Archive for the 'Entrepreneurship' Category
November 13th, 2008 by Mo Cheng
Its been a while since the last post so I figured I would chime you guys in on the latest news of our internet lending technology. For the longest time, our vision at Synaptic Database was focused on recreating the look and feel of the payday lending industry. I’ve actually written a short blog about “cleaning up” the industry, and I feel like this is the first step into approaching this vision. Now when I say recreating the look and feel, this example is exactly what I mean.
Its a drastic change from some of the sites I’ve seen like Magnum Payday Advance. See the world of difference? I think the mistake a lot of payday loan marketers are making is they’re putting too much emphasis on communicating the fact that “we loan money to anyone”. The industry has gotten older, and the concept of payday loan and finance is now widely understood. Putting giant dollar signs onto your website will not help you get new customers because you’re communicating a old and worn out message.
So what are payday borrowers looking for these days? How do we cultivate a larger consumer base for our services? These are the questions we need to start answering as an industry. The demand is no longer “instant short term loans to bad credit customers”, but instead better customer service, reliability, good financing rates, and a safe and comfortable atmosphere to commit the transaction. How does YOUR COMPANY stand against communicating these new customer perks to this new generation of borrowers?
I’d like to see how everyone’s projects are lining up to approach this new type of marketing effort. I’ll update this post when the website goes live. If you’re impatient, you can check out this link: http://www.temporalcadence.org/clients_2008/moroni/
September 26th, 2008 by Mo Cheng
The development of the call center software (previously referred to as the CSR module) has indeed been a long journey, and we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Its times like these that make me anxious to finish - mainly because I just can’t wait to give it a full out test drive! In case you haven’t read up on the previous posts about this specific module heres a small recap:
The call center software was designed to run and manage a payday loan call center. If you aren’t familiar with the purpose of call centers in relation to payday loans, its simple - Call centers enable payday loan companies to focus customer service and collections operations in one central unit. As opposed to running a collections and customer service operation out of retail stores. This enables retail locations to focus on basic operations like loan origination, pay out, and payment acceptance while call centers specialize in reminder calls, past due accounts, and processing new applications. Not only is the call center fully integrated with retail operations, but also accepts internet applications as well!
The call center is indeed a fine crafted ship. 
Our new module handles everything from employee and floor management , third party risk management (Teletrack, CL Verify, etc), new and return application processing, all the way to collections. Heres a few snap shots of what we have so far… theres still more to come!
CSR management Screen
CSR Item Queue
CSR Item Processing
Embedded Activity Journals
September 11th, 2008 by Mo Cheng
Its been a few years since I’ve started in the payday loan business, and along the way I’ve met a good bit of people. Now for those who know me personally, you would know that I’m pretty young compared to my own business experience. It hasn’t taken me long, but I started to realize two categories of people - Negatively and Positively inspired people. I know both these categories WELL because I’ve been in both these categories at some point in my life. Its a little embarrassing to admit that I was in the Negative Inspired group for a long time.
The reason why I decided to cover this subject is because in the payday loan business you encounter a lot of these type of people. And why shouldn’t you? You’re in a business where 99% of the time your most loyal customers will end up screwing you over and stealing your money - and that’s the god honest truth to it. Now I was raised in a family where the mind set could be summarized in this thought: “If you want to be successful in your life, you have to be CAREFUL. Never be unprepared for the worst.” Now how negative is that statement? If you were to follow that kind of general ruling through your life, you would be scared to “mess up” and constantly preparing for the worst. With that in mind, I’m going to lay out what I believe is the foundation of Negatively Inspired minds:
- Your scared, worried, or always concerned about messing up, or making mistakes
- You’re ALWAYS preparing exit strategies for everything you do in life - just in case things go sour
- You criticize before you analyze
- You generally don’t trust people in general
- You ask yourself ill relevant questions like: “Why do I always have such bad luck?!”
- On any unlucky event or incident, you only see the negative
- They are always the first to argue and give someone a “piece of their mind”
Met someone like that before? I know I have. Ever notice that awful out of the blue things always happen to them on a continuous basis? Its called Law of Attraction - you always get exactly what you emotionally fixate yourself on. This very basis of functioning was brought to my attention by a great friend of mine named Jerry Ayles. I don’t want to get into too much details on this blog here (because honestly im just procrastinating from working on the new CSR Journal Functionality) but the basic guideline is: If your afraid of failure it will come regardless, but if you dream about success all day that will inevitably come to you as well. Maybe your thinking: “No way. You can’t just get everything you want out of life simply by dreaming it.” Its a valid thought.
To understand how law of attraction works, you have to understand the thought processes at which your brain is cascading when you start to dream about great things. Sure - just dreaming of success alone isn’t going to bring you success, but its what those thoughts invoke you to do. I believe that the brain is like any other organ in your body, it has a function to carry out and it will execute its function regardless of whether or not its good for you. Ask it “Why do I have such bad luck?” and it will answer “Because your just an awful person”. Ask it “How can I build an awesome business” and it will lay out the entire road map to success. Your brain is an organ, and its placed there to not only remember things, and give you personality, but also to help you figure things out - regardless of how worthless the question or problem is. Good questions lead to good answers, good answers lead to good actions, good actions lead to good results. Get it?
Asking yourself positive questions is only one trait of a Positively Inspired person. I’ll list a few more, but honestly im pretty new at this myself so if you have some pearls of wisdom, add to this blog by commenting!
- You plan more for success than you do failure. You have exit strategies, but you always focus on winning
- You could care less about making a mistake. All mistakes can be fixed in due time anyway
- Your open to listening about everything
- When something bad happens, you find ways to exploit it for opportunity
- You always have a positive attitude towards everyone because you know if your negative to anyone you just end up regretting it
Anyways. Id love to hear more from you guys. I frequently moderate a payday loan industry forum as well. Come by it and chat sometime!
August 12th, 2008 by Mo Cheng
Before I started out in the payday loan industry, I was a software developer for big companies like Sungard and other software vendors of the like. Thats not counting all the millions of trips ive taken as a technical consultant for these companies to visit blue chip energy companies like BP, Calpine, and Shell. Back then a job was a job - If it paid my bills and I could live comfortably off of the income, I didn’t have much to complain about.
After a while I started to see just exactly what I was contributing to - helping big corporate energy giants create technology to make millions of dollars in trading profit per day. My six figure salary literally was pennies considering the profits they would amass in a single month. It wasn’t long before I started entertaining the idea of getting into another career. Between my obsession of writing picture perfect business applications, and a sharp know-how in some of the most advanced topics in finance I decided to take my first step into the payday loan industry.
The adventure began with a cash-out in savings that I had saved over the last few years as a software developer. With less than 40k in startup capital I started Green Valley Financial. Green Valley Financial was a special payday loan startup because we were focused on the look and feel of service rather than making obscene amounts of money. We figured that if we have the right presentation and a comfortable look and feel, we would attract the right kind of borrower and lower our default numbers. With that in mind, we did away with the classic bullet proof glass. In its place we setup couches and desks for borrowers to meet lenders face to face. Our aim was to create a presence which resembled the feel of a small size bank.
This “financial presence” formed the foundation of our business operations. In combination of providing advanced loan options, and customer payback programs we were able to break every conventional rule for starting a payday loan business - we were in a mid high to high income demographic, regularly attracted customers from beyond 20 miles away, and our average borrower income was around 50k a year (I even had a small group of borrowers making as much as six figures a year!). We had accomplished all this without the use of conventional advertising, and road side visibility. Our “advertising campaign” strictly relied on craigslist. - Can you believe that?!
Long story short - state regulation for APR crack downs forced by business to close in mid 2007. I wasn’t exactly bummed because I saw it happening a year before it happened. On top of that, I had developed a loan management system that was tried and true for the payday loan industry. Between then and now, is the story of Empower - but ill tell that one another day.