Brian Pruett With Lake City Branding And John Quirk With Asset Location & Recovery Intl

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:23] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business RadioX Stone Payton here with you this morning, and today’s episode is brought to you, in part by Alma Coffey, sustainably grown, veteran owned and direct trade, which of course means from seed to cup, there are no middlemen. Please go check them out at my almacoffee.com and Go visit their Roastery Cafe at thirty four point forty eight Holly Springs Parkway in Canton. As for Harry or the brains of the outfit Leticia? And please tell them that stone sent You, you guys are in for a real treat this morning. First up on Cherokee Business Radio, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Lake City branding Mr. Brian Pruett. Good morning, sir.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:11] Good morning, sir. Thank you for your invite to be a part of this.

Stone Payton: [00:01:14] Well, I am delighted to have you. Of course, I have a real affinity for anything sales, marketing, promotion, anything that’s going to help the business person and particularly the small business person, get the word out about what they’re doing. Get some visibility out there. So I really appreciate what you do. Can’t pretend to understand how to do it, but I don’t have to. I can. I could call you right. That’s right. So do tell us a little bit about mission purpose what you envision yourself out there trying to do for folks.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:48] So I’d like to be that person that’s helping that small business get their word out and getting them to draw their customers to them. I’ve worked for several different folks around the metro Atlanta area in different capacities, mostly in the sales and marketing aspect of it. And they just, I’ll be honest, they were crooks. They said things that they didn’t, they didn’t mean and they didn’t do the job. They said they did. And I don’t want to be that person. I’ve seen what not to do. I’ll just give you a quick example if I can everyone please. We had a sales slick. I became this this company. I won’t mention any names, but I became this sales, this company sales marketing sales director and ran a contest for some of our clients. And during the holidays, part of the numbers were cut in half for this particular product. And I didn’t know that until I talked to the circulation manager. It’s just a little hand. It was a newspaper, but come to find out when our sales. Alex told everybody that we did one hundred and twenty thousand circulation and I find out at the most it was twelve thousand circulation. That’s a big deal, you know? So I walked in the next day after finding that out and handed my resignation. And when I was asked what I was doing, I told him I wasn’t going to lie to customers anymore. So unfortunately, I had a little streak there for a while who worked for a lot of business owners who just didn’t do what they told the customers they were going to do. Yeah. So I want to be the person who is honest, reliable and getting the word out for that small business to help grow their business.

Stone Payton: [00:03:21] So I got to tell you, and I’m sure this is no surprise to you as a small business person myself, you know, I run this little studio here in Woodstock, and I also work for the network trying to help grow grow our presence across the country. This whole idea of advertising and marketing, it’s an elusive creature. It’s it’s a little bit intimidating. We we so often find ourselves at the mercy of someone who purports to know how to do everything from social media to direct advertising and all that. What do you do? What can you do to set a person’s mind at ease and get them in a space where they can collaborate with you to create a productive campaign?

Brian Pruett: [00:04:03] So I love to sit down with the owner and hear about their story and what they’re trying to do and what their business is. And then from that, I’d like to find out what they’ve done in the past, what seems to work, what doesn’t work, and then put together a plan for them. I’ve done everything from selling for advertising to newspapers to magazines. We’re doing direct mail to events, that kind of stuff. And there is a little bit of good in every single one of those. I think a lot of people don’t understand the difference between marketing, advertising and branding. It all kind of kind of comes under one umbrella, but there is a difference. You know, marketing is my first to any activities undertaken by a company to promote and buying or selling of a service. And you’ve got the four p’s of marketing, which is, you know, the product price, place and promotion.

Stone Payton: [00:04:51] That’s the one thing. I got a marketing degree, and that’s why I’m pretty good at table tennis and pool because I didn’t pay as much attention as I should. That’s the one thing I remember is the four pieces. Is that still valid is I still have a place in our framing.

Brian Pruett: [00:05:06] It does. It does, you know? And then if you go in to look at the the the advertising aspect of it, that is the act of practice, of calling public attention to one’s product service need and especially by paid announcements in newspapers. Magazines, radio, television, billboards, et cetera, there’s just I could go on and on. Yeah, branding falls under that, and that’s when you, you know, you put your logo on shirts, hats, pins, different things to give away. And I also believe that nowadays print has gotten to the point where it’s not just advertising, you’re still branding yourself because a lot of people don’t unless it’s a local magazine, local newspaper. People that keep they say print is dead. It’s not totally true, but you’re branding yourself, you know, people see that logo in in a magazine and newspaper, and they remember that after reading it all of it over when you had a business card or somebody, you’re branding yourself right?

Stone Payton: [00:06:03] And I think I heard someone say not too long ago, right in the studio that your branding, whether you want to or not. Right, right. One, four

Brian Pruett: [00:06:14] Seven. If you go to any networking event, you go to any networking event you’re branding yourself. Right, right. Your sales because you’re selling yourself. And I think that’s what’s important to understand is that if you’re working for somebody and trying to do sales or if you own your business and doing sales, you’re selling yourself. Yeah, you’ve got to establish one relationships. Relationships is huge in this industry and sales of any kind. Yeah. And you know, if you don’t. Establish that relationship, begin that trust in us, you know, trusting somebody to do what they say and then not doing it.

Stone Payton: [00:06:47] Your relationship is dead. Well, we were talking about this before we went on air. You and I are both part of the Woodstock Business Club and and I’ve written business as a result of that, but maybe just as importantly, if not more so. There’s a plumber, there’s a video guy, there’s a business attorney in there that I have come to know and trust and enough to use them myself. But also, if you or our other guest, John, that will visit with her a little bit, you know, said, Hey, do you know a good plumber in the area? I without hesitation, you’ve got to talk to Justin. He’s the guy read, Tell me. And I know. I just know Justin is going to come through. Those relationships are, I mean, they are so critical. I knew that to be true in the consulting, training speaking world because that’s where I came from. But it’s obviously true across the board, isn’t it?

Brian Pruett: [00:07:39] Oh, definitely. I mean, you know, one industry that I find, there’s three industries that I find very hard to really give good recommendations referrals to because everybody in the world does them, and it’s real estate mortgages and insurance. You know, so I’ve got friends, good friends, multiple friends that are in all three of those and have multiple relationships with multiple people in those things. So I always tell somebody, Well, who am I going to tick off in an industry? But you know, it comes down again to a good relationship. Some of those, like I just came from another networking group where they promote collaboration over competition. Mm hmm. Right. So somebody who let’s just take a mortgage broker may not be able to do something that another mortgage broker can do. So they were for that back and forth. I think that’s what you. You know, if you refer your friend and he can’t do it, believe and understand that he’s referring to somebody else who can and will take care of you. Right? So again, that’s the relationship part of, you know, understanding that you’re not going to refer somebody who’s just going to come in and not take care of you, rip you off, you know, do anything that’s going to hurt you.

Stone Payton: [00:08:46] So over the years of doing this, I got to believe that you’ve seen people make some of the same mistakes, like you’ve seen some patterns. Is that accurate? And if so, can you can you share some of those patterns or some of those do’s and don’ts when we’re thinking about using services like yours?

Brian Pruett: [00:09:04] I think probably the biggest. One mistake and it comes down to even part of the printing aspect because we do commercial printing as well. And it comes to the fact where they make the mistake of going to somewhere who’s not local. Meaning like Vistaprint going online and buying their stuff.

Stone Payton: [00:09:23] There goes my Vistaprint sponsorship, John. No, I’m kidding.

Brian Pruett: [00:09:29] You know, and because they think they’re less expensive, that’s not always the case. Why you should do business with that person or that company, right? You know, if if there’s a mistake to be made, keep on Vistaprint. If there’s a mistake to be made and you call them, you’re not going be able to talk to anybody. Right? When you got somebody local, you can talk to somebody, figured it out. Get the the issues fixed, whatever the case is. The other thing that I think about is the other mistake that I see all the time when it comes to marketing is that when a business says, well, I’ve got to cut costs, the first thing they cut is marketing dollars. And that’s the worst thing you can do, right? Because you’ve got to keep your name out there, you’ve got to keep your brand out there. You want your customers still to come. The other thing when it comes to marketing and people say, Well, I’m just too busy. Don’t stop your branding because, yeah, you don’t want customers anything, but if you’re too busy, but you would need to hire some help. Why not brand yourself by doing a help wanted ad? So you’re keeping your name out there all the time, so people just see it.

Stone Payton: [00:10:33] So and this doesn’t have to cost a fortune, right? If you if you just eyes wide open, just build it into your budget, even if it’s a percentage of your of the gross receipts you’re bringing in, maybe just right off the top put in that branding bucket. Is there some wisdom in something like that?

Brian Pruett: [00:10:52] Yeah, I think that if you do look just like your personal budget, if you set aside a certain amount every month right to go into that, then you can build a pretty decent plan in a small business, can build a really good one, both just the local vendors in the media that can help them grow their business.

Stone Payton: [00:11:09] Yeah. So what is your favorite part? What do you enjoy the most about this work?

Brian Pruett: [00:11:15] The networking I love being I’m a people person. I love getting out. I’m going to have a run by somebody. Tell me that I’m like Santa because I’m everywhere. They see me everywhere.

Stone Payton: [00:11:25] Which again, that’s a that’s a I mean, I realize that you enjoy it, but that’s just good. Solid mojo. That’s good branding strategy, right?

Brian Pruett: [00:11:32] Right. And they say I’m built like him too. So I got that jelly belly just like him. So but the other thing too is it’s been joked around and I’ve actually made some business cards up with this that I’m the leader of the networking posse. For a while there, I took two guys around with me and they all we did was network together, so they branded me the leader of the networking posse. So I tell people all the time, if you want to go with me, I’ll keep you busy networking. I’ll introduce you to folks. But that’s my favorite part.

Stone Payton: [00:12:00] Well, I got to tell you, networking I personally always found uncomfortable, did not do very much of it in my former career, even when I was trying to market to a local constituency. I don’t mind it now. In fact, I enjoy it more because I can invite people to come on my show like instead of trying to sell them something, right? So. So I enjoy that. But what? What tips, counsel, if any, do you have on? I don’t know what the right word. Working the room, you know, like if you go to a Woodstock business club or a Canton business club or the chamber is there, are there some do’s and don’ts or some some some good tactics strategies for them?

Brian Pruett: [00:12:39] Yeah. So the first thing is, don’t go in and try to hand your business card and sell to every single person

Stone Payton: [00:12:44] And every room has that guy right? Yes. Right, John? Right? Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:49] And the other thing too is you’re not going to be able to meet everybody. So what I’ve been taught and learned is you try to talk to somebody, be nice, but listen to what listen is. Listening is key. Yeah, to to what they do. And if you think one, it’s going to benefit them that your services can offer or you know, somebody else that they can benefit from knowing. That’s that’s huge. I’ve taken the approach this year, twenty twenty two has been is what I’m trying to do in networking is do as many one to ones establish the relationship? Yeah. And not talk about Brian. But listen about Stone. Listen to their story. And then how can I help them if it if I can help them because of my business? Great. But if it’s because I can introduce them to John, then that’s what I’m going to do.

Stone Payton: [00:13:35] I’ll tell you who should do like a training video on this. It’s just this is just the way this guy operates, you know, and Rudy Garza over there, it would to stop Business Club. You’ll really have to press to get the man’s name and his business. If you’re meeting with him, he is genuinely listening to to what? Who you are or what you do. Why you do it. And he is wired to say, Oh, you know what? You need to meet Bill. I’m going to I’m going to have. I’m going to connect you with or he’ll walk you. If you’re in the room, he’ll walk you over there. You don’t hear him say anything about insurance. I bet he writes more business. Anybody in the room, right? He is a living example of what you’re describing. And candidly, so many in that crowd or are are that way. Ok, so let’s get a little bit tactical here for a moment because I get the very distinct sense that working with you is not not Hey, Stonewall million. My catalog, right? Right. I mean, you’re a did you tell me if this is inaccurate? I get this sense that you’re essentially a marketing consultant and in some of the tools that you have available to help me achieve the objective might be promotional products or some of these. But speak more to that.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:46] Yeah, so I haven’t. We started part of this business back in June. Just the Lake City part. Ok. All right. We had a magazine up until then that we covered high schools and Bartow and Gordon counties, but to answer your question is part of my business model for this is yes, I wanted to be that consultant and going and listen to the business owner and then sell them. You know, whether you’re using us or you’re using the family, you know, magazines or Mary Daly Journal or whatever the case is. Let me look at what you’re doing and what you’ve done in the past, and then let me see if I can put a plan together. That makes more sense if that’s going to be the case. Because again, I’ve worked, I’ve done sales for different print media, done, you know, some things in the sports world and realize that, hey, that you might want to sponsor this team because that’s going to be big for you and your business, right? That type of stuff. So to answer your question, that is correct. I also have worked for a media buying agency and and most people don’t understand what that is. I want to go in and listen to them and and and instead of, well, I’ll maybe on top of putting the plan together, let me be the person that’s going to all these different media vendors and work on a plan with them. So you’re not having directly to deal with them. Let me do that and might be able to even negotiate a better price.

Stone Payton: [00:16:04] Yeah, I wouldn’t have the first clue about how to buy media, and we don’t sell ads in our particular business model. But yeah, if I were to buy, I would screw that up. Nine ways to Sunday.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:16] Yeah, I mean, and you have to be able to understand and know different aspects and different vendors, from billboards to radio to cable TV to, you know, all the different stuff. So there’s a lot to go into it. And most people, most business owners, you asked about mistakes early, most business. The other mistake they do is try to do it all themselves. Let somebody come in, you know, and spend the money.

John Quirk: [00:16:37] Brian, has COVID affected your business or other businesses in the last year?

Brian Pruett: [00:16:41] Yeah. Well, that’s why we had to shut our magazine down because we couldn’t get the advertising, so we had to rebrand ourselves.

Stone Payton: [00:16:47] I see. Well, it’s impacted us. In some ways it actually helped us. We we started doing more virtual interviews because people didn’t want to come in the studio. It’s not the same thing by any stretch. It’s not anywhere near, you know what we’re doing right here. But it did. It still gave us a way to serve, and it did expand one segment of our of our market. But yeah, it’s impacting. It’s impacting everyone, I think.

Brian Pruett: [00:17:16] One thing that I have learned from this business, we were briefly talking and joking before about direct mail. I was one of those guys who thought direct mail was junk until I got into the business and found out how how it can be definitely effective and only because we’ve come up with, I guess you could say it’s our baby, but it’s called a billboard postcard that we mail to five thousand homes every six weeks and rotate the areas. And there’s twenty twenty five businesses on there. And it’s really cool to know when you’re your product works because you have a client, call you back and say, When’s your next mailer? Because I just got four clients off this thing. Oh, sweet, you know? So if it’s done right, if it’s got somebody who can do it while business partners been doing it for a while, so he knows he does all the paperwork and we take it to the post office for you and all that. It can be very effective, but the key to that is to having a very good call to action. Why should that customer call? Are you right now granted with ours? It’s a little kind of being innovative because the ads are basically a business card size or two if they do double spots. So we put a QR code on top of the in front on the front of the card. So when a person gets it and they scan it, everybody who’s on that card has some kind of offer mentioned. They say I’d get 10 percent off from whatever the case may be. So you have to be creative too. But I was just thinking, you know, about people who talk about direct mail and it doesn’t work. And maybe because you’re not hitting the right customers, it may be because the right person is not doing it or the right message isn’t right. So. But yeah, so I enjoy being able to be creative in helping others.

Stone Payton: [00:18:52] I can tell. I know it comes through in your voice. I can see it in your eyes here in the studio. So do you find that there is a distinction in many cases in what’s going to be an effective strategy for business to consumer type businesses or retail versus B2B business to business?

Brian Pruett: [00:19:13] Yeah, I mean, a lot of folks that we’ve talked to, we are now getting ready to actually kick off a one of those billboard postcards to 5000 business for business to business customers. Ok. Because the message is it’s different. Obviously, if you are a let’s just take an HVAC customer who wants to hit your residential right, one HVAC for a commercial is going to be able you’ve got a bigger building, you’ve got different aspects. So your music is going to be a little different I.T. companies. They’re not going to promote residential because I mean, yeah, they could work on computers, but that’s not what they’re there for. Right, right. So they’re going to go out and they’re going to try to do some kind of add to the business owner of wireless. Why letting me take care of your it is important, you know, and stuff like that. So you’ve got again, got to be creative on that. But yes, there are different ways to to work with those and get the message out there to different customers. If I believe that, answer your question.

Stone Payton: [00:20:11] Well, yeah, what I think I hear you saying is so many of these tools and resources can be utilized effectively in both of those arenas, but it circles back to working with someone that has the experience, has some, some real knowledge and expertize in the arena can make the distinction and make the.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:30] Yeah, I had to cancel what I will say to going back to the direct mail piece. Part is, you know, when you talk to somebody about doing social media and digital marketing, they can talk about how they can target your IP, address your income. I don’t know that most people know that you can actually do that with direct mail. I had somebody who. Oh, no, I can’t.

Stone Payton: [00:20:49] Yeah, right. It sounds like you can. We can. We can help you with that.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:54] I had somebody approached me and asked me they were doing the Alzheimer’s walk for the Rome area back in the summer, and they asked if there was a way for us to target people who’ve donated to Alzheimer’s in the past. We actually could. We actually found that, oh wow, we wound up not doing the mail piece because it was a little out of their budget. But we think the point is we can find we can find anything to and do it direct mail piece for that, just like you can on digital

Stone Payton: [00:21:19] Now, do you guys work with promotional products like the hats and the pins and the and that kind of stuff are like this little messenger bag I have here?

Brian Pruett: [00:21:27] And yes, we can.

Stone Payton: [00:21:28] You or you have someone that you bring in for something like that

Brian Pruett: [00:21:32] Or, yeah, we can we can get it done for you, whether we have to outsource it or whatever the case is, we can get it done. Funny story. When we started doing this back in June and we met with one of the vendors we were going to work with, we learned real quickly what the hot seller was back in the summer and won’t go because I know this. We’re on air. But condoms was the big seller back in the summer for hotels. The all the hotels are buying up, putting their logos on them and keep them in the room so we can literally put your logo on anything but.

Stone Payton: [00:22:06] But again, it’s it sounds like it’s not. Hey, you know, let’s just let’s go to Brian and order some more books or hats or T-shirts or whatever. Yeah, make that call. But you’re more of the the quarterback and strategist. And if that fits into the strategy? Great, if not. And let’s, you know, make sure that we take into account the budget and plan accordingly. Your eye sees as much more of a strategic resource than a promotional vendor, right?

Brian Pruett: [00:22:36] Yeah. The other thing, too, is one of my jobs that I was able to have was I was blessed to be able to have and I’m a big sports person. Ok, so but this particular job that I was, that I had allowed me to have and get introductions and maintain relationships with a lot of retired sports athletes who live around the areas. Yeah. And what I’d like to do, which I’ve not been able to do yet, and I’ve talked to some of these guys that that would be willing to do it is again, along with the budget of a small business owner. But let’s do a smaller scale of a Tiger Woods and Nike with some. These athletes who live in the area where the retired, you know, or whatever, let don’t promote that small business and see where it goes.

Stone Payton: [00:23:15] Fun. So I got to ask. I think I know most of the answer based on the conversation so far, but I got to know, man. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for you? Work for Lake City branding? Do you find yourself eating a lot of your own cooking or how do you get the new business all networking?

Brian Pruett: [00:23:35] Yeah, I was just talking with somebody last night and talking with my mom and my wife as well that I’ve been blessed enough to all of the business that Lake City has gotten. I have not had to do one cold call. Wow. I’ve done some cold call emails here and there, but the ninety five percent of the business has come from networking.

Stone Payton: [00:23:56] Yeah. And that relationship building as a as a product of the network. Right. So you have so much energy and your enthusiasm is contagious. So I suspect this doesn’t happen very often. But you know, I’ve been around people my whole life, so I know sometimes you must run out of gas and you got to recharge. Where do you go for? And I don’t necessarily mean a physical location. It might be, you know, a book or whatever. But where do you go for inspiration and to kind of get recharged and ready to suit up and show up again?

Brian Pruett: [00:24:30] So I spend a lot of time with my family in the evenings and then also hang out with friends. We do. Some of us go and do trivia one night a week. I used to host trivia, but I go play it now instead of hosting. And it’s just that time with friends and family that that really energizes me and. And then the other thing too, is thinking back about people that I’ve helped in the past.

Stone Payton: [00:24:53] That’s got to feel good, right? Yeah, yeah. So what’s next, man? What where are you going to be putting your energy in the next several months? Are you looking to grow the business to scale it, to replicate you or you’re just going to hunker down? Or what are you going to do if

Brian Pruett: [00:25:07] I could clone myself? That would be great, but scary at the same time. But yes, I want to grow this business. I need some. I need some sales help right now. The other thing that I want to do is I want to actually get back into some charity event planning. Back in September, we actually I partnered with somebody and we put on a business expo in Cartersville, which was the first business expo in Kargil in five years and got 52 vendors. And what I did was I wanted to give a portion of the proceeds to the Tranquility House, which is the battered women’s shelter there in Bartow County. At the end of the day, we were able to hand a check for $2000 to them. Oh, nice. So I want to be able to put on events like that and be able to spread the love of different charity because there’s so many out there that do good things that are local and small that people don’t get to hear about. So that’s what I want to do and add to Lake City.

Stone Payton: [00:26:02] Well, it’s a conversation for off the air, but I really would like to sit down. And of course, you know, I’d like to do it over a beer. That’s my stuff. But we’ll do it over coffee. If you want,

Brian Pruett: [00:26:12] I’ll do it over root beer.

John Quirk: [00:26:13] Ok, that sounds good.

Stone Payton: [00:26:15] But one of the things that we would like to do here locally for Cherokee Business Radio I would like is to start having a regular influx of people who are running nonprofits and are managing these causes. I don’t feel like they they get a lot of attention. I don’t think most traditional media are probably knock on their door down, saying Come and talk to us about your mission and purpose. And so I’d love to sort of tap into that world and I don’t know, maybe even set up a monthly series or something. It sounds like maybe you’ve got some inroads into that world.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:49] Definitely. We can definitely talk about that.

Stone Payton: [00:26:51] All right. If our listeners want to learn more, I want to have a conversation with you or someone on your team and talk about any of this or sit down with the root beer and just kind of think through where they are and where they’d like to be with their with their marketing and their branding. What’s the best way? Let’s leave them with some coordinates, whatever’s appropriate LinkedIn, email, phone, whatever website.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:11] So our website is Lake City branding. You can go there and there’s a contact us form there. I’ll give you my email. It’s Brian, it’s Brian at Lake City branding. You can follow Lake City branding on Facebook, and you can look me up on on LinkedIn as well.

Stone Payton: [00:27:28] So fantastic. Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:34] Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:27:35] Yeah, keep up the good work. Hey, how about hanging out with us while we visit with our next game?

Brian Pruett: [00:27:39] Absolutely. I love to learn more about John here.

Stone Payton: [00:27:42] Fantastic. All right. Next up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning we have with us managing director for Asset Allocation and Recovery International, Mr. John Quirk. Good morning, sir.

John Quirk: [00:27:54] Stone, good morning. Thanks for inviting me.

Stone Payton: [00:27:57] What a delight. This is fun. So what did you learn in that last segment, man? Anything you can take away down to your back to your business?

John Quirk: [00:28:03] I learned we need Brian and we need Lake City.

Stone Payton: [00:28:06] I can tell you that

John Quirk: [00:28:07] Most of our business comes. From word of mouth, but we want to grow our business, and I’ll tell you, I am definitely going to get together with Brian Pruitt.

Stone Payton: [00:28:15] All right. We’ll talk about my commission on that later, Brian. It sounds good to me. So. So John, mission purpose, asset, location and Recovery International. Tell us what you guys are up to out there.

John Quirk: [00:28:27] Well, we locate and recover assets taken as a result of financial fraud, and that means investment fraud, divorce spouses and so on. We locate assets locally through our sister company, Spencer Investigations, which is a licensed investigative agency. My business, which is asset, location and recovery, focuses on all the overseas banking havens. So we locate money in Bermuda, Jersey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Cook Islands and so on. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. We locate the money and we recover the money overseas

Stone Payton: [00:29:11] So you can hide your money, but you can’t have it from John

John Quirk: [00:29:15] In most countries. We’re able to find, find the money and recover it. Every country is a little different. Switzerland is different than Panama. Bermuda is different than the Cook Islands or the Cayman Islands, but you have different kinds of terms and we use different remedies to recover the money. Ok, I

Stone Payton: [00:29:34] Got to know what’s the back story? How in the world does one get in this line of work? Tell us a little bit about your career path and how you landed here, man.

John Quirk: [00:29:43] Well, I worked in the intelligence community for 35 years. I lived overseas. I lived in Russia, Venezuela, Turkey, Yugoslavia, France for many years. My wife used to say I’ve been thrown out of every decent country in the world, and we’re all former FBI and CIA, and we use intelligence tactics. Not so much law enforcement tactics to recover the money. We use financial databases and sources that we have overseas that are either lawyers, sometimes criminals, Standard Chartered accountants in all of these different venues to help us locate the money, how the money got there. We’re a member of Swift, which we use to trace money wire transfers, and we’re able to obtain documents to support lawyers that are involved in litigation in this country or law enforcement, international law enforcement that’s looking for money as a result of money laundering cases.

Stone Payton: [00:30:49] So is fraud more prevalent today than several years ago? Or is it just on my mind because I’ve been watching the the season four of Ozark?

John Quirk: [00:31:00] No fraud. Fraud is booming in many, many areas. We used to have a fraud database. We had 100000 fraudsters listed in it. There’s different kinds of fraud, there’s senior fraud, there’s investment fraud. There’s fraud now by a divorced spouse hiding money overseas and abandoned children and spouses in a divorce setting. And what people don’t realize is that fraud really undermines democracy. We talk about, you know, terrorism and terrorism gets a lot of play, but draining money. We’ve had tremendous fraud and covert billions of dollars have been lost. Mortgage fraud, investment fraud, all kinds of different fraud is really draining money out of democratic countries.

Stone Payton: [00:31:52] So are there things that we, as individuals, heads of families, business owners? Are there some just basic blocking and tackling that we can and should be doing to insulate ourselves a little bit from being easy pickings for fraudsters?

John Quirk: [00:32:08] Yeah, it’s a good question.

Stone Payton: [00:32:10] In order to get it out. But I thought it’s a great question. What do you mean?

John Quirk: [00:32:13] Well, what I usually tell people is that in the beginning, do a background check on somebody just because they said they went to the Wharton School of Law or the Wharton School of Business, or just because they said that they’re very liquid doesn’t mean anything. There’s so many different kinds of fraudsters. We have so many people in prison and so many people probably that should be prosecuted. And there are so many different kinds of frauds small frauds, large frauds. We do mainly large investment frauds where people have invested money in Ponzi schemes or pyramids. And because there’s more of an educated information base on how to hide money, more people are putting money in Switzerland, Bermuda, Panama, the Caymans and so on. And that’s those are the banking havens we target for 20 years, I used to do an annual trip. I’d go to Guernsey, which is an island off the coast of England. I’d go to the Isle of Man, which is a banking haven off the coast of Ireland. Then I’d go to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Cyprus. I fly out to Hong Kong, Macao and so on. And there’s some of these countries that no longer are really banking havens. People no longer put money in the Bahamas. They no longer put money in Hong Kong because of the situation. Panama is not a good place to put money. Caymans is a very, very top place to put money, and different ethnic groups hide money in certain places like you’ve heard a lot about Nigerian and West African frauds. You know, they send these letters through the mail. They like Guernsey. Canadian fraudsters like Bermuda, OK? Americans usually go to Switzerland or Liechtenstein if they have a lot of money. So we find money, whether it’s in a trust stock account, bank account or intermingled Swiss Technical Fund, a Swiss management portfolio con. It’s called. So those are all of our targets, basically.

Stone Payton: [00:34:27] So what makes these places havens? Is there a degree of privacy that you’re afforded there that you’re not afforded, like in a typical American bank or what?

John Quirk: [00:34:39] Yes, they call it banking secrecy, but in Switzerland, there really is no more banking secrecy. There’s only a couple places really that are super secret that are even difficult for us to find money. Well, I don’t

Stone Payton: [00:34:52] Tell them about those. Ok. Unless you want to.

John Quirk: [00:34:55] Well, it’s not a big secret. Liechtenstein is very difficult. Luxembourg is difficult because they haven’t signed the international money laundering laws. And you see, when you get into these type of things, you have a coterie of specific criminal violations. We prefer criminal recoveries. So if somebody has been involved in conspiracy, fraud, wire fraud and usually money laundering, money laundering always comes at the end. People think, Oh, it’s a money laundering case. You can have money laundering. If you don’t have wire fraud, you can’t have money laundering. If you don’t have conspiracy to defraud or bank fraud or embezzlement, money laundering always comes at the end. And most of these countries now have laws, which means know your customer and suspicious activity. But many of the banking havens don’t pay attention to it. North Korean drug money is hidden in certain places. Putin owns fifteen hundred companies in Guernsey. He’s probably the richest man in the world. Way more rich than Donald Trump or Bill Gates. And so fraud is it cuts across business, politics, government. And to answer your original question, we just have more corruption everywhere. We have corruption in government, business, banking, health care. We are in part of the corruption is that the world has become so much more prosperous. There’s so much more money to steal and fraudsters engage in that in a very big way and a very clever way. And law enforcement is very, very difficult and hard to catch up to them.

Stone Payton: [00:36:45] Oh, I bet. So what is the process look like? I maybe I’ve been defrauded. Someone’s embezzled some money or something, and now I reach out to John because now, now you’re on my radar. What? What does our relationship information exchange? What does that process look like when you bring on a new client?

John Quirk: [00:37:10] Well, first we do a background on the target. The bad guy. Ok. Second thing is we locate all their assets. We can find anybody’s bank account trust, wire transfer. Wow. Domestically or internationally. Then the most important thing we have to determine was it really fraud or a bad investment? Two different things. Yeah. You know, everybody thinks they lose money and it’s fraud, and the FBI is completely overwhelmed. Now, the FBI and our firm is getting heavily into identifying digital currency bitcoins. We couldn’t do it a year ago, but now we can find the balance and transfers of bitcoin. So there’s always new types of frauds, but you have to be sure that it’s not just an investment that’s gone bad. Yeah. Then you have to after you locate the money, we have to. Develop a remedy to recover the money, and there’s only a few remedies. And when I say only a few remedies is very difficult to get your money back when somebody is taking it. The first thing we do is when we find out something, Hey, did the person that took your money, did he go out and buy a Range Rover? A boat, a car? Spend a lot of money on his girlfriend’s jewelry? Does he have any money left? Because it may not be worth going after him? Because law enforcement, mainly the FBI or the IRS Criminal Division there are only interested in the prosecution.

John Quirk: [00:38:45] They’re not interested in getting money back. They’re not a collection agency. So what we do is there’s only three ways really to get your money back unless you use some mafia thug to visit the guy. We don’t do that. So there’s a civil way that’s civil litigation. You hire a lawyer to sue the person. There’s criminal, which we prefer. Explain that in a minute, and there’s a hybrid civil and criminal to get your money back. We prefer the criminal remedy because it’s nine out of 10 times you’ll get your money back if you work with a specific law enforcement group that is interested in the criminal violation, while our company is only interested in getting the client’s money back. And that’s a criminal complaint, and it’s a remedy called Mallette, which is called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. I write articles on this. Yeah, it’s in the Justice Department and they will help you get money back in Switzerland or Hong Kong or Bermuda or the Cook Islands. Or you can use British techniques called Anton Piller Ax or Meriva injunctions. Because if you look at all the offshore banking havens, they were all run basically by England, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Caymans, Turks, Barbados, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey and Cyprus. Even Monte Carlo were all British law. So you use British law in the criminal area to recover the money if there’s any money left that the fraudsters taken.

Stone Payton: [00:40:30] So you’re a prolific writer. You write and teach. You got a lot of irons in the fire. Speak a little bit to that. Is that accurate? Don’t you’ve written books and articles and all kinds of stuff? Have you?

John Quirk: [00:40:42] Well, most of my books and articles are initial security. I wrote the official history of the CIA, FBI and things we use in our terminology, like targeting and counter-espionage. Yeah, but most of my background has been in what we call FCI. That’s foreign counterintelligence. So over the years, I’ve worked against what we call criteria. Countries in this country criteria countries. It’s not a secret our Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, China and then the National Security Division, they’re Iran, Hezbollah, the PLO people that are working against us. And over the years, the FBI, which is the premier counterintelligence organization, has been overwhelmed by both the Chinese and the Russians coming into the United States to both steal secrets and basically bribe a lot of our leaders to go along with them, especially the Chinese. They’re brilliant at this. In fact, I came up to Georgia because I worked on a Chinese case, which, you know, the people know that the Chinese steal intellectual property, mainly technology. But let me tell you what they’ve done in Georgia. This could be a whole separate show. They have come into Georgia Chinese intelligence and they steal all of our seed tobacco, cotton, apple, soybean, whatever we grow, they come into our universities. Sometimes they co-opt professors, they give them a free trip to China and a few other perks when they get over to China. And the professors think it’s great and what the Chinese do, they take our seeds, send it back to China, re-engineer it, come back, sell it at a discount rate and put our seed businesses out of business. Wow. And that’s just one of the things they do. If they, of course, they’re involved in technology theft, they’re involved in business theft, strategic alliances. There are really our main adversary now. I mean, the Russians steal things, but they can’t get it into production. The Chinese get it into production.

Stone Payton: [00:43:04] So Brian, how would you feel if John? Quirk or on your tail if you got wind, John Quirk, who was hunting you down.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:14] I don’t think I could hide. I think that’s a movie. Catch me if you can. I think he catches you.

Stone Payton: [00:43:20] Yeah, I think so too.

John Quirk: [00:43:22] So we’re very focused on trying to get money back for our clients. We do some pro bono work mainly for seniors who don’t have a lot of money, who are a very big target of fraud. And what we try to also do is on the federal level, we have great people at the FBI and the IRS that that know how to target and develop criminal cases with the U.S. attorneys. On the local level, the economic crime units at the local police and the state police need better education and need better money because there’s so much fraud. When somebody comes to them, they usually don’t take the case. They just don’t have the resources to trace money to Switzerland or they don’t have the resources to build a case against them. And this is a very, very big problem. You know, with all the problems in the United States that we have crime and fraud is increasing dramatically.

Stone Payton: [00:44:21] Well, so does the layperson who does not know about you guys, do they typically if they’re, you know, fired up and want to do something because they’ve lost money or their mom got swindled? Do they typically go to their family lawyer first and then the lawyer connects you guys or.

John Quirk: [00:44:41] Yeah, sometimes in the U.S. they go to a lawyer in divorce cases. Of course, they go to a family lawyer who’s looking for assets and a spouse. A spouse is hiding money, right? So they contact us and then also word of mouth internationally, it’s a little different. We’re we’re very well known internationally. I spend part of the year in France. I lived in France 20 years and I’ve lived in Turkey and a number of other countries. So we know most of the people in the banking havens, whether they’re international lawyers or we do a lot of anti-counterfeiting work for companies like Gucci, Ferragamo, Polo, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and now we used to do what’s called by bust. We we do a buy of counterfeit goods, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit AZT, whatever. And now we just looked for assets of the counterfeiters. So if you find the assets of the counterfeiters, you can put them out of business. So in that regard, most of our business in asset location, 90 percent of our business is international. So we’re always overseas looking for money or developing courses. And in most foreign countries, they don’t have a very good system in our country. We have the Justice Department with the U.S. attorney on the federal level. And there’s an old saying a U.S. attorney can indict a ham sandwich and our laws here are very draconian. If you want to conduct fraud, go to Canada, you have penny stock fraud and Vancouver investment fraud and Toronto, the mafia in Montreal and their system for prosecution is very, very weak. Germany, what Americans do here to go to jail for would never go to jail. In Germany, their laws are just very weak and they kind of defend the businessmen. So there are major frauds overseas, but the prosecutions are not aggressive. And in our country, you have to be aggressive because if not, the fraudsters will just take over everything. I mean, we’ll never eliminate fraud, like you’ll never eliminate the mafia, you just control them from taking over the country.

Stone Payton: [00:47:13] It seems like you would never run out of work. I mean, do you even have to do sales and marketing at this point?

John Quirk: [00:47:20] We wanted to grow our company, and the type of outline that Brian Pruitt did at Lake City is exactly what we need because the reason we want to grow our company is we want to get into different areas and we want more revenue, right? Our bigger cases take a longer time to do. We might have to work on a case for two to three months locating the money, writing the filing. Yeah. Meeting people. Sometimes in many cases, we work undercover against the people. We get into their organization. Wow, we become partners with the crook. We work with them. We find out who the accountant is, who the bookkeeper is, who the who’s doing, the wire transfers. And we use some very large sources that aren’t secrets overseas. Like Swift. When we do a background, we usually get the person’s phone calls. So if he’s got 20, if Stone Payton has got 20 phone calls into the Cayman Islands, the Barclays bank, that’s a pretty good idea where Stone Payton is

Stone Payton: [00:48:25] Like, Wow. So I mean, I can tell you, enjoy the work. Is there anything in particular like when you get a certain type of case, you’re like, Oh boy, another one of those? Or do you just find joy and satisfaction and a lot of different?

John Quirk: [00:48:40] Yeah, I think it’s the curiosity of how intelligent the bad guys are and how sophisticated they are in America. Most people go to a lawyer to set up an overseas bank account, OK, and they set up. Maybe they pay 5000 bucks to set it up in Guernsey or Switzerland, but it’s not really secret from us, right? People like the drug cartels, the Russian mafia, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hide money, so they go into Ireland. They set up a company like the Scorpion Trust. They open up an Irish bank account. They take that, they take that documentation, they go to Guernsey, then they go to Guernsey. They go back to Gibraltar, they go to Gibraltar, they go to Switzerland and then the money will rest in a spirit to Santo in the Cook Islands. Most American businessmen or spouses cheating on their spouse don’t want to do that. They’re too puritanical, too practical. And we Americans are too practical, so they don’t want to spend more than five or ten thousand dollars hiding a bank account. Right. It’s not secret from us if we’re going after people in the drug business, which we don’t do. We know that we’re going to be defeated early on because it it costs thousands and thousands of dollars to locate there where the money rests.

Stone Payton: [00:50:04] I’m such a boring person. I have. We have my family has a couple of accounts over at Wells Fargo and here for this studio. I got a little business account over here at Banco C.K. down at the corner. Wow.

John Quirk: [00:50:19] Well, it’s getting more expensive to set up a bank account overseas. You need at least a million five to open a bank account in Switzerland. Now you need three million in Liechtenstein. Gibraltar, you can open up for a couple of thousand, but it’s not really secret if somebody’s looking for it. Guernsey’s very secret Bermuda’s secret the Caymans. The super secret Panama is not secret anymore. The Bahamas is not secret. As I mentioned, Hong Kong doesn’t really have banking secrets anymore, so Americans prefer Europe. They get a trip to Europe, they can visit Luxembourg, they can go to Switzerland, and they open up their bank account there.

Stone Payton: [00:51:02] So, so the gap if there is one, and I’m not convinced that there is much of one, but but the gap or a place to to maybe pull the lever and continue to grow and scale this thing. It occurs to me, it’s education. It’s the layperson like me, you know, just the average person knowing that there’s a resource available to us like you to help us solve these problems. If mom does get swindled or if we if we do have some sort of fraud or suspected fraud in our lives.

John Quirk: [00:51:35] Yeah, yeah. I write articles for family lawyer and divorce magazine, and one of the frustrating things that happens in divorce it is that it’s very difficult to get documents out of the spouse, whether it’s a PNL or IRS statements you’re talking about. Education lawyers need to be educated, but even judges need to be educated because judges, if you go in with a with a report and say, look at it, we found all the money in Switzerland. The judge often doesn’t know how to enforce it. Ok. And what’s happened in the divorce area, which was civil? You know, you go to a lawyer to get divorced, right? It’s now going into the criminal area and it’s good for us because we do criminal seizures in divorce cases. And what happens is the spouse lies where he is put money. You can’t really get them on what’s called fraudulent, transfer or contempt. Those are very weak civil things and lawyers often have to keep the case going. And it never ends almost where when the spouse lies in court and he hides money overseas and you get into money laundering, that’s a criminal violation in the divorce setting that’s happening more and more.

Stone Payton: [00:52:54] All right. So if our listeners want to learn more and get more educated there, clearly there are some resources they can go and read about it. But they also might want to have a conversation with you or someone on your team. What’s the best way for them to do that?

John Quirk: [00:53:06] Yeah, I can send them articles I’ve written on how to locate assets overseas. We’ve done a number of podcasts. They can contact us at our website, which is W W W Dot Asset Location Recovery Dot Com or I R G G Global BRL at AOL.com or our phone number nine five four seven four four six zero eight five. We’re a family business. My son is a cyber investigator. He has advanced degrees in hacking and cyber investigation. And my wife is former intelligence officer from Venezuela. She runs our domestic company. My older son was a U.S. attorney. He was a prosecutor. So we have a few other spiny creatures around in the company with different kinds of backgrounds. We have a former KGB guy that’s very good when it comes to things in Russia and so on. So we have that expertize to and we would. Be able to tell you early on before you spend any money, whether the case is worth doing or not.

Stone Payton: [00:54:23] It sounds like you’ve got most, if not all, the bases covered on these topics almost. Well, John Quirt, thank you so much for a fascinating, informative, wee bit scary but interesting and intriguing conversation. Really appreciate you coming down and visiting with us.

John Quirk: [00:54:41] My pleasure. Thank you.

Stone Payton: [00:54:42] All right, this is Stone Payton for our guest today and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business Radio.