PEP Episode 085 — Lending Against Residuals: How ISOs Really Scale with Super G Capital | Darrin Ginsberg

The payments world didn’t just change—it rewired who holds the power. Christopher Dryden, Founding and Managing Partner of Global Legal Law Firm, sits down with Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Capital (https://www.supergcapital.com/) to chart the path from door-to-door ISO sales to e commerce gateways and the rise of embedded payments. Darrin shares how he built one of CSI’s largest offices, why e commerce distribution beat terminal leases, and what he learned buying 50+ portfolios before turning that knowledge into loans secured by residual streams.

We sit down with Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Capital to trace the arc from ISO sales to e commerce gateways to lending against residuals. We unpack how ISVs seized leverage, why banks don’t fund portfolios, and where smart capital actually drives ISO growth.

• early ISO sales tactics and CSI scale
• pivot to online processing and gateways
• seminars and referral partnerships for distribution
• portfolio buying, attrition, and concentration risk
• creating loans collateralized by residuals
• underwriting beyond statements and rates
• ISVs gaining power and shifting rev shares
• why banks won’t underwrite recurring revenue
• MCAs vs structured ISO lending
• best uses of capital, including agent buybacks
• coaching founders on overhead and pay plans
• health journey, resilience, and return to lending
• loan sizes, terms, and how to contact Super G

We get into the mechanics that most outsiders miss. Banks still don’t treat a merchant portfolio as a real asset, so ISOs with strong monthly revenue can’t access traditional credit. Darrin explains how he underwrites beyond the residual report—looking at sales models, stickiness, leases, software integrations, and support—to price risk and structure deals that actually help companies grow. We also unpack the ISV power shift: early rev shares near 10% ballooned to 90% as platforms realized their leverage, with many becoming their own ISOs. If you’re not selling software or embedded into it, you’re fighting uphill.

Capital is only as good as its use. Darrin breaks down high-ROI moves—buying back dormant agent residuals at favorable multiples, funding proven marketing, securing equipment for frictionless installs, and opening scalable recruiting hubs—and warns against draining loans to pay off low-rate mortgages or paper over broken unit economics. We contrast sustainable ISO lending with merchant cash advances that trap businesses in costly cycles. Along the way, Darrin’s health journey adds perspective on resilience and focus, and why fundamentals still win in a market obsessed with headlines.

If you’re an ISO, ISV, or PayFac operator looking to scale with discipline, this conversation gives you a clear playbook on underwriting, attrition, portfolio value, and the smarter ways to deploy growth capital. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review with the one change you’re making to your model this quarter.

*Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice.  All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.*

Transcript

Christopher Dryden (00:00):

I was talking to one of our clients yesterday, and he’s got through acquisitions now. He has an A CH portfolio

Darrin Ginsberg (00:08):

Okay

Christopher Dryden (00:09):

It’s through Nuvei now. And VE has had to change the economics of its relationships with the ISV, which has decreased his percentage of the revenue share score. And he’s not complaining he gets it. But I think one of the things that was funny is that ISVs, when they first came into the marketplace, they were using ISOs as the entry point.

Darrin Ginsberg (00:33):

Correct.

Christopher Dryden (00:34):

And that’s totally changed.

Darrin Ginsberg (00:36):

And the ISOs were paying them. I mean,

Christopher Dryden (00:38):

Dog shit

Darrin Ginsberg (00:39):

10%. Yeah. Percent Rev shares. Yeah, totally. When I started with mindbody, I think our rev share was 10%. By the time I ended that relationship with them, they were at 90% split.

Christopher Dryden (00:47):

Totally.

Darrin Ginsberg (00:48):

They just learned the business. They learned how much value they were bringing to the proposition and said, what do we need you for? And eventually they went off on their own and became their own iso. Yeah, and that’s the, it’s kind of the same way a rep does. A lot of reps start in the industry as a sales agent for an ISO, and they end up becoming their own iso.

Jeremy Stock  (01:07):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of Global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode. Really excited today in studio. Joining us is founding a managing partner of the law firm, Christopher Dryden, as well as our special guest, Darren Ginsburg with Super G Capital. You can find Darren over@supergcapital.com. General. We’re looking forward to this conversation. I think you guys have known each other for quite a while, haven’t you?

Christopher Dryden (01:37):

Yeah, I would say. Well, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Oh yeah, for sure, man. It’s great. I finally got you down here. I’ve been asked. So yes, I’ve known Darrin for a long time. When I came into payments mid two thousands, I was pretty tentative when I would go to shows and whatnot and trying to get my feet wet, understand what was happening. Payments isn’t the easiest thing to understand. And I can remember we were at something in Scottsdale, it was like 2013, you had that little hoverboard, the hoverboard thing that you were riding around. It was, and I think that was the first time I talked to you in length. I talked to you before, but I think that was the first time I ever hung out with you at a show. And ever since then, I’ve always considered you a friend because sort of on the outside periphery of this world that we live in and we do different things, but unless you’ve been living under a rock jar, Darrin’s experience level in payments, he’s super G now, but he hasn’t always been super G. And I think for a lot of people it would be a great introduction. I think Darrin’s Rolodex is way bigger than mine as far as knowing people in the business, but I think it’d be good for you to just tell people who you are and how you got to Super G, because your early days payments better than most people.

Darrin Ginsberg (03:03):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I got into the business really young. I was 22 years old, and I became a sales agent for a small ISO in Orange County, and I really learned a little bit about payment processing and selling terminals and things of that nature. And that was back in 1990

Christopher Dryden (03:20):

Yeah

Darrin Ginsberg (03:20):

When the industry was first starting and when terminals were just becoming a thing back before that, it was knuckle busters and imprinting cards and calling 800 numbers to get authorizations.

Christopher Dryden (03:30):

Exactly, exactly

Darrin Ginsberg (03:30):

And so I got into the industry, I think at the right time, right at the beginning of the infancy of the electronic payments industry. And by the time I got to 1992, I joined up with a group called Card Service International, which I’m sure you have.

Christopher Dryden (03:44):

Yeah, I always love to call ’em CSI, CSI like the TV show. But in our world, it’s the CS. I

Darrin Ginsberg (03:51):

Mean, we kind of dominated Southern California by far, and I joined up with them in 92. By 1994, I’d become their largest sales office, and we were writing 300, 400 new merchants a month. We were at that time, didn’t even earn residual income. All we did was sell leases. We,

 

Christopher Dryden (04:11):

But you guys did. So here’s the interesting thing about Darrin. So Darrin’s, COO at some point in the nineties was a guy named Paul Reanda. Yeah. How is that? Totally. And so it’s interesting because you guys sold websites too or something like that, right?

Darrin Ginsberg (04:24):

Absolutely. So in 92, we started out just selling terminals like everybody else, and it was a great business that built up through the nineties. And by 1998, the internet had come around and people were starting to do processing on the internet. And so I really wanted to do processing on the internet and card service International did not want us to do that. They wanted us still to sell brick and mortar businesses. And so I left Card Service International. I left about 17,000 merchants that I had signed up with them over the years and started up a company called E-Commerce Exchange, and that’s where we focused on doing processing on the internet. We were one of the first people to start selling gateways like AuthorizedNet. We actually got AuthorizedNet to give us a private label gateway. We were one of the first private label gateways, and we started pushing websites along with processing.

Christopher Dryden (05:11):

Yeah, Paul told me you guys used to do seminars. We did for small business owners. We did. And you’d have ’em come in and then you’d show ’em your suite of products that you could help ’em expand.

Christopher Dryden (05:23):

When the internet

Darrin Ginsberg (05:23):

Was, the way we really grew was by doing events and getting referral partnerships. So at these events, there would be 500 people at an event and they would all be interested in buying some type of business and getting into online businesses. And so if they were going to sign up and have an online business, they had to have credit card processing. And so we provided the credit card processing for those clients.

Christopher Dryden (05:44):

Who were you working through at that point?

Darrin Ginsberg (05:46):

At that time, we were working with Humboldt Bank, actually.

Christopher Dryden (05:48):

Okay.

Darrin Ginsberg (05:49):

Yeah. So they were one of the only banks at the time that would do processing for online businesses.

Christopher Dryden (05:54):

And it didn’t really matter what the type of business was. No, just anything, anybody that would going to have a checkout. Exactly. That’s awesome. Yeah. So eventually you make your way to lending because I’ve only known you as a lender in this space. How did you transition?

Darrin Ginsberg (06:09):

So after e-commerce exchange, I sold that business in 2000. Right before the dotcom crash. I had a big investment firm, came in and bought my company from me. And so I retired at 32 years old and thought life was going to be grand. I was just travel the world and have fun. And shortly within two years realized that every one of my friends, everybody I knew was already still in the business and still working and couldn’t come out and travel with me. So I got back into the business with some of my older agents that worked for me and got back into the business. And so decided,

Christopher Dryden (06:43):

Did you rebrand or were you still doing e-commerce experience?

Darrin Ginsberg (06:46):

No, I had sold that brand. Sold everything.

Darrin Ginsberg (06:47):

Yeah. I joined in with some other agents of mine that had an office in Chicago and they needed help in promoting the business and doing marketing and things of that nature. And so I jumped into help with that. And I also, during that time, started buying portfolios.

Christopher Dryden  (07:02):

Yeah, how’d you segue into that?

Darrin Ginsberg (07:04):

I was looking for something where I didn’t need any people to do it, where I could just buy a portfolio and earn cashflow off of that portfolio. And so I realized I could buy portfolios at a decent multiple back then where we were paying 18 times monthly revenue for portfolios. And so I bought about 50 portfolios. And during that time of buying those portfolios, I realized attrition was the big thing about buying portfolios. If your attrition was too high, you would not do very well on the portfolio. And so I at that point figured out how to, I decided to try to lend to a merchant into an ISO rather than to buying their portfolio. And so I started that up in about 2008. I decided I would just loan money to somebody against their portfolio and use their portfolio as collateral. And that’s kind of how Super G got started.

Christopher Dryden (07:55):

But the purchasing side was all of it kind of self-taught coming from the idea of I get my residual report, I understand the revenue and expense to get to my net and if I got to share anything, and then doing portfolio analysis. Did you know how to do that before you started buying?

Darrin Ginsberg (08:13):

I learned as I was buying, and you had to learn to sort the portfolio by largest merchants, the smallest merchants, to see if a portfolio was top heavy or not top heavy, or if it had multiple chain locations in there that you might not want to buy because if you lose one merchant, you lose 40 merchants. And so I kind of learned on the go and it was very successful. Most of the portfolios I bought, I made money with, but a few of ’em, I lost money and learned from that and realized at that point in time, I figured I should stop because attrition had started climbing past the 10% rate. I decided I should probably maybe try something else. And that’s where I did a loan to a client and it worked out well, and I decided to continue on the loan path. And

Christopher Dryden (08:56):

Was that skillset pretty transferable when you started doing underwriting merchants related? I mean, I know absolutely. And I guess this is my question, which is probably when you’re doing a loan even today, are you just looking at the residual and I mean obviously primarily you’re looking at the residual for the underwriting, and I’m sure that’s kind of like you went from buying to lending and using those same kind of metrics. But at a certain point in time, there’s a lot of other things that are happening with a business. What I’m personally interested in is what’s kind of the ramp up to being a true lender where you’re actually underwriting a business? I know when you do residual portfolio purchase and sales,

Christopher Dryden (09:45):

They’re Pretty simple. You get into an equity purchase and sale, or you’re selling assets beyond cashflow. The level of analysis just gets way more granular. So I would imagine you got the same thing.

Darrin Ginsberg (09:57):

Yeah. I mean, you have to look at other things, sales model, how are the merchants being sold? Are they going to stick around? Are they on software? Are they on standard terminals? Were they sold a lease where they sold? You have to look at the different methodologies of how those merchants were sold to determine if those merchants are going to stick around.

Christopher Dryden (10:18):

How much diligence does that? Are you interviewing people as your, because I’ve always wondered, so the first time I met Darrin was the first client of this firm, had a heavy leasing model, and we are going back to oh 8, 0 9 maybe when you started, and I called it the smash and grab because they sold a fiction and then gave you a savings estimate that was unachievable.

Christopher Dryden (10:46):

And I didn’t know this. I was like, Deering the headlights coming into the industry. I was like, oh, I got this great new gig, but I didn’t really know and I just kind of believed our client, which that’s got its own pitfalls. And I was pretty naive when I started the whole thing. And I remember Darrin came in to talk to him about finance because they were looking for some financing and they had this great portfolio of merchant revenue and then also leasing revenue. But the problem was is that the way that they did the leasing is they ate up a significant amount of the savings estimate, and then people still thought they would be saving money, but all rewards cards, they downgrade to a much higher rate. And so they were like, well, yeah, well, they never talked about the downgrade surcharge. And so I think the first time I ever met you was after a presentation to them and they had a lot of burn in their portfolio. Eventually when they sold it, it just incinerated. I think they sold the I three verticals and ended up being a really bad thing for I three verticals eventually. But how much did you have to learn you were an ISO?

 

Darrin Ginsberg (12:00):

Because I was an ISO, I Think I knew a lot of the ins and outs, and I had seen good ISOs and bad ISOs throughout the country for the times I was working as an ISO. And so I think I knew a lot from that. I don’t think I would’ve gotten into the lending business had I not been an iso. I would not have lent to ISOs anyways.

Christopher Dryden (12:17):

Exactly. You had enough familiarity with how everything operated to be able to understand their revenue and their expense,

Darrin Ginsberg (12:22):

And then understanding the savory characters and the unsavory characters in the payments business

Christopher Dryden (12:27):

And how much investigation outside of numbers

Darrin Ginsberg (12:31):

Mean as much as you could. Obviously lots of due diligence, background reports, credit reports, things of that nature, just to see what the person looks like behind the scenes.

Christopher Dryden (12:41):

Yeah, okay.

Darrin Ginsberg (12:41):

Making sure they don’t have complaints with the better Business Bureau, making sure they don’t have lawsuits against them. All of that kind of stuff is super important.

Christopher Dryden (12:50):

The character of, and I don’t think character meaning unsavory, but the character of the borrower, I’m imagining because the payments industry has changed so much. We were just talking about this before we got on, but payments is like you’re talking about knuckle busters, and then I look at today and how I find

Darrin Ginsberg (13:14):

that’s all software. ISVs, ISVs, I think are the new ISOs.

Christopher Dryden (13:16):

Yeah, they are. You know Allen Kopelman right? Sure. I say this almost every time now, but he said, if you’re not selling software, you’re dead. Absolutely. And I agree with that. Do you think in underwriting it’s made it easier with the advent of technology and kind of its growth and pushing how payments is evolving versus, because it used to be sales, right? It used to be mom and pop, you’re out there, feet on the street meant something, and today it’s just so different because your entryway is through a strategic partner versus

Darrin Ginsberg (13:48):

Absolutely. Yeah. I don’t think there’s as much sales going on as much as integrations. I mean, if you sign up and you’re going to use a business management software, you have to kind of use a processor that’s integrated in there, otherwise you’re double entering everything that you do. Well, actually, one of my first referral partners when I was in ISO still was a company called MINDBODY Software, and they did business management software for yoga studios, Pilates studios, health salons, beauty salons and things of that nature. And when we signed them up as a partner, instead of going and signing one merchant at a time, we got literally hundreds of merchants every single month of people who signed up with that software.

Christopher Dryden (14:26):

And you were probably exclusive too. We were at the time. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. That’s actually something that’s been really interesting. I was talking to one of our clients yesterday, and he’s got through acquisitions now. He has a CH portfolio and it’s through Nuvei now. And Nuvei has had to change the economics of its relationships with the ISV, which has decreased his percentage, the revenue share score. He’s not complaining he gets it, but I think one of the things that was funny is that ISVs, when they first came into the marketplace, they were using ISOs as the entry point. Correct. And that’s totally changed.

Darrin Ginsberg (15:09):

And ISOs were paying them. I mean,

Christopher Dryden (15:10):

Dog Shit

Darrin Ginsberg (15:11):

10% Rev shares. Yeah, totally. When I started with mindbody, I think our rev share was 10%. By the time I ended that relationship with them, they were at 90% split.

Christopher Dryden (15:19):

Totally.

Darrin Ginsberg (15:20):

They just learned the business. They learned how much value they were bringing to the proposition and said, what do we need you for? And eventually they went off on their own and became their own iso. Yeah, and that’s the kind of the same way a rep does. A lot of reps start in the industry as a sales agent for an ISO, and they end up becoming their own iso.

Christopher Dryden (15:38):

Yeah. I actually did a training, I train, I was at our Florida office and I was training the employees there that they’re unfamiliar with the payments. They’re new to it to a large degree. And I was saying to understand payments today, you really have to understand kind of the genesis and then the evolution of the service providers from ISO to super ISO FSP to ISV to Pay Fac to what’s going on and where your entry point is and how you can operate in the business. And I always find that to be fascinating. And I also think as transactions are risky, you’re looking at that because you’re underwriting people related to that. The thing I’ve always found fascinating about what you do and what I didn’t understand, so the first time I met Darrin, he got out of the meeting with our client. I was asking our client what the meeting was about, they were explaining it to me, and then we were talking about kind of costs of lending, and I said, well, why would you pay more? Why wouldn’t you just go to a bank or this or that? And the interesting part that I learned was that the access to capital isn’t there, right? It’s not available.

Darrin Ginsberg (16:55):

No, most banks don’t understand merchant portfolio and they don’t understand the value of the reoccurring stream that’s coming in every month. It’s not an item you can list on your balance sheet. Most ISOs spend every dollar that they make, if they make $10,000 a month, they spend $9,990. Totally. If they make a hundred thousand, they spend $99,000. And so they never have any real extra cash. And if you have a hundred thousand dollars a month portfolio, that’s worth probably three and a half to $4 million. But you can’t list that on your balance sheet. A bank is not going to look at that and say, we’ll loan you money off of that. And so that’s hence where we come in and provide them. We know the value of those portfolios. We know how to sell a portfolio if needed, and we know how to lend against it so that an ISO can grow

Christopher Dryden (17:44):

Well. So that’s the interesting thing to me because before we were, Darrin and I met just shooting the shit before we got on and we were talking about merchant cash advances, and we’ve done a lot of collections work on merchant cash advances and they’re super predatory. And I’ve always wondered why do people take out a merchant cash advance? And for most merchants, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. Absolutely. That’s my personal belief.

Darrin Ginsberg (18:10):

If they have an immediate concern, I mean, they have an immediate problem that they have to make. They got to make payroll, they have a bill payment that’s going to interrupt their business if they don’t do it, and I think that’s why they do it.

Christopher Dryden (18:19):

Totally. And then they get into this cycle where it’s really hard to get out. You’re not really lending the merchants. You’re lending to ISOs agents, people that have an actual portfolio that you can use as collateral, but why do people come to you? And I understand for cashflow, but what is the use of the additional cash that you’re providing? What do you see? I think it’s important for people to understand why the capital that you provide is important to how they can grow.

Christopher Dryden (18:49):

And actually, I mean, when I say Darrin knows everybody in this industry, Darrin knows almost everybody in this industry. There’s not a lot of people that don’t know Darrin. I’m actually really happy he came down to come on this program because you bring a lot of credibility with who you are, and I didn’t know, I guess I will talk about it. Darrin was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, really aggressive form of cancer, and he stopped being in the industry, and I didn’t really want to reach out. I didn’t know necessarily I didn’t want to intrude, but not having somebody like you and I know Mark and took it over and there was still a presence, but not having you in the industry probably left a little bit of a void because you’re a pretty big footprint.

Darrin Ginsberg (19:37):

Right?

Christopher Dryden (19:38):

Yeah.

Darrin Ginsberg (19:38):

So two things. So first of all, what do ISOs need capital for?

Christopher Dryden (19:42):

Yeah,

Darrin Ginsberg (19:43):

Number one is growth. I mean, obviously they need to grow every month. They need to write new accounts and it costs money to bring on new business. It costs a sales rep’s commission several hundred dollars. It costs marketing dollars. If you’re doing any kind of marketing, you need to pay upfront to do that. You sometimes have to buy equipment in bulk or buy a bunch of equipment. You’re going to give away free equipment to your clients so that they can process with you and you can earn money for many years to come. Sometimes they need money to open a new office. Sometimes they need money to pay base salaries so that they can bring on new people who are going to bring them business. What I found a lot over the last two years is a lot of ISOs are using my money to buy back agents’ residuals.

Christopher Dryden (20:24):

I think that’s smart.

Darrin Ginsberg (20:25):

So lot of guys, a lot of arbitrage. You can make more money without doing any additional work by just buying back some of your agents’ residuals and you can buy back a portion of them. You don’t have to buy all of them, but you have a lot of ISOs have reps that started at one point and then stopped working at some point. And so those just, they pay out a couple thousand dollars every month to this agent, and rather than continuing to do that, they use the income money for me to buy out those residuals and then make more themselves overall.

Christopher Dryden (20:53):

Well, and you can also get ’em for, I mean, that’s the thing that most people don’t understand. Like an agent when they go to sell, there’s not a marketplace for ’em. So if they’re going to be purchased, it’s going to be purchased a far less multiple than somebody who’s upstream from them.

Darrin Ginsberg (21:08):

I mean, if you’re buying a portfolio from a third party, you’re going to be paying a much higher multiple than you are if you’re buying ’em from your own guys.

Christopher Dryden (21:14):

Yeah, for sure.

Darrin Ginsberg (21:14):

So if you’re an ISO and you have 30 sales reps and you can buy back a small piece of residuals from 10 of ’em or 20 of ’em, you can do much better that way.

Christopher Dryden (21:24):

Yeah. So when you’re looking at a potential borrower, are you looking at what the reason for the funding is?

Darrin Ginsberg (21:30):

Absolutely. That’s one of the main questions I ask is what they’re going to use the money for, and I will counsel them if they’re not using it for the right thing. I mean, I’ve had a lot of guys come and say, look, I want to pay off my house. And I say, well, what interest rate are you paying on your house? And they’re 5% interest rate on their house.

Christopher Dryden (21:45):

Yeah.

Darrin Ginsberg (21:45):

Okay, that’s not a good use of capital. A lot of them pay off credit card debt. A lot of them run off credit card debt and want to pay that off because they’re making all these minimum payments and they want to pay that off. And so I’ll counsel them and only give them money if I think it’s going to be used to help grow the business, not just pay off some bills.

Christopher Dryden (22:03):

Yeah. So I guess, and this is something that you told me before, how much consulting are you doing with the borrowers post funding?

Darrin Ginsberg (22:11):

So I kind of become a coach. If I loan money to somebody, I want them to be successful, number one, I want them to be able to pay me back. But number two, I want them to be successful and grow. And so I’ll give them typically as much coaching as they’d like. I’m kind of sitting on the sideline and I’m watching what they’re doing and I’m seeing their deal counts and I’m there to counsel them. I mean, I’ve been through every aspect of being an ISO. I started as a one man show working out of my garage in the early nineties, selling deals myself, door to door, just like every, most people that have gotten into the business to running an office running 4,000 deals a month and having sales agents all across the country. So I’ve had a huge experience over the last 35 years of writing merchant accounts and understanding the business.

Darrin Ginsberg (22:53):

And so I think I can bring expertise to people that are typically a one man show and they don’t have anybody to bounce ideas off of, Hey, I’m thinking about trying this marketing method, or, Hey, I’m thinking about going after a referral partner. How do I do that? And so I feel like I give every client at least a couple of hours of consulting and coaching as to what I think they should do to help increase their business. I let them tell me everything they’re doing, and I give them suggestions, and some of ’em take the suggestions and some of ’em don’t, but I try to do as much as I can to help ’em be successful.

Christopher Dryden (23:24):

Are you doing ongoing portfolio analysis as you

Darrin Ginsberg (23:27):

No, that I’m not doing. I’m kind of looking at high level numbers. I’m not digging deep unless they ask me to dig deep. Got it. If they ask me and say, Hey, I really want you to look at what I’m doing here. I did a two hour call with one of my clients last week, and he was complaining that he wasn’t making any profits. He was breaking even basically. And I went through his payroll reports with him. I learned about his pay structures and how he was paying his sales reps and his sales managers and office people, and I looked at how many deals he was writing a month and told him, look, you have too much overhead here based on the number of deals you’re doing. He had three people in customer service, but he’s writing five deals a month. I mean, how do you justify paying three salaries when you’re writing five deals a month?

Christopher Dryden (24:10):

No, I get you on that. My question is, another one that I would have is, and do you find opportunities to cash these people out? Sometimes

Darrin Ginsberg (24:19):

I help connect them with buyers, other

Christopher Dryden (24:21):

People?

Darrin Ginsberg (24:22):

Yeah, absolutely. So I have clients of mine that do nothing but buy portfolios, and I provide the financing for that. So I have a gentleman back in New York who’s bought probably nine portfolios, and I’ve provided the financing for every single one of those. And so I will connect, so if I have another client that says, Hey, I’m interested in selling, I can connect them with other clients of mine that I know are buyers and active buyers. When you have a buyer, they’re sometimes interested in only a Fiserv portfolio or only a X, Y, Z portfolio. And so you got to connect the right people at the right time.

Christopher Dryden (24:57):

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I find so when I started in this, I did a lot more on the litigation side because it was kind of what I was trained with when I first came in, but I’ve totally transitioned into contracts and m and a, and that’s primarily what I do, and anything I do on litigation is more strategy at this point. But I find what you do fascinating because randomly, if you had told me I would’ve been in numbers, I would’ve laughed at you. My grandfather was a president of a regional bank in Michigan. My dad’s been a tax guy for 35 years, does international tax, and I’m a lawyer that focuses on payment processing, which I think is really random that through the generations we’ve all sort of focused on numbers, but when I get into the due diligence of a transaction, I’m forced to have a knowledge base that I don’t necessarily have, but I find what you do to be fascinating, to actually understand risk.

 

Darrin Ginsberg (26:06):

Yeah. Well, what I really liked about when I first got in the business was learning about all the different types of businesses that are out there and how people make money off so many different things.

Christopher Dryden (26:13):

That’s fascinating. Right?

Darrin Ginsberg (26:13):

Yeah. And that was the interesting part for me was going out to see a new merchant, learning what they did for a living, learning what their profit margins were, learning how they got customers. That was the interesting thing for me was learning about all those businesses. Now I can take that knowledge and use that in my business when I talked to an ISO and learning about their business and educating myself on what they do differently than everybody else and what their specialty might be. And so that’s the part I enjoy is learning about what other people do.

Christopher Dryden (26:41):

Yeah. I mean, I say this on the podcast with Jeremy too. I’m not much of being a lawyer. I don’t personify with being a lawyer. If you met me at a bar on a Saturday night, you’d have no fucking clue of what I do. But I think the thing that keeps me coming back here every day that when I do retire, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself to a certain degree is I learn every day. I mean, even in this podcast, I’m learning. I sit and I listen, and you get to sit in this catbird seat. That is really interesting because you do, you get to watch what other people are doing and see what’s successful and what may not be successful and maybe adopt some of it for your own. Yeah, I think that’s fascinating to be able to have that opportunity, having access to people that are in business and that’s their primary function. I think dude attorneys are horrible business people. They just are by nature, and I think it’s because a lot of ’em aren’t really exposed to business people.

Darrin Ginsberg (27:42):

I think ISOs, a lot of ISOs are great salespeople. They can go out to any merchant and sell a merchant, look at what equipment they have, look at how they’re going to process, show ’em how to save money. But a lot of ’em are not great at business people. They don’t understand the rest of the business involved financing p and ls, balance sheets, getting capital for their business. They don’t know how to do that.

Christopher Dryden (28:05):

Did you take any sort of formal instruction or was it just like on the fly

Darrin Ginsberg (28:10):

No, I actually dropped out of college. I went a year and a half to college and dropped out to start the business.

Christopher Dryden (28:14):

So all of your knowledge about how business finance and business accounting, these are things that you just picked up in the trade?

Darrin Ginsberg (28:22):

All self-taught. Absolutely.

Christopher Dryden (28:23):

That’s awesome, man.

Christopher Dryden (28:24):

Yeah, I really enjoy that. Like I said, you were gone for a little while. You’re back. I was happy to see when I saw you in Phoenix.

Darrin Ginsberg (28:32):

I am happy to share. In 2018, I passed out two times during normal activities and one of the times I hit the floor, and so I went to the hospital and they did an MRI on my head and found out I had a brain tumor and brain cancer. Pretty scary time in my life, obviously. Initial diagnosis was I had the worst brain tumor type in the world, which is called a glioblastoma. Told me that I would probably die within six to 12 months, and so obviously had to have brain surgery. Went and got multiple opinions on what my diagnosis was and what my treatment plans were going to be, and realized that I needed to do. I had to take off work. I obviously couldn’t work anymore, and so I actually was off from 2020 to kind of 2023. I didn’t do any new loans at Super G. I kind of put the business on kind of hold. I didn’t do any new loans, obviously had to still service my existing customers that were there, but I thought I was going to just not be able to come back to work. And so I did four years of immunotherapy treatments, which worked very well for me and didn’t have any problems during the four years. I was going to the hospital twice a month, getting IVs, getting treatments, and that was a pretty scary time, but

Christopher Dryden (29:52):

I can’t even imagine

Darrin Ginsberg (29:53):

Was able to get through that. In 2023, my brain tumor started growing back again. I had to then do some new treatments, which I ended up doing 11 rounds of chemo that seemed to stop my tumor in its tracks. And so today I’m considered what’s considered stable brain tumors always grow back. They

Christopher Dryden (30:11):

Well stable

Darrin Ginsberg (30:12):

Way,

Christopher Dryden (30:13):

Maybe

Darrin Ginsberg (30:14):

Stable just means I’m okay right now. I have to do MRI every three months and check on myself and make sure I’m okay, but it’s going to be a lifelong thing. I’m going to have to manage and treat. But

Christopher Dryden (30:26):

Yeah, I mean what you had is, and people can go look it up. It’s the most aggressive form of cancer, I believe.

Darrin Ginsberg (30:33):

Yeah, brain cancer is pretty scary, pretty scary thing. Luckily, I believe my brain tumor was in a good spot. It all depends on location, on where it is, and I haven’t suffered any of the things that a lot of other people that I’ve met that have brain tumors suffer. Just cognitive, just pressure, cognitive. Some people lose feeling on one side of their body. They can’t move one side of their body. They can’t remember things. Luckily, I haven’t experienced most of those symptoms and I haven’t had a really good treatment team. My doctors have been excellent and I really appreciate everything they’ve done for me.

Christopher Dryden (31:04):

Well, no, I apologize. I didn’t mean to cut you off. Yeah, no, go ahead. But I was stoked to see in Phoenix because I was surprised. First trade show I’ve done in five years. I know. I was surprised to see you. I mean, I know I’d emailed with you a couple of times, but I was surprised to see you there. I was like, oh, fuck. Darrin’s here. And then John was there, which was great too. And I guess the question that I was trying to get to was, as your restart has happened, anything different?

Darrin Ginsberg (31:33):

No, pretty much the same. I mean, my phone was ringing during the time that I was off, but I just wasn’t taking calls and wasn’t doing anything. But now kind of rebooted back up doing the exact same thing, same company, same everything. I just started doing new loans again and my existing customers started calling me back and people who needed funding found out I was back in business and here we are. That’s great, man. Yeah,

Christopher Dryden (31:56):

That’s great.

Darrin Ginsberg (31:56):

Super happy to be back.

Christopher Dryden (31:58):

I’m happy you’re back

Darrin Ginsberg (31:58):

Sitting around doing nothing is not fun.

Christopher Dryden (32:00):

No, no, I’m with you. Like I said, I don’t know what retire would mean. My dad turned 76 in a couple months and that dude, I don’t see him. I don’t foresee him stopping working to my stepmom chagrin, but I just don’t see it. Well, look, I always let, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn’t talk about? And I always give our guests the last word.

Darrin Ginsberg (32:24):

No, just let viewers know that Super G Capital’s here to provide loans anywhere from a hundred thousand dollars to up to 5 million per client. I provide the financing over 12 to 48 months. I work out payment plans for ’em to help grow their business, and we’re here and available.

Christopher Dryden (32:43):

Yeah, I will say beyond Darrin, just being a really good guy, which I think you’re a really good guy. I do. I’ve always gotten a feeling from you that sometimes you sit outside of, now I feel like I’m on the inside of payments, but for a long time I felt like I was kind of on the periphery of it. And you’re always really friendly and cordial, and I think because you’re from Southern California too, probably helps a little. But I think one of the things that I do most in my day these days is consult and just give people advice. I will tell you, if you’re out there and you’re listening to this, you’re not going to get much better advice from anyone than Neil Wood, from Darrin, and not just in finance, but ops. The guy ran in iso. He sees ISOs. I would encourage you if you had a reason for financing, just a conversation with Darrin will probably go a long way. Appreciate that. Oh, of course, man. I appreciate you being here. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. Okay, Man.

Jeremy Stock (33:47):

Excellent. Darrin, where can people find you?

Darrin Ginsberg (33:50):

You can come to my website www.supergcapital.com. That’s probably the easiest way.

Jeremy Stock (33:55):

Excellent. And we’ll have all the information down below. Thank you for listening this long to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We’ve had a very special guest in today, Darren Ginsburg with Super G Capital, as well as our managing partner of the law firm, Christopher Dryden. Gentlemen, it was a great one. We appreciate it and we’ll see you on the next one.

Christopher Dryden (34:14):

Thank you. Thanks.

Jeremy Stock  (34:15):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at global legal law firm.com. Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.