From Farm Boy to Fintech Founder Fighting for Small Business Owners with Levi King

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! talk about farm roots to entrepreneurial grit, building through adversity, serial entrepreneur across industries, lessons, regrets, and do-overs, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Levi and our sponsors. Here's something most of us don't think about until it's a problem. Our phone service. Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier built from the ground up with security as the priority. If you care about protecting your digital life without giving up your smartphone, Cape makes that possible. Visit cape.co to sign up today.

1:01Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Levi, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, thanks Fire Nation for having me and hope you get some utility out of this conversation. When I started off for me growing up in American poverty, success meant building a company and finding a lifestyle that frankly enough money to live the life that I didn't get to live growing up.

1:52And it was a pretty narrow view of what success is, but that it just seems so unimaginable to have money that that was the only way you could think about it. And so as I got older and wiser, everyone around you, if you build a successful business, it's profitable and you get that lifestyle. And probably yourself, you think I'm successful. I accomplished what I set out to. I've made it. Obviously, you got to make sure it doesn't go off the rails, but you're successful. You made it, you got after it, you built a company, you're profitable, you do what you want in life outside of work. You have enough money inside the business to continue to build the business.

2:30And what I missed from that equation is if you're not happy, once you get there, you're not successful. It doesn't matter how much money you're making, but everyone around you will just, will, can't imagine that. They can't imagine why would you not be happy if you built a successful company and you've got money and it's entirely possible to not be happy once you think you've made it. And so if you're not happy, in my opinion, you're not successful. It doesn't matter how much money you have. It's not worth it if you're not happy, content in life, finding personal and professional fulfillment every day in what you do, who you work with, the customers you serve, the good you're trying to put out into the economy.

3:08Well, after interviewing 4 ,911 entrepreneurs to date, I can verify that Fire Nation. I mean, so many entrepreneurs' worst entrepreneurial moments is when they thought it would be the best, like when they sell their business, when they make that big acquisition, when they have that huge payday, because that's not it. And so that's why we're talking about going from farm boy to fintech founder, fighting for small business owners. And I want to talk about your farm roots to the entrepreneurial grit that you now possess today. So how did growing up on a farm shape your work ethic and become the actual spark that pushed you towards entrepreneurship?

3:47Well, first of all, farms never sleep. They don't go on vacation. The cows, they're going to get hungry at the same time every day, whether you feel like feeding them or not. Something's always going to go wrong. Weather's not going to cooperate. My mom and dad had five kids, adopted five kids, and I was the oldest boy. It was very traditional household. So that meant when dad wasn't around, things were on me. And so my life was waking up in the morning, getting my list of assignments and getting to work. And then the only guarantee was something was going to go wrong or other things were going to come up and you had to get it done.

4:20But there was just this mindset where you had to do it. Like it, it never crossed my mind with setbacks that like, well, I could just give up and go back to the house. Equipment breaks, cows break down a fence, you know, your ditch bank breaks and floods a field. like you have to do it and it doesn't matter how hard it is doesn't matter um you got to figure it out and it actually built some deep creativity and problem solving but also just this mindset that failure is not an option the cow's got to eat the crops got to get watered and so i think that that really planted that seed of just hard work determination self-sacrifice and all all the while from a very young age, I was super curious about money and why we were so poor when we worked so hard.

5:09And it also just planted that seed that somehow in life, one way or another, I was going to figure out how to do the things that I did work hard, all the things I just mentioned, but make a lot of money. And so that, that was very foundational for me in becoming an entrepreneur. And I didn't think of my dad as an entrepreneur growing up. I didn't think of a farm as a small business, but that's exactly what it is. I didn't have the vernacular. Those were things that stitched together later, but that's certainly where all of the seeds were planted in my life to take the journey down the path of entrepreneurship.

5:43Cows got to eat. I mean, I feel like that could be a t-shirt fire nation for anybody out there. I mean, to me, it's just a great motto. I want to talk about building through adversity, Levi. I mean, the number one challenge, what is it that you faced from day one as a small business owner? For me personally, I'm an introvert. And my first company I started, it was very humble. I had a 24 foot extension ladder, a bucket or a bag of tools and a pickup truck. And I drove around at night looking for electric signs that were burned out. And I would cold call the next day and say, hey, I'll fix your sign for less.

6:17And then I bootstrapped my way into installation of electric signs. Then I bootstrapped my way all the way into manufacturing of custom electric signs. So all of my customers were also small business owners. but I, because I was an introvert and I'd never, like I was never the person in life that would willingly take the stage or be in front of the classroom. It scared me to death to cold call, but I figured out luckily very early on, thanks to probably some left brain in me that money solves all problems in business. That's not true in our lives, not even close, but in business, it is true. Money solves all problems.

6:55Enough money does. and so it scared me to death. I read tons of sales books. I'd have sweat rings down to my waist when I was cold calling. And then of course, every yes you get helps you build that confidence. But that was kind of the first business. That's what I had to learn was to get outside of my shell and get out in the community and network, go to the chamber of commerce and schmooze and all this stuff that was entirely unnatural to me. And then it changed business to business. You know, manufacturing and installation is a very complex business. I've always viewed view tech is very simple compared to that first business.

7:28But, you know, there was always another lesson to learn and something else was difficult. And so I'd say that was kind of the first wave, but it kind of connects to the second major learning that I had to understand, which is how to communicate with people, how to motivate people, how to get people to do hard things. You know, like I said, when I was growing up, there was no choice, but people that you hire, They have a choice. They can quit. They can half-ass it. They can make you think they're doing more than they can. They can politic, right? There's all kinds of games people can play. But to just really understand human beings, how do they think?

8:05What motivates us? How do we make decisions? Which sent me down a path that I'm still on. I've read dozens of books on brain science to just understand humans. We're very complex creatures and we're all different. So that was the second major wave was, okay, I got to understand how people work. Like what makes them make all the decisions they make every day? Because you have to be able to influence those as a leader. You can't force them. You can here and there, but that's a losing battle. You can't force people to do things over and over. They don't want to do. They just quit or move on or check out mentally.

8:40So you've kind of gone into this a little bit, but I want to dive even deeper into the fact that being a serial entrepreneur as you are across many industries, you've built and sold multiple businesses and multiple verticals. What continues to drive your curiosity and of course, the courage to keep starting over again and again and again? The courage was easier the second time around because I had money. I had no money on the first one. And I thought the second one was going to be easy. So the second one was an outsourced sales and marketing company where we resold products into the mortgage banking space.

9:15We didn't have our own products. It was just simply sales and marketing, which was way more ways your business to run than manufacturing. But it brought all of its other challenges. I was blue color. Now, all of a sudden, I'm white color and I'm wearing a suit and I'm talking in front of thousands of people instead of like a person, which scared me at first. But it was just kind of curiosity. And in fact, I didn't, people would always ask me like, why'd you sell your sign company? Cause at age 25, I air quotes made it. Uh, I remember my father-in-law was just like, you're crazy. What are you doing?

9:49Like you're 25, you, you get 3 million in revenue. He didn't know my revenues, but I had 3 million in revenues. I was profitable. It's manufacturing. This is difficult. And I just, I was like, I'm done with this. And so I sold that started the next one, that one kind of overlapped other businesses, but then I bought a hotel, bought a string of franchises in the restaurant servicing industry and built a financial services business for ESL immigrants, Spanish speakers with retail locations in Oregon and Idaho, eventually sold all of those. But there was just this curiosity, like a new challenge, something new, and then a piece of getting tired.

10:31Like it took me a long time later in therapy to even have answers as to why I sold company after company and went on to something else. But there's this part of me that just wants to continue to invent, like try new things, try things that are more difficult. And then, you know, the next step was, okay, I wanted to get into tech, which is fundamentally different than small business. And based on the little that I've shared so far, I didn't have the pedigree. I didn't have the education. I didn't have the connections. And so that was probably the biggest leap that I took was going from small business to technology and going from bootstrapping slash getting traditional loans to pitching venture capitalists and taking equity financing.

11:10But it's just that deep curiosity and just a drive to climb higher and higher. I'm like, Tess, am I capable of more? And my confidence really built through those first few businesses. But then when I got into technology, it was like, okay, this is like taking steps backwards in confidence. This is a different game altogether, all the way throughout the stack, operations, the type of talent that you need to attract, just everything was different. But it's just that deep curiosity and the ongoing drive to like, I think I'm capable of more and not, at first it was I wanted to prove to everybody that I grew up with, like people that knew me that I was extraordinary.

11:50And then it was important that I graduated from that and I did. And then it just, it's always just been inside me. I just want to show myself, like, can I do more? Can I rise to a greater level of impact in business? I mean, Fire Nation, what the heck do you want to do? You want to have one accomplishment in life at 25 years old, at 30, at 40, fill in the blank, and then just click cruise control for the rest of your life. I mean, there's one word for that. It's called boring. And entrepreneurs, we don't like boredom. We like challenges. We like accomplishments. We We like progression. We like to be productive with our time.

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14:43So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Levi, we're back and I wanna talk about the birth of NAV, that's N-A-V. Share the story behind the co-founding of NAV back in 2013 and the problem that you set out to solve. Yeah, it's really very connected to what I've already shared. You know, when I started the sign company, I didn't have money, I had to strap my way in, I didn't have any credit, didn't have anyone to lean on.

15:20And so understanding how credit and financing applied to a manufacturing company was difficult. It's very, very difficult. There was no resources online to understand, like, why is this happening or that happening based on my business credit or the financial statements that I just provided. And that experience led me to co-found Lendio before NAV. and Lendio is a late stage profitable fintech in the business financing space. And, you know, we, it's a, it's a great platform and very, very successful, but it kind of takes a look at you in the moment. Okay. Right now, here's what you look like. Here's how any third, third party is going to make a risk-based decision on your business based on your personal credit, your business credit, your cash flows, and here's your options.

16:09And a lot of times, small business owners don't have any options for financing. And more often than not, they have options for something subprime or midprime. And they're like, wow, I got a real business. Like, really? I got to pay an effective rate of 80 %? That's what lenders think about me. And the problem is always in the data. And so once I felt like we were out of the woods at Lendio, having been that small business owner who was always ruthlessly curious, pushed on banks and anyone that was saying no to understand what is it you're looking at? Like I'm running$300 ,000 a month through my business checking account and you get, you won't give me a line of credit at my bank, like seriously.

16:48And, and so I didn't, and so Lenny was a great model, but it, it just dresses the here and now. It doesn't tell you, well, here's different decisions you can make around your, your credit and financial health so that your options improve in the future. And because I'd been that small business owner. And I was so thirsty for answers and there were none around. That's what led to NAV. Say, okay, let's solve the underlying problem of financing, which is you got to where you're at. You've usually beat up your personal credit because you leveraged credit cards. You didn't know what business credit was.

17:20So that's usually beat up. You probably don't manage your cash flow very well. So you're bouncing one or two checks a month. And then that means your subprime, or maybe nobody's going to give you money. So the birth of NAV was really, let's start with education. And so we have native integrations with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus with Finicity Plaid to bring in cash flow data. And we model around that data and say, OK, here's what you look like. And that's all for free. There's a version folks can pay for. It's like an insane free product. It's probably the most expensive free product that is offered to small business owners.

17:53But it helps them then change the outcome of the future. OK, great. Subprime is all you get right now because we connect the dots between all of that data. you know, here's a better bank you should be with. Here's a, here's a business loan or a business credit card, insurance, whatever. But, but it's still, that's what you are today. Stop bouncing the checks. So we give cashflow insights, teach them how to manage their cash better. You got a tax lien on your business credit. They didn't know it was there. They didn't realize there's some random County tax they were supposed to pay. Get rid of it, pay it off.

18:23Don't get another one. They've been slow paying their, their vendors chronically thinking there's no consequence. This doesn't show up on my personal credit. Like, hey, bad news. There's three commercial credit bureaus and your credit sucks because you're paying everybody late. Stop doing that. You know, your personal credit, like you got too much revolving debt that you used to start the business, refinance that into a subprime business loan. Your personal credit is going to go through the roof. Everything else looks good. Refi out of that subprime loan into something midprime. And so with NAV, it's more about, and NAV, implicit is navigation.

18:55We're going to help you navigate the life of being a small business owner successfully. And it's a long journey. And you go through that. I'm starting out. Nothing's working. It's kind of working. And so you've got to optimize to get to profitability. And you get to profitability. Maybe you want to grow. Maybe you don't. But then you move into more of a protect mindset. You look back and you're like, man, it was hell to get here. I've got to stay on top of this data to make sure in the future, if I want a loan, I can get one. It's cheap. If I needed a business credit card, I can get one. If I want cheaper insurance, I can get that.

19:26If I want a better discount rate with my merchant processing company, I either get it negotiated or I'm going to switch somewhere else. But that's where it came from. So NAV is really the culmination of my life's work of having been that business owner who got 30 different loans, commercial loans, almost every type of loan that exists and dealing with net 30 with trade, you know, with suppliers and vendors to, okay, how do we turn that all into a product that makes it drop dead simple for a small business owner to understand? And from a credit and financial health perspective, here's where I'm at.

19:58And here's how I improve that over time so that all of my options get better. Really appreciate that breakdown. I mean, to me, Fire Nation is just so inspiring to see the journey, to hear just the process and the progress of entrepreneurs who have just been figuring it out this whole time. So with that note being talked about, Levi, you have a lot to share with entrepreneurs who are struggling because you've struggled. Of course, these obstacles and challenges that you've faced over the years, they're real and they're part of every journey. So what is your one piece of advice for business owners that are listening right now who are fighting to stay afloat?

20:34You know, I touched on some of the more obvious ones. Don't just chase money, thinking that that's going to bring you happiness. Understand people. I think I was too ruthless early on with people, with the people that work for me. I like valued my candor. Like, you know where you stand with me, but I didn't understand the concept of like, hey, you can hand someone a piece of pie or shove it in their face. Hey, either way, it's a piece of pie. What are you complaining about? I shoved it in your face. And so I had to learn to communicate a lot better and adjust my communication style based on the personality of the person that I was working with.

21:13But the biggest regret that I have is I didn't take care of my mental health. Like my mind, I would tell people it's a steel trap. And through those businesses, like I went to hell and back 100 times. And I just prided myself on like, I'm rock solid. And then in 2018, after Goldman Sachs led our$45 million C round at NAV, and we weren't out of the woods from a profitability perspective, but we were on a business model, you did economics. And on that round, we got profitable. I started to have panic attacks and I'd had no history of mental health and it was brutal, like absolutely brutal. And so I went to work like any entrepreneur.

21:52I got to work on it. And eventually it took a couple of years, therapy, psychology, lots of new habits, meditating. Frankly, psilocybin is what was the most important cure for me along the way. But I could have got ahead of that. I didn't take care of myself. I live for everybody else. My wife and I have six daughters. I was through all this. I've been a very present father. I've been a present husband. And so my mindset was I'm going to give to my family and I'm going to give to work. And that's it. And I saw that as giving to myself, but it wasn't. And so I broke. And that was a miserable period of life.

22:32Luckily, I've been panic attack free since May of 2020. And I haven't had anxiety at all since Q1 of 2021. one. But if I had to give one piece of advice, it's don't wait till your mental health breaks. It doesn't matter how rock solid your mental health has been in life. Eventually it can break if you don't take care of yourself. And I wish I would have, I mean, I've learned a lot from those experiences and it really helps me get back because as you can see, I'm really open about it. I want to be a part of destigmatizing it. But if I could do it over again, I'd still skip it. I'd get ahead of it and make sure I never got to that breaking point.

23:10Totally. I mean, Levi, you shared a lot of valuable and important things today, but that might be the thing that helps the most people. So thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable. If Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about NAV, about other things you have going on, what is your call to action for our listeners today? If credit and financial health is relevant to your business, which it is for most, maybe not like a home-based consultant or something like that, but go to nav.com, nav.com. Very simple, easy, easy to pronounce, easy to remember. I'm on LinkedIn forward slash Levi King.

23:43Happy to connect with people. This is my life's purpose is now serving entrepreneurs. And at NAV, we have about a million users. It's pretty good scale. We aspire to serve millions of small businesses in the US and hopefully eventually in other geographies, but LinkedIn or going to NAV, either way works. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with LK and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Levi, L-E-V-I in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Levi, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

24:23For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Levi for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, freedom isn't a dream, it's a decision. Join my community, the Freedom Circle, where clarity, systems, and support collide. Your 90-day path to time and income freedom starts at freedom-circle.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Here's something most of us don't think about until it's a problem. Our phone service. Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier built from the ground up with security as the priority.