Inspiring Conversations with Everett Sands of Lendistry

Today we’d like to introduce you to Everett Sands.

Hi Everett, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I grew up in a small business environment in Washington, DC. I saw both the day-to-day operations of a family business and its impact on our community. My grandfather owned a tailoring shop. When I was a kid, I worked there sweeping the floors and running the cash register. But as we drove around, my family would point to different businesses that are in the shop’s previous location and say, “We used to be there.” I’d wonder, why “used to”?

I learned that the business used to have multiple locations and even a school where others could learn the trade. It was well established in its community and one of the first African American-owned businesses to have a contract with the U.S. Army, supplying the caps during the Korean War. The business was growing and doing well, but my grandfather needed resources to reach the next level. Instead of support, he was given some bad financial and tax advice from someone who should have been an ally, and he couldn’t access capital to grow further. The business didn’t close entirely, but it took a hit.

Hearing that had made a big impression on me, and as a numbers nerd, I spent a lot of time thinking about what that business, our family and our community would look like today if my grandfather had had a partner in his corner to support his growth. I went into banking and commercial lending and learned that many of the issues that affected my grandfather’s journey are still prevalent today. Lendistry was built to learn, innovate and inspire new ways to make change.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Lendistry launched in 2015 and grew steadily, gaining certifications and beginning to earn accolades. We became a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), and Community Development Entity (CDE), and SBA Community Advantage lender, and we built V1 of our own proprietary tech platform to enable our customers to apply online. Then 2020 hit, and the pandemic sent our small team of about 40 people home. We were scared for ourselves, but we were also very afraid for the local businesses in California and across the country. So we got together and decided as a team that this was our mission—this is what we founded Lendistry to do. We would use our platform and our knowledge and do everything we could to help those businesses survive.

There were many obstacles when we tried to step up, because the financial world and legislators didn’t yet know who we were and what we were capable of. We started out as a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lender in CA, and we had to write letter after letter—seven letters if I’m honest, to get approved in as many states as we could. We went from 1 state, to 6, to 12 in the PPP’s first round, but we didn’t stop. During the second round, our footprint increased to 23 states, then finally nationwide. We ended up being the #8 PPP lender in the country for 2021, and now we apply a lot of what we learned in that crazy year to our processes and our recommendations to other capital deployers.

As you know, we’re big fans of Lendistry. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Honestly, we’re known for being hard to describe—that’s part of doing things that haven’t been done before. But at our core, Lendistry is a tech-forward and mission-driven small business lender. We’re also the nation’s only African American-led Small Business Lending Company, a.k.a. non-bank SBA 7(a) lender, and the only CDFI that’s also a national fintech. We offer commercial loans starting at $25,000 for businesses that have been operating for 2 years or more, including businesses that have a hard time finding responsible lending partners, like minority-owned, women-owned, rural businesses, non-profits, airport concessionaires, and small contractors. We also have a residential mortgage arm, Lendistry Home Loans, and a business insurance agency, Lendistry Insurance Fulfillment Team. It’s important to us to provide economic opportunities as a holistic partner—a resource businesses can rely on for the long-term.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
You’re asking about “risk” from an entrepreneurial perspective, but in finance, that word has its own meaning. I’ll try to answer both. From an entrepreneurial angle, at Lendistry we’re breaking new ground in an industry that’s slow to change. There’s a lot of risk built into that journey. Every step forward is a risk, but if you don’t take them, you don’t get anywhere. From the finance perspective, risk is more existential because it refers to getting back the money you lend out (and investors getting theirs). In my years working for traditional banks, I saw minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and businesses in distressed areas continue to fall through the cracks, while the industry’s leaders continued to claim those communities were too high risk and could not be reached. The market need was real and ready, but when we formed Lendistry we were also aware that potential investors were not used to an innovative approach to government-sponsored lending. It would take time to build up the technology we envisioned and earn the government licensing Lendistry would need to offer loans responsibly.

We’ve used technology and a team of experienced, mission-driven credit professionals to change what metrics are used to determine if a business owner is creditworthy. The end game of this credit risk strategy is to inject undercapitalized borrowers into the existing data set in a way that changes how they’re perceived in traditional financing circles. The more businesses receive loans and make their payments, the more the perception of risk can be lifted for future generations of entrepreneurs.

Today, we know this model is successful and impactful, but at the time, no one had done it before. If more proof is needed, one of those early investors I mentioned earlier is now Lendistry’s CFO!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lendistry.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lendistry/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lendistry
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lendistry/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnQaL_pavXBykyysnQa6aHA
• Other: https://smallbusinessunscripted.com/