Loans to build communities, with Moishe Gubin

Moishe Gubin is a workhorse, a mule. And now it's paying off: for him, for the banks he leads, and for the communities they serve. In today's episode, we chat about work ethic and an old-fashioned path from the bottom to the top, we chat about what communities are, and we talk about bankers becoming a footnote in someone else's success story.

Optimum Bank are at home at https://www.optimumbank.com (but as mentioned, you can also find more investor news by searching OPHC on the NASDAQ and financial press, https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/OPHC/)

You can find Optimum Bank on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optimumbank/

LinkedIn is also where you’ll find me (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange/) and this show (https://www.linkedin.com/company/how-to-lend-money-to-strangers/) - so pop over and send me a connection request

My action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24

If you have any feedback or questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Keep well, Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Moishe Gubin 0:00

Really, how do you look at community? That's the starting point.

Brendan Le Grange 0:06

In Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol Scrooge, needing a job done, simply calls over the closest young lad and employs him on the spot. That story was set in the 1840s in England, and yet, somehow, 150 years later in Brooklyn, New York, something remarkably similar happened. Kicking off one of the most compelling founder stories we've had on the show. Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan Lagrange.

Moshe Guven, CEO and chairman at Optimum Bank and CEO of Strawberry Fields, welcome to the show. Moishe, you've got one of those wonderful, almost made for the movies career story.

So before we get into the meat of our discussion today, what are the foundations of your career?

Moishe Gubin 1:06

I grew up in a really, really poor house in Queens, New York, really, really proud of where I come from -recently, my mother passed and so now, you know, trying to do good in their memories: my mother, my father - but not a wealthy family in the projects of New York.

I worked my way, literally, through elementary school and through high school. In high school, I caught a break, I was on my way to buy a Slurpee, like maybe 12 years old, and a guy dropped something on the street, and I went and picked it up for him and put it on the back of a truck. And they're like, Hey, why don't you help us load this truck. I said, sure, I got nothing going on. And I just loaded a truck with them. And then like an hour later, they said, Well, hey, kid, why don't you come deliver the truck with us. And I said sure.

Now remember, this is time where parents didn't worry about their kids. It was relatively safe. I'm a 12 year old getting into a truck. We drove to Westchester unloaded the truck. I get back four hours later. And the guy says What are you doing tomorrow? I'm like, I don't have school tomorrow. He goes, we'll be here at four o'clock in the morning and you can work.

And I worked every minute of my life through high school.

And I graduated high school at 16. Got my first college degree at 18 and got married at 20. I worked the day of my wedding for the catering business!

I'm telling you, I'm a mule. Until today I'm a mule. Anyone who knows me, you know, I'm a workhorse. And then got my accounting degree which my second degree at 21.

My wife one day, I had left the house on a Saturday night to go cater a 1000 person wedding at the New York Hilton. I worked all the way till Monday morning where I come to the house at five o'clock in the morning. And then you know, I literally dropped into a hot shower. And as I'm going into the shower and going into the bathroom, my wife is like, Where have you been? And I'm like what do you mean 'where've I been', I'm working so that we can make a living and you know, have a good life. Yeah, but we're newly married and you leave me and whatever.

What do you want me to do? And she says, Well, you have an accounting degree, why don't you go work as an accountant... And so that's, that's a brilliant idea.

And so literally the next week, we're talking circa 1997. And literally the next week, you know, I took my resume and I mailmerge my resume and sent it to, I want to say, 1,000 places. I got three job interviews, and from those three job interviews I was offered three jobs.

And I took the job that was working as a bookkeeper at a nursing home. That's my humble beginnings. And then I started working as a payroll and accounts payable bookkeeper. I worked my way up through the organisation from Accounts Payable payroll, I went to receivables from receivables went to collections. Then I went to assistant controller then I became controller then I ran a home, then I ran two homes... and that brings us to 2001 .

My wife gives birth to triplets.

And she says to me, we got to get out of New York, my parents are in the Midwest and I really want their help to raise these kids. And so we moved to South Bend, Indiana and we got to South Bend, Indiana and I started as a director of budgeting for a nursing home chain and running 17 nursing homes for them running around talking to them helping them become profitable.

And fast forward two years I got an opportunity to buy something I bought my first nursing home. Really the rest is history because from there, we just kept growing and buying and buying and buying.

And today literally almost 20 years later, my 20 year anniversary with my business partner is October 31 2023, will be 20 years partners with a good friend of mine named Michael Blisko. And we've accumulated now over a billion in real estate, we have 110 nursing homes, our company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Chairman and CEO, it's called Strawberry Fields, stock symbols STRW, and somewhere along the way, while working my way towards becoming publicly traded on the healthcare REIT side, I felt that I needed board experience and an opportunity came along with a nursing home that was for sale that the owner, that was the seller, was the chairman of a bank in Florida. He roped me into joining the board. And I was right away the SEC financial expert and the and the Nasdaq financial expert, they considered me a sophisticated financial expert, whatever that is,

Brendan Le Grange 5:11

It's a big move to go to the bank. So what was the inspiration? There was a purely the opportunity to get the board experience or had you had an interest in banking before then?

Moishe Gubin 5:22

What I like about banking, in general thought is, you know, you're part of someone else's success story.

But what I would say is that, what was always the positive or the negative of that is that, you know, the banker helps you get to where you're going and then you surpass him because you become successful. And I've always felt that it's bittersweet.

But on the positive side of the of the conversation, I like to be that footnote in someone's story, somebody had to take a chance on them, you know. And I'm not a transactional guy, everybody in my life is still part of my life from beginning till now, I don't have any enemies that I know about.

Anyway, I wanted to be part of that story. And I took the opportunity at that time, because of the need to get that board experience so that it would build up a resume for when eventually I go and do a roadshow to the public market to raise equity for an issuance.

Brendan Le Grange 6:13

I want to pick up on that a bit. Because Optimum Bank, at least as it is today, embeds itself very much in the community. It's all about being a community bank. What does that mean to you?

Moishe Gubin 6:24

You know, the starting point, first of all, is really how do you look at community. I look at my network, and my whole world, if you want to call it my own personal ecosystem, as my community.

So that's the starting point. And then, and then to a little subset of that is, I happen to be an Orthodox Jew. And as an Orthodox Jew, I mean, there's a total of 5 million total Orthodox Jews in the whole world. So from that perspective, and as a total of 15 million Jews completely, people think we're billions of people, we're only 15 million total people. So in a sense, it's a very small community there.

And then you have the business point of view of where in South Florida and and you want to be the local community bank. So I look at it like this. In all of those areas, I play a role not as an influencer, but as a resource to help get things accomplished that they want to get accomplished, that they have a hard time as a random relationship somewhere else.

So as an example, I take major pride in all the different synagogues - actually went to mosques and churches as well - but synagogues and schools and other religious institutions. And the fact is reputation only they know me. And it's good business, by the way happens to be it's a good business, because at the end of the day, if you are worried that that building is going to be foreclosed on, you're going to fundraise the money, and you're going to be able to get the money to be able to pay your mortgage.

It's similar to like a guy who has taxicab and that's his office, and that's his business, he's going to always make his payment on his taxi payment. He might not pay his mortgage, you know, the other obligations he has in his life, but he's gonna pay for that taxi. In the same way that people are going to support the church support the school where their kids go, and the like.

And so, you know, I sit and listen, both from a point of view of charity, and from the banking side of it. And again, I become part of a small footnote somewhere, the fact that the school now has 850 kids, because the community has grown, I know that I had some small part and being able to get them to be able to take care of those later and 50 kids, where if I wasn't involved, they would have gotten to 250 kids or 300 Kids, because they would have been maxed out.

And actually even practice at the actual bank, I actually do play a front role where I sit with them, and then I help shepherd the deal through as Chairman of loan committees. And look, I think it plays an important role in the geography where we are and specifically, you know, in the Orthodox Jewish world, and a lot of the nonprofit world. I was with one of my original windows yesterday for lunch, and his comment resonates with me, he said, you know, lending is an art and a science. Okay, now mind, we were talking really about global banking so, you know, my bank does all this other stuff too, deposits and everything else, but my from the talk about just simply on the lending side, in the community bank role with within lending, he says, you know, it's really a mix of art and science, and, you know, the lenders that are all science, and they're not getting deals done, because, you know, there's always something wrong with the math somewhere, you know, and the guys that are all art, and that with loans that are bad loans, so you got to kind of manage that balancing act between the two sides to it.

And as a community banker with, especially in with my world, you know, the communities I'm serving, which a lot of it is also not necessarily local, but it's community as it's the Jewish world of, you know, not for profits, you know, churches, mosques as well, where I have to apply more art than science saying, Look, you guys have on a Saturday morning, let's say in a synagogue or on a Sunday morning in a church, you know, you have 500 people coming here. I look at that as 500 giving units that are coming regularly to a candy store to buy candy, and so I need to analyse what they're donating, you know, year over year donations, and I basically turned it into a science off of the art so that I can meet their needs anyway.

Brendan Le Grange 10:04

You've already talked to me a little bit about the philosophy there. And I can hear that coming through really nicely. What I'm interested in now is what that loan portfolio looks like, from my understanding is primarily in the commercial real estate sort of space has talked about sort of nonprofit commercial real estate space.

What what does that customer profile of yours look like? And I'm not very familiar myself with the commercial real estate side of lending. I've always done the consumer stuff. So maybe just a little bit of a primer for me of what makes that unique.

Moishe Gubin 10:34

Yeah. Okay. So today through June 30 numbers that I think we sent out yesterday, our loan portfolio has already gotten up to $518 million. Now about you five years ago, we were at $88 million. So from 88 to 518, is a pretty good growth trajectory,

Brendan Le Grange 10:49

especially with COVID in the middle of that.

Moishe Gubin 10:51

Yeah, no, totally.

But I'll tell you our out of our total portfolio, we've probably got about $50 million of consumer lending in there. Outside of consumer lending.

We have we created a lending programme for accounts receivables for mainly nursing home receivables that are Medicare Medicaid receivables, because that's also the business I'm in on the other side. And by the way, keep in mind, I can't borrow from my bank. rego doesn't allow me to be so there's no hanky panky, no affiliate transactions, nothing, okay. They don't even wave a wire fee for me.

Just can't do it.

So we started thinking, Well, you know, in my world and strawberry, I have tenants that need lines of credit. So I let why would we want them to go, you know, outside of our world, when we could is very easily done, we bring them into optimum bank, you know, it's sticky money, it brings in a whole bunch of deposits. And so we started doing that.

And that's growing nicely. We're getting close to about 30 35 million in that portfolio. And once we hit about 50, I gotta go back to the board and ask for permission to raise, maybe do another 50 of that. That's the stuff that's not backed by real estate and 4,000,004 and $20 million. It's mainly multifamily.

We have some retail. I mean, look, we're at of that 400 million, I'd say we probably have 300 of it is true. Commercial real estate, strip malls, hotels, we have some office. But I'll tell you, we we haven't had a bad loan in five or six years.

The only bad debt that sits on our books is actually a GAAP snafu. Now mind you, I'm a CPA, by the way. So from GAAP accounting, so we have a line of business, that's consumer lending driven. And we buy loans from let's say, Lending Club or Marlette, or that kind of world that lend money to people, small 20,000 to 25,000, small loans paid over three years, five years.

We only buy like the high, like the better paper that's, you know, it's not like as risky. And so it's built out that it's going to have delinquency ratios that are higher than you know, commercial lending. And so in my world of accounting, that would be a cost of goods sold, and we come off the top line, you know, and then you'd say you're netting out at a, you know, a 9% yield.

Now, with accounting accounting is forcing us to put that all the way on the bottom under bad debt. Yeah. And so it shows if you look at our financials, we have a little bit of bad debt. But that bad, that is not real bad debt, we haven't had a bad loan, and literally, five, six years, and a lot of that has to do with the goodwill that's created. And now we're lending.

Usually, when you do something nice for somebody, they have a very hard time to burn you in person. Yeah, mean? Meaning mean, they'll avoid you. But once you but once you're in front of that person who you lent 100 bucks to, it's very hard to them for them to say Screw you, I'm not giving you back your 100 bucks. Yeah, you know, they might not have the money, but they'll but they'll they can't intentionally do bad to you. They know you did good by them. Yeah. And so our whole bank today, the system and how we do our business is so friendly.

And let me just tell you, let me let me let me go back a step. When I invested in the bank 13 years ago, I thought, you know, this will be easy, I'm gonna learn a new business, and I'm gonna go put my money right in the business and we're going to be good to go.

And what I found out was that it's really not that simple.

And the bank was not geared towards taking care of, I would closely call me as, like a wealth management customer. Okay, so right away, we realised you know, what, we need to fix and replace all of the staff that feels as if they're doing the customer a favour, and we're going to replace them with people that understand that the customer is how we live, but that the customer we die, and that we're going to treat everybody the white glove service, and we're going to treat every customer as if they were Moishe Gubin being the customer.

And so it took years we brought in Tim Terry, he was my bank president, probably nine years ago at this point. And he basically replaced most of our staff with people that understand that our lifeline we don't live without our customer being satisfied with us. I have on every business card that I give out my cell phone numbers on there, and people can find me on WhatsApp or text me, you know, old times a day II, you know, I need help, I need this, I need that, and we take care of them. Um, you know, and that's, and that's, that's a philosophy that a lot of banks do not have.

Brendan Le Grange 15:08

Yeah, and let's talk about nuts and bolts for a minute. As you said, this is not about doing favours, you are evaluating the loans and deciding who to lend to and who not to. So, as I said earlier, I'm not familiar with how one does that in the commercial real estate space, I come from a world where it's going to FICO score and a few things like that and we're done.

How are you managing that balance of running an efficient process that involves the right amount of science, but also allowing an understanding of each unique business that's coming looking for money from you,

Moishe Gubin 15:39

you understand a couple points is that number one, you recognise that there's a different job task of credit versus lending.

And so we have a constant civil war going on, where the lender wants to produce, and the credit guy wants to be protected, you know, you have to navigate all of that, obviously, with respect and friendliness.

But a general rule of thumb that we start with is that, you know, assets don't pay mortgages, cash flow does, from our point of view, the starting point is going to be the integrity of the person who we're talking to. And so a lot of that gets diffused, where the lead comes in. Today, the leads are all coming in that they're hot leads are coming in from a new borrower that that's friends with a current borrower who came from another borrower or another bar, and there's, there's a direct lineage, if that's the right word to say, Okay, we know who this guy is, we know who his friends are, we know where he lives.

And then, so to underwrite a deal. You know, typical underwriting requires, you know, the cash flow, like I said, But, you know, you really want to look for two to three things, or if you're looking at three to three things, which is I think, you know, you need, you need to ask the quality, but you need the cash flow, and you need the strength of the guarantor, or the principle behind it so that, you know, that they're gonna back, you know, their debt. You know, that being said, everything has wiggle room, you know, if, if, if you have a stronger guarantor, you know, the really the one thing you don't, that doesn't really have the wiggle room is the cashflow that make us where the wiggle room exists in the cash flow is where you could look at global cash flow versus individual cash flow.

So you came to me and said, I got this building, it's empty. It's not making any money, I want to buy it. And I want to I want 50% LTV, or 60, or 60%. LTV or 70%. LTV rather, my point of view is, okay, well, who are you? And how are you going to pay me back? Right. And so, you know, if I understand you, and I see the rest of your world, and I know where your cash flow is being generated from, from my point of view, I'd lend on that all day long, which a lot of banks wouldn't, because it's not a cash flowing asset.

But for me, the actual debtor, or the guarantor that are, you know, he has the ability to pay us because he's making beaucoup cash, it has other he could be a neurologist, making, you know, million dollars a year, you know, at the hospital, and he has the pride idea of investing.

And he just said, but he doesn't know anything about it, he's buying an empty building that he thinks is a good deal. I'll lend him I mean, he's a neurologist who's making money, you know, he has good credit, that's credit pays anything. But he checks out as far as who he is, and where he lives and who you know, don't come to me for your first deal, like giving me the hardest, you know, loan to try to figure out for you, you don't have to come to me with a vanilla deal, either, you know, cream puff but I mean, but come to me with something that makes sense.

And then once you're in, you know, my purse strings are open, because, you know, that goes a long way. Because you want to back up someone who backs you up, in general rule in life, right? You want to help the guy that helps you like your surgeon in arms, he's your guy, that guy guided by you banks by you, and and he's only supposed to do like, I want to back him I want to do for him.

Brendan Le Grange 18:43

But most of what I want to sort of come back to the results announcement that you had recently just said, very good results coming from optimum bank. But in your address, you also spoke about the strange times, we are in the world.

So from your point of view, as you look, I guess, at the bank itself, but also just more broadly at the trends that are out there. We've got interest rates that have been rising, you know, threats of inflation, threats of a recession. What are the trends or the bits of other measurements out there in the market that you're keeping an eye on? And what's kind of the things that you track, as you look at the health of the economy, the health of that commercial real estate space?

Moishe Gubin 19:23

The biggest problem we have in a bank is, you know, in the case of the radical interest rates, because if you follow, you know, the five year or 10 year, you know, one year, it's every day of the week, but different news of what the what the market thinks, you know, it could shoot up to half a point, you know, every day every day is that volatility.

So the one thing that we did is we just changed our pricing to be, you know, three years ago, you'd come to me and say I need a loan, I'd say okay, I can give you five and a quarter or five year money, and then we'll reprice it after that. It's a treasury one year Treasury poster and a quarter and I can do that all day long. And I say you know, I got it done. Read the deal, it has to get passed by people. And you know, and I got your back, I don't sorry, I think you have a good story and we were able to sell it.

But today, that story is great. But you have to because of, you know, locking in the price, I can't give a fixed day one price, I could give a fixed price, but it has to be locked in, you know, five days before closing so that I know that I've got a spread on my money, I can't, I'm at an interest free loan society here, we're a bank that has that we have shareholders that we have to make money for all the while doing it the right way.

So from our point of view, we're relatively lucky compared to other other banks, and you know, the rest of the country, you know, we're in South Florida, you know, the customers, we have been vetted, the way they're being vetted. And just a whole routine on what we're doing and where the where our referrals come from, we have a way different situation than I guess a lot of other banks that are, you know, every every lender is a cold call customer that can take you all over the place for all types of assets and all different places that the local economy is terrible, you know, you don't know that, right?

That's what that's one of the reasons why you'd want to as a bank, certainly in times like this, you'd want to not expand your footprint, you'd want to kind of look more towards, you know, we know the local, you know, real estate market where we are, and, you know, we're going to lend money to people that are good people buying, I mean, you could you could lend money out, get some see property, right. But you got to know, that neighbourhood where you are, if that makes sense that that's going to continue to be able to, you know, cash flow.

Brendan Le Grange 21:32

Because there's obviously been a time that's not been the best for small regional banks, at least, if you're reading the newspaper headlines, but I'm gonna say that again, that's okay. So the headlines may be picking some of the worst stories, rather than the reality, it sounds like there still is very much a position for small regional banks in the USA ecosystem.

Moishe Gubin 21:52

We're a bank that's able to take care of the customer and make them feel good about themselves.

That being said, when when this last batch of stuff went, you know, went down, I realised how it's way better. I mean, I knew beforehand, but but I really realises how it's way better to be lucky than smart. People said to us, because I remember when I think Silicon Valley went out, like my phone was ringing, like off the hook. Yeah, like crazy off the hook.

And the Epiphany, like on the first phone call was like, What do you mean, we don't have any of these problems they go from? I said, let me just tell you, we got a conversation about two years ago at the bank. And we were talking about buying, you know, T bills, bonds for our portfolio, the policy was we needed 10% of our assets to be held in bonds. And I'm sitting there as chairman of the called algo. And my management saying, we need to buy $20 million of bonds. And I go, what's the rate? They're like, 191.

I said, Why would I want that crap for? Well, that's our policy, the regulators are going to come and be angry at us. I said, Well, we can always change our policy. It's bad businesses make any sense? Why do we want that?

And so, lo and behold, we changed our policy: we didn't buy it. We talked about it every quarterly meeting saying, you know, until we change the policy, that we're reaching our own policy by not having, not having this stuff, but mind you every month that went by, we're like, well, let's have another month where it became devalued. And we didn't have that risk.

And well, even till today, we only have about $450,000 worth of held to maturity bonds on our balance sheet. Okay? If I was just a yes, man in our conversation and that committee, right, we would end up spending, you know, all this money, and we would have gotten our rear ends handed to us, right.

The second thing that happened last year, I get a call from one of my favourite customers, she says that, you know, I really love your bank. And I'm like, Thank you, we really love you as a customer, you know, what can I do for you? And she's like, well, I got $10 million sitting in another bank, and I don't really need to have it there. I'd love to give it to you. And I say, so ship to ship the sugar. I'll take it. He says, Well, it's held in trust. And the trust requires that I have insurance on those funds.

So I said, Look, I honestly I don't know anything about that. She goes, No problem. I'll have my CFO send you the insurance company, along with the information and get it done with the money to do so I get the thing and finds out she was paying the other bank either 15 or 65 pips I don't remember what I think might have been 65 pips for the right to have insurance on her money for $10 million. And so I called the company, we find out what the programme was a mobile home last November, December, we took on this insurance and we offered it to all of our customers. I

t's unlimited over the 250 It's unlimited, and we foot the bill, we don't charge our clients at all. So if you are a customer and you had $400,000 and you wanted to have insurance, okay, no, mind you, we don't need insurance. But if you want insurance, you can have it, I'm paying for it. Then I just give you a form to sign you sign the form. You have insurance. That's the end of it. So that was number two.

And the last thing was is we're at 40% liquidity, okay. We have 170 million of availability on a monocle. Out of this untapped till today, from quarter to quarter, our deposits went up like $40 million from third quarter from first quarter second quarter. So that'd be lucky than smart. You know, it got it's got proven out.

Brendan Le Grange 25:12

Moishe, it's been a delight chatting to you and hearing the story firsthand. I think a lot of people listening would also be interested in in learning more and sort of following that story as it progresses. If people want to find you online, what is a good place for them to go to do that?

Moishe Gubin 25:27

Look up the stock symbol is OPHC Optimum Bank Holding Corp. Our website is user friendly, our app is user friendly. One thing we have in our bank that other banks don't have is will open accounts without having to be a person.

So if you need a business personal accounts, you send an email and somebody responds right away, and we get you all set up. But our website has information. So that's www.optimumbank.com. Again, the stock symbol OPHC, the easiest thing to do since since we're publically traded and we file, run the NASDAQ and file everything timely. You could go there search news, you know, Yahoo Finance, or one of these places, or Ameritrade and you should be able to get all of our filings all the prep.

And we sent out a press release today about our second quarter results, which were fantastic. Our June month was the best month we've ever, ever, ever, ever had. And it's a run rate of a 19.7% return on equity. Okay, okay. It just, it blows anyone's mind. Piper Sandler sent me an email that the my bank is on there all star list top 35 banks in the country. Okay. I mean, I mean, it's per capita, we're a small bank compared to you know, Wells Fargo, but I mean, but it's a proud moment.

You know, I, I got into the business without knowing what I was doing. I was, you know, I had I had other full time jobs. But I fell in love. I fell in love with the business. And today we're cranking man, we're, and we're doing it the right way. Everyone's happy, we have no marketing dollars spent zero. And every day that week, we got people coming in with money that they want to deposit and people saying, I heard you have money to lend me. Every day of the week.

Brendan Le Grange 27:08

You've put yourself in a great position there. Congratulations on those results. And yeah, best of luck for for the future. Before I let you go. I mean, you've already made a huge transformation at optimum bank, is there anything that we should be looking out for anything coming next on the horizon?

Moishe Gubin 27:26

This next 18 months, like I said, in my letter to the shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting, I think is really going to be the biggest transformation.

As far as products and growth, we should be able to raise $30 million in the next 18 months to get us to a billion dollar bank, we should get finally get some research analyst and get some coverage of the stock, which we haven't had in the bank spent over 24 years almost.

So we should get that what should what should what should make the stock pop at some point. But then you have all these verticals that we wanted to we got to we got to look at other banks to buy, we're looking at different verticals to add to the holding company like a FinTech or even on a smaller side, you know, maybe a residential lender or an insurance agency, a title company, I mean, there are things there are things that we G-d willing, you know, we're at the best we've ever been.

So G-d willing, we'll be able to take that springboard with that and kind of kind of grow the holding company to have other assets that will be income producing that'll help the company grow and with the intention of taking all the all the excess surplus cash, putting it into the bank, so to raise our lending limit and the girl the balance sheet of the bank.

Brendan Le Grange 28:38

Yeah. As you say, you're a small bank. You weren't on my radar before, but I've really been inspired to to see what you do this. I'll be one of the ones definitely following along online. So thank you again, motion for for making the time to speak to me. I've had a fantastic time. And yeah, I wish you the best of luck for those that have very bold ambitions of yours.

Moishe Gubin 28:56

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and I can't wait to see how this what this looks like and what our future looks like together.

Brendan Le Grange 29:03

And thank you all for listening.

Please do look for and follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and share the updates widely on LinkedIn where lending nerds are found in our largest concentration. Plus, send me a connection request while you're there.

This show is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange in Brighton, England and edited by Fina Charleson of FC Productions.

Show music is by Iam_wake, and you can find show notes and written transcripts at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show and I'll see you again next Thursday.