Introducing Swypit’s Chamber Affinity Program

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 17 — Swypit-Chamber Affinity Program with Kevin Hodes
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Kevin Hodes
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.29 Kevin Hodes
Well, what's awesome about the chamber itself is you're always or they're always looking for some sort of non dues revenue generator where they don't have to think about it. It's just it's just kind of working. So it's hard to find those right organizations. How do you do that? You know?
00:17.484 Brandon Burton
I'm gonna help you do that today. Here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I have a great affinity program to introduce you to, so stay tuned as we kick off the intro. This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:44.046 Brandon Burton
Thank you for tuning in today for episode 17 of the Chamber Chat Podcast. I'm Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your chamber members and your community. Our guest today is someone that I've been excited to introduce to the Chamber Chat Podcast community for a while now because he has the ability with his company to bring a lot of value to any chamber that is listening and is able to help many of your members. become more profitable as well. Our guest today is Kevin Hodes, who is the founder and CEO of Swypit and is an ETA certified payments professional. Kevin Hodas is a three time best selling author, executive producer of the documentary Maximum Achievement, the Brian Tracy Story, executive producer of the Jay Abraham movie, and executive producer of the upcoming movie Folds of Honor. His expertise is sought out, and he has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS, AE, E, and Bravo networks. Staying active in the community and giving back is important to Mr. Hodas, which is why he directs profits from Swypit to go back to the community in many ways and many organizations, with his primary focus being the American Fallen Soldiers Project. Kevin, please say hello. to the chamber chat podcast audience and share something interesting about yourself that we didn't already learn in your bio.
02:18.35 Kevin Hodes
Hello, Brandon, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to your people out there in the world today. Of course, all of what I do is nothing about myself, but it's always about helping others. So primary focus has always been helping others. But I have to tell you, you know, I love what I do and I love being able to help people more than anything else. So what a great opportunity. And of course Whoever that guy was you were talking about a few seconds ago, I wanna meet him. He sounds pretty pretty famous or something. I don't know.
02:49.708 Brandon Burton
I I think he was a Dosecchi's guy. He's one of the he's the most interesting man in the world. So yeah.
02:55.116 Kevin Hodes
Yeah. Definitely.
02:57.484 Brandon Burton
Yeah, so I'm glad to have you on the program today. you know, whenever I consider bringing a guest onto the Chamber Chat podcast, I always want to make sure that they can provide great value to the audience, especially when it comes to potential partners or sponsorships. And I've wanted to bring Kevin on the show because he has a great program through his company Swypit to provide nondues revenue to your chamber. and to help reduce costs to your members and in turn help make them be more profitable. Kevin, before we get into some of the details for this chamber affinity program, why don't you just take a few moments and share with us a little bit about Swypit as a company and what makes Swypit better than the others that are out there?
03:48.472 Kevin Hodes
That's a very good question. And you know, I get asked a lot what really is the difference between your organization and everybody else. And I'll tell you the the biggest secret is is that I basically have been doing most everything for the past twenty years or over twenty years, all referral. So you really had to know somebody over the past twenty years before you actually had the opportunity to even work with us. And I think that's been a real huge factor in separating us from everybody else because most people are we're we're gonna have a guy in the area. You might get a phone call like that. And he's gonna come by and we guarantee to save you money and all that other stuff. And you know, there's a lot of people that can do things and say they can do things, and then at the end of the day it becomes really nothing very special. And being a chef and coming from the food industry, I really have figured out that people are looking for great pricing. And they want great service. And those are two things really hard to hard to find. And so I've been able to offer both of those items to chambers, merchants, and all over the country. And and and all the years I've been doing this, I I really don't have to fight so much with people when they've been referred into us. Can you solve these problems that we have? And a lot of times people don't realize they even have a problem or had an upcoming problem because they haven't done something. And we identify it and assist with that. A few moments before I got on with you, I received a call from one of our clients up in Nashville who was asking some questions about something and didn't realize that he had the ability to do something. And I said, Well, you know, you're starting up your business and you didn't realize everything that's been told to you. So of course, we don't remember everything. Well, I was able to identify what he was missing. And he says, my gosh, this is awesome. And I love working with you folks. You always answer the phone. You're here to help us. And that's what I love to do is be there when they need us, not when, you know, mo mo more times than none, you you need assistance with something and you can't get a hold of somebody. So we we strive to be there all the time. But you know, being in in the food business.
06:16.0 Kevin Hodes
I was a chef on private yachts for many years and I worked from the wealthiest men in the world. And in working for them, I realized some real key factors of what separated them from everybody. And and then I got into business consulting and I learned some of those things and applied those that I learned from these very wealthy individuals. And I just kept finding other ways to help people. And I realized when I fell into this slimy world of credit card processing, as I call it. that I could really help people and in a way they've never been able to be helped. And most people just think that all of us are all the same in the credit card processing industry. And we're really not. And that's why I have so many chambers that work with us now. And we have chambers that have affinity programs with us now. And they're they're very happy. And I love being there for them and our staff loves being there for them. And, you know, it's it's hard to find the the expert in a field. You know, you, Brandon, yourself have been in your field for many, many years, and people know that they can go to you and you'll have the answers for them. If someone's looking for the real answers for the credit card processing world, that they call me or they call my staff and we give them the skinny, whether they they may not like the answer sometimes, but we want to tell them the real info that they need to know. Whether they sometimes like it or no.
07:44.726 Brandon Burton
It's a building that no like and trust relationship to where people will come to you and expect that you're gonna give them honest upfront answers and and the best service that they're able to you're able to provide. I love the fact that that you started off and you still base on a a system of referrals, that you're not out there pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and saying, I've got a great deal for you. You know, you're you're working a referral system. And you gotta know somebody to get in with swipe it. So that I think that's helping to filter, you know, the best businesses, the best chambers, you know, to work with you. But also it it allows you the ability to to serve them in a way where you care about them a whole lot more than if they were just some random person. So I I know you mentioned just briefly kind of in passing that you work closely with chambers of commerce, but also other association groups. and have been for several years now. What is it about serving the Chamber of Commerce community industry that you enjoy?
08:53.346 Kevin Hodes
I would say most that I have the ability to talk to the smaller, medium-sized business owner that doesn't have access to somebody that has the knowledge I have. And the chambers recognize that and they know that they feel more comfortable be able to work with somebody that's not going to jam up their members. The members want, you know, a a fair deal. They want to have the ability to be able to do what they do and not worry about all this crazy language that they have to know. for is for instance, most merchants and even chambers may not even realize what a nineteen ninety-five non-PCI compliance fee might be on their statement. They see it every month and they have no idea what it is. Well, that's two hundred and forty to three hundred and sixty dollars, depending on who and what company is charging that fee. But it's two hundred and forty to three hundred and sixty dollars that's just going right down the toilet every year for these clients. That they shouldn't be paying that because the company that they signed up with probably just said, we guarantee to save you money, or we'll pay you $500. They signed them up. They have a salesperson that they can't get a hold of anymore. And now they're trying to find out what this money is, and they can't even figure out what it is. And I'll tell you what it is. Every merchant in America has to be PCI compliant. I don't care who has told anybody about. PCI saying, no, you don't have to worry about it. We're PCI compliant. The process is the card associations, meaning Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover, need to be compliant. The processing company has to be compliant. And the merchant has to be compliant. So those three factors have to work congruently, or you're noncompliant. The merchant doesn't realize they're charged a noncompliant fee. So we help. Merchants, when we see that on their statement, get compliant. We assist through the process. We don't just say, here, do this. We say, we need some information. This is why it's noncompliant. This is what's going to get you compliant. But I think this is an area that's so overlooked, even by chambers themselves. And some of the chambers that we have helped have they had no idea that they were being charged this fee.
11:14.906 Kevin Hodes
Or they knew they were being charged it. They just didn't know what it was for. So we were able to explain it and get them compliant. And it's a yearly compliance factor. It's not just you get compliant and you're done. It is a once a year reassessment. So an email will come and say, Hey, you got to get re compliant or reassess your compliance. And we see those emails come along and people say, Hey, what do we do with this? We say, We know what to do. We'll help you with that. So I mean there's that's one factor, just one single factor that I think would be you just look at your statement and say, noncompliance fee. Boom. Well, we can help there. you know, we we see a lot where people might have a fair price and their devices might have broken, and then they call the company they work with and they want to charge them an exorbitant amount of funds for equipment. And since in the inception of my company, I knew right away that all these salespeople need to make commissions on the sale of equipment. Well what we did was we took that out of the equation and we just started giving people the s all the equipment they may need and or devices and or knowledge without charging them. So they're not getting charged all these additional monies for things they shouldn't be charged for as far as I'm concerned. Just good old fashioned, great pricing and of course great, great service.
12:41.726 Brandon Burton
The service is what I was hearing. Everything you were saying is was all based around as a service right there. so let's let's get into the kind of the meat of this, the details of this chamber affinity program that Swipe it has to offer. just if somebody's driving or on a walk or something while they're listening to this, you can also go to chamberchap podcast dot com slash C C like credit card, and there's a little slideshow on there that you can get. a lot of this information as well. But sometimes it's nice just to be able to hear it and then have that reinforced when you go back to look at that. So Kevin, can you kind of give us a the big picture of how this chamber affinity program works that Swypit has to offer?
13:27.522 Kevin Hodes
Well, what's awesome about the chamber itself is you're always or they're always looking for some sort of nondues revenue generator where they don't have to think about it. It's just it's just kind of working. So it's hard to find those right organizations. How do you do that? You know? we find them by, you know, maybe hitting Google and you check out rip off report, things of that nature. I wanted to touch on this because and I forgot to mention it. a moment ago, but I tell everybody when it comes to your money, you really need to be Googling people. Google the company, Google the organization, Google it like crazy and and keep checking up on them because things may change. You know, you go to the BBB and you find out that it's a terrible company that you just signed up with and you're like, my gosh, I just made this huge mistake. So my goal for chambers and franchises and other organizations we support is to make sure that they don't have to worry about the company they're working with is going to be a bad decision that they made. And so what I suggest for chambers, if they're interested in even working with us, is we'll do an assessment of where they currently are at and we'll tell them if they're good where they're at or not. We'll say stay there, don't stay there. We'll say If you want to work with us, this is the experience that your clients are going to receive the same way we're treating you. Because we treat everybody the same. I have celebrities that are my clients, and they get the same exact treatment that the merchant that's doing five or seven thousand dollars a month is getting. We do not play favorites. And that to me is something if if you are able to Google me and you see me, I might, you might see a picture of me. I'm five foot one, and there isn't a fight that I ever won. I've been bullied and beat up all my life and I've never cared for the way I was treated. So I wanted to treat people with respect. I want to treat them with honesty. And I want to kill them with kindness so that they never leave us. And it's part of the reason we still have the first customer we ever wrote way back nineteen, twenty years ago. But going back to real benefits for the chambers, you know, there's very exclusive member only pricing that we can offer.
15:47.464 Kevin Hodes
And this will increase, you know, your new member capabilities. So, like members, when they come in and they say, Hey, we want to join the chamber, and you can say, Well, we also have this affinity program that we have special pricing just for our members. And I know you're going to get hit up for credit card processing, but we have screened, we have, and we use them ourselves. So we know they're a good organization and we want you to use them too. And then of course. when your client, your member says, wow, that's great, it'll also decrease your current attrition because now they feel compelled to continue to use the chamber because they're using that merchant service provider. So it kind of works kind of hand in hand, kind of mentally in the background in someone's mind. And of course it will reduce your chamber operating costs because we typically can save merchants up to about 40% on their processing, depending on where they're at and who they're using.
16:46.286 Brandon Burton
Do you say typically forty percent or zero?
16:48.746 Kevin Hodes
Yeah, it could be up to forty percent. You know, a lot of people love to use QuickBooks, they love to use Square, they use they they might think Stripe is the best thing since life spread. What's really amazing that people don't know, here's a little secret for you. We all have the same cost. The card associations, Visa, MasterCard, Amex Discover, they control the cost. It's the people that you sign up with. that could be creating all of your nightmares and you just don't know how to fix them because you haven't found the experts in that field. And that's where we come in and we're gonna help in those areas. We've got bank neutrality. There's no switching banks. You don't have to we could care less what bank you use. We've got cash advanced capabilities for merchants. So maybe a client he might be having a hard time he needs some extra cash. We've got cash advanced capability, check services. I don't offer check services anymore. In fact, I tell people that the cost outweighs the benefit. And there's a lot of people still pushing a check product. I think it's crazy to be using a check. It's it's not something I think is good. Now, if you're a chamber and you're accepting a check from a client, yeah, check take that check and go to the bank and deposit it. But I wouldn't use a service. Unless you're doing like five thousand checks, then it makes sense to get a check reader sitting behind your desk and you can run checks through it. It goes directly into your bank. And I say work only with the bank for check processing only. But I would never sign anybody up for a check product. I have it, I think it's ridiculously priced. So I rather give people the things that are gonna make them profitable instead of making them less profitable. Now, members themselves, you know, we could get people set up in twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours. It doesn't take very long. We're doing free cost analysis on their current processing statements. We know how to read them, we know how to look at them. We do free terminals, we do free upgrades. This stuff all costs me personally money, which I'm investing directly into that client, hoping they're gonna stick around long enough to, you know, maybe we might make some of that money back. And
19:13.58 Kevin Hodes
Really more important, we've got live people. You know, there's no there's some processors out there that charge per phone call when you actually call in for service. And they might charge you per technical issue, which I think is ludicrous. But, you know, the the program benefits, you can always see what those are in our program over you pro review and our the and a lot of the details that are associated with that. And you know, we're We're a person just like you folks. We want to be there when you need us. I know when we receive phone calls, I hate missing a phone call. And one of the reasons is is because I know people aren't calling me to tell me that the weather in South Dakota is cold and steamy or whatever it is. They're calling because they have a question of something they need an answer for. So I respect them for that.
20:06.648 Brandon Burton
So as you were going over those program benefits, I was thinking the ideal situation is for you as a chamber, listening to this, and you think, Yeah, I use ABC Company for my processing. Let me see what Kevin and and his group there at Swipe it can do. And so they would send you a statement, you can look at it, tell them kind of the cost savings analysis, here's what we can do for you. And like you mentioned, it could be as up to forty as high as forty percent. I think even if even if it came in, you know, just five percent less, but it had this affinity program tied to it where you're able to promote this to your chamber members and they're able to save on their processing because a lot of these members are using things like swipe or like stripe and square and things like that that are charging crazy high fees. So you're able to help by promoting the swipe it program to your members and be able to make some recurring revenue off of those referrals. did I miss anything there, Kevin? Is that does that all sound right?
21:16.876 Kevin Hodes
Yeah, we've got a program that will help the chamber actually co brand some marketing materials that they can send out to their members saying, Hey, we now have an affinity program that we've negotiated special pricing for you and all you have to do is get a hold of this company and let them know that you're part of the affinity program. We don't charge for it. We won't make the Chamber look bad for it. We're gonna tell them the honest truth. If they're good where they are, they should stay there. We're gonna do these introductory letters with the chamber, obviously will give us information. We'll get them over to them. You know, the other thing I really you and I talked about in the past is, and I've really been trying to wrap my head. I'm obviously very busy with a lot of things, but I really think it would be really crazy. Going to the actual chamber and doing, say, a QA session and explaining in person the benefits to the actual members. and the the chamber would put together maybe an RSVP and we would say, Kevin, founder, owner of Swypit, three time best selling author, is gonna be here. He's gonna be taking questions from you folks. We'd love the opportunity for you to be there, please. RSVP. Now you've got a hundred people you put in a room. And they're gonna badger me to death. And I love it. I love it. I love it when they hit me up with all these raw questions and why is this and why is this? the the goal is to change their methodology, their their thought process on not all companies are created equal. Not all companies are the experts in their field, not all organizations are looking to hurt people. And when you find the right company. Now you're in a place where you don't want to ever leave that organization because you've found the true experts in that field. And that's why the affinity program that we have for chambers would be really beneficial because they just don't have to worry about working with some crazy company that's gonna really make the chamber look bad or make their members look bad. And those are factors we don't ever wanna do. And if we have zero complaints with the BBB in all the time that we've been
23:38.86 Kevin Hodes
with the BBB. And I'll tell you, that's not an easy task when you're battling all of these crazy guys that just lost their job working at some place. I won't mention a any specific we'll say IBM. Let's say they worked for IBM. And IBM says, we're laying off a thousand people. And now all of a sudden I'm competing with a an individual that doesn't have any knowledge of the industry. And he's just guaranteeing them they can save them money. Well, I always tell a lot of people that, yeah, maybe they're gonna save you an initial a buck or two here, but they're not certified payment professionals like I am, and they are not an organization that is really looking out for the customer's best interest because they haven't figured out what all the ins and outs are of this industry. There's so many factors. And on my website at swip dot com, I've got an FAQ section. where people can actually go and see the actual rates that are published from the card associations. And I really like to show that to people. I had somebody in the office yesterday and he goes, No one's ever shown me that. And I said, well that's because most of this business is really, really filled with a lot of people that don't know the industry and they're just quoting some one specific rate for one specif specific card. And if that chamber or that merchant doesn't even take that card, how would they know? So this is a really complex industry. And when it comes to your money, you have to be really careful who you might be wanting to use. But we obviously in our affinity program want to make sure that chambers feel comfortable with us. And of course, we feel we've done a really good job at taking care of clients. So I think When the chambers come to us and say, Hey, will you work with us? We feel compelled to give all the information and they make their own decisions. We don't really push anybody into anything. That makes sense. Does that kind of cover all of that?
25:45.006 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I think So do you want to talk about how you're able to to give back to the chambers and how this can benefit them beyond the cost savings?
26:00.194 Kevin Hodes
Yeah, you know, the chamber will receive a percentage of the revenue generated. And in the first year, just depending on certain factors that come into play, I'm gonna say it could be up to seventy two hundred dollars and the second year it could compound to being fourteen thousand dollars or more, and then the third year could be up to twenty one thousand dollars per year. And this is just revenue from you referring a legitimate organization. That has special pricing set for their members. And not all of your members are going to sign up. It's just not going to be. If you feel that all of your members are just going to rush to us and sign up, it's not going to happen. There's a a level of liking, trusting, just like you, the chamber itself, will want to be liking and check checking us out at the same time. But you're your actual clients will feel so much better when they are working with a legitimate company and they're going to come to you and say thank you for introducing us to an organization that not only put money back in their pockets, but solved their problems without them having a zero cost out of their pocket. And the the affinity program that the chamber is going to receive is this is basically free mummy, free mummy. free money. It's Mother's Day coming up. So thinking of moms and all that good stuff. But of course, we w we want to be a a partner, not an organization that's going to say one thing and do another.
27:30.413 Brandon Burton
That's right.
27:44.248 Brandon Burton
So what I love about this affinity program, those numbers that you put out there with the kind of compounding year to year is based on, of course, new members enrolling in the in the swipe it program. but the chamber is in any given city, wherever you're located, tends to be a go-to resource for information. And as new businesses are getting started or as they're having trouble with their current processor. They're gonna come to the chamber and say, what do I do? And if you have this as an option to feed your members to say, here's a trusted vendor, a trusted partner that the chamber works with, then they're gonna, they're gonna appreciate you pointing them in the right direction. And then in turn, that's gonna continue to build that base year after year. And I can see, you know, getting five years into this, you know, bringing in a substantial amount. each year that that's all you're gonna be doing is talking about the great benefits of swiping.
28:50.712 Kevin Hodes
So exactly. I I will say, Brandon, also that as a board member of a chamber of commerce, one of the things that I used to hate myself is why would we have somebody join for a year and then not rejoin? Well, if you it what we would do is is we would let them know that we have special negotiated pricing structures on multiple items and it would make the the merchant, that client a little stickier. Because they would feel that something was actually being of use from the chamber. And my member benefit actually kept me as a member of the Chamber of Commerce. So I I've never liked it when somebody did say to me, Hey, the Chamber never did anything for me. A lot of times the members don't really know what the chambers can do for them. And that's why we've put together a letter that would be sent out to the actual member saying, hey, by the way, we have this affinity program for merchant services that you might want to take advantage of because we've negotiated special pricing for you. And we're also a client.
30:05.014 Brandon Burton
Yes. So that's the next thing I was going to mention is for any chamber, I would highly recommend just try swipe it out yourself before you start promoting it to your members. You want to make sure that this is something you're comfortable with before you start broadcasting that. And Kevin's going to take great care of you. He's going to make sure that you're getting the best service out there and answer questions along the way. So that would be my suggestion is to visit you know chamber chat podcast dot com slash cc on there there's a form that you can fill out saying that you'd like to get some more information and possibly work with swipe it and then kevin and his team can reach out to you get some more information and start the bar start the ball rolling to see how they can serve your chamber and your your chamber membership. with is there anything you'd want to add to that Kevin as far as how they would get started?
31:03.566 Kevin Hodes
I think the easiest thing is to take a look at your current statement and get it prepared, send over a couple of months to us, we'll look at it, we'll analyze it, we'll tell you where you're at. Well be prepared to tell us some of the other things that you might have going on. Maybe you have a a golf outing, maybe you have your annual gala and you haven't been able to even accept any types of payments at those events. And we can offer you a product at no cost. To assist you in making more money for revenues into the chamber itself. So I mean, there's there's a lot of factors that we can assist with. My goal is to be an organization that can make you more profitable. Our goal is to give you the service that you've never had and help out the members themselves and reinforce those relationships of why they actually joined the chamber in the first place. I think those are probably the key factors of all we would ever want to do.
32:06.584 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I think that's a great point that I think I I overlooked here is all the different ways that you're able to help with accepting payment. So besides the standalone terminals, you can help with any online payments through their their website for memberships or their website for event sales or ticket sales or something at an off site, like you were mentioning, golf tournaments or different community events that the chamber hosts. So swipe it's able to help with all of those different payment options. Kevin, what is what would be one action item that a chamber can do today as they as they look at their credit card processor to make sure that they're being taken care of properly?
32:53.272 Kevin Hodes
I think that looking over their current situation is finding out when you Google them if they're a good organization that you know that you've been working with the right company. And in the process of thinking of using Swypit itself, S W I P I T, it's kind of a strange way we spell it. When you Google us, you'll find all kinds of positive information that will peak maybe something that you are interested in. keeping in your your mind when you start Googling the other company that you might work with. If you're working with your own bank, your own bank doesn't even process credit cards. They have to farm it out. And they don't make any decisions. And if you had an issue or a problem, you probably were stuck calling an 800 number. And I think it's important to know that you need to find experts in almost every field. And they're very hard to come by. And you have found somebody that has knowledge and expertise and we're looking to get it out to all the people that want to utilize services of us that they've never been able to get from others. And everybody might think we're all the same, but we're truly not the same. We might have s similar pricing structures, probably not the pricing structures that you folks have now. And of course the the chambers, when they look over their information, or maybe they I don't want to take away from their current members. Their current member or members that might have signed them up might have moved on to some other job already and you just haven't had representation. And I'll tell you it's probably 80% of people that I run into tell me that their individual they signed up with is no longer with the company. So that warm and fuzzy feeling Of having somebody that knows all the ins and outs of how your system is set up and can identify the issues before you're even going to have the issue, that's gone. And that's where we come into play. So if even though you want to utilize your own members for merchant services, you've probably used them in the past and found that they're they're just coming and going too quickly. And that this is the time where you can find an organization that's worked with other chambers.
35:22.644 Kevin Hodes
and has a long history of expertise to get the chambers more profitable.
35:31.498 Brandon Burton
The other thing that I would just maybe add to that is whoever they're currently using as a credit card processor probably doesn't have an affinity program that they can offer either to bring in those non-dues revenue where Swipe it's offering this great opportunity to not only lower the cost, but also to bring in additional income to the chamber. So Kevin, there's a question I like to ask everybody that I have on the show as we wrap things up. And I know you've been involved with Multiple chambers of commerce and on the board of chambers and everything. But as we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
36:11.128 Kevin Hodes
That's a really fantastic question. I think it's imperative today to be a member of a chamber. The advocacy, the looking out for members in their community is imperative to the future of business. These chambers are doing things for business owners, they don't even realize the impact of the people that might be within their organization. The the chambers the They I can't even imagine not being a member of my local chamber. It it's just a it's gonna continue forever as far as I'm concerned. People that don't realize all the benefits a chamber can give and they're not utilizing all of what the chamber can do for them, they're missing out big time. And if they're not, they maybe maybe they'll stumble upon this podcast and have listened to what I'm suggesting and that's to join their local chamber. You know, and it's it's not a very expensive thing to do to get involved with the chamber in the beginning. You know, you can graduate into, you know, higher dollar amounts and get other benefits. And as you the merchant grows, we'll expand how much they spend at the chamber. And and I think it's imperative to business today to be a member of the chamber. I've I love being a member of the chamber. I have created some long lasting relationships. I have
37:39.726 Brandon Burton
That's how we met was through the chamber of commerce.
37:42.188 Kevin Hodes
Yeah, perfect example. Yeah. we you and I have met and we've been friends for years. I will say that I have probably I I mean, I was on a call this morning with somebody that was referred me business who's no longer a member of the chamber for seven years. And they referred me over to their company, and they're a very large organization that does worldwide type transactions with large Estee Lauder type companies. And Those are because of being a member of the Chamber of Commerce. So I'm a huge advocate of the Chamber. I love the Chamber. So it's it's very warming to my heart knowing that I can make the chambers more profitable by processing their credit cards, but also being able to have an affinity program to also give them nondues revenue and be there when they need it that they've never had before.
38:34.572 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. Great, great wrap-up and summary there. Kevin, I wanted to to thank you for spending some time with us today here on the Chamber Chat Podcast. I want to thank everybody out there who's listening. I hope you found some value in what Kevin had to share with you today, some hopefully literal value. show notes for this episode can be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode seventeen. And from the show notes page we'll have a video that lays out how this program works and you can also visit chamber chat podcast dot com slash cc to learn more about this partnership with swipe it and again that's s w y p I T if you wanted to Google Swypit. Kevin, besides Google, where can listeners connect with you if they have any questions about this chamber affinity program or about Swypit in general?
39:26.712 Kevin Hodes
Well, that's the best question so far, Brandon. That's right. They can head right over to S is in Sam, W Y P is in Paul, I T is in Tom.com. And there's a wealth of information there. We also have our YouTube channel where I have all these crazy videos that I do. That in fact, I would suggest they go look and see the three things that I hate about the credit card processing industry. It's one of my favorite little videos that we put together in an Emmy Wood. Emmy Award winning studio in Florida. And I just love all those videos there. So there's an incredible amount of information if you just Google swipe it. And of course, head over, check out the web, check out YouTube. But Brandon, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be on your sh podcast today. I say show. It is a show.
40:15.734 Brandon Burton
Right. It is. Yeah. It's a show. Yeah. Absolutely. When we will I'm glad to have you on here and we'll link the the YouTube video mentioned and in the show notes so people can look for it there and make it real easy. But hope you guys all have a a wonderful day and we'll talk to you again soon.
40:17.803 Kevin Hodes
It's a show.
40:37.782 Brandon Burton
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