welcome back to the daily mastermind george wright the third with your daily dose of inspiration motivation and education and i am excited to be in studio today with earl adams earl how are you doing man i'm doing great george doing great how are you i'm great i'm great thanks for being here i know we had a little bit of coordinating but guys listen today we're going to be talking about corporate credit and ways that you can grow your business. And so let me give you a little bit of an intro. Earl's a co-founder and CEO of TryTouring, and he's an expert in business credit as well as corporate funding. He helps entrepreneurs basically build real corporate credit and stuff that's tied to your EIN number, not your personal assets. And he mentors emerging entrepreneurs and founders and business leaders. But he's got a background that really made me want to kind of reach out because many of you are struggling right now. You're trying to grow your business, your founders, whether you're raising money or trying to expand. There's a whole field here that maybe you don't quite understand. And so I'm excited to have you here today with us, Earl. And so with that being said, I would love for you to just give us a little bit of your background because I think a lot of people come into this space and they don't really have personal background. They just jump into it. And so would you mind just kind of sharing a little bit of your background with us So people get to know who you are and where you came from. Sure. Yeah. You know, I was raised in family business, like a lot of people worry. When I was nine years old, I was in the warehouse in the summers, sorting hydraulic fittings for my dad, 25 cents an hour. George, I probably wasn't worth that, just to be honest with you. But I was heavily indoctrinated into what it is to own a business. My dad owned the companies. We were the first ones there, last ones to leave. Other kids were playing baseball. I was sorting fittings. And when school came in, I was pulling a red wagon around the neighborhood with a lawnmower tied to the back in a bucket with some bleach white and joy soap and a thing washing cars and mowing lawns. So I spent that period of my time learning and watching and seeing what goes on and the work that it takes, the work ethic kind of got instilled in me. And by the time I was 18, my dad says, what's going to make you happy, son? And I said, well, when I've done as well in business as you've done, dad. And he goes, oh, that'll never happen. oh great thanks for the motivation what he goes no life and business is about timing it's about timing and when he got into what he got into it was kind of like bill gates getting into computers it was the right time the right the right piece and i said well then i i quit and so for for 37 years i've built businesses and small businesses large businesses seven figure eight figure businesses and and here about five years ago i figured out i was doing it wrong what so i'm curious because you obviously grew up hard work and entrepreneurial but what do you mean you were doing it wrong like what's your what's your what was your big kind of epiphany there well trisha i'd built this company over the course of three years put 1.9 million dollars of real money out of the bank money not borrowed money into the company between myself and family built the company up to eight figures i'm thinking my gosh i'm i'm going to exit this is it this is that moment i'm gonna exit for 5 10x revenue and everything's gonna be great and i jumped on one of my harleys and i went on a celebration ride from the west coast to the east coast went back to new york i was on my way back coming through wyoming and i unfortunately hit a mule deer at 440 in the morning at 85 miles an hour wow so that ended up putting me in a coma they had to put me in a coma they told everybody he's probably not going to make it he's probably not going to live And they shipped me off to a hospital and everybody's going, coming in and saying their goodbyes and stuff like that. And I had a couple of business partners in that business, you know, like most business partners are like, how can we help? Except they threw in ourselves at the end of it. So while I was in the coma, they took a bunch of merchant capital advanced loans in my name and then stripped and ripped my company and ta-da, I live. and I found out the hard way in Washington state and I think a lot of other states most people don't realize this is that when you have partners on the cap table even though they're doing criminal things breaches of fiduciary responsibility and things of that nature cautious interference it becomes a civil matter not a criminal matter so I had no real recourse because you can't squeeze blood from a turnip and then you couple that with the fact that I had signed my name on the dotted line for everything in that company outside of putting up the money, I was heavily, heavily leveraged. My name was associated with every ounce of credit for that company. And while sitting in a recovery chair, mechanical chair, I was hit with the reality by happenstance, really, that I could have built credit on my EIN. It was a social security number for my business in lieu of using my own social security number. So I didn't need to have any of that stuff in my name. Yeah, this is one of the reasons that I started the Daily Mastermind, you know, mind, money, business, motivation, and lifestyle, because I think none of us really learn these things. Obviously, they don't teach them in school. And unfortunately, you learn some of the best. On one hand, you learn the best lessons in life through experience. But on the other hand, you don't want to learn some of those lessons. So here you are, you know, living and building the American dream. You have an unexpected event, which happens and people don't think about until they do happen, but you never really had that education to structure your business, right? Which is why I really am a big, big believer in that financial and business structure education. So I'm curious, you did what most entrepreneurs and business owners did. You built a business, you built it on the backbone of your personal credit. And most people don't know that there's a difference. But when this happened, you had all of this liability that was out there. So what was the turning point for you? First of all, like how did you deal with that? And second of all, what was the turning point where you kind of had that aha moment and realized that there was more you could have done with that EIN or employer identification number? you know it's it's an interesting question and you framed it pretty well in that i think most people whether they're brought up by their families or they're raised in company business or they have mentors in their life nobody really teaches that this is probably the single most important thing that you can do in life for a business which is create that separation we go get we get llcs and we set up s corps and c corps and we're trying to you know keep that separation right so you don't lose everything if something goes crazy but i was sitting in that chair i had my laptop in my lap i couldn't even stand up on my own and i see this little blip that says use your ein to build credit on your business and i thought well that's hogwash you know i might not have said hogwash george yeah right but but i had free time on my hands so i just started deep diving in it and i i had this moment where i went i have got to be the dumbest smart person i've ever met i mean how did i not know this how did i not know this raised around business building businesses how did i not know the reality is it's okay nobody's out there teaching it it's okay from the standpoint that you didn't know once you do know now you got to do something about it yeah well and the awareness like you uh we were kind of talking before the show like the awareness is a the key You know it unfortunate that most people become aware of what they should have could have would have done when it a bad scenario or a bad situation that happens which is why I know you're so passionate about doing things now. But how did you start educating yourself? Was it just literally looking online, researching and kind of going through the ups and downs yourself? Did you have mentors? Like what did you do to really educate yourself in this area of corporate credit and building your corporate credit? I got to be honest, I was really mad at myself, to be honest with you. I was ferreting out of all of those issues. And fortunately, I came out of it for the most part unscathed. Obviously, the money was gone. The eight-figure company was gone. So I came out of it fairly well compared to where most people would have been. But the fact that I didn't know drove me nuts. So it was just a massive, immersive, deep dive. and then the more I dug the more I realized there's a lot that I don't know and I thought what else don't I know and I started digging and pulling those things to the table and I said you know I'm gonna instead of going and doing what I've traditionally done I'm gonna dedicate the rest of my life to bringing tools to the table that businesses like myself would be otherwise unaware of not even know where to source and probably couldn't afford even if we can find it I wanted to know what the what are the elite doing what are the affluent doing what are these people in power, what's their loophole? And I started dragging all this in. And the most prevalent piece was really that initial separation of personal and business and how you do it and what the methodology was for it. And so it's just been, and every day, honestly, is an exercise in learning more and adding to all of these other pieces that I've been able to bring to the table in our company. Yeah. Cause it, you know, tax laws change all the time, you know, different things change all the time, but like you said, and I think it's important to note for the listener that, you know, the ultra high net worth and the really successful businesses out there, they are not scaling their businesses with personal guarantees because it's not only the topic of separating your liability, but it's also in my experience, there is even some, not just benefits, but better leverage you can get by growing your corporate credit. So So help us understand what's the difference between corporate credit and personal credit as far as guarantee and liability in a business? And why does someone want to immediately make a shift? Can you just make that decision or do you have to get to a certain point before you can? Because we probably have listeners that are everywhere from startups and founders to large businesses that currently have personal guarantees on their merchant processing and all that kind of stuff. Where do you start and what's the core difference in your mind? well look it doesn't matter if you're thinking about going into business or you've been in business for 15 20 years the end result's still the same i talk to businesses all the time that they do millions upon millions of dollars in top line revenue and we'll go and pull their their business credit and this is funny because and i'm going to tell you the distinction but they only qualify for like 1500 or 2000 they're like what am i going to do with 2000 when you turn 18, most people, they start building their personal credit, right? Maybe they go get a cosigner. Dad cosigns for them, gives them that speech, be a good steward of your finances, and you'll build it, but you're going to need it throughout life. But nobody tells you that on the business side, when you're building credit, there's three different entities that you're getting reported to, Dun & Bradstreet, Business Equifax, and Business Experian. And you need to be registered with them. That's just a tip for everybody. You got to get registered with those. but here's the one of the other unique distinctions on personal credit they always want you to keep your utilization way down low right if you're going to stay with a good score and keep your own utilization low business credit the more you use the more you demonstrate your ability to borrow and pay the more they give you usually the tune of 10 to 100 times that of what you could ever get personally so and so your your cash flow your business obviously affects that and a lot of other things. What's your, what's your biggest factors that affect your ability to build and grow corporate credit and scale it? So here's the, here's the big misnomer has nothing to do with cashflow. You can build credit on an entity. We have, we have a company, an LLC. We have a hundred thousand dollar credit line on it. We have a hundred thousand dollar truck in the company's name, a $55,000 Jeep in it, about $60,000 and other cards on it. Never done $1 in revenue. but we utilize that corporate credit. We, we want to go buy toilet paper. We use the card. Then we pay the company, right? So it's legal. And we, so it's the use of it. Got it. Just your demonstrated ability to borrow and pay. Everybody thinks, well, I don't do enough revenue so I can never build credit. That's not the case at all. It's just your demonstrated ability to borrow and repay. Revenue has no factor. And revenue has a factor when you go into getting big bank loans where they're going to look at something called an SPSS score, which is between your personal and your corporate, your business credit, your paydex score. So why do you think most entrepreneurs or business owners, founders don't understand this? Like besides the fact that it's not taught, like what's the big, what's the big reason they don't understand? Is it hard to get the information? Is it hard to sort through it? Like what's the thing holding most business owners back from leveraging such a good asset? Most people think it's a lot harder than what it is. You can build it way faster than you can ever build personal credit. but the bigger bigger thing is we're pot from an early age the old lemonade stand methodology you know you buy some lemons you get some water get some sugar you sell some lemonade you take your profits you buy more lemon sugar and get some water from mom right sometimes it starts raining and the lemon goes bad and the sugar goes away and now you don't have anything but we are taught to reinvest even me as a at a young age reinvest your money reinvest your money well the affluent the elite they use other people's money they always have they always will and so we're just not aware of it but if people understood one simple statistic which has been constant year after year after year which is on average in the u.s around 600,000 businesses will shut their doors forever they'll shut them down they're gone and everybody always says poor johnny he he's been there for 20 years he his business is gone but they forget about johnny's family, Johnny's employees, the families of Johnny's employees, the families that uplift that family, and then the organizations that step in. There's such a negative ripple effect from a business shutting down. And it's wholly unnecessary because 83% of those businesses, when audited, say, if I just had access to credit and capital, I could have stayed in business. But everybody's leveraged themselves with a hilt. And unfortunately, a lot of them are losing their personal assets because they're signing their name. Sure, I'll leverage my house. I will co-sign forever for my baby. People refer to their business as their baby and they'll co-sign forever. Yet your dad wouldn't co-sign for you beyond one or two times and you had to be a good steward of your finances. So there's a psychology difference as it relates to it. And the one is a lot easier to build than the other. It's a lot easier to build corporate credit than personal. And you don't have to have good personal credit to build corporate credit. Yeah, it really is unfortunate that, you know, a large majority of businesses shut down and because they've had their personal name or guarantee or assets tied to it, it does have a ripple effect through their personal. And I think most people I've learned that over the years don't realize that the high, the ultra high net worth like I said they don use their own money They use other people money They use credit They build and grow their business because they also have this mental ability that most don to separate business and personal and i think a lot of people in business have a hard time separating their identity from the business itself as a structure and that holds them back from really doing it but you're right you've got to learn if you really want to be successful you've got to learn to leverage tools and resources and and the tax code and credit to grow your business. What do you, what have you seen? Cause you work with a lot of companies. What have you seen as some of the biggest benefits that businesses have by creating and putting some focus on building corporate credit? What are the, what are the real benefits to an average business? You know, I, I commonly hear people say, we're fine. We do plenty of money. We're good. But then we, we start talking to them. We get in there and we, we always look at their credit. It doesn't, it's an effect that like personal credit. They realize I qualify for nothing and I do millions of dollars. But here's the real big benefit. If you've been in business, you've encumbered yourself. You invariably encumbered yourself somewhere along the line. Maybe you have partners. Maybe you carry a balance sheet where one partner's put in more money than another partner, right? When you build corporate credit, picture a wall. That's your corporate veil. When you build credit over here, that's 10 to 100 times that of this over here. You can take that credit, jump over that veil, pay off these encumbrances. now it's attached to this and go right back on the other side of the corporate veil where you belong and this ends up clean and clear being clean clear personally allows your personal credit to do what it's supposed to but so many people end up leveraged that they can't even go buy a car they just can't because they got so much tied to them and they're feeling overwhelmed for sure so yeah you know i think a lot of businesses are are held hostage by their resources right because if If it's not, you know, Tony Robbins talks about it, it's a matter of resources or resourcefulness. And most people have resourcefulness. They just don't have resources. And so there's the obvious, be able to expand your business and, you know, and grow. And I think most business owners don't realize that their goal really needs to be create a lifestyle so they can grow outside themselves. But you can't do that if you're personally tied, personally liable and everything like that. So you've been in this space for a while, and I'm curious because the market's changing, right? The market has gone from tough to get education, at least I've seen over the last couple, three decades. The information was key, then it was how to use that information, and now we're getting into an age where it's all about using tools and resources and AI. And so you've been in the space where you've had education and people pay a lot of money in the past for, you know, corporate credit and training and, you know, coaching, mentoring, things like that. What have you developed now? Because I was I kind of took notice as to what you guys have on how you've shifted the framework of how a business can get sort of educated and utilize these tools. So tell me a little bit about Tritorine. Yeah. So look, the AI is here. It's not going away. and the reality is and people people say so well i'm gonna lose my job because of ai you probably are a lot of you so you can make a choice you know i i can either be the one who tells ai what to do or i can be the one that ai tells what to do you have that ability to make that call but in business and and being on the leading edge of things you also have to adopt these things that you know aren't going away it's the next industrial revolution i mean europe forces are now just pets. They're no longer beasts of burden. This is the same thing here. You've got to be on that leading edge. So I've spent all of these years pulling all these resources and we have all these different companies that allow businesses to come in and take advantage of that, take advantage of this. And I said, you know what? Let's house it all under one roof. Let's create a membership platform that people can engage in to where they have the access point and they can pick and choose and educate themselves on all the different things that are available in lieu of having a rep going, Hey, have you heard about this? Have you heard about that? They can sit and view it. But then I said, you know what? If I truly and genuinely believe like I do that the most important thing you can do for longevity within your business is to establish corporate credit now before you need it. Right. Then I should make that really accessible. And we've sold the platform forever for 3000, 4000, 5000, depending on how you bundle it. The chronology doesn't change. I said, let's negate a lot of the human element. Let's utilize AI on the educational side and let's just give it to people. Let's let them have it just for being a member. Let's make it super easy, create a barrier of entry that's not a barrier at all. It's just an open door saying, come in. So we've done that. We've reformatted things so that everybody can take advantage of it. Nobody has to use money as a reason why they can't do what they really have a responsibility to hit because if you own a business and you have employees, you have a responsibility to those employees. It's not just about your income, but theirs as well. So you have to protect yourself, no different than having a general liability policy. You need to be here at least sage and stabilized when it comes to credit so you don't run into those falls. So that's why we created TriTuring. Yeah, that's interesting because it's just another great example. I was doing a master class earlier today talking to people about how they need to not just understand AI, but they need to know how to utilize it both to leverage their time, but also access information. And so I love that you said that because a lot of times people think, well, you know, cool, catchy platforms and phrases and all these kinds of things. But at the end of the day, technology is making it available for you to quickly assess your needs, get access to information. And so leveraging AI is, I think, a clear differentiator. And I think you guys have done a good job of that. So that's really cool. I like people to understand that it's not as difficult to understand how to build corporate credit or deal with your corporate business structure as it has been in the past. But you have to not let that. I think you guys have probably done a good job of making sure people are not afraid to engage with all of the tools and automation and everything because you've put it together in a nice platform. Let me ask you this. What do you think is the biggest obstacle you find with businesses you have right now that's holding them back from just going down the road of trying to establish business credit? Are they too busy? Do they not understand? We've talked a little bit about it, but what's the biggest thing holding people back right now? They think it's going to be a heavy lift that it's not. To take care of your foundation when it comes to building business credit you may have a cumulative three to four hours all untold and once you set that foundation the rest is just an exercise in rinsing and repeating right but you've got to get the foundation so if you can parse three to four hours out of your life and just follow the steps the chronology of it then you're foundationally set to where you need to be but the the inherent thought associated with oh this is going to be this heavy lift and i i don't i don't like technology george I, it scares me. It's not, it's, it's literally almost multiple choice. Just fill in the box. And if you don't understand it, watch the video associated with it. It'll take you no time. If you just do that. It's taking the first step, right? Like it's, it's the same problem people have in everything, including business, is is taking that first step I curious is there just from a from a tactical standpoint does the type of entity or business that you own affect your ability and your efficiency at developing corporate credit, whether you have an S corp, an LLC, a C corp, whether you're a partnership and things like that, do those all factor in? And is, is that what kind of your platform helps people to understand? Or is there any kind of information you could kind of give our listeners on that end, depending on what type of business, sole proprietorship, LLC, whatever that they have yeah we've actually within the platform we're big on education we want people informed especially coming from my standpoint i'm like i didn't know this i didn't know that so i'm like i'm gonna pile everything i didn't know into it so everybody knows but the reality is whether it's an s corp a c corp a 501 c3 an llc y'all all you have an ein every one of them have an ein they don't have any impact on your ability to build credit your ein is what you build credit on so it's not some some exercise and i've figured this out even though if you want to know how to structure your business that's all part of the chronology of the platform because we can take somebody from absolutely nothing and they go right through the steps and some of them already haven't figured out so they're just skipping the steps right there's no things like a free tip for people if your business isn't registered with 411 you're you're gonna have problems you're gonna pop a red flag people don't realize that but i can say it but then where do you go well we give you a button you just push it and it takes you right there and you do it you know they're simple there and i'm happy to give it doesn't matter it's not a secret you can go to ai you're right yeah how do i do it checklist right well and people are realizing more and more it's funny because there was this crazy survey that i heard the other day where people were going online for diagnosis medically right And I own a med spa down in Scottsdale. And one of the things that I was fascinated by is how the percentage of accuracy of your own doctor versus Google searches versus AI, that AI accuracy for diagnosing symptoms was higher than anywhere else. And so people are starting to realize that when you can aggregate information from all the best sources, there's a lot of credibility that can come from that. And it simplifies the process. It doesn't make it as difficult. I think people are kind of coming of age of that, but I can tell you when it comes to running a business, most people don't think about their personal liability or structure. And I think those are very important aspects, which is why I kind of brought this up. Do you have any, we're getting to the end of our time here, but do you have any specific advice that you would give a business owner, founder at whatever level they're at that maybe is not focused on corporate credit that you feel like they should be looking at in the current market or next steps they should take? What would be some of the kind of final thought you would leave with people that are hearing this topic? Look, once you know you have a responsibility to take advantage of it. People, people don't typically do things until they're in a situation where they, they need it to have already been done. This isn't, we made it. I mean, our company, we made it towards doesn't, doesn't hardly cost anything. It's the lowest business expense a person would ever have. And it's all right there. Once it's done, it's done. Just be a good story to your finance. But if a person's out there sitting about it, sitting there thinking about it, change, change your life. Don't put yourself in that position. You don't need, it's totally unnecessary. and it's not the heavy lift that you think it's going to be. It's what you do after the fact. And it's not about loaning money. Building corporate credit is not about going and borrowing money. It's about changing how you spend your money. You're still going to buy pens. You're still going to buy paper. You're going to buy computers. You're going to buy fuel for your vehicles. You're going to buy toilet paper. You're going to buy food. Whatever you're spending money on in your business, do it as the business. Not off your debit card. Not off a credit card. Not off something you personally guaranteed. change all of that. And what happens is by changing how you spend your money, you're demonstrating your ability to borrow and pay. So when that time comes, if that time comes, you're already pre-positioned for the lenders to look at you and say, you've been on the dance floor. I'll dance with you too. Yeah. It's a philosophy of how you run business. And as you, as you get, you know, no matter what level of business you're at, you have to learn to, to, to create a philosophy where you understand how to leverage the tools and resources available to you. And you also have to prepare ahead of time. And I think that's one of the biggest messages I think people need to understand is that you may not think you need to prepare with resources and tools like this, but you don't want it to be like, Earl, you had happened when it was too late, right? In hindsight, there's not a lot you can do. And so it is important to do that. So I do appreciate you being here and sharing this message. I think that structure and business and, um, and not just structure, but taxes and money and investing and things like that are things that we don't necessarily highlight enough. And I do feel like it's a very, very important aspect. So where can people go to connect with you if they want to connect with you and also, you know, um, maybe next steps. And I'm happy to put some links in the show notes as well here. Where's the best place people can kind of connect with you personally. Yeah. You know what? They're more than welcome to reach out and to be through my website is try Turing.ai. Turing is spelled T-U-R-I-N-G after Alan Turing. It's kind of a nod to the inventor of AI. And there's links in there. You can certainly jump on anyone, my team's calendars. You can certainly request to speak with me. I'm happy to speak with everybody. I love having the conversations. And for more than anything, you don't know, George, when a deer's going to run out on the road and change your life forever. You don't know when the next COVID is going to happen. You just don't know and you don't expect it everybody goes through life going we're set we're dialed my credit's good everything's great but circumstances outside your control can make things not too great really quickly so why not preemptively get yourself positioned yeah there's no excuse it's never been simpler and easier so that's awesome i'll put in the if you listen to this episode i'll put in the show notes uh the social media handles for Earl as well as the company and we'll put a link to the website as well. So you can go check it out and go try touring. So that'll be something that I encourage you to do. And then if you have any questions, certainly hit us up. But Earl, I appreciate you being here. I encourage listeners to go out and you've got some great messages online. I've been able to kind of consume some of your content. I think they'll get a lot out of it. If at a very minimum ways they can structure their business and really create some boundaries and barriers to personal liability, I think that's going to be very helpful. So thank you for being here. George, thank you. I appreciate you having me. I love any opportunity that I can to share the message. Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, guys, thanks for listening. Thanks for being part of the show today. Remember, share the show. We really do appreciate it. It'll mean a lot to us. And as I always mention, and no matter where you are, whether it's business structure, credit, mind, body, money, you know, it's never too late to start living the life and creating the business and the life that you were meant to live, but you've got to take action and you've got to take some steps to start doing that. So hopefully we've inspired and motivated you to do some of that today. I appreciate you being here. Hit me up on the Daily Mastermind. Let me know what you're up to, what you're doing. We'll celebrate some wins. Let me know what you're struggling with, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow. Have a great day.
