I look at it and say, how do you want this to work?
(14:24)
Because I may not have everything that you need today, but I know exactly how to architect it for you so that if you need to pay out multiple people, if you need to bring money in a certain way. And so right now, probably our sweet spot, we’re one of the only e-commerce brands that can say credit card, a CH, all tied into the same checkout, all tied into your accounting software from Sage, NetSuite, QuickBooks, FreshBooks, whatever you want it to do. So now you have real time reconciliation, which saves your accountants tons of times and money, and especially when you’re looking at it going, oh my word, how do I reconcile two and three days off and the credit card with the payments? And so we’re seeing just that simplicity of saying text to pay, email to pay, all of those things are embedded in our gateway. So it just makes it simpler. And that’s really what we’re trying to do is make things simple for you to say, Hey, I don’t want to go anywhere else because you guys handle everything. For me,
Speaker 1 (15:24):
That’s big. I know for me, I’m always about simplicity. I think simplicity is the ultimate sophistication as DaVinci says, but it’s true. I remember one time someone actually wanted to do a CH. I’m like, oh no, I couldn’t do it through that same payment system. I had to go find a way through QuickBooks to do it, and then that messed up my QuickBooks for the accountants. So I had to figure out how to make that all balance out and work correctly. And it can be a pain sometimes if you don’t have it all at a one stop or one place that you can just go and do it. It’s simple. It’s easy to use, it’s fast. You have to put all that mental energy learning a system. It’s not done for you, but as simple as possible so that you don’t have to think about it and you can move on to doing what you do best as a business owner.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Well, and you said the money ripples, right? That’s kind of the focus of this is how can I save money? Well, time is money. And so I look at this and I often tell people, listen, so our slogan is payment people purpose. And it’s really, look at the end of the day, I know you have a life, and so you have a family, and I want you to spend as much time with your family as you can. And the last thing you want to worry about is your payments. We’re the payment people with purpose of all of our money that comes through us, we donate back to charities. We’ve got tons of nonprofits that we work with. We really feel big about that. There’s this blessing that we want to ripple to other people. And I think the key is this. When you think about that payment, how can I make it easy for you?
(16:49)
We’re always here to answer phones, walk you through if you have a question. We’ve got all the solutions from the gateway, from the fraud to set up an account, to run a test transaction, to do an a CH, do those kinds of things. But I really feel like the key here is how can you do it that will free up your person’s time so that they can make you money? Because again, so much of it is I have to go track something else down and that disconnect. And I think the other thing that’s fun is we’re able to add surcharging when it makes sense. So we walk through that to say, here is the way with just a simple accounting, you can take real money and have it become, instead of you paying that 3%, they pay the 3% in certain transactions. That makes a ton of sense.
(17:38)
And I can tell you on an ebitda, it has changed millions of dollars in certain verticals and industries by saying, Hey, I’m a subscription based company, a hundred dollars, that three bucks over 30,000 people makes huge difference. And you’re looking at it from just, I’m saving a little bit of money. But then when you turn that onto the accounting side of it, it becomes life-changing money. So again, a lot of things that you could do that’s different, but every one of those are different use cases. And that’s I think the value that we bring is I’ll walk you through whatever your business is, what makes sense, what doesn’t make sense, what are we seeing because we have lots of thousands of businesses work with us. And so we see different industries and different MCC codes, we know what’s working, so we kind of are there as a payment partner to walk you through and say, Hey, here’s something to consider. This works, this doesn’t, what are you doing that’s working? And it’s just kind that boutique approach.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Well, that was kind of the question I was leading up to here is really like how can somebody know if they’re getting ripped off when it comes to processing so many different fees and the percentages and whatnot? And it’s not always the interest rate. It’s not only always the percentage, sometimes it’s the fees or just other things that happen. How do you know if you’re getting ripped off?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Well, the easiest way is honestly contact me or somebody like me and ask ’em to run a side-by-side analysis and just show us, Hey, show me what I’m paying and how come, because credit card companies, they’re not dumb. They do all of those hidden fees for a reason, and I wish it were better and I wish it were transparent. I wish I could say, Hey, every one of these are the same because it’s just not. But what we do is we look at it and I can show you anytime you want to say, Hey, like I was telling you this one association, we’ve worked with them for years now and shown them, here’s what we need to do. If we switch to this gateway and we change this, I can move you from level one to level two or level three interchange. All of those things give way better, buy rates better.
(19:39)
And so then I can lower their rates and it really increases everybody’s profitability. They make way more money. It keeps our payments in line. There’s a lot of ways to do things, but I think the key is this, if you don’t know who is on your team, it’s going to be a really bad day when you have your money held or when they shut your account down. And I’m telling you, the biggest companies today are doing this, and I’m not going to name names, but I will say some of the biggest banks today, and we’re saying the main street banks are freezing accounts, holding accounts, holding people’s money, and they’re making it really hard. So I’m just telling you, I would highly recommend that you should know who your partner is in your payments just because so much of your life is right around where that money’s coming from or is it going to be there for you tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
That’s so true. I’ve actually known companies that have had their money held for not just the, so-called six months, they might say it could be years even after they’ve shut it down still years before they’ll release that money. And I’ve seen companies almost go bankrupt because of that one reason alone.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Well, Alex, Oz and his a hundred million dollars offer book, if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend, it’s an awesome book. But his very opening first chapter is I made this big sale held, charged back a hundred thousand bucks and he only had like 120, forgive me on the numbers, but whatever. And he literally right before Christmas, had a couple thousand bucks and he’s like out of business because of one chargeback. And that was the way he chose to start his entire story. And it’s what forced him on his journey in his gyms and club memberships. And so I’m just telling you, everyone needs to understand payments are the vital lifeblood of business and you need to say, Hey, what am I doing to have the reassurance that I’ve got the right system? It’s not just rates. It’s not just fees. It really is do I have the relationship?
(21:39)
And I think that’s probably the thing we push the most is we’re really focused on building a relationship. And people ask me all the time, jet, how do I win? And I’m like, I win when you win. And that’s what I liked about this business is there’s no contract that says, Hey, you got to sign this big long deal with me or anything else. I win when you win, if you’re happy and you’re making money, I’m making a fraction of a percent. And that’s how we make our money. And so I look at this and I go, it really is a win-win true partnership in the sense of I’m only here to serve and make people more money and I want you to win because that’s how I win too.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
That’s what we’re all about here, man. That’s servant part that we always love, right?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well man, this has been awesome. If people want to reach out to you guys to find out more, what would be the best way to do it?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
It’s super easy. It’s just our website is, it’s an abbreviation of Platinum Payments, so it’s plat pay.com. Kristen, it’s so easy. I tell people all the time, if you want anything done, our website is awesome. You can go in there and literally fill out the form and the form on there will start the merchant application. It will have one of our guys contact you. All you would do is put whatever notes. Hey, want a free analysis anything there? We’ve got the best library, all kinds of tools that are there. We’re always reinventing the payment space We’re going to roll out. If I can give you a couple of highlights really quick before we finish, we’re working on a card that will be a very unique card in our wallet. So we’ve created a wallet with 17 patents that we’re pushing to major, major brands and platforms.
(23:22)
It’ll give insights that you’ve never seen before. It’s different than Apple Wallet or Samsung or Google, but it will do the same kind of thing. It’ll push video marketing right from a wallet, no TPAs for coaches, gurus, marketers. It is brilliant. And we’re having massive adoption from Main Street retailers. They love it because instead of developing an app, you put a card in a wallet and now you’ve got that ability to push, take payments, take rewards, all kinds of stuff. So that’s one. The other one I’m really excited about is we’re going to, and while I would recommend that you watch for this, it’s not out yet, but it’s coming. It’s going to be payment cowboys. We’re partnering with some of the largest cowboys in the world, and it will be become a brand around that whole lifestyle of what we can do that hard work, faith, family values.
(24:11)
And we’re going to come back and really start showing, we’re going to put some cool events from rodeos and some fun events that’ll be round family and that. So I’m just saying we’re doing things. We’re going to have a huge, huge giveaway at the end of this year for a side-by-side, and we’re working out some deals on some big stuff. So a lot of fun things. I’m really excited about what we’re doing. I would highly recommend it. If somebody wants more information, go to Plat Pay and ping me there. I’m easy to find. If you want to send me an email, it’s pretty easy. It’s just jed@plapay.com. One of my team members or myself will get right through to you and it’s probably the easiest way to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Awesome. Yeah, we’ll be sure to put that in the show notes. And I’ll tell you too, Jed, just as a personal shout out from my experience getting, sometimes I get overwhelmed when there’s so many things, not just business, but just personal life and everything else. I really appreciate that you have members of your team that says, listen, do you need me to sit down with you? And I told ’em, I was like, you know what? Honestly, yeah, even if it’s by Zoom, just sit there while I’m filling out the form just to make sure I’m accountable and I do it. And I appreciate that. That’s something that you usually don’t see many people willing to do. And so a big shout out for you and your team.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Thanks buddy. And we are super excited. And so Chris, same kind of thing. If anyone needs help you or anybody else, feel free. We’d love to just offer free brainstorming, whatever we can do to help you as you’re designing what business you’re working on. We love to be there and help.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Fantastic. Really appreciate that, Jed. Well, everybody, there you go. Definitely go to plat pay.com, check that out. Reach out to Jed if you have questions for him or you just trying to figure out what to do for your next phase of your business, definitely do that today. And here’s the thing, guys, you can listen to these podcasts all day long, but your life only begins to change when you start to take action. So be sure not to be a hear of the word, but be a doer as well. Go and make it a wonderful prosperous week and we’ll see you later. How do you know if you’re getting ripped off
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Credit card companies? They’re not dumb. They do all of those hidden fees for a reason. But I think the key is this. If you don’t know who is on your team, it’s going to be a really bad day when you have your money held or when they shut your account down. And I’m telling you, the biggest companies today are freezing accounts, holding accounts, holding people’s money. You should know who your partner is in your payments just because so much of your life is right around where that money’s coming from is going to be there for you.