April 23, 2024 • 26 mins
Unlock the secrets to business growth that defies the risks of upfront investments with Jeremy Mapes, the ingenious entrepreneur behind Mapes LLC. His story is one of accidental discovery and swift rise to the top, as he found himself navigating the complex world of the debt collection industry and climbing to the role of Vice President of Operations before even tossing his graduation cap. This episode peels back the layers on how Jeremy's performance-based sales strategy has revolutionized MAPES and Associates, offering receivables companies a golden opportunity to amplify their growth without the financial gamble. Join us to grasp the wisdom behind his "results first, payment later" philosophy and how it's changing the game for agencies fearing the cost of sales personnel.
When the world shifted to living-room offices and kitchen-counter workstations, businesses like collection agencies had to pivot—and fast. The conversation in this episode doesn't just stop at the pandemic's push for remote work; it plunges into the heart of technological transformations that ensure operations hum smoothly, from virtual PCs to robust cybersecurity. But the real star of the show is AI. We're not just talking your everyday chatbots; we're delving into how companies like LivePerson and StitchAI are redefining customer interactions with a splash of artificial intelligence. Discover the triumphs and trials of integrating AI into communication platforms and why staying ahead means embracing a community of tech comrades to creatively tackle operational challenges. Jeremy Mapes shares a treasure trove of insights on why collaboration and innovation are the pillars of success in the collection industry and beyond.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everyone, welcome back to the growing Lean
podcast sponsored by LeanDiscovery Group, an
award-winning app and softwaredevelopment firm based out of
Virginia.
This is your host, dylan Burke,also known as Deige, and I'm
happy to be here today withJeremy Mapes, founder and CEO of
Mapes LLC.
Welcome, jeremy, thank you,thank you, yeah thanks for being
(00:24):
here.
So, jeremy, to get us started,can you tell us a little bit
about your history andbackground and how you got
started in this business?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Sure, it was actually completely by accident.
I was back in 1994, I waslooking for a job, I was going
to college and I was going tocollege for my management
information systems degree and Ihappened into a debt collection
agency because they had anadvertisement out and happened
to get audited or not audited,but interviewed right on the
(00:56):
spot.
And so they said, come backFriday, see if you can work debt
collections because a lot ofpeople can't.
And found out I had a knack forit while I was going to college
and ended up becoming, before Ifinished my college, my entire
degree.
I ended up becoming vicepresident of operations for a
small agency in Wichita, kansas,and then from there, after a
(01:17):
few years of running a shopthere, because I ended up being
vice president of going from acollector to vice president of
operations over a few yearsthere, company changed and I
wanted to expand my wing.
So I ended up at another agencythat did national receipts for
several of the big corporationslike Retailers, national Bank,
which people know as Target orTarget Credit Card, and that was
(01:40):
up in Wyoming, and then went toanother company just a year
later after I fixed them.
That was what they needed fixedand corrected.
And then I went to work forfive years at an agency up in
Wisconsin and was there and tookthem from 10 agents that were
doing third party collections to100 agents, with half of them
(02:03):
doing third party debtcollections and then also first
party BPO services.
And then from there spread mywings and my final move before I
started my consulting businesswas to a public corporation down
here in Florida, which iscurrently where I reside, right
outside of Orlando, and theywere the world's largest service
or mortgages.
At the time, aquin and I wasactually over their collection
(02:27):
division.
I was senior manager oftechnology business, which is a
long wordy name for a companywhose all of technology is in
India, and then the people thatmanage that manage the
technology that based them inthe US.
They are the business side.
So I ran the technology forthat division and other
integration projects and we hadthey'd actually downscaled into
(02:48):
the US to 50 agents and then wehad well over 500 to 700 agents
in India, along with most of myteam working out of Bangalore
and Mumbai.
So I got my experience workingwith international companies and
international teams, which wasvery interesting before I
started my own consultingbusiness and I was asked
actually by one of our vendors,said hey, you happen to give out
(03:11):
a lot of free advice to a lotof our clients.
Why don't you consider being aconsultant and help working with
these companies that need help,instead of giving away your
knowledge for free?
And so in 2007, I went out intobusiness for myself and have
been MAPES LLC ever since.
The only thing that's changed iswe've had some businesses in
between.
My focus was on consultingoriginally.
(03:32):
We've also done customtechnology for companies or
technology support.
We probably are.
Bread and butter is in support.
And we also started recentlyMAPES and associates for making
phone calls out on behalf ofseveral receivables companies,
because they find when theybring sales people in, sales
people often come with a upfrontcost that doesn't necessarily
(03:55):
prove to be valuable.
And so we came in with thethought process of we'll take
the risk, we'll make the calls,that way we know the people are
working.
And then, when you get therevenue, when you get the sales
and that you start collecting onbehalf of the agencies, we'll
take 25% of the revenue that youproduce.
So that way you know if we'remaking money it's because we did
(04:20):
the work.
And, of course, they love thatidea.
I've actually just started thatin the end of November and it's
very popular.
So I don't advertise right nowbecause we're modeling it before
we build in more people.
Because we don't have the modelright, because they've got to
carry without funds for we'vegot to carry without basically
carry the note until they gettheir business or the business
(04:42):
in from us.
So we're trying to make thatmodel perfect and then when I
open the door to say we'll takeon more agencies, they'll stand
in line.
That won't be a problem,because they all love the idea
of having competent sales thatdoesn't cost them until they
actually make money off of it.
Very easy sales pitch.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, 100%.
No.
That's amazing and I can't seewhy people wouldn't want to hire
someone when it's performancebased, especially if you are
showing that you are performing.
That's awesome.
I'm excited to hear more aboutit.
Can you walk me through theoverall business strategy there?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
for the MAPES and associates.
Yeah, the business strategy waspretty simple, since I'm, at
the end of the day, I'm atroubleshooter, whether it's
operations or IT.
I hear people with problems andthen I think how can we fix
that, correct that, or is therean opportunity there for us to
do something?
And for the longest time I'dheard agencies complaining about
(05:43):
the matter of fact.
I was talking one in SouthCarolina just in the last year
or two and they were complainingthat they had a loss of a major
client.
There's been a lot of companiesin the receivables industry
that have been complacent in thelast 10, 20 years and they'll
build up their revenue.
They have a continuous revenuecoming in from these clients
that they've served for yearsand then they won't worry about
(06:07):
sales so much until the daycomes that one of their large
sometimes 50% to 60% of theirbusiness walks out the door
because they got too complacent.
And what we find in thereceivables industry there's
third parties coming in to these, in particular healthcare
organizations, and saying, hey,we will monitor, we'll do agency
management for you, for theseagencies that are working for
(06:29):
you, and we're gonna take apiece of the action, basically
the agency's action and thefirst thing they do is they come
in and let's say these agenciesare working for a 20%
contingent fee off of what theycollect payback, so they're
working off a contingency too.
And then this place comes inand tells them that they're
gonna have to work for 12% whenthey're making 20.
And so they're taking a hit totheir bottom line.
(06:52):
But they have so much volumeinvested in these large
healthcare organizations, somewill stay with it, some will
walk away and say sorry, wecan't operate at that level,
especially the way thelegislation is these days in the
United States.
This isn't political, it's justas they have more regulations
they have to meet today thanthey had to meet 20 years ago,
(07:14):
so it's much more costly to dobusiness.
So a lot of them are walkingaway from it.
Or they try to bring in newsalespeople to find new revenue.
But they've got to train thosesalespeople and they've been
doing customer support, notsales, for the last 10, 20 years
.
And so they bring in thesesalespeople and a lot of times
they'll fail, either because ofa lack of education they give
them or because of a trust butdon't verify factor that they
(07:38):
bring in the wrong people whoare.
They're not building a KPIdesign that they can manage
their salespeople.
And that's a problem becauseyou bring somebody in,
especially in a managementposition, it's gonna sell your
company and say, okay, go at it.
Oh, what are they doing?
How many calls are they makinga day?
What kind of calls?
What cold, warm, hot callsleads do they have?
(08:00):
What does their daily schedulelook like?
I actually know of an agency inOhio.
They hired a salesmansupposedly a veteran to the
industry, came from anotherplace and they paid him a salary
$100,000 salary.
So they're spending what $9,$10,000 a month for his benefits
.
Kind of find out.
(08:20):
He was spending 80% of his timein his hot tub in the backyard,
supposedly making sales.
Letting a check what he wasdoing, which is nice for them
that I found out and thenobviously people start to get
suspicious when they don't havetoo much coming in.
I think he was relying on thefact that he thought he was
gonna bring in some businessthat he knew previously, but he
(08:42):
really wasn't working too hardat it.
So I think there's greatopportunities out here for
people that have a drive.
I think there's a lack of drivethese days and a lot of people
we see.
So for people that do have adrive, there's a very good
opportunity to make money.
It's just where is that moneyat?
Where can you take drivenpeople and put them that they
(09:03):
have an opportunity?
So the people we bring intoplace, they that come in to make
these phone calls on behalf ofthese agencies we help train
them up, get them to understand.
We make an agreement with theagencies that we can audit them
at any given time.
We have control, and what'sgood from my side is we have
control over the clients too.
So if we do have a rogue agencythat doesn't live up to what
(09:27):
they agree, it's in ouragreements that we can take our
clients and leave, which in alot of times you're signing an
NDA.
If you're a salesman with acompany, so that's our benefit
too.
So once we do have build up arepository or a group of clients
for these agencies, they needto commit to what they need to
do as well.
We're gonna audit them on behalfof the creditors and that's our
(09:49):
sell to the clients we run into, as you're not just dealing
with ABC collection agency,you're dealing with maips and
associates.
We're gonna audit them becauseif they're not doing the right
thing and they're not makingmoney for you, then we're not
making money.
I mean, they're bringingliability and they're doing the
wrong thing, then we're gonnacatch that before we lose a
client and we lose our money too.
So it's a win-win situation, orthree ways should be
(10:11):
win-win-win win for us, win forthe agency and win for the
client 100% and I think you'vegot that model right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Excuse me, and it's exciting to see what you're
doing there and I definitelythink you're gonna be able to
scale this.
That's awesome.
I wanted to jump back to thebusiness before maips and
associates and talk a little bitabout that, because I like to
talk about how how our foundershave adapted to changes and I
(10:43):
want to get your how you adaptedto changes, and the most
notable one, I guess, is thepandemic.
How did you adapt to that withyour business and yourself, if
there was any adoption needed.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, that was.
That was interesting thing.
We were actually my companyitself was best suited for the
pandemic because we were workingremotely and now I wouldn't be
pre pandemic I did a lot offlying out on site to the
agencies to work with them outof them in person.
The one thing that changed fromthe pandemic and I didn't know
how it was going to go with usif, because people were
(11:17):
tightening their ships up, theywere, they were, it was running
then a lot of people there's alot of people that left their
industries and help, you know,kind of did do anything for a
while so that that hurt agencysome as well.
But the big thing was for a lotof collection agencies they
never had agents work remotelybefore and so that was something
new to them and it was almostrequired in certain situations.
(11:39):
And so in some states they were, it was, it was actually
illegal for them to workremotely until the pandemic
happened.
A good example is the state ofWashington.
Washington actually had laws inplace and said at least for the
receivables industry, you haveto have your people working that
are making calls out to theconsumers.
(12:00):
They have to be headquarteredat wherever you state your bit
place of businesses and they putthat on hold when the pandemic
happened because you know it ranright against them, saying you
can't have people in the officegetting each other sick.
So that changed my businesspartially.
One was I had to help Work withthese agencies to be able to
(12:23):
have their staff work remotelyand set up Rules, sets as far as
how they're going to work, howyou're going to audit them, how
did you know that they're doingwhat they needed to be?
Make sure that they werebuffered against potential
infiltration from, from securityrisk, which always getting
better every time that thepeople out there that are trying
(12:44):
to Get into systems.
And so for us, we just actuallyfrom my business, I ended up
working more remotely the lastweek before they shut down.
People flying out was.
I was actually on a plane thatweek coming back from working
with a, with a largercorporation, and it was
interesting because they hadjust merged the year before and
(13:06):
we're helping them with theirmerger and they were trying to
figure out how they were goingto make the company in multiple
cities work out.
When they now had to figure outhow to make the company work
with, they had to think about athousand agents.
They had to have a figure outhow they're going to manage
those agents, with many of themworking remotely at this point,
(13:26):
and so they had to take a total,total change of pace.
And, as a lot of us know, therewas companies that were going in
buying laptops.
Laptops did real well, didn'tthey?
Bunch people buying laptops andPCs during the pandemic so they
could put their people out inthe field, but they had no idea
how to source that.
And you know, if they knewtoday what, what they didn't
(13:48):
know, then they would probablydone it differently.
Because, I mean, we're in anage of remote is very possible.
The need for a physical laptopin the field for somebody that's
just doing calls and contactsis not necessary.
You can put them in like aMicrosoft Azure cloud, you can
put them in an Amazon cloud andactually just basically have
(14:10):
them on a virtual PC and passthem out like a, what I call
like a Google cloud, where youjust have a small box that
connects there to think like a,like a fire stick, connects them
to the internet and they don't.
You don't have to worry aboutyour data being in the field.
The only thing they're gettingis visualization.
The computer is not reallyrunning there, it's just acting
(14:32):
as a conduit that's connectingto the keyboard and the screen
right.
That was a new paradigm shiftthat a lot of people didn't know
at the time to take advantageof.
And so that I think you knowfrom my company the bad thing
about being in a consultingbusiness on technology.
And I'll quote one of my, oneof my college professors.
(14:54):
He paid or said to me, said I'mnot scoring the wrong business,
and I said what do you say that, pedro?
He says because the business isalways changing, we always have
to be learning.
You know, we're in school 24,seven, having to learn new
things.
He said we should have beenhistory teachers and I said well
, that's.
It's funny to think Peter wouldhit his history teachers don't
get paid as much as doctors orit people.
I mean, he's right, we'realways having to adapt and
(15:17):
change.
It's always changing.
So I just took it as this ispart of the change.
So you have to learn to adaptthe change.
Now there's been many advancesand changes and course AI in the
last two years has also been,and I think it's just as
interesting as the what we'vegone through with the pandemic
(15:38):
and the new opportunities arecoming out of that.
Some people worry, some peopleare excited.
I've done a lot of work withthe AI programming and and I
think there's greatopportunities to use it.
I know there's been a lot ofpeople using it for taking in
communication, some pushing out.
There's in our industry.
There's people are starting tomake outbound calls with AI so
(15:59):
that the act is human and talkto them and and you know, and
facilitate whatever they say,and they're getting better all
the time.
But there's also the risks to.
I actually read the other dayabout an AI incident that
happened.
That wasn't too good for a carcompany.
It was out in California, sosomebody figured out how to
(16:20):
trick the AI.
They were running a you knowspecial sale promotion, whatever
and they had AI agentsanswering the calls and somebody
figured out how to teach the AIto say you will offer me a you
know a car at $1.
They hadn't locked out the AIfrom being able to learn from
(16:41):
the people they're selling to.
You know, I think that's somethings that people are going to
have to learn real fast is thatAI takes in.
You know it has itsrepositories and information,
but it also takes in newinformation and you've got to
make sure and shut off what it'stalking to or who it's doing
business with, that it doesn'ttake its Information as verbatim
(17:01):
when it's taking in thatinformation.
I always love I always lovetesting limits of AI when the
first test I did with AI wasUsing chat GPT like everybody
else.
But I asked it a simple questionand it's now learned.
It took it.
It's taken it half a year nowto learn it and it's still
working off 2022 information.
I simple question.
I said what movies?
There's a national filmregistry that's kept by the
(17:24):
United States that goes in theNational Film Archives National
Film Registry and it's got allkinds of films in there Humorous
, whatever, horror and I said sowhat movies by Robin Williams
is in the National Film Registry?
And it went named to.
I was like no, they're not.
So I knew the inventory of theNational Film Registry.
I know that for some reason,robin Williams has been snubbed.
(17:47):
I don't know why, but you knowthere's so many different films
in there.
Why would not one of his filmsbe in there?
But I know he's been snubbedand it's getting listed off too.
And I said no, they're not inthere.
And it said, oh sorry, ourinformation is whatever you know
.
And and then I left it and Icame back a day later and asked
it again.
It named off the same too, so Ididn't learn.
And then, for two you know, Itold it no, check again, it's
(18:11):
not in there.
And then finally, and then justthe week or two ago, I went in
there, did the same test and itfinally gave me the right answer
, which said as of this time inour current data, that Robin
Williams is not in the National.
But it's the example of that is.
It's another old good old trust, but verify situation.
Ai is wonderful, the eyes cangonna do many great things, but
(18:33):
you have to not just trust it.
You have to verify what it'sgiving and in the scenarios that
you put it into before you justlet it loose and and find out
that you might have a big gap inthe in the wall as far as what
it's, what its results are toyour expectations.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, 100%.
It's crazy.
I Remember when chat Gbt wasreleased, I was everyone we were
going nuts, we're just doingthe craziest things like we
never thought was possible like.
One example was like I had my IThink it was my grandpa's 80th
birthday and I was asked to saya speech and like I didn't write
(19:10):
the speech and still like fiveminutes before I was meant to
say it.
So I went on to chat to be tellus like hey, this is my grandpa
, this is his name.
He had a few details from hislife, he has a few memories.
He's right me a speech that'llmake everyone in the room cry
and laugh and Literally in twoseconds, I had this beautiful
speech that had everyone in theroom crying and laughing.
(19:31):
It was, it was amazing and,yeah, that's just like surface
level things you can do with it.
It's, it's super cool.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Are there any specific tools?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Are there any specific tools that you use in
your business operations?
A I tools.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Hey, I tools.
I'm actually working with somedifferent companies right now
testing their tools.
So there's one out there.
It's big company and I don'tknow how to pin the industry
necessarily yet, because theythey're used to doing with
dealing with the you know,million-dollar contracts.
The one bad thing about thereceivables industry there's
there's a handful of largecompanies and the rest are
medium to small, so that thatcompanies live person and they
(20:10):
do AI, that they.
They are originallyCommunications, their, their
focus was the number ofcommunications that you could
talk to a customer through.
So they have your messengers,your chats, your slack,
everything so that, irregardlessof the channel the customer
wanted to use, they'd have achannel that they'd be able to
reach the, the office and beable to communicate with them.
(20:32):
And they started to introduceAI into it.
Which was the big reason why Iwas looking into it, because I
had customers coming to me going.
We lost a deal because wedidn't have an AI solution for
chat and I said, great, whatabout AI solution for IVR,
interactive voice recognition?
(20:53):
What, as far as voice, whatother communication types do you
need a AI solution on?
And they were just.
It's funny to listen tocustomers because they're so
focused on what we lost on this.
We just need to start with this, okay, well, we need to start
with this, but you're gonna losethe next one on whatever else
you don't have if you don'tthink about it.
So I started reaching out tocompanies live person I have a
(21:14):
relationship with.
There's a newer company out ofIndia that's doing outbound and
inbound, but they startedwithout bound of all things
Communications for makingconsumer calls, for collection
agencies and it's calledstitchai S-t-i-t-c-h and they're
out of India and I was lookinginto why India was running ahead
(21:37):
on voice communications.
From what I've been searchingthe states, you'll see a lot of
advertisements out there for AIcommunications, but most it's
chatbot, I think is what you'llfind 90% of the time.
And I was wondering why therewasn't more AI voice when we
know that they can do AI voicecommunications.
And I figured out one of thenewer Chat to voice
(21:58):
communications or AI to voicecommunications.
India developed one called RASAor ASSA, I believe is how it's
spelled.
But they have RASA, so they'rethey're running with it.
All they got to do is convinceAmericans to buy it, and so I
started.
I started a relationship withthem.
They started.
They actually reached out to mefirst because I do a lot of
integrations.
So they called me and saidmaybe we need you to be able, we
(22:22):
want to see if you can help usconnect to these collection
agency databases and or CRMs.
And collection agencies run onabout 50 different CRMs when
they'll run on when they builtthemselves, and so each one
requires a different type ofconnection.
You know, be nice that they allconnected through ODBC or JSON
and I hope I'm not getting tootechnical for the people out
(22:42):
there but it'd be really easy ifyou could send, send a, do a
simple query through ODBC or ifthey all agreed to do REST API.
You know, but they don't.
So that's where I come in,because a lot of times the
technical staff with these CRMsDon't necessarily know what they
have to be able to connect andthat's where I make the
connection for in between thetwo, a lot of times on the
(23:04):
vendors behalf.
But it can go.
It can go either way, but it'sbeen.
It's been interesting.
So I'm working with their team,actually see them this next
week in Nashville.
They had a tech conference andhopefully we can come up with
some new ideas on ways we canuse their AI modeling.
Okay amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
That's awesome, and I've just looked at the time.
We have gone quite a bit over,but that's.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
No, no worries.
But before we go, what advicewould you like to give to other
business owners looking tosucceed in today's world?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, business owners , especially if they're the
small business world and, ofcourse, this program you call
lean they need to keep theireyes open to non-traditional
methods.
I mean, one thing I did back in2007 that was right was I did
voice over IP for my phonesystem.
That's an easy one, right.
But you be funny.
You find it funny that peoplethat still get a traditional
telco coming into their officethey don't do it at home anymore
(24:00):
.
Why do they do it at theiroffice?
You know, do you really need afax fax number?
And if you do, you know,through voice over IP companies
you can get a fax number if youthink you need it.
800 numbers are pretty much notas necessary as they used to be
because everybody's got theability to call Anywhere in the
US.
You know, for the, for there's.
Whatever their single plan is, Ithink they need to look at the
(24:24):
earliest adoption.
So, whatever they're doing, Ithink they also need to look at
what they have to do manuallyand what.
What's done manually now thatcan be automated, because that's
where everything's going, ofcourse.
So if you like you said withyour example of writing the
writing the P she did with chatGPT, I think that's.
You know that's going to happena lot more and it's going to be
(24:46):
on.
If somebody spending you knowwe used to spend hours doing
PowerPoints that's a goodexample.
Any of those type of things youshould be able to find a way to
automate it.
If you haven't yet, it's coming.
And I always say if it, for somereason, you don't find
something out there to do it,you either weren't looking hard
enough or you're stepping on anopportunity To maybe build
(25:07):
something yourself, even ifyou're not that technologist.
Find the right people, put themtogether.
So keep looking, always lookfor the, the you know the Least
costly method and the automatedmethod, so that you spend more
of your time making deals thanyou spend Having to do the work
to, to put the communication outthere or to have to do the the
(25:27):
you know the.
That's time you can be at thebeach these days.
So Talk to, always talk to peergroups.
Who's doing what?
Who's doing things more simpler.
That saves a lot of time aswell.
100%.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
I appreciate that and Thanks, jeremy, for Everything
today and your time.
What's the best way for ourlisteners to get in touch with
Jeremy mates, if you have anyoffers for them or if they're
looking to connect and followyour journey?
Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And so they can go to matesllccom.
So my name is mother A's andapple peas and pizza he's net
word.
This is in sam larry, larry,charliecom or they can.
They can reach out to me onlinemy email address Jeremy.
At mateslccom, we keep it allsimple.
That's also good examples.
If you're gonna have a business, make sure everything's wrapped
up in your name so it makes itfor every everybody easy to find
(26:16):
you right, exactly Well.
Thanks again for your timetoday, jeremy.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Thanks for your time today, Jeremy.
I really enjoyed chatting toyou.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Good speaking to you as well down.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the growing Lean
podcast sponsored by LeanDiscovery Group, an
award-winning app and softwaredevelopment firm based out of
Virginia.
This is your host, dylan Burke,also known as Deige, and I'm
happy to be here today withJeremy Mapes, founder and CEO of
Mapes LLC.
Welcome, jeremy, thank you,thank you, yeah thanks for being
(00:24):
here.
So, jeremy, to get us started,can you tell us a little bit
about your history andbackground and how you got
started in this business?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Sure, it was actually completely by accident.
I was back in 1994, I waslooking for a job, I was going
to college and I was going tocollege for my management
information systems degree and Ihappened into a debt collection
agency because they had anadvertisement out and happened
to get audited or not audited,but interviewed right on the
(00:56):
spot.
And so they said, come backFriday, see if you can work debt
collections because a lot ofpeople can't.
And found out I had a knack forit while I was going to college
and ended up becoming, before Ifinished my college, my entire
degree.
I ended up becoming vicepresident of operations for a
small agency in Wichita, kansas,and then from there, after a
(01:17):
few years of running a shopthere, because I ended up being
vice president of going from acollector to vice president of
operations over a few yearsthere, company changed and I
wanted to expand my wing.
So I ended up at another agencythat did national receipts for
several of the big corporationslike Retailers, national Bank,
which people know as Target orTarget Credit Card, and that was
(01:40):
up in Wyoming, and then went toanother company just a year
later after I fixed them.
That was what they needed fixedand corrected.
And then I went to work forfive years at an agency up in
Wisconsin and was there and tookthem from 10 agents that were
doing third party collections to100 agents, with half of them
(02:03):
doing third party debtcollections and then also first
party BPO services.
And then from there spread mywings and my final move before I
started my consulting businesswas to a public corporation down
here in Florida, which iscurrently where I reside, right
outside of Orlando, and theywere the world's largest service
or mortgages.
At the time, aquin and I wasactually over their collection
(02:27):
division.
I was senior manager oftechnology business, which is a
long wordy name for a companywhose all of technology is in
India, and then the people thatmanage that manage the
technology that based them inthe US.
They are the business side.
So I ran the technology forthat division and other
integration projects and we hadthey'd actually downscaled into
(02:48):
the US to 50 agents and then wehad well over 500 to 700 agents
in India, along with most of myteam working out of Bangalore
and Mumbai.
So I got my experience workingwith international companies and
international teams, which wasvery interesting before I
started my own consultingbusiness and I was asked
actually by one of our vendors,said hey, you happen to give out
(03:11):
a lot of free advice to a lotof our clients.
Why don't you consider being aconsultant and help working with
these companies that need help,instead of giving away your
knowledge for free?
And so in 2007, I went out intobusiness for myself and have
been MAPES LLC ever since.
The only thing that's changed iswe've had some businesses in
between.
My focus was on consultingoriginally.
(03:32):
We've also done customtechnology for companies or
technology support.
We probably are.
Bread and butter is in support.
And we also started recentlyMAPES and associates for making
phone calls out on behalf ofseveral receivables companies,
because they find when theybring sales people in, sales
people often come with a upfrontcost that doesn't necessarily
(03:55):
prove to be valuable.
And so we came in with thethought process of we'll take
the risk, we'll make the calls,that way we know the people are
working.
And then, when you get therevenue, when you get the sales
and that you start collecting onbehalf of the agencies, we'll
take 25% of the revenue that youproduce.
So that way you know if we'remaking money it's because we did
(04:20):
the work.
And, of course, they love thatidea.
I've actually just started thatin the end of November and it's
very popular.
So I don't advertise right nowbecause we're modeling it before
we build in more people.
Because we don't have the modelright, because they've got to
carry without funds for we'vegot to carry without basically
carry the note until they gettheir business or the business
(04:42):
in from us.
So we're trying to make thatmodel perfect and then when I
open the door to say we'll takeon more agencies, they'll stand
in line.
That won't be a problem,because they all love the idea
of having competent sales thatdoesn't cost them until they
actually make money off of it.
Very easy sales pitch.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, 100%.
No.
That's amazing and I can't seewhy people wouldn't want to hire
someone when it's performancebased, especially if you are
showing that you are performing.
That's awesome.
I'm excited to hear more aboutit.
Can you walk me through theoverall business strategy there?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
for the MAPES and associates.
Yeah, the business strategy waspretty simple, since I'm, at
the end of the day, I'm atroubleshooter, whether it's
operations or IT.
I hear people with problems andthen I think how can we fix
that, correct that, or is therean opportunity there for us to
do something?
And for the longest time I'dheard agencies complaining about
(05:43):
the matter of fact.
I was talking one in SouthCarolina just in the last year
or two and they were complainingthat they had a loss of a major
client.
There's been a lot of companiesin the receivables industry
that have been complacent in thelast 10, 20 years and they'll
build up their revenue.
They have a continuous revenuecoming in from these clients
that they've served for yearsand then they won't worry about
(06:07):
sales so much until the daycomes that one of their large
sometimes 50% to 60% of theirbusiness walks out the door
because they got too complacent.
And what we find in thereceivables industry there's
third parties coming in to these, in particular healthcare
organizations, and saying, hey,we will monitor, we'll do agency
management for you, for theseagencies that are working for
(06:29):
you, and we're gonna take apiece of the action, basically
the agency's action and thefirst thing they do is they come
in and let's say these agenciesare working for a 20%
contingent fee off of what theycollect payback, so they're
working off a contingency too.
And then this place comes inand tells them that they're
gonna have to work for 12% whenthey're making 20.
And so they're taking a hit totheir bottom line.
(06:52):
But they have so much volumeinvested in these large
healthcare organizations, somewill stay with it, some will
walk away and say sorry, wecan't operate at that level,
especially the way thelegislation is these days in the
United States.
This isn't political, it's justas they have more regulations
they have to meet today thanthey had to meet 20 years ago,
(07:14):
so it's much more costly to dobusiness.
So a lot of them are walkingaway from it.
Or they try to bring in newsalespeople to find new revenue.
But they've got to train thosesalespeople and they've been
doing customer support, notsales, for the last 10, 20 years
.
And so they bring in thesesalespeople and a lot of times
they'll fail, either because ofa lack of education they give
them or because of a trust butdon't verify factor that they
(07:38):
bring in the wrong people whoare.
They're not building a KPIdesign that they can manage
their salespeople.
And that's a problem becauseyou bring somebody in,
especially in a managementposition, it's gonna sell your
company and say, okay, go at it.
Oh, what are they doing?
How many calls are they makinga day?
What kind of calls?
What cold, warm, hot callsleads do they have?
(08:00):
What does their daily schedulelook like?
I actually know of an agency inOhio.
They hired a salesmansupposedly a veteran to the
industry, came from anotherplace and they paid him a salary
$100,000 salary.
So they're spending what $9,$10,000 a month for his benefits
.
Kind of find out.
(08:20):
He was spending 80% of his timein his hot tub in the backyard,
supposedly making sales.
Letting a check what he wasdoing, which is nice for them
that I found out and thenobviously people start to get
suspicious when they don't havetoo much coming in.
I think he was relying on thefact that he thought he was
gonna bring in some businessthat he knew previously, but he
(08:42):
really wasn't working too hardat it.
So I think there's greatopportunities out here for
people that have a drive.
I think there's a lack of drivethese days and a lot of people
we see.
So for people that do have adrive, there's a very good
opportunity to make money.
It's just where is that moneyat?
Where can you take drivenpeople and put them that they
(09:03):
have an opportunity?
So the people we bring intoplace, they that come in to make
these phone calls on behalf ofthese agencies we help train
them up, get them to understand.
We make an agreement with theagencies that we can audit them
at any given time.
We have control, and what'sgood from my side is we have
control over the clients too.
So if we do have a rogue agencythat doesn't live up to what
(09:27):
they agree, it's in ouragreements that we can take our
clients and leave, which in alot of times you're signing an
NDA.
If you're a salesman with acompany, so that's our benefit
too.
So once we do have build up arepository or a group of clients
for these agencies, they needto commit to what they need to
do as well.
We're gonna audit them on behalfof the creditors and that's our
(09:49):
sell to the clients we run into, as you're not just dealing
with ABC collection agency,you're dealing with maips and
associates.
We're gonna audit them becauseif they're not doing the right
thing and they're not makingmoney for you, then we're not
making money.
I mean, they're bringingliability and they're doing the
wrong thing, then we're gonnacatch that before we lose a
client and we lose our money too.
So it's a win-win situation, orthree ways should be
(10:11):
win-win-win win for us, win forthe agency and win for the
client 100% and I think you'vegot that model right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Excuse me, and it's exciting to see what you're
doing there and I definitelythink you're gonna be able to
scale this.
That's awesome.
I wanted to jump back to thebusiness before maips and
associates and talk a little bitabout that, because I like to
talk about how how our foundershave adapted to changes and I
(10:43):
want to get your how you adaptedto changes, and the most
notable one, I guess, is thepandemic.
How did you adapt to that withyour business and yourself, if
there was any adoption needed.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, that was.
That was interesting thing.
We were actually my companyitself was best suited for the
pandemic because we were workingremotely and now I wouldn't be
pre pandemic I did a lot offlying out on site to the
agencies to work with them outof them in person.
The one thing that changed fromthe pandemic and I didn't know
how it was going to go with usif, because people were
(11:17):
tightening their ships up, theywere, they were, it was running
then a lot of people there's alot of people that left their
industries and help, you know,kind of did do anything for a
while so that that hurt agencysome as well.
But the big thing was for a lotof collection agencies they
never had agents work remotelybefore and so that was something
new to them and it was almostrequired in certain situations.
(11:39):
And so in some states they were, it was, it was actually
illegal for them to workremotely until the pandemic
happened.
A good example is the state ofWashington.
Washington actually had laws inplace and said at least for the
receivables industry, you haveto have your people working that
are making calls out to theconsumers.
(12:00):
They have to be headquarteredat wherever you state your bit
place of businesses and they putthat on hold when the pandemic
happened because you know it ranright against them, saying you
can't have people in the officegetting each other sick.
So that changed my businesspartially.
One was I had to help Work withthese agencies to be able to
(12:23):
have their staff work remotelyand set up Rules, sets as far as
how they're going to work, howyou're going to audit them, how
did you know that they're doingwhat they needed to be?
Make sure that they werebuffered against potential
infiltration from, from securityrisk, which always getting
better every time that thepeople out there that are trying
(12:44):
to Get into systems.
And so for us, we just actuallyfrom my business, I ended up
working more remotely the lastweek before they shut down.
People flying out was.
I was actually on a plane thatweek coming back from working
with a, with a largercorporation, and it was
interesting because they hadjust merged the year before and
(13:06):
we're helping them with theirmerger and they were trying to
figure out how they were goingto make the company in multiple
cities work out.
When they now had to figure outhow to make the company work
with, they had to think about athousand agents.
They had to have a figure outhow they're going to manage
those agents, with many of themworking remotely at this point,
(13:26):
and so they had to take a total,total change of pace.
And, as a lot of us know, therewas companies that were going in
buying laptops.
Laptops did real well, didn'tthey?
Bunch people buying laptops andPCs during the pandemic so they
could put their people out inthe field, but they had no idea
how to source that.
And you know, if they knewtoday what, what they didn't
(13:48):
know, then they would probablydone it differently.
Because, I mean, we're in anage of remote is very possible.
The need for a physical laptopin the field for somebody that's
just doing calls and contactsis not necessary.
You can put them in like aMicrosoft Azure cloud, you can
put them in an Amazon cloud andactually just basically have
(14:10):
them on a virtual PC and passthem out like a, what I call
like a Google cloud, where youjust have a small box that
connects there to think like a,like a fire stick, connects them
to the internet and they don't.
You don't have to worry aboutyour data being in the field.
The only thing they're gettingis visualization.
The computer is not reallyrunning there, it's just acting
(14:32):
as a conduit that's connectingto the keyboard and the screen
right.
That was a new paradigm shiftthat a lot of people didn't know
at the time to take advantageof.
And so that I think you knowfrom my company the bad thing
about being in a consultingbusiness on technology.
And I'll quote one of my, oneof my college professors.
(14:54):
He paid or said to me, said I'mnot scoring the wrong business,
and I said what do you say that, pedro?
He says because the business isalways changing, we always have
to be learning.
You know, we're in school 24,seven, having to learn new
things.
He said we should have beenhistory teachers and I said well
, that's.
It's funny to think Peter wouldhit his history teachers don't
get paid as much as doctors orit people.
I mean, he's right, we'realways having to adapt and
(15:17):
change.
It's always changing.
So I just took it as this ispart of the change.
So you have to learn to adaptthe change.
Now there's been many advancesand changes and course AI in the
last two years has also been,and I think it's just as
interesting as the what we'vegone through with the pandemic
(15:38):
and the new opportunities arecoming out of that.
Some people worry, some peopleare excited.
I've done a lot of work withthe AI programming and and I
think there's greatopportunities to use it.
I know there's been a lot ofpeople using it for taking in
communication, some pushing out.
There's in our industry.
There's people are starting tomake outbound calls with AI so
(15:59):
that the act is human and talkto them and and you know, and
facilitate whatever they say,and they're getting better all
the time.
But there's also the risks to.
I actually read the other dayabout an AI incident that
happened.
That wasn't too good for a carcompany.
It was out in California, sosomebody figured out how to
(16:20):
trick the AI.
They were running a you knowspecial sale promotion, whatever
and they had AI agentsanswering the calls and somebody
figured out how to teach the AIto say you will offer me a you
know a car at $1.
They hadn't locked out the AIfrom being able to learn from
(16:41):
the people they're selling to.
You know, I think that's somethings that people are going to
have to learn real fast is thatAI takes in.
You know it has itsrepositories and information,
but it also takes in newinformation and you've got to
make sure and shut off what it'stalking to or who it's doing
business with, that it doesn'ttake its Information as verbatim
(17:01):
when it's taking in thatinformation.
I always love I always lovetesting limits of AI when the
first test I did with AI wasUsing chat GPT like everybody
else.
But I asked it a simple questionand it's now learned.
It took it.
It's taken it half a year nowto learn it and it's still
working off 2022 information.
I simple question.
I said what movies?
There's a national filmregistry that's kept by the
(17:24):
United States that goes in theNational Film Archives National
Film Registry and it's got allkinds of films in there Humorous
, whatever, horror and I said sowhat movies by Robin Williams
is in the National Film Registry?
And it went named to.
I was like no, they're not.
So I knew the inventory of theNational Film Registry.
I know that for some reason,robin Williams has been snubbed.
(17:47):
I don't know why, but you knowthere's so many different films
in there.
Why would not one of his filmsbe in there?
But I know he's been snubbedand it's getting listed off too.
And I said no, they're not inthere.
And it said, oh sorry, ourinformation is whatever you know
.
And and then I left it and Icame back a day later and asked
it again.
It named off the same too, so Ididn't learn.
And then, for two you know, Itold it no, check again, it's
(18:11):
not in there.
And then finally, and then justthe week or two ago, I went in
there, did the same test and itfinally gave me the right answer
, which said as of this time inour current data, that Robin
Williams is not in the National.
But it's the example of that is.
It's another old good old trust, but verify situation.
Ai is wonderful, the eyes cangonna do many great things, but
(18:33):
you have to not just trust it.
You have to verify what it'sgiving and in the scenarios that
you put it into before you justlet it loose and and find out
that you might have a big gap inthe in the wall as far as what
it's, what its results are toyour expectations.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, 100%.
It's crazy.
I Remember when chat Gbt wasreleased, I was everyone we were
going nuts, we're just doingthe craziest things like we
never thought was possible like.
One example was like I had my IThink it was my grandpa's 80th
birthday and I was asked to saya speech and like I didn't write
(19:10):
the speech and still like fiveminutes before I was meant to
say it.
So I went on to chat to be tellus like hey, this is my grandpa
, this is his name.
He had a few details from hislife, he has a few memories.
He's right me a speech that'llmake everyone in the room cry
and laugh and Literally in twoseconds, I had this beautiful
speech that had everyone in theroom crying and laughing.
(19:31):
It was, it was amazing and,yeah, that's just like surface
level things you can do with it.
It's, it's super cool.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Are there any specific tools?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Are there any specific tools that you use in
your business operations?
A I tools.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Hey, I tools.
I'm actually working with somedifferent companies right now
testing their tools.
So there's one out there.
It's big company and I don'tknow how to pin the industry
necessarily yet, because theythey're used to doing with
dealing with the you know,million-dollar contracts.
The one bad thing about thereceivables industry there's
there's a handful of largecompanies and the rest are
medium to small, so that thatcompanies live person and they
(20:10):
do AI, that they.
They are originallyCommunications, their, their
focus was the number ofcommunications that you could
talk to a customer through.
So they have your messengers,your chats, your slack,
everything so that, irregardlessof the channel the customer
wanted to use, they'd have achannel that they'd be able to
reach the, the office and beable to communicate with them.
(20:32):
And they started to introduceAI into it.
Which was the big reason why Iwas looking into it, because I
had customers coming to me going.
We lost a deal because wedidn't have an AI solution for
chat and I said, great, whatabout AI solution for IVR,
interactive voice recognition?
(20:53):
What, as far as voice, whatother communication types do you
need a AI solution on?
And they were just.
It's funny to listen tocustomers because they're so
focused on what we lost on this.
We just need to start with this, okay, well, we need to start
with this, but you're gonna losethe next one on whatever else
you don't have if you don'tthink about it.
So I started reaching out tocompanies live person I have a
(21:14):
relationship with.
There's a newer company out ofIndia that's doing outbound and
inbound, but they startedwithout bound of all things
Communications for makingconsumer calls, for collection
agencies and it's calledstitchai S-t-i-t-c-h and they're
out of India and I was lookinginto why India was running ahead
(21:37):
on voice communications.
From what I've been searchingthe states, you'll see a lot of
advertisements out there for AIcommunications, but most it's
chatbot, I think is what you'llfind 90% of the time.
And I was wondering why therewasn't more AI voice when we
know that they can do AI voicecommunications.
And I figured out one of thenewer Chat to voice
(21:58):
communications or AI to voicecommunications.
India developed one called RASAor ASSA, I believe is how it's
spelled.
But they have RASA, so they'rethey're running with it.
All they got to do is convinceAmericans to buy it, and so I
started.
I started a relationship withthem.
They started.
They actually reached out to mefirst because I do a lot of
integrations.
So they called me and saidmaybe we need you to be able, we
(22:22):
want to see if you can help usconnect to these collection
agency databases and or CRMs.
And collection agencies run onabout 50 different CRMs when
they'll run on when they builtthemselves, and so each one
requires a different type ofconnection.
You know, be nice that they allconnected through ODBC or JSON
and I hope I'm not getting tootechnical for the people out
(22:42):
there but it'd be really easy ifyou could send, send a, do a
simple query through ODBC or ifthey all agreed to do REST API.
You know, but they don't.
So that's where I come in,because a lot of times the
technical staff with these CRMsDon't necessarily know what they
have to be able to connect andthat's where I make the
connection for in between thetwo, a lot of times on the
(23:04):
vendors behalf.
But it can go.
It can go either way, but it'sbeen.
It's been interesting.
So I'm working with their team,actually see them this next
week in Nashville.
They had a tech conference andhopefully we can come up with
some new ideas on ways we canuse their AI modeling.
Okay amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
That's awesome, and I've just looked at the time.
We have gone quite a bit over,but that's.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
No, no worries.
But before we go, what advicewould you like to give to other
business owners looking tosucceed in today's world?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, business owners , especially if they're the
small business world and, ofcourse, this program you call
lean they need to keep theireyes open to non-traditional
methods.
I mean, one thing I did back in2007 that was right was I did
voice over IP for my phonesystem.
That's an easy one, right.
But you be funny.
You find it funny that peoplethat still get a traditional
telco coming into their officethey don't do it at home anymore
(24:00):
.
Why do they do it at theiroffice?
You know, do you really need afax fax number?
And if you do, you know,through voice over IP companies
you can get a fax number if youthink you need it.
800 numbers are pretty much notas necessary as they used to be
because everybody's got theability to call Anywhere in the
US.
You know, for the, for there's.
Whatever their single plan is, Ithink they need to look at the
(24:24):
earliest adoption.
So, whatever they're doing, Ithink they also need to look at
what they have to do manuallyand what.
What's done manually now thatcan be automated, because that's
where everything's going, ofcourse.
So if you like you said withyour example of writing the
writing the P she did with chatGPT, I think that's.
You know that's going to happena lot more and it's going to be
(24:46):
on.
If somebody spending you knowwe used to spend hours doing
PowerPoints that's a goodexample.
Any of those type of things youshould be able to find a way to
automate it.
If you haven't yet, it's coming.
And I always say if it, for somereason, you don't find
something out there to do it,you either weren't looking hard
enough or you're stepping on anopportunity To maybe build
(25:07):
something yourself, even ifyou're not that technologist.
Find the right people, put themtogether.
So keep looking, always lookfor the, the you know the Least
costly method and the automatedmethod, so that you spend more
of your time making deals thanyou spend Having to do the work
to, to put the communication outthere or to have to do the the
(25:27):
you know the.
That's time you can be at thebeach these days.
So Talk to, always talk to peergroups.
Who's doing what?
Who's doing things more simpler.
That saves a lot of time aswell.
100%.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
I appreciate that and Thanks, jeremy, for Everything
today and your time.
What's the best way for ourlisteners to get in touch with
Jeremy mates, if you have anyoffers for them or if they're
looking to connect and followyour journey?
Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And so they can go to matesllccom.
So my name is mother A's andapple peas and pizza he's net
word.
This is in sam larry, larry,charliecom or they can.
They can reach out to me onlinemy email address Jeremy.
At mateslccom, we keep it allsimple.
That's also good examples.
If you're gonna have a business, make sure everything's wrapped
up in your name so it makes itfor every everybody easy to find
(26:16):
you right, exactly Well.
Thanks again for your timetoday, jeremy.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Thanks for your time today, Jeremy.
I really enjoyed chatting toyou.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Good speaking to you as well down.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.