title: How to create a million dollar Voice Chat Business with no money
author: Founders Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: Founders Podcast
published: 2026-01-20T09:00:00
sourceurl: https://anchor.fm/s/10542bd40/podcast/play/112325659/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-11-8%2F413993360-44100-2-f6fecdfcc1db5.mp3
word_count: 10649
Hello Albert, how are you doing today? Good Ash, I'm excited to be here. Me too. Me too. Same here. Before we proceed, Albert, do you have a favorite code? Something that motivates you, inspires you, you would like to share with our audience. Sure. I think, you know, something that we kind of follow here is if you're not losing, you're not winning. That's certainly something that we've had to adopt many times as we've failed so many different times and it certainly feels like we're losing. But in turn, it just turned out to be great learning as we continue to scale, continue to grow and continue to just learn different ways and processes on how to do things. So that's what I would leave. If you're not losing, listen, you're not winning, right? If you're not failing that, you're not winning. So that's just totally part of the process and is actually good. You'll fail a lot more than you win. Indeed, indeed. That reminds me, you know, when, when I was a kid, I was a very short guy. You know, like when you go to the school prayers, you stand according to your height, right? So I was the guy who used to stand in the front of the line, because I was. Very short. And I started playing basketball because not because I like the game, because I wanted to improve my height. That was one of the motivation, right? And I think in a couple of months I just gave up. One of my sports teacher mentioned to me like, oh, you look very, very tall, even though I didn't even increase at in even a centimeter. Right said what? What do you what are you saying? So you, you're looking very, very tall. It's good that you're playing basketball saying no, but I, I, I stopped playing it. So why? Because, you know, I'm not good at it. I'm tiny. I can't, you know, basket the balls and everything. I say, well, you're increasing your height. And if you're not trying, you're not going to increase more. Right. That's right. Yeah. No, it is my son. He's 15. He plays basketball. He loves the sport as well. And we've certainly even witnessed with him growth. I mean, it just seems so quick, honestly. You know, they say that those those sports that require you to stretch, like swimming or basketball do actually, you know, affect the height. It does. It does out. So yeah, it's good. I, I, I give all the credit to the, to the Spurs for whatever height. Right now I have 5-8, but I, I, I didn't, I was never expecting that I will grow that tall for the Spurs. Great stuff. So Albert, imagine we are in room of full of ambitious founders, early stage builders. No one knows your name. They have never seen you. And you walk in into the room. The mic is in your hand, the stage is yours, The spotlight is on you and people are looking at you. Who is this chap, this handsome dude coming on the stage and you don't know who is this person is? What is going to say? And there you go. You got your opportunity, window of opportunity to tell them your story, Tell them something that they'll say. Oh, I'm going to stick in this room for the rest of that. What would be your story? No, that's, that's, that's a great question. First off, I can tell you right now there's no there's going to be nobody in there that talk about this good looking or this handsome guy. That's usually not a description that I typically get. It may be funny or outgoing or those type of things, but as long as my wife thinks that I'm handsome Ash, that's all that matters. So a couple of things. One, you know, I'm always walking into rooms like this all the time. We have various different things that we're attending conferences, you know, board meetings, PTO meetings, you name it. But founders are by far my favorite. Like, you know, these entrepreneurs, those that get out there and, and do, you know, whatever it is that they can to try to bring a product to the, to the community. And so, you know, one of the things that I would say, obviously, I guess it depends on what the context is. If I'm there just as an introduction, I would simply introduce myself. You know, my name is Albert Howard. I run a fintech software company that provides live chat, video chat, audio chat, virtual assistant chat bots for banks and credit unions with a specific focus on credit unions across the United States. So that would be probably an intro high level in terms of what it is that I do. But in terms of like being able to relate, Oh my gosh, Ash, I can't tell you the amount of failures that I've gone through before finally, right, Having success with mini branch. I remember starting at 16 years old and me and two of my buddies would go door to door in our community, in our neighborhood, asking if we could paint their curbs with their numbers just to try to raise money. I mean, so, you know, we've always done various of things. We've had big ambitions, big goals. You know, I think another thing that's funny also, Ash, when you come into a crowd that is full of founders, if you were to ask any of them, right, you could ask it in general, who here feels like they are not as far ahead as they should be, right? Like they all raise their hands because every single one of them can relate. Feeling like I feel like I should be a lot further ahead. And I think a lot of that is just because, you know, as you're growing, as you're learning and you're having to adopt, especially with technology and AI and all of the tools that are available right now, like you're having to, you know, you almost feel like you're falling behind. And so I would encourage these founders as well, like, listen, you may feel like you're falling behind, but I could tell you you're light years ahead of the other average person that is out there. The fact that you are in this room with other founders demonstrates that you are head and shoulders above many that are out there that are not even in a room similar to this. So. Indeed, it's, it's always it's always the people who are proactive and who are ready to take risks, right? Who are the people who take an extra mile to go to the event? Who are the people who go to these offices and, and, and, and take the lift next to the big investor who people who keep going to the VCs collecting their nose, People who, you know, live on, on ramen for, for months. But. Still working on the solution. Right. Yes, yes, yes. So so Albert, talk to us about where the story begin. Where did where did the idea for this service video chat, audio chat, all these kind of you know, verticals you have came from? Absolutely. So actually it came, it came about, I don't want to say accidental, right? Everything happens for a reason. But we have a sister company, it's an ATM company called A1 ATM. And at the time we had many credit unions that would come to us and they'd say Albert, We like the idea of ITMS, which is an interactive teller machine. It gives them the ability where their member can connect to the branch through video chat at that machine. But Albert, we don't like the cost of ITMS. If you guys will create a solution allowing us to be able to have video chat with our members, but without having to pay over 100,000 American dollars for one machine and 10s of thousands for each additional, we will adopt that technology. So in July of 22, we launched what was kind of the idea of Mini Branch to be able to help solve that piece, to be able to have video chat that would actually launch just through the mobile device of that member rather than tying up that machine just simply through the marketing components. Here's where things really started to grow pretty quickly is in October of 22, we had a credit union that launched an ATM. They're based out of Oregon, the state of Oregon on the West Coast of the United States. They launched an ATM through our ATM company in Boston, MA. They were so successful. They've added to date actually thousands of members, but up to that point, they were very successful. They added dozens of members, you know, within a couple of months and they said, Albert, if we can have this level of communication and connection to our members that are 3000 miles from the closest branch, I want to be able to have this communication and this connection with our members on everything. We want this on our website. We want to be able to launch it through apparel. We want apparel where we can attach a mini branch quick response code that they can scan it as we're out and about doing business development, community engagement, and they can connect instantly to our branch. They can open up accounts, apply for loans, everything like that. So in October, at this point of 22, we realize this, this is actually a lot bigger than what we had initially conceived. So we had pause on all marketing and everything that we're doing, all promotions, everything like that. We revamped and re launched what is now the current mini branch platform that you see in March of 2023. And that was where it started including and incorporating much more of the communication of platform and channels. Now, Ash, I'll be honest with you. And up to this point, we're talking, you know, over 2 years of development of building out, right? Like nobody sees that. They just see like, Oh my gosh, they were overnight success, but they never see the countless hours. They never see learning these different platforms that you've never knew anything about before. In that time as we are building, honestly, we have no desire Ash to even build out the mini branch platform. We actually went to those that would become and are currently are our competitors and said, hey, we think that we've got a a a good marking here. We think we've got a good idea here and that there's an appetite. We've got credit unions coming to us now. They laughed at us thinking that there is there. No, there's there's no appetite there. You know, there's no want or need. If they want to be able to have that stuff, they could come to us and we're like, listen, you're, you're charging way too much. Like if you bring down the cost, our focus are the growing credit unions, right? As opposed to small credit unions, more of a mindset thing. So this is for those smaller asset size, those growing credit unions, I'm talking 150 million in assets and below. Like there is a market here. And they still said no, Nope, Nope. If you think there is, they can pay this price. This is the price that we have and we're like, this is not going to do so Ash. That is what actually LED us to the drawing board where we begin to just build out and then launch, you know, mini branch. So that's kind of build out and then it's just. So basically it's a service for credit unions to integrate video chats into their system, into their platforms, right? Exactly and live. Chat. Texting. Sorry, Scott, I said. And live chat and texting and virtual assistant chat bot, all of that audio chat included with that. As well all sort of like a communication platform. So is it like a stand alone platform like like Zoom or Microsoft Teams or is it more infrastructure level where you provide them APIs and then they integrate into their own platform? Great question. It is. It is a stand alone platform. So they don't even need to have anything built out. They don't need the infrastructure, the back end, they've got mini branch and it will provide that that communication platform for. Right. OK, that's great. And you said that you actually reached out to these credit unions and they said that they are facing this problem and then you started working on it. Usually founders take a different approach. They start building something and then they look for the customers. Why did you do that? Why did you go other way around? Yeah. So a couple of reasons. One it's I don't want to say it's the the smarter way, but it definitely is a much, it's much more beneficial way. You start getting capital, you start getting revenue a lot faster when you know that you've got people that already lined up that say, hey, if you build it, we will buy it, right? And so when you've got that lined up, then it's just a matter of cool, let's go and let's build it. What else do you want? So the nice thing about that Ash is that as we built out mini branch, we did it with their input. What else would you pay for? What else would you like? What else would you like for us to add? And so from there, we knew exactly what it is they wanted and we built out a product exactly around them, around their needs. And so rather than trying to build a product and then looking for people to sell it to, we found the people to sell it to who are willing to buy it. And then we said, cool, now let's build it. And so, you know, Ash, up to up to date, we've never had to raise any funds. We have just been self funding from day one. We use our own capital. And it's just been, yeah, it's just been amazing. Awesome, Great stuff. So you didn't have to do any market research. I mean, I, I guess it is it naturally happened because you you got the customer first before even building the product, which is pretty good. Tell us more about what draw you specifically to the credit union ecosystem rather than the wider retail banking space. Man, absolutely. So for, you know, a couple of things. First off, I've been a member of the credit union since I was nine years old, so I already had some history. It was a credit union that gave me my first auto loan when a big bank located in my country declined me at our university campus for a credit card. My credit union, who I've been with since nine years old, gave me an actual auto loan where I bought my first auto. So I already had like that level of commitment. I had the familiarity. Now, this is when I was living out in California. After I got married, we moved out to South Carolina where we currently reside. And in South Carolina, man, I'll tell you, we had just had our first born son, my wife and I, I'm looking for banking hours. There was no credit unions. They were hiring at that time. So I applied for a bank that was hiring. So I worked, you know, I worked in the branches for close to 10 years as well. I've only ever been hired by two banks, but they're both of them merged into two other ones. So technically I've worked for four banks. When I left there, I went to go work for an ATM company, A1 ATM, where we would launch ATMs out through our bank in different credit unions will call them employee groups and banks will call them bank at work locations. And when I started working at the ATM company, I started working with a couple of the credit unions that that ATM company already had Ash. It took me back to my first love, man, when I'm meeting with some of these CEOs and they're like, you need to go talk to so and so and so and so and so and so. They're naming all of these other folks. It was so different than what I had grown accustomed to within the banking sector, which within the bank where you're not only competing with every other bank or credit union or financial institution down the road, man, you're competing with your own branches, a part of the same bank, like it's highly competitive. There was no looking out and trying to help out other banks down the road or anything like that, unlike the credit unions. And so excuse me, after I met with him, that really just kind of took off because then I'm going to this CEO who's introducing me to this one. They were all looking out for each other. The mentality was totally different. And so that's what kind of got us into the credit union kind of space. I will tell you, we do also have some banks that are partners, multi billions. That is not who our current target is. That's not who our market is. We built this house specifically for those credit unions that have been getting left behind in smaller, you know, those that are smaller in asset size, not in mindset, but in asset size. And so that is who we've built it out now. Ash, another thing as well, like I think it's so important, right? For founders of any company, you've got to identify your niche and you've got to identify it very quickly. The faster that you identify it, the more narrow your focus becomes. The more narrow your focus is, the more likely that you're going to be hitting the target each time. When we launched mini branch, we're still trying to wait to get a couple of credit unions and we start thinking, you know, hey, there's a lot of other folks, a lot of other industries that could benefit from this. We could go after accountants, right? Then they want to meet with their different clients across the, across the, their region or country or whatever. But we can go after attorneys, we can go after Realtors. We can go after like we're naming all of these other industries that were like, man, let's, let's try to do it. And we have to go back to our mission. Nope, Nope, Nope. This was for financial institutions. This was for credit unions. And then even more now, right, you've got close to 5000 credit unions just in the United States alone. And even that is still pretty wide, right? It's a narrow industry, but still kind of wide of the net. So let's narrow it down more. Who specifically was this for, man? This is for those credit unions, you know, 250, three, 100 million in assets and below those that for the most part have been completely been left behind technology wise. So narrowed it down even more so. So that's something I would encourage all of the founders like, listen, it's good if you've identified an industry, narrow it down even more. So are you going after, you know, if it's banks, if it's credit and then narrow it down more, right? Like maybe as you start doing more and more demos, you start identifying, you know, there's a lot more female CEOs that are saying yes than there are even male CEOs. So now you target it even smaller down. So I would certainly encourage folks to think about that. Got it. That's that's actually a very good strategy anyways, when when you're going towards when you're trying to figure out how you can grow your business. And I want to touch the basis on how the data from the interactions these credit unions are using. But before we go into the that's part and the behavioral insights, can you give us a sense of the size of the business where you are in terms of the revenue, number of customer, size of the team? Yeah, absolutely. So we've got about 15 on our team currently. You know, in terms of revenues, we have, you know, our our value. I think we actually maybe just broke or about to break 8 million right now in, you know, in terms of what you know, I guess the company would be valued at and it's just been tremendous, tremendous growth. You know, every single month we continue to see an increase in revenue, which is tremendous. You certainly as a company that doesn't have the pressures, you know, listen, I encourage folks this as well, Ash. You know, one of the things that I encourage people is early on, we did have folks that were willing to invest in mini branch. Our mindset at the time, I don't know, maybe it was wrong, maybe it was right, but we felt like if we were to take on investments that early on, we'd be giving away a much larger chunk of equity and we knew it was not going to be worth as much as what it was going to be worth in a year, right? So we started looking down the road. And I'll tell you it is, it's much easier to look down the road when you're not just trying to feed yourself, right? Like if you're trying to just, I've got bills to pay today, then it's certainly a lot more enticing, a lot more tempting. So get to the point in place if possible, where you're not just trying to feed yourself today, but you're when you when you no longer have that pressure, you are able to look one year, three-year, five years down the road and you're able to make much different and better decisions when you're doing that as well. Yeah, Capital is anyways quite expensive when you are at the early stage. It's get more cheaper the more further you go ahead. And with a team of 15 people, 8 million valuation, incredible. I would salute you for that. You know have you is anything or you just bootstrap everything? No, we have bootstrapped everything up to this point and honestly with our level of growth, we we plan on continuing to continue to bootstrap and just keep doing it. It just. That makes sense. It gives us the flexibility also, Ash, right? Like we're not having to go, we're not having to wait to talk to the board. We're not having to get approvals. We're not having, you know, all of these other, you know, venture capitalists that want a board seat that are like, no, no, no, we don't think you should do that. It gives us the ability that we could pivot very quickly. We're able to react. So if we notice that there's something not working or something we need introduce, we just do it, Ash, and we just go down down that path and roll with it. So. Great stuff. And I want to touch on the data and, and, and how you know the, the credit unions have adopted the the the change. But before we go into that, what where do you see the greatest resistance when shifting from in branch interaction to a remote service in this credit credit unions? I think we're starting to see a shift in the mindset on that. I'll tell you, you know, COVID was a big kind of part in that and that it made a lot of these financial institutions, a lot of these credit unions, C-Suite level executives realize that in order to compete, they needed to start utilizing digital technology. And I think that the problem up to that point was if they were looking at it so like one, one line 1 focus, it was well, it's either. Connection and relationship or technology rather than looking at how technology can complement and extend that relationship. Meeting the member wherever they are not requiring them to get out of their house, you know, out of their jammies into their vehicle, drive 3 miles down the road drive, you know, 2 kilometers up the road and then go into the branch. No, man. You can meet them wherever they are. So you're actually starting to see a shift in the mindset in terms of realizing like this is something that we need. So then the next after realizing this is something that we need was the price. Well, we know that we need it, right? But it's the price. It's just too expensive. And so that's where many branches been able to position themselves as giving the these credit unions the access to the latest in technology, but at a price point that they can afford. And so, you know, when they see the price point, they get so excited because for the most part, there's really only two competitors that are in this space and they focus on the top 20% of financial institutions. I don't blame them. That's their business model. I understand why it's a lot more profitable. We have some that are multi billions as well and it's great. But going back to our mission and honestly, it's crazy, they focus on top 20%. We'll take the other 80%, Ashley. There's 80% that's left wide open. And so that has been our business model, that has been our focus is just taking what has been overlooked. They've only had one choice up to this point. You either pay us what we say or you're just missing out. And so those days are gone. Yeah, yeah, definitely. You have proven it in the last few years, right? So, so talk to me about how did you came up with the pricing you, you already had this insight from your initial customers about what prices they are not willing to pay. But you need to come up with the price what they are willing to pay because you have also want to make profit, right? And one of the biggest challenges founders have is to come up with the pricing plan and the revenue model. The reason behind this being a challenge for founders is mostly what happens is either founders first time founder, they're not habitual of charging a lot of money or, or any money to be honest. And they're they always want to have, they're always emotionally involved with their products. So they always want to like improve their customers life. And then while they're doing that, they want to make money, but they don't want to charge too much. That's. That's what I've felt with, you know, founders I've been interviewing for a long. So what do you think? So explain to me what what were the the can you, I don't know if you can take your competitors name, but if you can, can you tell tell us who are the computers and what are their pricing plans? And then how are you competing with them? Yeah. So it's a great question. So a couple of things. One, I do think that it's like every business kind of goes through that, especially every single founder or CEO or CFO, whoever it is that's coming up with the actual like pricing. And you're really in a discovery phase. And you know, what I would encourage is get out of that discovery phase kind of as quickly as possible. I say that just know it seems like you're probably always going to be in a discovery phase. You start bringing new things and it's like, OK, it's been a year, we need to probably take a look. Is it time to go ahead and and raise the cost or anything? But yeah, we were certainly within that. And you know, Ash, what I encourage folks is men, it's OK if you've got one or two, which by far are the hardest ones to get, you know, cuz every single one, they like the idea of the latest in technology. Nobody likes the idea of being the first one to test out that technology. And so it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we hear you. So how many clients do you have? And it's like, well, I mean, you would, you'd be the first, you'd be the first. And then it's like, well, yeah, well, we'll get back to you, right. And so like those first couple were by far the hardest. And so let's not encourage folks, if you've got to do a listen, I'll give it to you for free for the first couple of months. In our case, we say, listen, we'll charge you basically at cost what it's going to cost us. It was extremely minimal. Now what I would encourage folks as well is there's a couple of books and this is what kind of really shifted the mindset. I don't know if you've ever heard a guy named Alex Harmozzi. He's got a few good books, does a lot of. Business $100 million leads. $100 million money models, $100 million offers, $100 million leads. And that was a book that was transformational for our perspective because thankfully early on, we did read a couple of his books, including $100 million leads and we raised the price, I'm talking 10X. You know what was crazy, Ash, let me tell you this. We started getting a lot more agreements after we raise the price 10X then when we had it 10 times cheaper because the problem was, is that they equated the value with the price. They're like, oh, they're price low. The value must be low. It wasn't until we jacked up the price and we just started increasing the amount of value. I'm talking we 10X the value also to justify the 10X and price that all of a sudden it was like, man, that value must be good because that price is pretty good as well. And so, you know, again, kind of another one of the philosophies you can say within the book is you need to price it out so good that they feel stupid saying no to it. So we took a look. We knew what our competitors were charging because we wanted to actually partner with them to have them do it right. But they said, no, here's what our fees are, here's what our costs are. And we're like, that's, that's too much now that's ridiculous. The problem with that they had as well is that to this day, right, like here we are three years later and they still have a very like blurry price structure. So they, what they'll do is they're like, oh, cool, you want live chat, It's this price. But if you want audio chat, it's going to be this on top of it. If you want video chat, it's this on top of if you want to chat about, it's this on top of you want texting. And so it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, can you just give me one simple price that ash is something that sets apart? We do 1 price and it includes everything when you're dealing specifically like within this industry where they've got to go and get board approvals, where they've got to go and work on their budgets for the next year. And you say, cool, here's what your price is. This is a structure. You don't have to worry about all this. It's all included. It's, it's a breath of fresh air. It's like, my gosh, finally, why, Why is nobody else doing this? So listen, what whatever the focus is, make it easy. And I will tell you, Ash, this is also something we have to learn because early on we actually have three different price points that that made it extremely, we were trying to focus on too many things, right? We're like, well, if you want it just for this use case, it'd be this much. If you want this many agents, it's this much. If you want this use case and this use case, it's this much. Oh, and also if you want an ATM, right, promoting our ATM company as well, it's this price. But if you want, you know, multiple ATMs, it's this price. And so just keep it clean, keep it simple from there. Then just started, you know, growing dramatically. When you when you say ATM, is that the ATM machine where we withdraw the money or it does it? Is that right? And when, why do you, why do you say promoting to ATM companies? Because do the ATM companies also have video chat with their customers in order to sell that, sell that service? Is that what we're? Believe it or not, no. Actually we had after we launched mini branch with the idea to add value to our ATM company. So we had mini branch so that it could promote our ATM company. We've adopted that. There's really no other ATM companies that have done that, which also we're like, you know, that's a whole nother industry that we can go after knowing that every single one of these ATM companies will want to be able to have access because Ash, our ATM company, they provide that video chat, that live chat, the texting it on all the capabilities that can be launched from that ATM by simply scanning the mini branch quick response code that launches that platform. And so now A1 ATM has customers that can go up there and if they have a transaction question, they could engage in a video chat immediately with the customer service. So now that's pretty cool. But our focus has been and continues to be the credit unions and how can we provide that connection. Ash, here is another thing that happened as well, right? So within when Covic happened, as you know, so all of these manufacturers, these distribution centers, these call centers, they were no longer allowing visitors to come in. So these credit unions that will look at this as a way that they could continue to grow because they could show up for the new hire orientations, they could show up for the health fairs, they could sign up all these employees, they no longer have that access. So our ATM company, we could deploy an ATM inside of their giving them access for the employees to be able to access cash and then through mini back branch to be able to provide the connection back to that credit union. So there was a lot of kind of big things that were happening that really led to, you know, mini branch being able to truly scale and grow as it has. Awesome. And take me through the whole process then let's say I am a, a credit union, right? What do I have to do to have mini chat, mini branch into our our systems? How does that whole process looks like and what how much you're going to charge me? Nice. Yeah. So we keep it very simple. So actually another thing I think that sets as part Ash and I always encourage folks to do this as well. If you're going to be taking somebody's time and somebody is taking all of their time to see a demo, right? However long that that demo may be, which we like to provide to show them the power of any branch. Whether you've got a 30 minute demo, I'm talking for any business that it is, you may be running 15 minute demo, an hour demo, right? Like if you are taking this time out, again, we have to learn a lot of this kind of on the fly. Ash. And you know, early on what I felt like I needed to do was establish the rapport. Like I had to demonstrate that I'm just a normal guy just like you. I'm here. I want to help help you out. They don't care about that, Ash. They didn't come to hear about my life or hear what I had for breakfast or my vacations that I've got planned or that I just went. They don't care about any of that. They came specifically to see that piece of software that had interested them enough to go and book a demo. So we eliminated a lot of the fluff stuff, got straight to what it is that they were there for. We identified any pain points. We're identifying them early on. So if you're a credit union, you're coming to me saying, yeah, listen, we would, we'd like to, you know, hear and see a little bit more about Mini branch. First off, I'm asking like what pain points you have? What things have you done so far that haven't worked Well, you know, we, we just, we really haven't done much. You know, we're more of a community sized credit union and the people have kind of come to us. We've been here for 70 years. We started working for this plant and they kind of, you know, that's who the employees were. And so they've kind of naturally have come here, but we've noticed the decline in foot traffic as every single financial institution has a decline in foot traffic coming into the branch. And now they're competing against, you know, these fintechs, they don't even have a single branch and they're competing against them, right? Like whether it's PayPal or Zell or many of these others. So they have to, they have to start utilizing technology. And so again, kind of going back that they realize that it's there. I'm talking to the credit unions to help them verbalize what their pain points are so that when I'm talking about how many branch addresses their pain points, it's not like, well, that doesn't pertain to us. You know, that's not our pain point. No, it's exactly what they said to us, you know, within the beginning. And so we're bringing that up and then we, you know, go over the implementation, which we keep it extremely simple. I mean, Ash, we launch in four to six weeks. Our competitors are doing, you know, twice that long. We're able to roll out very quickly and we keep the process simple, kind of moving along the entire way. Then we're able to go live and then we continue to meet with them even after going live again. Ash, a huge, another differentiator. There's a book. There's a book and it's called The Blue Ocean Strategy. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Great. I don't know what all the listeners have. They need to go and get this book because it is absolutely incredible. It talks about how you've got the blue ocean, you've got the red ocean, right? The blue ocean is, it's this pristine water. It's clear you're the only one there. You're able to look at the shells, the coral, you've got the fish swimming by you. It's peaceful and nice. And then you've got the red ocean. It's where, man, everybody's there. They're all fighting. They're all trying to see the same thing. They want to see the same fish that's there. They want to see the same dolphin that just bounced by. And it's, I mean, it's a bloody mess. Like it's just everybody over there. So what can you do to create a blue ocean, something that is entirely different than where everybody else is within the same industry, within the same space, but sets you apart? And I'm going to share this with you because this has been absolutely a game changer as well. We realized even just after listening and reading that book that our competitors focus on the tools, they focus on the features, they focus on Omni channel, they focus on all these words that most people have no idea even what they're talking about. And we focus on the emotional appeal. We are connecting your members, the member that has been with you for 50 years that you gave their first auto loan to that have now moved out of state because of family or because of work. To be able to still be there, to have that relationship with the folks that they know, that they love, that they trust, right? We are there for that 18 year old girl that has been a member of your credit union since she was 9. Now she's 18, she moved out of state. She's now at college by herself, her first time on her own and she just realized her account is negative. She got hit with an overdraft fee. But she remembers Rosanna, the teller of the credit union that's always like, hey, good luck. If you need anything, you make sure sure you reach out to us, OK? We've got you. We've been here your entire life. We will take care of you. She remembers that as she's there in the dorm by herself, and she jumps on a video chat with the credit union, seeing a familiar face who now helps walk them through how to set up a budget. Refunds, that overdraft fee. Anything else you need, I'm here for you. So it is that the the connection piece rather than focusing on the widgets and all those other things. Can you, can you share? Can you share a moment when you realize the product made meaningful difference to a member of a credit union team? Something you know every every company has these testimonials from their customers. Is there a story you can share with our audience? Honestly, we get so many, so we continue to meet with our partners every month after they go live. We see many. This is something that's not even just a one time thing. It was initially we're like, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. But then we started seeing it more and more. So one of the things that we realized that wasn't even an intention of many branches, like emergency redundance was like a backup. I didn't realize honestly how common that this was, but that the phone systems would go down and members will not have communication with the actual branch, with the actual credit union. And so we've seen it in multiple instances. I'm talking in Oregon and Louisiana, in many different states where they're like Albert, our phone systems went down and we were panicking because we thought that our members were not going to be able to get a hold of us. But thanks to Mini Branch, while the lines were down, the phone lines were down, our communication with our members did not go down. We were able to still maintain the communication with them. We've seen other instances where spammers have sent mass text messages to the membership base of the credit union saying, hey, click this link, you need to reset your password or write whatever the spammy emails and texts that you get all of the time. I know I get them to. And the credit union was able to jump in and through mini Branch, send a mass outbound text message to the membership letting them know, do not click on any links. You know, anything thing that you see that has not come from this number was not from us. So we've seen it multiple times where it's been able to, you know, take care of them and help them out. So it's been amazing. Great stuff. Before moving to our Lightning round where I got 6 quick question for you, I wanted to ask you about like what sort of trends in digital behavior you think have surprised you and most were the past year, But also where do you, where do you see the future of remote banking heading or the next three to five years? Yeah, absolutely. I think we're going to see it a lot more. You know, especially now when you've got agentic AI, you've got all the capabilities where you've got all these AI virtual assistants. Our virtual assistants today, they look a whole lot different than they did in July of 2022, for instance, Ash, because if you remember, it was November of 22 when Open AI was launched, when they launched ChatGPT. And so that has absolutely transformed the game. And so just the capabilities, you know, big thing that is now continuing to scale and grow is voice AI capabilities. So we've recently launched voice AI capabilities where if somebody doesn't want to chat, for instance, with the virtual assistant chat, they can literally call it up and ask that virtual assistant any type of questions, right? Like, hey, how do I put a travel notification on my card? Where do I go apply for a loan? Another thing that we're starting to see a huge uptick in as well is the credit union staff members having access to their own chat bot that is specifically for internal use. So you've got one that is member facing, right, the customer facing, and then one that is employee facing where it's got the policies and procedures. They're able to ask questions like what is the fee for an international wire, right? Because a member just asked them, they could look it up and now it's giving them the answer. So we're seeing a lot more of that in terms of digital capabilities. No, I mean, it's going to continue to move more and more to that. Again, especially as the credit unions continue to realize we need to adopt this, we need to bring this in or we're looking at closing out. You know, Ash, you know the industry that I'm in, which is the credit union industry in the financial industry. It is a consolidating industry, right? Like this year alone, there's I think going to be 160 credit unions that will close their doors and now are merging into another financial institution. And with that, I think there's only two that have actually had their charters approved this year to open their doors. So it is a quickly consolidating and when you take a look at what one of the top three reasons are from for consolidation, it usually revolves around technology. Well, we had to because this larger credit union gives our members access to the latest in technology. And so we are eliminating those excuses to be able to provide that access to every credit union regardless of asset size with that latest in technology to meet their members where they are truly. Indeed, indeed. Albert, thank you so much for sharing all this information. And I'm sure a lot of founders will get a lot of inspiration from your story because a, you have these golden Nuggets of not going towards the product first, go towards the market 1st to a customer first, which is amazing. And B, you have to niche out. You have to, you know, focus on things where you can find your own blue ocean and create the, the, the, the, the, the place to go. I've got 6 quick fire question for you. If at any stage you think you want to skip any of them, just give me a shout and then we can move to the next one. How does that sound? Sounds good, great. What are the top 3 strategies to generate more leads in 2026? So good question. So a couple of things. One I think is emails, emails actually star still are extremely important. In fact, I, I will tell you, I know these are quick fire, but man, some of these answers I really want to expound on. So just so you know, early on, what we have to do is we have to partner with a publication that said, hey, if you pay us X amount of thousands of dollars, we will send it out to all of our, you know, those that have opted out, all of our subscribers for you. We liked it. But it, you know, after a couple of times, you realize like, man, you are limited only to what their list is. And their list they were bragging was 10s of thousands. It was impressive. Ash. The problem with it though, is that we only want to focus on the C-Suite level executives, right? Like it's not the teller that's making the decision. It's not that member service or customer service representative. So we knew early on, we've got a great product. What we need to do now is build a media empire around this product. And so that's exactly what we've done since the end of 22 beginning of 23. Let's build out our own e-mail list. So that's going to be 1 A second one is you are your own brand, right? Like so on your LinkedIn and you need to be sharing stuff, stuff that's valuable, not just salesy stuff. Everybody's tired of that salesy stuff. When you DM me and you're in one of my DMS on on LinkedIn or any other social media, it's all salesy. I know it's all copy and pasted. It's I'm not, I'm not interested in, you know, just, you know, it's not it doesn't even use my name. Many times it just says hello. Sometimes it's in bracket user, right? I'm like dude you copy and paste this from TA GBT like at least put my. By name and that'll personalize it. So social media, though, realizing that you are your own brand and just be be true, be true to yourself because people can sniff it, sniff you out, right? Like if you're just trying to appear to be something that you're really not, they're going to be able to identify it very quickly. So emails, social media in terms of just being your own brand. And then, you know, there's a couple other things that we're looking at right now, but I'll be honest with you. I think early on you really should identify one Ave. that you're going to focus on, drill it down, build up the X amount of revenue that you want to get to, whatever that is, 6 figures, 7 figures. And then look at some of the additional avenues like let's do this. I think if you focus on those two though in conjunction, that's tremendous. I will say as a third, if you choose to do, I know we occasionally will do this every couple of months as we get out and we meet with these folks. It's just good, right? I'm not waiting for them to come to me to set up a demo. I'm going to the conferences of places where I know that they're all mingling, they're all talking, and we'll go over there as well. And so, you know, that's what has helped us, you know, up to this point. Indeed, indeed. What book would you recommend to our audience and why? Man, there's so many good books. You know, honestly, I think Blue Ocean Strategy would be at the top of that list right now. That one would certainly be at the top of the list. Choose Your Enemies Wisely by Patrick McDavid would be another one that would probably be really close to neck and neck because it identifies it. It helps you also identify the fact that you need enemies. Enemies will absolutely drive you. So when you identify and you know, like that competitor, they thought that we couldn't do it. They thought that there was no market that we're going to get out there, we're going to crush them, right? Like when you have a common enemy that your team can unite around, I mean you become unstoppable. So choose your enemies wisely would be a great 1. Blue Ocean strategy would be another good one. And you know Alex Ramosi came out with a new book also, which was $100 million money models. Any of those books honestly are good. You can even find it for free. I think he charges very cheap as well and audible and those type of things. But. Great stuff. What 1 attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder? You know, there's a couple of things, I think, one being relentless, just not stopping. I see. I think the problem is, is that we get so distracted with so many different things. You know, we knew that it was starting something new that gave us the success that we have right now. And so we feel like we got to go start something else new, right? Like that's what led to this success. So let's go out there and do it. But no, just keep, stay focused until you build out again to whatever the goal may be, 6 figures, 7 figures. And then if you choose to expand, focus on where you're at though, you know, don't even go out there yet. Build it up. If you choose to sell it, sell it out. If you choose to sell to venture capitalist or private equity, then and by all means, and then you can shift some of your focus to some of those other things. But in the meantime, I would say stay relentless, stay focused. If you can do that, it doesn't matter the amount of doors that get slammed on your face. You know, we we have to make it fun, right, Like it was. We actually, when I was back in the branch, even with the staff Ash, I would come up with a game and it's called go for the nose and no apostrophe S not, you know, nose like on your face. And the problem that we kept running into is that in my case, many of our tellers, many of our customer service representatives at that bank, they'd be like, well, I'm tired of asking people about applying for 0% interest on a balance transfer on their credit card. They just keep telling me no, they would take it personal. I was like, man, listen, I'll tell you, I've done door to door sales. Like you've got to learn you can't take it personal and that it's also a numbers game. And so in that case, what I would share with them and actually would run on Monday, I said, guys, we've got a new competition this week. It's going to be called go for the nose. Whoever gets told no the most amount of times, I'm going to be buying you lunch on Friday. So what that did is when they were told no, they were actually excited, They're like, yes, that's one more for me, one more for me. At the end of the week. I would then go over the results and I'd be like, hey guys, just so you guys know, right, John was the the winner. He got told no 50 times this week. Oh, and by the way, he also got told yes 10 times this week. So the interestingly enough, the one that got told no the most amount of times also got told yes the most amount of times. So it would completely shift their focus where they realize and this really is a numbers game. So now they know one out of every 5 is going to be a yes, I've got to get through these Nos before I get to that, yes. So now no longer were they scared of being told no. So that's something else I would add as well. Indeed, indeed. What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit? You know, I think, I think it is not to have habits. Honestly, I think that's been something that has been extremely beneficial is when I take a look at my competitors, they have like a specific routine. I've got to wake up at this time, brush my teeth at this time, work out at this time, have my coffee at this time. And when something throws them off, they're completely thrown off for the whole day, like it completely throws off their day. So I would say, listen, every once in a while, man, change things up. This way you're not dependent on wearing a specific bracelet or ring or you know, oh, it's going to throw me off. It's my juju. It's all gone. I'm no longer lucky, right? Like so if you, if you break that off, right, even if you do it as I'm going to do it for 21 days, I'm going to do it for three weeks, change it up each day, then I would encourage folks to do that because it just realizes that, man, you could be good without having that exact cup of coffee at that exact same time in that exact chair or reading that exact book or X amount of chapters per day. Change things up. And I think that'll be extremely beneficial because then you realize that's not going to shake me up if something pops up and throws me off of my routine. Indeed, indeed. What's What's a new or a crazy business idea you would love to pursue if you had time? Honestly, something that I would love to get into would be helping fund founders, knowing what that process is like to be able to help contribute in terms of capital, to be able to help them scale, to help them crush it. There's so many different ideas, there's so many different businesses. There's so many incredible people out there that, you know, for many, for most parts, they're getting taken advantage of. They, they lose sight of the vision, they get distracted again chasing the shiny objects. So to help kind of keeping them focused, providing some equity, some capital and let's go and grow this business together, I think would be something that I, you know, I mean, I've talked to my wife about it. That's something that we would love to do. My son, I've got a 15 year old son, I've got a 8 year old son. They're always coming up with different little business ideas. I encourage it. I want them to be thinking differently than how the schools teach them where you've got to be a good employee. You've got to make sure you work at this place for 30 years, 40 years, and then you can retire. Ma'am, forget that junk. Go out there, build something incredible, amazing the people want people willing to pay for. At that point, you could do what it is that that you want to do. So I would, you know, one other thing that I would add as well. I think it's finally starting to get the the proper attention. Many people have taught like, oh, just follow your passion. The problem is, is that if your passion is just to play drums or to go and, and plant a garden, right? Like that's not, that may not necessarily make you a bunch of money. So pursue and go after what you are good at, what you have a natural talent towards. If it's math, if it's engineering, if it's talking to people, if it sells, if it's public speaking, like whatever comes natural to you, lean into that and you will become passionate as you start making money from that and it becomes very exciting. Then all of a sudden, oh wow, I actually am pretty passionate about this, this. And so yeah, it's something else. I would encourage folks as well. Yeah, yeah. There's a Japanese proverb called ickigai, which is sort of like passion. People can, you know, pay you for that, things like that. And then you'd draw the three circles. And then it's the middle part, which is great. And the last question is, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know? Man, let me see. You know, I'm not that interesting of a guy. You know Ash, I've been to. I don't know we'd like to travel OK, I'll say that we love traveling We've got a trip planned even for next year we've got Italy, we're looking at Australia we're trying to hit all of the continents. My boys, me, my wife, we love history, we love traveling This year we're able to visit 5 different countries. We were in Ireland and Iceland and Sweden and we went to England and then we also I'm trying to think which other one of France as well. We did Paris, France. So we love traveling. I don't know. I mean, you know, I, I two things. I think this has been extremely beneficial and if anybody learns this, I think this would be great for them as well. I love God and I love people, Ash. And when that comes natural people can they can see that they know that you're looking out for them. They know that you're genuine. They know that you're not going to try to pull fast one on them. And that goes so much further, especially in this industry where they're fairly close knit. It could work for you or it can work against you. And so in my case, if I tell them I'm going to get them, get something done for them, I'm going to get it done. And so and they appreciate it and then they share with everybody else. So yeah, I love traveling, love God, love family, love what I do, love helping folks out, love watching them scale, love watching them succeeded. It's not a 0 sum game, right? It just cuz Ash is succeeding doesn't mean that Albert is going to have to now start failing. Now we could both succeed. And so that's what's incredible in the day and age that we live in. Indeed, indeed. Albert, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story, unpacking the last years of building this business and some of the ups and downs. If people want to check out the service or people want to get in touch with you personally, what's the best way to do it? Absolutely. So our website, isminibranch.com, you can check me out on LinkedIn. It is Albert Howard. Go feel free, follow me, send me a message. They'll make sure it's not salesy. At least put my name if you're going to try to do something right. But yeah, those are going to be the two best places to be able to get a hold of me. Great stuff Albert, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring journey and impactful work you're doing. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Founders Podcast. Ash, I appreciate the opportunity to be here and anybody needs anything can feel free to reach out to me.