Why Passive Income Is REAL in 2025: Seve Ortale Breaks Down the Payment Processing Gold Rush

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Speaker 2 I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don't know what. That slowly sort of morphed into I want passive income, but I don't know how.

Speaker 2 Being an agent payment processing, you can just be a killer one-man operation. You can make 20, 30, 40, 50 grand plus a month, just you and completely passively.

Speaker 2 Maybe work an hour, maybe two a week, field two texts and emails here and there. That's what drew me into it at first.
I mean, outside of that, obviously, I love money.

Speaker 2 My biggest why is just wanting the free. I could have gotten a W-2 job and built up and climbed the ladder, but money doesn't mean anything if you can't do what you want to do with your own time.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, and welcome back to a level podcast. This is Paul Alex.

Speaker 1 Guys, we are top one in business right now on Apple Podcasts because of you guys, the 4 million downloads that we had back in, what was the month, Emilio? August. In August, guys, see?

Speaker 1 I'm losing my mind here. Anyways, we have a phenomenal interview with an entrepreneur.
He's actually a pretty young entrepreneur out of Nashville, Tennessee, guys. He goes by the name of Seve, okay?

Speaker 1 So think about it like this.

Speaker 1 Payment processing, credit card processing, guys. It's one of the biggest blue oceans now in 2025, guys.
And this man is the man with the plan.

Speaker 1 So if you guys are looking to learn more on how you guys can start as a beginner to turn into a CEO, okay? You're going to learn from the best. All right.
And he's also, what I like,

Speaker 1 he also did a little bit of firefighting too, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 2 A little bit. Yep.
Thanks for having me on, by the way.

Speaker 1 Sevey, welcome to the show, brother. Thank you.
Thank you. How was your trip?

Speaker 2 It's been great.

Speaker 2 We actually my co pete he's here with us we uh flew right in from nashville he happened to be coming out there we had a big big enterprise deal that we're pitching about 500 billion dollars a year in uh processing volume so working on that and then straight over to here and we're leaving tomorrow so dude how does

Speaker 1 how does someone land a massive deal like that

Speaker 2 so it's crazy it uh

Speaker 2 I couldn't tell you how, but they keep just kind of coming into our pipeline, whether it's people's connections. This one, it's a D1 basketball player that's in our program.

Speaker 2 Somebody that was in that, went to that same school. He actually is involved with a company doing about half a billion a year.
And they just started having a conversation about it.

Speaker 2 And he reached out to us so he could broker it. And here we are.

Speaker 1 So would you say your network is absolutely everything in this game?

Speaker 2 Absolutely. 100%.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's all about knowing people that know the right people and getting that connection, getting you in the right room.

Speaker 1 One deal can completely completely change your life i love that i love that and sevey for the audience that right now is listening and watching this okay tell us who you are

Speaker 2 yeah so to this day i think i'm just just a guy right um but yeah i mean i grew up in nashville tennessee um went to college um despite my wishes but to make make the parents happy luckily i met my fiancé there and uh yeah shortly after i got straight into credit card processing after i had a failed um business and uh

Speaker 2 found that and went from agent to owning my own ISO in about two years.

Speaker 1 Dude, I love that. That's quick.
Two years. Yep.
And how old are you?

Speaker 2 I'm 25 years old, 26 next month.

Speaker 1 I love it. I love it.
Happy early birthday, my man. Thank you.
So you went to college. Parents wanted you to go.
You didn't want to go. That's correct.

Speaker 1 So what was your vision instead of college if you had your choice back then?

Speaker 2 So for a long time growing up, anytime somebody asked me, oh, what do you want to do when you're older? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 I'd always say, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don't know what right um and that honestly for me that was like a tough thing because you feel kind of like an idiot because entrepreneur is already hard entrepreneurship sorry is already hard enough and to say like oh yeah i know i want to do that really hard thing but i don't know how or what and that was the thing it was like oh well i'll figure it out mom and dad they're like ah no that's not gonna be how this works right um so ultimately listened to them um you know the positive thing came out of it again met my fianc there um but yeah i didn't know and that honestly like i spent a long time i've researched pretty much every business model there is out there.

Speaker 2 But vision's always been be an entrepreneur of some sort. And yeah, luckily

Speaker 2 my parents growing up, most people don't have this. They wanted me to be an entrepreneur, but they didn't really necessarily believe in the whole not go to college thing along with that.

Speaker 1 Dude, I respect that. I respect that because they encourage you.
to go ahead and actually follow what you wanted to do, which was your vision, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I have a son coming up here in December in a short little amount of time, dude. And I always, you know, I talk to my buddies that have kids for the past few years now.

Speaker 1 And they're like, dude, are you going to get them into business? Are you going to do this? What are you going to do? Are they going to be a cop?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, bro, look, I'm going to go ahead and just be the Mr. Miyagi to my son and show them the way on how to go ahead and be successful.

Speaker 1 Now, whether they want to use it or not, that's on them.

Speaker 1 But I will say this: I do agree with your parents, though, because

Speaker 1 it's a flex, bro. It's a flex that you graduated.
Yeah. I dropped out.
I dropped out.

Speaker 1 I went to corporate sales dude six years was the first um i guess family member in my family to make six figures which was a flex for me yeah but at the end of the day i still wish i would have completed dude i still wish i would have transitioned from community to four-year and then just got it done just to say like i did it yeah yeah of course but my sisters did it so i was a black sheep uh-huh yep but um cool so you go to college did you end up doing like wrestling uh in college i know we also talk about firefighting yeah so yeah i was a wrestler for about 10 years growing up I didn't wrestle in college.

Speaker 2 My brother did. But

Speaker 2 yeah, my college is one of two colleges in the nation. We have a student volunteer fire department.
So you your freshman year, if you're interested, you try out.

Speaker 2 If you make, they only take six, generally about like 30 or 40 start on the first day of classes. And then yeah, they take six after tryouts.

Speaker 2 And if you make it, you're on it for the rest of your time in college. So you have like a little pager you're on campus with and you know you can be at class, whatever, doing whatever.

Speaker 2 If your pager goes off, you got to go to the station, get it in the get an engine and go out there so

Speaker 2 yeah you're on call about half your time and yeah it's a big responsibility it's almost like its own little fraternity there but uh yeah it's an awesome awesome thing they do so and I didn't want you you you didn't want to go ahead and become a full-time firefighter after that my man that wasn't in the cards for me no yeah no I think if I didn't have the entrepreneurial urge yeah I think I would have I mean I've always said like if it weren't for that I'd probably just work a dangerous job I've done some wildland firefighting too it's an awesome job don't get me wrong It's just, it's not what I saw myself doing for the rest of my life, but it's a great experience.

Speaker 2 You get to learn a lot, meet a lot of cool people, and have a pretty interesting skill set because of it. Wow.

Speaker 1 I love that, man. So you met your wife in college.

Speaker 1 Obviously, when you go into relationships, when you're in business, okay, you go ahead and you tell your spouse or whoever you're getting in the relationship what you're going to do for a living.

Speaker 1 So you're in college. What is your girlfriend at that time? Now she's your fiancé.
What's her name?

Speaker 2 Addie.

Speaker 2 addie shout out to addie but um what she what did she think about your entrepreneurship vision oh man so she's a small-town christian girl so um grew up her dad actually you know he owns a dealership he uh he started after that dealership had already been around but basically worked his way into an ownership position through basically sweat equity so that said like

Speaker 2 The whole entrepreneurship thing is new to them. That's normal for my family, all my cousins, all entrepreneurs, everything, but very new to them.
And yeah, at the time we met, like,

Speaker 2 my plan was to have an e-commerce business. All right.
And, you know, she's supportive. She believes in it.

Speaker 2 But, you know, as I'll get into it more later, but as I, you know, worked on that thing for about a year, tried launching it, it wasn't working out. Right.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I mean, it's definitely different. It was different for her.
Her family was definitely a little bit apprehensive of it.

Speaker 2 In fact, after, you know, asked for her parents' blessing to, you know, propose to her, her dad basically verbatim said like, hey, about a year, year and a half ago, if you you would have asked me, I would have said no.

Speaker 1 Oh, hey, at least he was real with you, dude. He respected you enough to be like, hey, you know, you're cool.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about your e-commerce venture. Okay.
So you start in e-commerce. Why e-commerce?

Speaker 2 So, yeah, it's a weird one. It actually had to do with payments.
More on the, if we want to get technical on the card issuing side.

Speaker 2 But so what it was, it was like a ring that you wear on your finger, right? And

Speaker 2 basically, I partnered with the European tokenization platform. They could take a credit card and put it in an NFC chip in your ring without actually touching the credit card or anything.

Speaker 2 And you could use that for tap-to-pay. You didn't have to charge it.
It's waterproof. You could always have it.
Now, the tricky thing with it is European banks would allow for it and the U.S.

Speaker 2 banks wouldn't. So the tokenization platform was European.
So basically,

Speaker 2 you know, senior in college, building this up, have a European marketing company,

Speaker 2 European distributor, European manufacturer, and could only sell this in Europe.

Speaker 2 So So you can imagine that wasn't a great opportunity trying to run ads in different languages and everything like that.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that's where I started. And

Speaker 2 basically, we spent about a year working on it. And then by the time I graduated, it just

Speaker 2 was throwing money at it and it just couldn't work.

Speaker 1 You were trying to force it at work. It wasn't going, dude.
You were just like, you know what? My main avatar, which is America,

Speaker 1 can't even target them.

Speaker 2 Yep. Yeah.
Yep. And I still have a bunch of inventory sitting in my garage, actually, for those rings.
And I think if the banks will ever allow for it here, I think it could be

Speaker 2 a good opportunity.

Speaker 1 You're ready to make it rain, dude. Maybe not in Europe, though.
I love that. I love that.
Dude, you got to share that. You got to share that on socials, dude.
I would love to hear more about that.

Speaker 1 Because there's a lot of people out there, dude, that they have multiple ventures that just never happen. Yeah.
And dude, even myself, like I lost 30K on Amazon. I freaking got scammed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I all types of shit, bro. Like, I was a nightclub promoter, right? Yeah.
Like, you know, and it was all before I went ahead and started these ventures now for the past like seven years.

Speaker 1 But with that being said, so that happens. You're out of college.
And then how do you get into payment processing?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So since that business was like,

Speaker 2 I mean, it had to do with payments, right? A family friend of ours has made hundreds of millions of dollars in payment space. Dad is friends with, and I've known him since I was, you know, tiny.

Speaker 2 We kind of been consulting with him a little bit on this. Obviously, he's more on the acquiring side than the issuing side.
But we were speaking with him about it and getting some input.

Speaker 2 He and my dad were golfing one day and he was like, why don't you get seventy into just payment processing? You know, just sales.

Speaker 2 Like he, you know, I know 20-year-old guys making 30 grand a month doing this and it's all passive income, right? And

Speaker 2 sure enough, my dad told me, I was like, all right, sure. Like, you know, still stuck on making that business work at the time.
I was like, yeah, I'll do it as a side hustle.

Speaker 2 I didn't want to admit that I was throwing in the towel at that point. And their ISO, their sales organization for processing, is more of a W-2 sales ISO.

Speaker 2 So not independents, but they were going to bring me on as just 1099 independent to do my own thing.

Speaker 2 And luckily, they got to kind of squeeze me in with their W-2 training of the new batch of employees they were hiring.

Speaker 2 And so went out and spent a couple days with them and basically hit it from there.

Speaker 2 Got a little class on it, and that was about it.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about that, man, because not a lot of people could take a little class and execute.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about your mindset, dude. When you were at that class, what were you thinking? Were you like, dude, this is for me?

Speaker 1 You were like, I'm going to give it a try just to, you know, just to please my parents. What was your thought process through that?

Speaker 2 Man, so I'd never done sales at that point. I always said I want to be an entrepreneur.
And like, I always had it in the back of my head.

Speaker 2 It's like, I'm going to need to learn sales at some point, right? This is a big, big gap. And,

Speaker 2 you know, i get there not knowing anything about it never having done sales and that was the time that i was like wow i'm built for sales like i love this the uh i have to shout him out kevin murphy is his name um shout out kevin yeah he started pro merchant um and he was doing their training there and he uh he made me fall in love with it he was talking you know i grew up as a wrestler right and i saw how sales is almost like a competitive thing win or lose you're on your own two feet and he was like this is awesome like you know you're you're closing people you're making money and uh yeah i mean i saw that and just fell absolutely in love and then uh went from there but

Speaker 2 it wasn't

Speaker 2 it wasn't like you know it gave me everything though

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Speaker 2 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 1 So fast. Wanna take a sec to think about it.
Or like a monster.

Speaker 3 tabs on that instant offer.

Speaker 1 With OfferWatch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from the driveway.

Speaker 1 Touch it.

Speaker 1 You wanna do it? So, want to drive? CarMax.

Speaker 2 Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply.
Right.

Speaker 2 It was a good overview. I fell in love with sales, but there were definitely, you know, as much as you can learn in a three, four, five-day class, right?

Speaker 2 So there's definitely a lot missing from it that I had to learn on my own.

Speaker 1 And what year was this?

Speaker 2 This was 2023, actually.

Speaker 1 So in 2023, you go through this five-day class or four to five-day class. You learn it.

Speaker 1 The ISO at that time, independent sales organization, guys,

Speaker 1 he goes ahead, takes you under the wing,

Speaker 1 mentors you. You fall in love with it because of the competition portion of it, which I like.
Yeah. Because as in sales, sales is everything, guys.
I mean, every industry,

Speaker 1 you're selling. You know, think about it like this.
You go to the doctor. What are they selling you? The medication.
Yep. Right? At the end of the day, you go to five different doctors.

Speaker 1 They're all going to sell you five different medications. It's the exact same thing, dude.
You had it on point.

Speaker 1 So then from there, what was your first milestone where you were like, dude, this is going to be the industry that's going to make me a multi-millionaire?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So after that training, right, I actually got to shadow somebody.

Speaker 2 His name, again, shout out Colby. Shout out Colby.
He's sort of involved with us still to this day, but I got to out him. He was that 20-year-old making about 25, 30 grand a month.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, okay, if he can do it, I can definitely do it. Like, you know, he just graduated college at the same time as me.
There's, you know, nothing separating us. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, shout out to him. And after that, pretty much on my own, right? I was an independent.
They're more cut out for W-2 employees.

Speaker 2 They didn't have a whole lot of bandwidth for me. And I can't blame them.
It's okay.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I actually went to 600 businesses in a row. Got shut down every single time.

Speaker 1 What was the common denominator on why they would deny you?

Speaker 2 So my whole pitch was just awful. Brand new at sales, didn't know anything.

Speaker 2 You know, I would walk in there and my whole pitch was, hey, I can save you money. Get out, get out, get out.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it took a lot of, obviously, perseverance at that time to keep going. And eventually I started realizing that, okay, pitching them savings, like, you know, that's important, right?

Speaker 2 That's like, as you know, the ultimately what gets sale, but everybody's coming in here, everybody that sells processing and saying that. So,

Speaker 2 I realized it was about providing value outside of just the savings and saying, Hey, I notice you're still handwriting tickets and walking it to the kitchen.

Speaker 2 Let's give you a handheld device and get a kitchen printer, and then you can just put the order in there and it'll print. And providing value outside of just like, hey, let me save you some money.

Speaker 2 And then ultimately, I started to get some sales, have my first one roll in, and then it turned into a couple. And then I got three sales in a day.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I sold my first residual check in October of 2023 it was $355 and donated the whole thing I was uh and that was a that was a huge milestone um

Speaker 1 even though it was only $355 that was huge it's huge and the reason why I say it's huge for all the listeners right now and all the viewers because for most people that start on trend entrepreneurship they would never make a dollar

Speaker 1 they would never make a dollar especially when you're starting from the ground up especially when you have to learn a new industry especially when you have to defeat your mind behind, I've never done sales.

Speaker 1 I got to go ahead and talk to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strangers, put myself out there, because now in society, people can't handle it now.

Speaker 1 So how did you go ahead and have that bulletproof mindset to take that much pain? Because that's what it is, pain, dude. Yeah.
It sucks. It hurts your ego.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So how did you develop that mindset?

Speaker 2 So I think years of wrestling has just beat it into me.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 not only is that a grueling sport, but you're cutting weight when you're not actually practicing or working out. You're not eating.

Speaker 2 That makes you pretty tough. But I think just seeing someone else do it and knowing there's nothing different between me and him.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love that.
And I resonate with you, dude. You know, when I first broke into ATMs, same thing.

Speaker 1 I was like, dude, it's just freaking easy. Like, what the hell? I already have sales experience.
I could do this.

Speaker 1 And I was able to do it. Same thing went into when I first go back on online.

Speaker 1 I like to call myself a dinosaur and say, like, hey, dude, like, I could figure this out. You know, I don't need to be 21 to do this.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's it. Because I would see these other guys and you still see them.
Average everyday people going over there on the online space now. You know, social media has allowed.

Speaker 1 the everyday person to go ahead and market themselves and to build multi-million dollar companies, right? If you do it right.

Speaker 1 So with that being said, you go ahead and you build up your residuals. You donated, dude, huge milestone making residual income.

Speaker 1 What do you say

Speaker 1 is your why to wanting to build passive income, dude?

Speaker 2 Like I was saying a minute ago, how

Speaker 2 I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don't know what. That slowly sort of morphed into I want passive income, but I don't know how.

Speaker 2 And in fact, before I got into it, speaking to my now fiancé's dad, I remember telling him that he's like, well, of course everyone wants that, right?

Speaker 1 They just don't know how. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 And just sure enough, happenstance. But

Speaker 2 I'd say my biggest why is just wanting the freedom, right?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's morphed now, but at least, you know, being an agent payment processing, you can just be a killer one-man operation.

Speaker 2 And you can make 20, 30, 40, 50 grand plus a month just you and completely passively. Maybe work an hour, maybe two a week,

Speaker 2 you know, field some texts and emails here and there.

Speaker 2 That's what drew me into it at first. I mean, and outside of that, obviously I love money.

Speaker 2 Yeah, who doesn't?

Speaker 2 So I'd say it's a big, big time freedom thing and being able to, you know, because you can, I could have gotten a W-2 job and built up and climbed the ladder, but that money doesn't mean anything if you can't do what you want to do with your own time.

Speaker 1 Right, right. right.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 how long? Okay, because now you're breaking into the online space. You've been in the online space for how long now?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 going

Speaker 2 from being an agent to starting the ISO, is that what you're referencing here?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah. So agent ISO, which you can go through the transition, but then also being in the online space and then telling people about the opportunity to break into the space.

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.
Yeah. So I was an agent about about a year, built my book up to about 25, 30, grand.
It still kind of balances between the two every month now. But uh,

Speaker 2 yeah, agent about a year and went straight into you know building out our own ISO. And we did it through uh educating others on how to do it.

Speaker 2 So, and that was about a year ago as of this month, actually.

Speaker 1 Congratulations, Ben. I love it.
I love it. So, what does it take to build your own ISO besides a lot of sweat energy? Yeah, yeah, um,

Speaker 2 you have to be a psychopath for sure i've noticed um

Speaker 2 it a lot of work it's you're it's no longer a passive income side hustle or passive income one-man team it takes a lot of

Speaker 2 being diligent and you know a lot of logistics um handling paperwork deployments uh customer support you know changes for the accounts it takes a lot of that and really building a team because you you can't do that alone yeah yeah and then as far as your team

Speaker 1 how much has your team grown since you started as a one-man team?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I was a one-man team for arguably way too long and then brought Pete, my COO on, I want to say about four or five months ago. And it was a two-man team for a couple months.

Speaker 2 I was doing basically everything, you know, helping agents close deals, doing the paperwork, handling deployments.

Speaker 2 And I'd say within that four-month span, we've expanded to about six people.

Speaker 1 Six people. That's good, man.
That's good.

Speaker 1 And then what's your vision now that you've you know how it is to be a beginner dude so you know the the pros and the cons um you can go ahead and now mentor people in the space you you're doing you're building up your own iso you have the experience of doing that and now you're transitioning to a bigger team which is awesome now

Speaker 1 You're building a coaching program as an additional company separate from your ISO, correct?

Speaker 2 Yep. Yep.

Speaker 1 So what is your vision for now your coaching program?

Speaker 2 Like ultimately, what do you want to help people do with that yeah so the reason i started it is honestly because of those 600 notes i had right um you know i got a little bit of training was out on my own had some people i could text or email and hear back when i heard back but uh it's to cut that whole thing out that most new agents go through without support and most of the time give up right and so

Speaker 2 The vision, we really, it's two things. It's one, I want to give people everything I needed to know to build my book to 25, 30 grand a month.

Speaker 2 And two, give them everything I wish I knew when I started that I didn't.

Speaker 2 Because there were a lot of gaps for me. For sure.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that's kind of the whole vision there. And we've seen it works great.

Speaker 2 People are getting deals really, really quick. I've had people go into their first business and sign up a deal.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love that, man.

Speaker 1 So, what would you say as a beginner? So now we're transitioning more into

Speaker 1 coaching people on this segment of the interview. So for the people that might be interested in jumping into credit card processing,

Speaker 1 what type of characteristics do you think a person needs to have to be a monster agent?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say persistence.

Speaker 1 Based on what you've seen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, persistence. And I mean, obviously a lot of grit, right? At the end of the day, it's still sales.
You're going to get told no all the time, and that's completely normal.

Speaker 2 Persistence is the most important thing because even if you're doing, you know, what's the number we'll say three deals a month that's still like a ten thousand dollar yearly raise you're getting every single month right and so if you can just do that for 10 months you'll be making a hundred grand a year passively right yeah

Speaker 2 you know you can be the best agent for two months sign 30 deals over two months and then not do anything again and you're gonna flatline.

Speaker 2 But if you can consistently, even slowly just stack on a couple accounts here and there as a side hustle, you can actually, within a year, completely change your entire financial situation.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love that.
So it's basically painting that picture, letting people know that it is possible for them to go ahead and do that.

Speaker 1 Now, what would you say, okay,

Speaker 1 would be the first five steps if somebody right now was trying to look to get started within credit card process?

Speaker 2 Oh man, first five steps. So obviously you got to find an ISO, right?

Speaker 2 A lot of things you want to look out for with ISOs, of course. You know, they'll put traps in the agreement that, you know, you don't get lifetime residual.

Speaker 2 You don't have equity value and you can't resell your residual portfolio. You want to make sure you're avoiding all that.

Speaker 2 And then I tell people, find places you can get upfront money as well, in addition to residual. Kind of keep the lights on while you're building that.
So first thing is find an ISO,

Speaker 2 get set up with them. go through whatever training they provide and then honestly just get out there.
Just go hit doors, go talk to people.

Speaker 2 And if you want to, you can start, go through your phone contact list. Write down everyone you know that's connected to a business some way, somehow, and start there.

Speaker 2 And it's going to be messy when you get started. That's okay.

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Savor responsibly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think a lot of people, they don't realize that they're probably sitting on a gold mine just in their town, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I always go back to one of my mentors used to say, like, you know, because obviously as a business, you always want more traffic, dude. You always want release, right? Client acquisition.

Speaker 1 So he would always go like, dude, dude, just go to your dream 100 clients. Like, where would they hang out? Like, where would they go? It's think about like a fishing pond.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 And I transitioned that in order to, for my clients and my mentees, I always tell them like, dude, just think of your guys' dream 10. I'm not even going to tell you guys to go ahead and shoot for 100.

Speaker 1 They start out small. Right.
It was like small wins, right? That's why it resonated when you're like, dude, I made my first $355 check and I donated it.

Speaker 1 I think that's freaking great because a lot of people, they're like, oh, if it ain't a million, it's not a win. I was like, are you slow? Like, common sense ain't common no more.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying? Like, a lot of people don't even make a first dollar.

Speaker 1 You know, if you guys follow Alex Hermosi and you guys started first seeing his first couple of ads for school when he took that company and he and he became a co-founder of that, his ads, if you look at it specifically to what he says, he says

Speaker 1 70% of people that go on school make their first dollar.

Speaker 1 He didn't say something crazy like, you're going to make tens of of thousands of dollars. Yeah.
Like a lot of marketers out there, right? No, he said your first dollar because it's more reasonable.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 And you always got to go ahead. And when you market this,

Speaker 1 you got to go for what's more reasonable and achievable for the common person out there because not everybody's business-minded. Not everybody has the grit, right?

Speaker 1 But, but no, that's, that's good, man.

Speaker 1 So what would you say, okay,

Speaker 1 is the future of payment processing, dude? Do you think blockchain, crypto, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 2 So I think we're a while out from that.

Speaker 2 I think the whole crypto thing, we're pretty far out. Reason why it's ultimately the whole thing's a racket, right? It's Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex.
It's all racket.

Speaker 2 There's too much big money behind letting something completely take over overnight. I think there's a solid future in the way it is for a long time because of that.
But said,

Speaker 2 if crypto does come into play, if these things do come into play, it's going to be coming through those channels. They're not going to let that slide without them making money.

Speaker 1 Do you think it's just going to be like an ancillary option? Almost like,

Speaker 1 you know, I remember when I was doing ATMs, we were also doing BTMs, Bitcoin telemachines, right? Where essentially it would be like a third-party service and they would have a wallet.

Speaker 1 They would be able to hold the funds and get the funds instantly per merchant, right? Do you think that a possibility of something like that happens?

Speaker 2 I think in the interim, that is probably how it would,

Speaker 2 the transition would go right i i i don't see it being an overnight thing like oh bang like visa master card amax a works with bitcoin now right i think it would start out as sort of like an ancillary third-party thing and then i see it becoming more mainstream through again those channels right uh long term but i don't know if that's 10 years out or 50 or 70 yeah really yeah it's like the unknown man just like just like everything in crypto bro

Speaker 1 you never know where you're gonna catch the wave man yeah but um cool, dude. So let me ask you this.

Speaker 1 For anyone right now that wanted to go ahead and actually work with you,

Speaker 1 what would be the process that you would take them over from basically, let's say from the first time they talked to you to going ahead and actually being able to go out there and get their first account?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So that's actually something we're sharpening up right now.
So typically the way it's worked, and it's worked great.

Speaker 2 We just want to make it better. Yeah, of course.
Typically, the way it's worked is, you know, you get in, you have your onboarding call, you take our online training, and then you go out there, right?

Speaker 2 That in-between step, we want to make it even easier.

Speaker 2 So you get in, onboard a call, do the training. And now what we're doing is coming up with basically

Speaker 2 like a registration process, if you will, for agents. So

Speaker 2 what your job will be after that, after taking the training, will be, you know, write down 50 different locations in your own town. And

Speaker 2 you have to get 10 different appointments with one of our managers.

Speaker 2 So basically you go out there, you talk with merchants, business owners, get them interested, book a time for a follow-up with them, and then one of our managers will be on for that.

Speaker 2 Do that 10 times, see the process start to finish, see us close a couple deals and let us do it for you, and then you're going to know how to do it.

Speaker 2 You'll literally live see objection overcoming and how we go about showing them their savings and everything. And then from there, you're on your own.

Speaker 1 You're good. Dude, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's the process we're nailing down right now. Pete and I are working on it.

Speaker 1 Literally, that's pretty badass. I like that.
I like that. Hands-on training is everything, dude.
I tell people, you know, social media, I'm just, I'm an old school type of guy, dude.

Speaker 1 I rather do like the face-to-face, get hands-on training.

Speaker 1 And then that's the way I learn, right? More of like a visual guy. Yep.
That's cool. Do you guys plan on going and,

Speaker 1 let's see, doing events or going ahead? And I know you guys,

Speaker 1 you and your partner, you guys are doing a podcast, right?

Speaker 2 Yep. Yep.
We're working on that, the operators podcast. Yeah, it's not going to be just payment processing.
We're going to have a lot of the people in our program on it, of course, but

Speaker 2 people who are business operators, just operator mindset kind of grinders, and done well for themselves. That's really what we want.
Regarding the events,

Speaker 2 we're talking about doing one

Speaker 2 for everyone in our program, getting them out to Nashville. We just got an office space.
You know, Nashville's a fun place to be, too. Dude, I heard.
Yep. Yep.
Go out to Broadway.

Speaker 2 Have a good time with that, of course.

Speaker 1 I love that, man. I love that.

Speaker 1 So what would you say, okay,

Speaker 1 if somebody right now

Speaker 1 wanted to get a hold of you, dude? Where can they go actually go ahead and reach out to you?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So our Instagram, well, my Instagram is Sevi, S-E-V-E underscore, O-R-T-A-L-E.

Speaker 2 There might be another underscore at the end there, but you'll find it. So Instagram's a great spot.
I'm also on TikTok as well. Same thing there.

Speaker 2 And yeah, mostly there. And yeah, there's a link to our website in my bio there.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love that.
And what would you say for anybody right now that's trying to build a brand? Because you're building your brand, dude, and it's getting noticed. So

Speaker 1 how...

Speaker 1 What kind of recommendation or advice would you give to anyone out there, like an agent or someone who is in payment processing that's looking to build their brand that's made you successful in this space?

Speaker 2 I think,

Speaker 2 honestly, shut up and work. I mean, that's what I tell myself.
Figure it out. Those are FIO.
Those are, that's my favorite acronym right there is just do the actual work.

Speaker 2 You can spend a whole month coming up with a logo, getting your LLC, all of that. None of that matters other than just actually doing the work.

Speaker 2 For instance, the Payments University logo to this day is a Canva template.

Speaker 1 I love that. Just change the actual action.

Speaker 1 Perfect action. Yeah.
That's what I'm talking about, dude.

Speaker 2 Change the colors, change the words.

Speaker 1 Respect, bro. Respect.
No, because, dude, I resonate with you so much, man. You know, when I first got into the digital space, dude, Canva.
I literally canvased everything. Exactly.

Speaker 1 I didn't even have a website for like damn near a year and a half. Yeah.
I had like a Facebook group with like an ugly banner. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 Just taking the action, dude, and just providing value like you guys are. Man, you guys are going to do great.
I know you guys are.

Speaker 1 that's cool man so some words of encouragement for anyone that's trying to go ahead and break into the payment process space right now

Speaker 2 yeah again i think consistency is the thing that's gonna pay more more than anything in this industry but it

Speaker 2 there's no other opportunity like this i think Only close thing is going to be insurance, which the residual insurance sales at Residual is not nearly as high.

Speaker 2 We talk to people all the time looking to shift over.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 2 I'd say.

Speaker 1 That's a good comparison, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the industry's so similar.

Speaker 1 i'd say consistency just keep putting one foot in front of the other and it's not going to happen quick and it's in fact it's going to be slow it took me it took me a while but you build your book and you can step away like i haven't gone door to door in over a year now and i'm still making 25 30 grand a month from my deals yeah exactly passive income for life dude and you keep building if you want to and you get to go ahead and invest into other ventures and live life by design exactly so for all our listeners and viewers right now Sevi, what piece of advice would you have them to level up their mindset in 2025, brother?

Speaker 2 I'm going to fall back on my favorite quote here, which is, if it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.

Speaker 1 I love that. And that is the level up with Sevi, guys.
And Sevi, once again, where can they find you?

Speaker 2 On Instagram, Sevi underscore Ortell underscore. And TikTok, same thing there.

Speaker 1 And then also your coaching program, brother. Any website or anywhere where we could direct them to that?

Speaker 1 So yeah, payments university.info um or you can find that in the link in my bio or in the description in this video or on spotify or apple guys guys leave a five star review on spotify apple podcast and youtube guys make this interview go viral share this with someone that you care about okay that wants to go ahead and break into entrepreneurship Try payment processing, guys.

Speaker 1 It's a great way, great way to build residual income, passive income, so they're able to live life by design like Sevit has. With that being said, guys, my name is Paul Alex.

Speaker 1 This is the Level Up Podcast. We'll catch you on the next one.
Peace.