Devin Gambino: Why Financial Clarity Is the Most Undervalued Growth Strategy

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my guest today, Devin Gambino, CEO and founder of Linefeed. Today we will be tackling business growth mindset and how right financial systems can give owners their freedom back. So Devin has more than a decade of experience in finance and entrepreneurship. He’s helped over a thousand business owners scale their operation, manage cash flow more strategically and make better financial decisions. His firm, which is approved by visa and as an outsourced CFO provider, is built around the belief that financial clarity should be accessible to every business. Devin is also a proud husband and father, passionate about helping entrepreneurs build businesses that serve both their goals and their families. Devin, welcome to the show.
Devin Gambino: Thanks so much for having me, Trish, I appreciate it.
Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited about having you on today. So can you tell us a little bit more about Devin?
Devin Gambino: Absolutely. So, uh, I was, uh, 19 year old kid with big dreams of being a commercial real estate. You know, tycoon. You know, I’ll own one of these billion dollar buildings in Manhattan and in commercial real estate as a broker or an agent, you see firsthand how the deli at the bottom of this million dollar building, you walk through the deli because you got to show the space, and you’re here with the guy who’s buying the building. He’s looking at his phone the whole time. He’s not even looking at the space. Right. He walked out of the building to a CFO, a CSO and a CMO, and he says, what do you guys think? They say, yes, he bought the building. I’m thinking to myself, I saw the guy in that deli running around like a lunatic to do. I don’t know how many jobs in the 20 minutes that we were in that space. And it was that moment that took, you know, three, four years of, wow, I, I could probably help that guy, but that guy needs more help than somebody looking to buy a building. He seems like he’s got any help at all. Uh, so what you learn over over five, eight years, the banking, because I was so familiar with the real estate side and and I realized now the way that the market is built, uh, you know, you could probably agree with this.
Devin Gambino: The market is built right now as a way for people to be able to access quick money, but the cheaper, long term stuff with the lower rate is so hard to get for so many people and the business model for companies like mine. I mean, I know there’s no audience that’s live here, but if there was and I could ask for a show of hands of people that get a phone call from somebody offering a money over the phone, it would hands would shoot up across the audience like crazy. And all those companies that offer money over the phone. Think about it this way. If you stop borrowing, what happens to the business model, right? It it breaks. So my, my the story of Devin is really a story of trying to give business owners access to liquidity and to knowledge, but have the business model not break when they didn’t need to borrow more money. So I came up with this idea of 4.95 a month. It’s affordable for most people. 4 to 7 hours a month is all people need for a small to mid-size business. And if I could give it to them for free somehow, how could I give it to them for free? That’s where I combined lending.
Devin Gambino: I said if I could give them a loan and I get paid by the lender that I got the loan through. Then I could reinvest the money the banks are paying me on software and on things that make us have the the things needed for us to be worthwhile, to pay that 500 a month over the year. Right? And so now, uh, you know, we have a shelf of clients back here. You can see the book shelf of clients. And these are all people that are fractional CFO for across the country. And it’s, uh, I look at it as an opportunity that many business owners think is out of reach for them. But if you were to take a look at your tax returns from four years ago, you would probably notice that now you’ve added some write offs that you didn’t know you could have four years ago. Right? You learn every year. We learn every day from the people that we help. So a little bit about Devin is I’m trying to help as many people learn that if you borrow money from somebody who only makes money by you borrowing, that, you’re going to be in an endless cycle of people that only offer you short term stuff.
Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh. So I want to dig into this a little bit more and talk about Linda. And I know that there’s something special about there’s obviously something special about the business itself, where you went from wanting to be a real estate tycoon to assisting thousands of small business owners with this amazing idea that you have. But talk to me more about Linda and how where’s the name come from first off, and then we’ll dive a little deeper.
Devin Gambino: So I was at a company that and if you look online, I’m sure everybody who’s here listening, there’s so many companies with the word lend in the name. And having the word lend in the name helps for SEO. But I didn’t want people to think that we were just like everybody else, trying to just do loans, right? So defying defied it was tough to decide between the two or defied defying defiance finance, right. There were so many things we came up with, but we didn’t want it to rhyme. Of course, it’s a little So. So we have financial company with a rhyming name. But, uh, Linda came to mind and, you know, we were lucky that only Linda is a company in Canada, does mortgages. So we were lucky we were able to catch that and, and keep it in the States for us to do that.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s fantastic. All right. Take me back through how this works and who, who your service really serves. Like who are your clients. Tell us a little bit more about them.
Devin Gambino: I love that question so much because there’s there’s a there’s clients like this business owner here has they’ve been in business 36 years in Manhattan, a vitamin supplements company. And all these business owners here, you can’t read it. There’s seven of them. They owned each location themselves, no holding company structure. They met us. And now this company owns all the vitamin shops. This one owns the gyms. This one owns the real estate. So there’s there’s structure to it. And they asked me, Devin, why didn’t our accountant do this with us? And I said, because your accountants job is to make sure that your taxes are filed and that your pain as best you can on the rate that you’re paying for your taxes as you can. He’s not going to make sure that you’re paying yourself in the ownership compensation and not the W-2 in 2025, because I know you’re going to need to borrow in 2026. You’re going to have your third year in business. You’re going to be eligible for SBA loans. We want to make sure you got add backs. I can’t add back owner, uh, W-2, I can add back owner’s compensation. That’s something I see accountants not going to do. And so we don’t want to replace their people’s accountant. That’s the misunderstanding I get a lot is people say, Devin, you want to be my CPA.
Devin Gambino: And I say I have CPAs on staff, but what I would like to do is work with yours. And so that’s how I’ve been running the business up to this point. 90% of my, my business has come by way of referral because I’ll speak to somebody. They’ll get the CFO service for three months at no cost. And then I’ll get on the phone with the accountant and I’ll say, how tired are you people treating you like their CFO? But you get paid once a year in April, right? And then they laugh, just like you did. And then they go, Devin, what are you talking about? Can I. I can’t offer lending as a service. I don’t have a processing team. I don’t have the ability to have software that does it. I don’t have a CRM. I don’t want to build it out. That’s where I had this idea. I went out outsourced people that did processing, and then I realized I could do it in house. I do all my processing loan matching. Everything is done here, so you literally can apply a soft pull through. Our Experian partnership matches you with your financial data to all the banks in the country, and no hard inquiries have been done and you know where to go.
Trisha Stetzel: Wow, this is amazing. Like my mind is blown today. Devin, the work that you’re doing because it fills a void. There’s like this gap and you found it and you filled it, and it’s amazing. So let’s back up just a little bit. Most people are familiar with CFO. Some are not. So let’s define what is a fractional CFO. What do they really do and when should a business actually consider bringing one in?
Devin Gambino: It’s a it’s a question of how much help do you have. That is the answer. No business owner should be spending more than four hours every single week doing tasks that involve finding the next best 0% product, the next quarterly financial report that you run. You might want to use it to lend on. So we’re going to try and figure out if we need any equipment in quarter four of this year. Like right now, some business owners might be unsure if they’re going to have a tax liability. Now is the time to figure out if you’re going to. Because if you’re going to, why not buy the equipment you were going to buy in April now to kick the tax liability away? Right. It’s these small decisions over time and my clients on the shelf here that are millionaires. You know, Brandon Adams is an Emmy Award winning producer, and he’s on our board of advisors. He’s told me millionaires are made of smart financial decisions, dominoes that stack up over time, that make a pretty. You’re not going to meet a lot of millionaires who knocked over one giant domino and said that was what made everything work, that one thing, it’s very uncommon. And so from, you know, to to answer what you said is what does a CFO do? The CFO is doing the things that you’re not good at when it comes to finance. Right? Because if you were going to do your own marketing, you’d probably have somebody do your marketing for you or you would expect worse results. Well, yeah, what happens is people do their own financing and then they don’t expect results, and then they can’t figure out why they can’t get approved anymore.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve been talking about a lot of tactical things and, and smart moves and making sure that we’re making the right decisions or engaging people when we need something. Can we talk about the mindset around money? So what do you find is the biggest gap between how business owners think about money and how they should think about money?
Devin Gambino: I think this question in particular is going to require me to roll over the whiteboard.
Speaker4: Okay, I like it.
Devin Gambino: Roll over the whiteboard for this one, and don’t worry if you’re listening to the show, I promise I will make it just as easy to understand by listening, but I want the numbers to hit home for those that are watching. Um. Let’s say I’m able to get somebody $150,000 SBA loan, and the payment is $2,400 on okay, so $2,400 a month. On $150,000 SBA loan. Well, those payments are going to be 2388 a month times 12. We’re at around we’re going to have about 121,000 left over. So figure 121 K us. But where’d the rest of that money go? The rest of that money sits in the bank so that the next 12 months of payments don’t affect your cash flow. You’re making money with their money, and your cash flow is not affected. Now, why would you do that, though? You can’t make money with the money you just put to the side, right? But in a year from now, all the 121 that you did use, that you used this for salary. You used this for, uh, cogs cost of goods sold. Used it for marketing. Used it for legal. You used it for whatever. This all gets written off on the bottom line of the tax returns. Right. Affecting the taxable income. If you’re going to use this money and not see the tax benefit for 12 months, setting aside 12 months of payments while you’re using the rest of it would make sense so that you could reap the tax benefit before the payment impact. Now this is part one. Part two is what that business owner did with the 121.
Devin Gambino: He took that $121,000 and put 45,000 of it in a wholly paid life insurance policy. That was a it was it was a corporate account. It was a corporate life insurance policy, wholly paid life insurance policy. That 45,000 he did again year two and again year three. Now he didn’t not use the rest of it. I think he used 80,000 of it for a job. And then he made a return and put the other 45 in, etc., etc. but the idea is this was a long time ago. It’s been four years now, but on his third year he had 260, some odd call it $268,000 in here. But how is that possible? 45,000 times three is in 260. Well, what happens is it builds with the market, and the market builds on this and compounds every single year. As you’re putting more money into it now, you’re probably thinking, Devin, you can’t access to access this till you die. So you just locked up his money till the guy passes away? God forbid. Not really. Because you can borrow from this as a loan vehicle. And now when you do borrow from it, it’s not taxed. Because it’s not income. It’s not a loan, it’s a loan. It’s not income. And when you borrow from this, the rate on it is 5%, which beats the market rates. If you look up what’s prime today Prime is at seven. So if I can get you this at five. People are wondering how because it’s collateralized against the death benefit and now you can borrow and you’re making seven in the market.
Devin Gambino: So there’s actually a spread here. You’re still making money. And here’s the crazy part. He borrowed 240. And the AP the 2% spread difference between the 5% and the 7% from the market gains versus what he was paying, he was making that 2% spread on the whole. 268. But how is that possible? He only has 18,000 in there. He didn’t take it out. He borrowed against it. So if you can take your money and make it leverageable for you’ve heard of Rocket Mortgage before? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Rocket mortgage does hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages. But the what they do when they’re doing those mortgages, the people don’t know is they are linking up their bank account to liquidity lines of credit is what they’re called, and it allows them to lend money at interest only while they’re waiting for the mortgage payment to be made for its first month’s payment, and all their money is still in the bank. They just linked it up to the wholesale liquidity lender to get a liquidity line of credit, similar to rent by visa. They do a 17 to 33% of whatever’s in a linked up bank account on a 30 day net term line of credit. That’s 0% interest. I offer that to tons of clients. So the biggest mistake people make with money is they think once I got the money, now I can go use it. Once you got the money, figure out the strategy to make the money multiply before its use.
Speaker4: Hmm.
Trisha Stetzel: Okay. Mike. Drop. I’m just saying. All right, so here’s the point where people are like, I really gotta talk to this guy. So, Devin, what is the best way for people to connect with you or find out more?
Devin Gambino: I would say if you need to reach me because you want to sign up as somebody to send us clients and get paid 30% on the revenue that we generate on the file. So let’s say send somebody to us and made us $10,000. You’d make $1,000 for sending us that account, and it’s unlimited. Some people say make up to $50,000 annually. Unlimited. If you send us one deal that made you $50,000 because it was a $50 million shopping center, so be it. But with that said, I understand most business owners listening are probably not referring us clients. They’re probably looking for us to help. And if that’s the case, I want you to reach out to Cassidy at com at c a s I’d at com l e d e I. If we are in a situation where right now you’re watching this, I will give you a link to throw below Trish that you could have them click on. And it’s a dynamic app link. You’ll see what lenders you’re matched with in real time based on the answers you’re putting. So you know, when you get to the end that you’re not wasting your time by getting us those documents that we need. You know you’re matched.
Trisha Stetzel: Wow. That’s fantastic. Okay, so you guys got all of that? If you’re listening, when you get back to your computer, of course there will be links that you can point and click will also include the link that Devin talked about so that you can see your matches real time, which is amazing. Again the company is spelled l e n d e f I e. This is amazing Devin. Thank you for sharing all of this. I can again, I know I said it earlier, but you really do fill a void where a lot of the business owners find confusion or just flack inside of their organizations because there’s something missing and you’re filling that void. So thank you for making this happen. Yeah. All right. If it’s okay, I’d love to talk a little bit more about Devin. Right. Um, both as a founder and a family man. And I know that you are, Um, how do you define success for you today? And how has that evolved since you started, Linda?
Devin Gambino: So success for me is being able to walking to the office and not feel like at the end of the day, the only one that benefited from my being at work was me. Right. I want to be able to walk out at the end of the day and say, I helped four clients get out of a jam. I helped this guy get money for payroll that he would have missed. Um, I would like my people to say, gosh, I learned so much today about using section 179. I just did a tax training on section 179, getting the whole write off in year one of its, uh, purchase for assets. And I had somebody come up to me, one of my new reps, and he said, Devin, I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in a week. I if they were like this in school, I would have loved to take this in high school because it’s really life. Things that they should teach us. And it almost made me think I should maybe do some sort of like when I do the trainings with the people. Maybe I recorded and posted somewhere. You know, the information is a boundless. It’s boundless. Right? There’s so much information out there. So if I can be one source of truth for people, that would be a huge win. For I couldn’t tell you how many folks.
Trisha Stetzel: I love that, which is why you and I connected in the first place, because we share a lot of the same values around helping other people and making sure that people have access to information. I think that’s so important that we make sure that they have access to the information.
Devin Gambino: Um, right. Information, because there’s so many people out there that will get bad information for their own benefit. Yeah. And you gotta be careful. More now than ever. I couldn’t tell you how many business owners have told me that. They got told some sort of. Oh, yeah, if you do this and then this, I’ll get you this. And then they never hear from them again. And it’s a tragedy because it’s the small business owners are are that are, that are maybe a 1 or 2 year old company. They’re so trusting so easily with people that they feel can help their business because they their business is their baby. But business owners do what they love to do. They don’t necessarily love to do tax and accounting, but it’s a forced it’s something you’re forced to do as a business owner. Don’t do it alone. Don’t go out and and feel like you have to find somebody and and and and, uh, you know, rush to do the taxes. The if you have to file an extension. And, you know, I couldn’t tell you how many people told me they didn’t interview their accountant. I said, that’s amazing. You go look at a car. How many times do you look at when you shop for a car? When you look for an accountant, you didn’t interview anybody. You just went to the first person that popped up online. There’s a a there’s a very small percentage of people that I have talked to who have said, oh yeah, my accountant, I meet with him once a month. Most people meet with them once a year or once a quarter, if that. And I have found people that are small to mid-size business owners that have not had a company in their possession in their name for ten years or more, need more support. They do.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. And you know, something that comes to mind as you were talking through that is how many business owners are what I would consider afraid of the numbers. Or they bury their head in the sand because they don’t want to know what the numbers are or they don’t understand them. What would you say to people who are listening today, or watching if they really have this nervousness around? Well, I don’t I don’t even want to look at the books. I just want somebody to do my taxes. And I’m just going to see how much money’s in the bank. What would you say to them? Like, what’s the first thing they could do to get more comfortable with loving the numbers.
Devin Gambino: In order for you to want to do the numbers in the back of the books for your own business, you have to. Unfortunately, this is something a lot of business owners are going to shake their head right now is they’re listening. You have to need the money yourself as a business owner, if you don’t need the money personally, you’re not going to care about the books. You’re going to just make sure there’s enough money in the account to keep your business running. But if you need to bring home at least 80,000 or at least $120,000 to run your life, you’re going to want to care about how those numbers are. And it’s going to maybe take a year of man, I was listening to this radio show and they were talking about this, and I really wasn’t listening. Then year goes by and I didn’t do the books, and now I owe $100,000 to this tax liability, where if you would have done the books, you would have known in November or December that liability was around the corner. Why don’t I why don’t I go buy another $60,000 tattoo removal machine? It made me 280 grand this year. And by doing that, it washes this tax liability for people like you said, would rather bury their head in the sand for a second and then pop up when the accountants done with their taxes, and then they’re yelling at the accountant. They’re upset with him sometimes. And and I’ve had people call me and say, Devin, it’s my accountant’s fault. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I hear this all the time. I’m so sorry. Because I assume that it is their accountant’s fault. And then I get the tax return and I see it’s not the account’s fault. He did everything he could. You did not realize that you were so profitable, and now you’re in a pickle.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And not just looking at the numbers post happening, right? We need to be looking at them to know the health of our business is so important.
Speaker4: Okay, so some people.
Devin Gambino: Run their business just to just to have it though. I’m sure you’ve met these people. They have a business just to say they own a business and it’s just making enough to get by. But they’re not putting money in A41K. They don’t have health insurance, their people don’t have health insurance, and they’re okay with that. Those are the people that might not need financial guidance. They might need a guidance conversation around what do you want out of business? Right. People just want to be able to not have a boss but make money. That’s okay. But don’t have eight people, six people on your staff making 20, $30,000 a year so that you can live comfortably. And then they have no benefits, no nothing. And that, you know, a dead end job because you wanted to have a company that just worked for you.
Speaker4: Yeah.
Trisha Stetzel: When you could indeed be supporting all of the people who are supporting your business, which is beautiful.
Devin Gambino: Well, not only you could be. I had a gentleman on the phone this morning. He said to me, Devin, I sell everything myself. And my commission for that is mine. Holy. And I don’t want to bring anybody else for that reason. That is smart. I had a business owner a couple of months ago, said Devin. I’m bringing on people, and even if I didn’t, even if sell the deal. But the guy gave me the deal. I’m giving him the commissions because I want him to be happy and I want him to. But the company was in the red. So some people just want to run a business and make big decisions, but they don’t realize these decisions are helpful to your team, but now your detriment to yourself. There’s a there is a way of having your team be successful and having you be successful and the company not be in the red. And that’s where a CFO will make sure that those three things are always, never too much out of balance.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. As we come to a close, I have one last question for you. We talked about the people who are afraid of the numbers that have had their heads buried in the sand, but what about those who just feel stuck? What’s one simple step they can take just this week that can help them get back in control and start growing their business again with confidence? And I’d like for you to think, or to answer the question with it being any time of year, it could be the end of the year, the middle of the year, the beginning of the year. What is one simple step they can take this week to get back into control and start growing with confidence?
Devin Gambino: If it’s credit related, right. If their credit score is a 640 and they need it to get over 680 to get real financing options, what a lot of people don’t know is there’s something called an authorized user, and you can add an authorized user, right? If you’re an 18 year old kid, your mom gives you a credit card with your name on it. You’re an authorized user on her card. That’s what that means. And now there are websites where you can go purchase an authorized user tradeline and put it on your personal credit report for 12 months. Completely legal because you can add up to ten authorized users. On my BJ’s one card, I can add up to seven, so I have not used any of my $7,500 limit and the card’s nine years old. If I added that to your report, you’re sure your score would go up because the age of the report just went up. The availability because I’m not using it just went up. If your credit is the reason, put an authorized user trade from a family member or a friend or your brother or somebody, right? That that has a good credit score that’s not using the card, that’s able to say that the they’re not going to use it for a little while. Right. And that’s going to stay zero usage, because now you don’t have to worry about going and applying for a 3000 card.
Devin Gambino: The age of your report just went down. So if it’s credit related authorized user, if your credit is fine and you’re just less than two years old, it’s hard to swallow this pill. But people are not going to give you money for longer than you’ve been in business if you’re under the age of two, Because there’s a risk associated with it. So this is the fix. If you are a business owner under two years old, put together a, uh, I don’t want to call it a pitch deck for an investor, but put together a to whom it may concern. This is what I’d like to use the money for. And this is what I’m doing now. You can go to a financial advisor. You can go to the loan department at T Bank or your actual bank and provide them this. And they might say, you know what, your credit was 20, you know, 20% down and we’ll give you an acquisition loan. You just have to find a company in your area to acquire that’s probably better than, you know. Landscaping company says, I want to buy more equipment. They go to the bank with that. And now the bank says you could buy out a competitor. That might be a way better off than just buying three, three more mowers. You just got their book of business and the mowers.
Speaker4: Yeah.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, this has been so much fun. Unfortunately, we’ve come to the end of our time today. Devin, would you one more time tell folks how they can connect with you and lend a feed?
Devin Gambino: Yes. Sign up.com is a really easy website signup.com. If you want to get up close and personal, my Director of Partnerships, Cassidy, is open to have you reach out and her emails Cassidy two S’s at com. Of course there’s going to be a link in here as well in the video, but if you just went on Google and looked up, you’d see a bunch of YouTube videos with me on there from shows like this or the New York Business Association. So there’s hundreds of ways to find us. If you just look up, we’re number one everywhere you look on Best Company and everywhere else. So never more than a phone call away.
Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Thank you. And you’re such a giver. And taking care of all of the people around you. And just circling back around to the store about the man and the deli that really sits in my heart and fills me up today, so thank you for that.
Devin Gambino: I appreciate you having me, and I really appreciate what you’re doing for your community here with the show. It allows people like me to have a platform and I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much, Devin. All right guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Devin and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Of course. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.