The Business Expert: The Truth About the Economy! SBA Head - Kelly Loeffler

Codie interviews Kelly Loeffler, a successful entrepreneur and the administrator of the US Small Business Administration, who shares her journey from humble beginnings on a family farm to becoming a billionaire and a leader in the business world. Loeffler emphasizes the need for small businesses to access capital and navigate regulations, while also highlighting the potential for a manufacturing renaissance in America. Get the 2025 State of Main Street Report HERE: https://info.contrarianthinking.co/state-of-main-street-report-2025 Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. Chapters 00:00 From Humble Beginnings to Billionaire Success 03:08 The Power of Partnership in Business 05:47 Overcoming Setbacks and Embracing Tenacity 09:05 Lessons from Sports: Leadership and Decision Making 11:53 The Future of Small Business: Opportunities and Challenges 15:06 Unlocking Hidden Resources for Small Businesses 17:52 The Importance of Community and Collaboration 20:46 Navigating Regulations and Accessing Capital 23:47 The Made in America Initiative and Manufacturing Renaissance 26:54 Final Thoughts: Empowering Small Businesses for Success MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Codie Sanchez?

  Is there ever a moment where you were like, this isn't going to work. I'm totally going to fail. We're going to lose everything.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Over and over and over.

• 0:06Codie Sanchez?

  Kelly Loeffler is an American businesswoman, entrepreneur and former US Senator, currently serving as the Administrator of the US Small Business Administration. But she is also a billionaire, has run billion dollar businesses. The cool part? She comes from a place just like probably many of you.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  I grew up in a house that had no upstairs heating. So we'd wake up in the morning in the winter and there would be frost inside the windows. I saw my parents working together on our farm every single day, 20 hour days planting crops. I worked in our cattle lot. I showed cattle in 4H. And having that experience of working in small businesses, that gave me such a strong, well-rounded experience. Think back to when our company was a startup. I mean, today it's a $100 billion Fortune 500 company. I didn't need a birthday dinner. I didn't need the vacation. These were the things that built the trajectory for success.

• 0:59Codie Sanchez?

  You've been successful in WNBA, been successful in a senate race. You're the Administrator of the SBA. You've also run these huge public companies. How do you keep winning?

• 1:13Codie Sanchez?

  Very seldom do we get to hear from an actual billionaire, multiple times over, who's run a $100 billion company. How do we steal her homework? How do we learn lessons from somebody who has won so many times in so many businesses? And in the same conversation, she actually is one of the most powerful women of all small business in the US right now as the Administrator of the SBA, the Small Business Administration. So not only does she share lessons about what it takes to build a big, huge company, but she also shares lessons about how do you find money hidden in plain sight in the government from the SBA for you? And what is the future going to hold for small business? I'm really excited about this episode. Not very many people get a chance to sit down with the head of the SBA in her office and see behind the scenes what is going to happen to small businesses today.

• 1:58Codie Sanchez?

  You are going to want to listen to this episode. Kelly, I'm so excited you're here.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Cody, I'm thrilled to be with you.

• 2:04Codie Sanchez?

  You grew up on a farm and came from a lot of struggle and strife that only entrepreneurs know. Can you tell me about that time?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Well, it was incredible to grow up on a family farm. And at the time, you know, I grew up in a house that had no upstairs heating. So we'd wake up in the morning in the winter and there would be frost inside the windows. But we never thought that was anything that would be different or wrong with that. We just had electric blankets that we slept under. But I saw how hard my family worked and I was inspired by it. I saw my grandmother writing the commodity futures prices on the Formica countertop. And then when my grandfather and dad would come in for lunch, they'd look at the prices and go back out. And that's where I first got my interest in finance and markets. And I saw my mom and dad building their trucking company together and dealing with

• 2:56Speaker 01

  the Interstate Commerce Commission filings and the paperwork. And I saw our truck drivers coming over to collect their paychecks while my mom wrote them out. And it really impressed upon me that, wow, they're providing livelihood and they're building something for people, that people are coming to us, asking them to haul grain, loads of grain off their farm, not just our farm, but theirs. My parents sponsored the softball team in our small town. I saw, and what other small businesses did. And so I also saw how the toll it took on my dad, like how hard he worked, you know,

• 3:33Speaker 01

  20-hour days planting crops or baling hay, just the hard, physical labor that he did it out of love for us. I mean, he wasn't always able to be at our sports games. And that was totally understood by us. That made us tougher. We could come home and say, Dad, we, you know, we won the game. Here's how it went. And he's like, well, I won the game for you guys today, too. And, you know, it gave me a love of work. So I worked in the fields growing up a lot. I worked in our cattle lot. I showed cattle in 4H. I learned to sew my clothes because if I wanted a nice graduation dress or a dress in college for a formal, I would sew that.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  And then, you know, all the way to, um, you know, getting waitressing jobs to fill in for high school and college expenses and, and having that experience working in small businesses, waitressing, working in retail stores. And that gave me such a strong, well-rounded experience. That's why I'm so honored to serve at the SBA, to serve the small businesses that I know firsthand what they mean on our main streets.

• 4:42Codie Sanchez?

  So good. I also think I've met a few farmers and you guys are totally better at Wall Street commodity trading than the best suits and ties. I mean, I think the drawl is always the giveaway. That's when I know I'm in trouble because they give me a little, well, hey, I don't know about that. And then they know about that. So I got a lot of respect for farmers.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Well, they have a lot of skin in the game. I mean, nothing like having thousands of bushels of cash crop on your hands to force a decision.

• 5:05Codie Sanchez?

  One of the, um, things I was curious about is you and your husband have run multiple businesses together and seem very aligned. Um, what's, what's the secret to doing that?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Boy, that's a great question. First of all, I'm incredibly blessed. That's, that's the first open secret right there. Well, I, I am so blessed to have met him at a time in my life when, you know, things could have gone either way. I, I thought, you know, I've been moving around the country for 10 years, taking increasingly more responsible jobs. And I thought coming to Atlanta was going to be another stop on that career trajectory to where I was working to find my fitting. I'd just gotten my, uh, CFA and had worked in private equity, had worked in, uh, as an equity analyst and then was interested in doing investor relations.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And I ended up joining the executive leadership team, ultimately working my way up to that. Um, but we both just connected on our Midwestern values, our love of our, like, families, our work, our shared passion for, um, improving ourselves and giving back. Like, we're both very altruistic, but we're also competitive. So we kind of feed on that and, um, we, I'm just so blessed. We, we get along great. We love talking about business, um, and we both understand what's important in life. And it's, it's not, it's not the monetary. I mean, people make a lot of our, um, wealth or success, but it's something we don't really spend a lot of time talking about.

• 6:38Codie Sanchez?

  Interesting. Yeah, you're not very flashy.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  I drive a Kia Telluride.

• 6:43Codie Sanchez?

  Get out of town.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Codie Sanchez?

  Really? You don't want to, you don't want to have, roll up in the Lambo?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Made in Georgia. Well, I'll admit, I do, I have a Porsche and I do love, and I've, because when I was 11, uh, on, living on our farm, uh, a guy in a Porsche came driving up to drop off something for my dad from a grain elevator. And I was like, what is that car? And, um, when I found out it was a Porsche from age 11, I always wanted one. So, um, you know, I do think it's beautiful engineering and they go fast and I love racing and all that. But, um, I'm most comfortable just driving around town, um, in my Kia Telluride, made in Georgia.

• 7:24Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. Also, I'm a bad driver, so I shouldn't be trusted with nice cars. So I'm into that. Okay. So you chose well with your partner. And the only reason, I want to ask one more question about partnership because I think, um, at least for me, I work with my husband, it's the best thing that I ever did and also the hardest. Like, our first year working together was really, really hard. And I wasn't sure, we didn't make a mistake at first. I was like, oh my gosh, can we really do these two things? And now it's a gift that I feel like was taken from us as society. Like, it was bad to work with your family. It's bad, it's nepotism, it's all these things. And I think that was a giant lie. And instead, it's really beautiful to get to build with your family. Like, what, what do you think? And what advice would you give some young man or woman out there, um, that could learn maybe what partnership is like in business and, and love and marriage?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's incredible. It is such a gift. And I saw my parents working together on our farm every single day, building my dad's trucking company together. My dad started it the year I was born, after he got out of the National Guard. He'd learned to drive a fuel truck in the Guard and thought, okay, I'll add trucking to our farm, which was transformative for our family, just particularly in the lean years of farming where negative cash flow. And so I saw my mom helping my dad build that business and how amazing it was to have a family that all worked together. And now we're on the fifth generation on our family farm. It's incredibly rewarding, the, the pride and, um, you know, the ability to work through

• 8:50Speaker 01

  the challenges together. I think it's, uh, something that our country is a little bit lost. And you've pointed that out. I've heard you talk about like 80% of people in America in the 1800s were small business owners. And now it's 6%. And I think that's tragic and I really appreciate all the work you do to encourage entrepreneurship, even though back on the farm and in the small town I grew up in, everyone was an entrepreneur, but we never knew that word.

• 9:17Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, right.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  It was just, everyone felt like that was, they did what they did because it was their calling.

• 9:23Codie Sanchez?

  I think one of the interesting parts about you is you have built all these really big businesses previously, cross-sector, and yet, you know, you started really without a lot, which I'm sure small business owners can relate to. You know, they might hear how big your businesses are and not think that you understand what it's like to be a little guy, but was there ever a moment where you were like, "This isn't gonna work, I'm totally gonna fail and we're gonna lose everything?"

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Over and over and over. That is essentially, like, it's the setbacks and the rejection that I remember more sometimes. That's what always fueled me and...

• 10:03Codie Sanchez?

  Do you have a big juicy one?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness, well, from my earliest time in my career, I mean, I applied for jobs I didn't get, I went back and got those jobs. I've never accepted rejection, I've been tenacious about it, but I've also had huge setbacks, whether it's in working on deals or working on businesses that we thought that was the end of the opportunity, and just kept going. And I think it comes from really where I was, how I was raised. I mean, on a farm, you know, you are raised in that situation, you don't have any guarantees and you figure it out and you work hard until it's done.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  And I think just that tenacity really saw me through a lot and, you know, certainly building a career from Wall Street now into the cabinet, you know, from rural America, you know, I think... That just really taught me to dig in, keep going, keep learning and keep the curiosity about how things work and keep asking questions and never accept the first no.

• 11:18Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, you seem like when we were talking kind of behind the scenes, you're like, I like it. I want to be in there. I want to be like making a difference. I was like, wasn't it scary to run for senate? That sounds horrifying. You were like, no, like put me in, coach. So you've got a little of that inner psychopath. I'm into that.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Codie Sanchez?

  What about, so you owned an WNBA team, which seems incredibly hard in just every aspect, you know, not as much funding, lower ticket sales, you know, and then there was inner turmoil in the WNBA. What was the hardest moment for you running that business?

• 11:52Speaker 02

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• 12:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think the biggest decision came when my business partner and I, we were 50/50 owners, but before that we were minority owners. And there came a point where the majority owner decided to sell. And we had to look at each other and say, do we want to step up and be 50/50 owners? And I was running a big part of our publicly traded company at the time. And I had to have confidence in the team that we brought on to really run that business day to day. And also the funding. I mean, it was, you know, it's not an inexpensive endeavor to sink money into that every single year.

• 13:00Codie Sanchez?

  Was it public how much that was?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  No, but it's, I mean, it was a couple million. And it was, you know, we'd hoped to be able to get it to break even. But to the point, you know, back then, the bigger decision was to say, is this a go or no go? And I believe that when life opens a door for you, like to walk through it, and that life had opened a door for me as a professional sports team owner, and walking away at that time didn't seem like a good option. And I'm really glad we walked through it. We owned the team for a decade. And it was very grassroots. In fact, I was working with a reporter one time and pitching a story. I mean, I was making sure that we got the visibility. I had this vision because

• 13:43Speaker 01

  of what I'd seen living in Chicago during the Bulls' run in the 90s. And I thought, my goodness, I see what sports do for a community. They really bring it together. And I think Atlanta can be a great sports town. And so, we invested on that basis to not have this as a hobby, but to make this a business and a great community contribution. And we were so glad that we walked through that door and did that for a decade for our fans, for our community, to elevate the sport. And it turned out to be such a good... I learned so much, being a sports team owner, that applied to business. Because in business, sometimes you can kick the can on a problem. In sports, you can't do that.

• 14:22Codie Sanchez?

  Why? Everybody's just yelling at you all the time?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Well, because in sports, the scoreboard shows the results every single day. The ticket sales show the results every single day. The coaching shows the results. And so, you have to make those decisions game time. And so, I started doing that in business, running my businesses like a coach would run a team. And I became a lot more effective, decisive, and not afraid about what decisions were around the next corner. It just really emboldened me to make those decisions and keep going.

• 14:51Codie Sanchez?

  I'm a huge Phil Jackson fan. And it really stuck with me a lot. I read his last ones often on how to be a good leader.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Zen Master. Yeah.

• 15:01Codie Sanchez?

  Which I never would have known.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was... He really ran an amazing team. When you read about the dynamics of the Bulls and how the players didn't necessarily all get along, but they brought so much electricity to the court, to the community. And it was just a huge lesson for me, watching the Bulls. It was instructive, not just as a sports leader, but as a business leader.

• 15:21Codie Sanchez?

  What do you think your leadership style is? Like, you've been successful in WNBA. You've been successful in a senate race. You're the administrator of the SBA. You've also run these huge public companies. How do you keep winning?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's the, you learn from the losses. And there's more losses than wins, to be honest. When, when you get to this point in life, you start looking back and you're saying, I'm, I'm really glad for some of those hard times. And some of those hard times were the best times. I think back to when our company was a startup. I mean, today it's a hundred billion dollar Fortune 500 company. But when we had a hundred people and it, and it was working every single weekend without a single day off, straight through, get there early, leave late, come back, over and over, cancel the vacations, the birthday dinner turns into a due diligence review up in New York, all those things, those were the best times. I didn't need a birthday dinner.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  I didn't need the vacation. I mean, these were the things that built the trajectory for success. And so I'm always happy to run into the fire. It's why I was able to start a crypto company in 2017, because I love to see a challenge and I'm so blessed. My husband Jeff was the founder of, of that Fortune 500 company. And he's a visionary who is an engineer. And he takes every problem apart at the nuts and bolts level. And that's kind of how we've worked through a lot of challenges. And, you know, I'm a little, he's, he's a genius. He's brilliant. I'm more of a hard worker. I didn't have the gifts of the intellect that he had, but I'm a hard worker. That's my superpower.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  And I have a deep well of curiosity. I love to get atomic level on things. That's why I was the only chartered financial analyst that's ever served in the US Congress.

• 17:16Codie Sanchez?

  What?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 17:17Codie Sanchez?

  Okay, you're obviously smart if you have a CFA. That's like the highest basically level financial certification you can have. And the failure, the failure rate for like level three is something like 90% or something. It's like each level gets harder.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I worked really, really hard on studying for it. And I made sure I passed every level on the first try. And, and it was a great challenge and I love a challenge. And I think approaching everything like this is a challenge I can do is, makes all the difference. Instead of, oh, I'm a victim, I'm a woman, only 11% of the people that pass this exam are women. I just said, I, I know I can do this. Like, so I think accepting everything as a challenge as opposed to saying that it's all stacked against me makes all the difference.

• 18:00Codie Sanchez?

  Definitely. Yeah, there was a quote I was reading the other day. Somebody asked Michael Dell, they were like, Michael, you know, how much did you work during those first, you know, few years of of building your company? And he was like, oh, I worked all the hours. And so I think, is that what it takes to build a multi-billion dollar company? Is it just, is there any way to build it with a four hour work week, a lifestyle business?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And, and why would you want to do that? I, I, I think part of the journey of life is creating and building and being with people. I mean, we haven't really talked about the people element. The most fascinating part of what I've experienced over my 30 plus year career is interacting with people, learning from them and what works, what doesn't, how to succeed. And, and that doesn't come from just doing deals. That comes from experience at the negotiating table, you know, walking away from it, coming back to it, you know, having the discussions, whether it's internal within our own company. We used to promote internal dissent and debate. And then we'd make sure we pressure test everything internally and had the fights internally

• 19:09Speaker 01

  before we exposed them externally. And, you know, did things before we announced them. A lot of people love to run a company by press release and say, hey, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. Not, we didn't do any of that. We would do the thing and then we'd say, we've been doing this for a month and our customers love it. So I think, you know, doing, walking the walk, not just talking the talk was so important. And it's about making sure that you have people that are bought into the vision for doing the work, not, you know, taking the victory lap.

• 19:39Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. How, how do you foster dissent in an organization? How do you get people to like competing for the best ideas?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Well, I think it goes back to the original question you asked me about what kind of leader am I? I'm, I'm a hands-on leader. I, I try to run as flat organizations as we can, like we're all on the same team. Like the team first concept is we're all in this together. If you fail, I fail. And so I want you to succeed. And that's why I am really careful about the teams I pick. And, you know, loyalty is important, but you're being loyal to me if you say, Kelly, I don't think that's a good idea. It's, it's not disloyalty. I don't want to be encircled by yes men. I want people to say what you're doing is maybe not the optimal way to do this. Here's a, have you thought about this? And I may Take it on board? I may not, but I'm like, thank you for letting me know.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  I'm glad we've had this conversation. And, and so I think just really encouraging communication and dialogue. I feel like someday communication is going to be a lost art within the business world.

• 20:43Codie Sanchez?

  It does feel like that. But, you know, and, and maybe that does go back to, you know, sort of this, you've played a lot of games where you either won or lost publicly. Running a public company, gotta have quarterly results, you know? WNBA, nightly scoreboard. And so unlike a lot of people in the government, you're like, no, no, my cons, there are consequences to my actions, which is probably kind of shows across all of your businesses. So if you're talking to a small business owner right now who's worried about inflation and what's happening around them, what would you tell the, the people that you're about to see on the street?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Well, the great thing about small businesses is they live in a very dynamic environment. And so I hear from them all the time as I travel across the country. And what I'm hearing is that they want taxes to be made permanent, the tax cuts to be made permanent. They want taxes to be low, they want regulations cut, they want fair trade. They're excited about the conversation we're having on making America produce things again, onshoring our manufacturing. And I also think small businesses need a focus on skilled workforce by education. I mean, we really need to look at our educational system and say, what are the skills and the trades of the future? And so that's critically important because so many small businesses can't fill roles, can't find the skilled workforce.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So we're working with small businesses across that entire spectrum to make sure that they have the resource they, they need. Chief among those at the SBA is access to capital, which is our bread and butter, to help small businesses access lending through our, our partners in the private sector, your, your local community bank or, you know, things like a credit union, and making sure that they have the lifeblood of their business, which is capital.

• 22:28Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. So do you think that you guys, as, as an administration overall, will small business owners get those permanent tax cuts? Will there be like a pro-small-business environment? Because lots of people say they love small business, but do you think that is actually going to happen?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Well, look, there's no bigger fan of small business than President Trump and this administration. And I do believe we're working quickly toward Congress having that 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extended, hopefully made permanent. That will provide tremendous certainty for small businesses to invest and grow and hire and drive our main streets. And I believe manufacturers and businesses of all kinds are really spring loaded, just waiting for that tax cut to come through. But in the meantime, we're working really hard on deregulation because regulation, and in fact, the Biden administration passed $1.7 trillion in regulations, setting an all-time record by many multiples of massive regulation.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  That's a tax on small business disproportionately on our manufacturers as well.

• 23:34Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, we were reading some statistics earlier about how that is somewhere between eight, and maybe some other people say $15,000 per employee by federal taxes on small businesses. So there's a real regulatory drag, it seems like.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Codie Sanchez?

  And so, you know, let's talk a little bit about the things we can control, because I think sometimes hearing about everything the administration's going to do, you're like, great, you know, I'll keep working while we wait for that. So one of the cool things you guys have done is what I call like showcasing money hiding in plain sight. So the SBA obviously provides tons of loans to small businesses. What do you think most small business owners don't realize they have access to with the SBA that they do? Where is your like hidden free money?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Well, actually, that's a great question. I actually think the SBA is not well-understood. What we do is provide government-backed guarantees to private sector loans and loans that may not be extended but for that government guarantee. And what I love about these programs is they're self-funding. They're not taxpayer-funded. When run properly with the right underwriting guidelines, these loans pay for themselves while generating access to capital for the small business, growing the tax base, driving employment. So it's a really free enterprise. Slash private-public partnership type thing that is unique in government. Usually it's government giving a grant.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  What we focus on is making sure that qualified businesses who can't get capital elsewhere can get them through the SBA, those loans. And that's what I'm really proud of, is that we're making these loan programs better and more accessible.

• 25:14Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, and so if you're a small business owner listening right now, is there any downside to going to your local SBA office and just saying, hey, I want to see if I could be pre-approved for a loan for X or Y or Z? Like, should every small business owner be at least meeting with their local SBA?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So we have 68 offices across the United States at the SBA. And what you can do is start having those conversations. Maybe you don't need capital right now, but you need access to some of the counseling that we do through our small business development companies that really help small businesses build toward accessing capital or planning their expansion. And we can work across the federal government to connect them to other resources that, as you say, capital hiding in plain sight. Like, could there be other programs? The SBA also oversees government contracting. We have to ensure that small businesses get about 23% of federal contracts. And we have programs to help them onboard into federal government contracting, which I'll admit is not the easiest thing to navigate in the world.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  And we're trying at the SBA to demystify that and make sure that it's really small businesses that are getting that benefit.

• 26:22Codie Sanchez?

  So good. So we'll put it in the show notes. You should definitely go to the SBA. We'll link where the field offices are. No downside to saying, how could you guys help me? And the entire job of those field offices is to give you resources.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 26:34Codie Sanchez?

  That's what they're paid to do.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  That's right. And we have lending folks in our offices that can help direct you to what those loan services are, or they may say, maybe what you want more of is more of the counseling side and working with our partners and that.

• 26:49Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. And can they help you put together a package to actually get money? So if you're like, hey, I want to get a loan from the SBA. Here's sort of what I have. Can they look at it and go, well, you should beef up this part of your business plan. You should think about it this way?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the lender relations specialist in each district will, you know, kind of navigate you through that program. They'll connect you with a lender. We actually have an online lender match service that you can access as a small business just through our website and see if there's a lender that might. Be, you know, interested in your type of, you know, sector or type of loan. So you can do it that way, too, even if you don't want to go into an office.

• 27:25Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I also know that you guys have a list of like the top 200 or something most common lenders with the SBA. So you can kind of see who is playing this game often. I think a lot of times people are like, the SBA loans are really hard to get, which is true in some ways. But also, it might be because you're going to a lending institution that doesn't actually work with the SBA and they say they're a big lender, but they're in the bottom quartile. And so if you go to people who are at the very top, and I won't name names, so everybody's our buddy, but it seems like if you go to people who already do the thing, then they will have a higher likelihood of getting approved for the thing.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  That's, that's very true. And then there's also just the fact that these are government guaranteed loans. Certainly, the lender takes the first loss, so these are underwritten to traditional private sector lending underwriting standards. But at the same time, we have to ensure that they're underwritten so that the government isn't put in the position, or the taxpayer, which is also a small business, is put at, put at the position of funding losses. So we want to make sure that portfolio is performing as it should. And generally, it does. We operate a $444 billion loan portfolio at the SBA.

• 28:29Codie Sanchez?

  That's a lot of money. You also have incredibly low default rates. I think actually, you know, what surprised me is a lot of people, we teach thousands of people how to buy businesses and we use SBA loan programs all the time. And people were like, ah, normal people can't buy a business. The, the loans, you know, they're underwater. You have this personal guarantee. It's so big and scary. And it is. It should be, anytime you take somebody else's money, you should be really thoughtful about it. But, you know, your loan rates are incredibly low. So I also think the SBA is a great filter for, should you even buy this business?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:00Codie Sanchez?

  Right? If the SBA won't approve it, is it good?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  That's right. And I have talked to a number of business owners who have said to me, I got my first loan through the SBA. I would not be in business today. I was a sous chef. My wife was a teacher. We barely had any assets, but we had a great idea. They got an SBA loan. But they also said, we were never so happy when we paid off that SBA loan. And it gives them the discipline and the confidence to get into business and then start repaying that loan.

• 29:30Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, and now you guys have done some interesting things where I saw for the first time ever, you can start to have multiple people on an SBA loan to diversify some of your single-party personal guarantee risk, which I think is really lovely for people who don't have a lot of assets.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  That's right. We've tried to make the programs, make sure that they are performing well, but make them realistic for how deals in the private sector actually work. And a lot of times when you have people designing loan programs that haven't been in the private sector, that don't understand how deals work, that they may not have that flexibility. So we're trying to make sure we have the belt and suspenders on the underwriting standards, but also make sure that they work in the real world.

• 30:10Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, well, I really appreciate it. I think a lot of times the SBA loan not going through was a benefit to the buyer of the business, and they didn't even realize it.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Well, and that's right. We don't want to saddle people with loans and potential defaults and bankruptcies that we could have foreseen by having the prudent underwriting standards, which we just put back in place at the SBA, and that will re-strengthen the programs back to where they were.

• 30:34Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, I like it. What about, what would you say to people who say, "Man, the SBA loans take too long, and so they kill my deals, or I can't buy a business because they're not fast enough?"

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I hear that, but I also think that that is where we need to make sure that we have the right lender on the program. And that's why our lender match program was developed, to ensure that borrowers are talking to a full spectrum of potential lenders. But also, we are being self-critical and looking at, where do we have too much red tape and bureaucracy, and how do we run this like the business that our small businesses have to operate? They have to do more with less. They have to navigate all kinds of bureaucracy. We should be the last place that they're encountering massive red tape. So we are taking a hard look at that. And we actually set up a red tape hotline at [email protected]

• 31:29Speaker 01

  to let our small businesses tell us, where are they struggling, not just in the loan process, but where are federal regulations weighing them down needlessly?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Because I saw it firsthand when I was in the Senate. Like, there's a lot of focus on legislating and rulemaking and regulations. There's not a lot of focus focus until we got to DOGE about how do we roll some of that back? And President Trump is leading the charge on that again. He did it in 2016, eliminating multiple regulations for each new one. We're doing it again, at least eliminating 10 for every new regulation. And that's something that I think is picking up momentum, not just in the federal government, but in the states where there's also a lot of regulation.

• 32:12Codie Sanchez?

  So let's look into the future. If they don't get access to somebody like you, now they get to sit and listen and hear from you on what is the future with this administration with small business? And what are some of the initiatives that you think are going to be really incredible for small business owners?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  One of the things I'm most excited about is our Made in America manufacturing initiative at the SBA, which amplifies President Trump's America-first agenda. And what does that mean? It means we're creating opportunities in America that had been hollowed out from us over the last three decades, where we lost something like 70,000 factories. Five million jobs in our manufacturing heartlands are gone. We can do that again in America. And I have been across this country going through factories and hearing from owners of, and these are small businesses, most manufacturers, 99% of them are small businesses. And they've been telling me, I have been fighting the notion that we can't make things in America for two decades.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  And it's happening, and I see it as tremendous opportunity for small businesses because they supply the larger producers with the subcomponents and the parts and the materials that they need. They provide the restaurants for the workers. They provide the retail stores. I think we're on the cusp of a, not just a manufacturing, but an America-first renaissance in this country. And I hope everyone will be a part of it because I think if we can get, you know, the tax cuts done, the deregulatory agenda continuing to advance, we're on, really at the dawn of what President Trump says is truly a golden era because for too long, people have underestimated the American worker and American industry. And we're getting back to that now.

• 33:51Codie Sanchez?

  I get chills. Well, I'm so appreciative of Your initiatives to push forward small business. I can tell because I've met with your staff and other members of your team that you guys are actually really pushing for the little guy. And so I hope people take you up on all the initiatives at the SBA and go and look at the resources and meet with your local members. And then also you guys do an incredible job highlighting content too. So if there's like companies that, you know, are small businesses that want to get highlighted as well. I know that there are spaces on the website there. Administrator Loeffler, thank you so much for being here with us today.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Cody, it was great to be with you. Thank you so much.

• 34:25Codie Sanchez?

  My pleasure. If you want to see all the resources we talked about today, we actually compiled them for you into this little report. If you want that, then click below. You can get the link right here for all the SBA resources. If you guys liked this episode, wait until you see the one we have coming next. If you are not subscribed to the podcast, like apparently something like 60% of you guys are not right now, we are missing out. You guys are going to want to have a notification for the next podcast because we are going to find more hidden money and we are going to hear from more world leaders to see how you can change your life and your business. So make sure you hit that subscribe button. We called this podcast, The Big Deal, because you are a big deal to me. No matter how small your business is, or how big your business is,

• 35:09Codie Sanchez?

  or how big or small your life is, you really matter. And I hope you felt that in this episode. We are here to make sure that you continue to have the thing I believe leads to more freedom than anything else, which is money. I think that's the lifeblood of small business is making sure cash flow stays in. And I think that is the answer to freedom for most people is when you have more cash, you can actually architect the world around you. And so I want to thank you for being with us in this podcast. It means the world to me. And I just want you to know that we do everything in our power every single week to make sure that you are still the biggest deal on this podcast. We'll see you next week.