NAELB Regional Conference—November 7-8, 2003  Atlanta, GA

                       by Charlie Lester, Senior Leasing News Advisory Director

           Charlie Lester is President of LPI Financial Services located in

Marietta, GA and has been in the leasing industry since leaving IBM in

1984. In 1986, he founded Lease Pro, Inc. specializing in leasing for

the medical profession. In 1997, Lease Pro was acquired by First Sierra

Financial. In 1999, he resigned from First Sierra and started LPI after

sitting out his non-compete period. Since 2000, LPI in conjunction with

one of the most respected funding sources in the industry has offered a

unique one of a kind working capital loan program to medical

professionals through brokers, consultants and direct client marketing.

Charlie can be reached at 1-800-573-7796 or clester@lpifinancial.com

From an older biography, we find Charlie graduated with a Master's Degree in accounting from Virginia Tech in 1965 and became a CPA in 1966 shortly before going to work in sales for IBM. After 18 years in sales and sales management in six different cities, he resigned from IBM in 1984 to

raise his family in Atlanta. In 1985, a friend introduced him to the

world of equipment leasing and the rest is history.

“137 enthusiastic and full of hope attendees”. The luncheon comments of Bob Bell, President of NAELB, pretty well sums up this regional meeting. A very positive meeting with positive attendees looking to a better economy. What more can a meeting hope for?

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NAELB President Bob Bell and Gerry Egan, Past President of NAELB and

keynote speaker arrested by Atlanta Police.  Bell arrested for impersonating

an actor in the luncheon skit and Egan for being a known associate of  Bell.

(Bell on left--Egan on right)

A refreshing combination of old leasing pros that believe the worst is over to the new enthusiastic and technologically astute brokers who can’t understand why anyone should worry with all the business just waiting to be closed.  From the one-person shop broker who claims to be breaking the bank every month by funding two million a month to the old guard broker who is thankful just to be in business at the end of each month. What a mixture and what a great future for the industry since most agree that the leasing industry is on the verge of a break through. After all, if their clients and future clients can survive the past two years, they should be able to handle success with fewer competitors in the coming years.

137 attendees, 3 software companies and 4-5 true funding sources along with 12 super brokers or funding source wannabees.

 Either way, the sign up sheets for all “funding sources” were filled and some sources like Republic and Manifest had to go to double booking since they had the necessary personnel to handle dual interviews or revert to times off the slated schedule. As usual, Republic and Manifest were the premier funding sources at this meeting.

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The old standby--Manifest. Dan Marks and Andrew Suby from Manifest. You

can always depend on Manifest being at every conference and their steady

performance as a funding source. We now have proof that all salesmen for

Manifest must have three years experience as a linebacker for the Green Bay

Packers before being hired. (Suby on left, Marks on right)

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The most enthusiastic, attractive and breath of fresh air contingency at

the conference goes to Republic Leasing with two notable exceptions you can

figure out for yourself.  Left to right---Regene Kenyon, Amanda Muse, Leah

Roebuck, Claude Elmore, Kari Burkhard and Dwight Galloway.

The biggest single concern I heard from the 10 or so brokers I spoke with was the lack of diversified funding sources, point limitations and buy rates they cannot compete with.

 The biggest question they asked of me as the old guy---should I risk betting everything on one or two funding sources or should I have as many as possible so I can shot gun deals as needed?

 My answer—decide on one or two high quality funding sources that have survived for years and stay with them to establish true partner relationships. To be honest—most of these them looked at me and wondered what dinosaur species I belonged to. Can’t make everybody happy I guess.

As far as the conference presentations, three things were proven to me and I think to most of the attendees.

 1. TValue is a proven tool that everyone in the industry should know how to use for the most simple to the most complex deal structuring.

 2. Community banks should be nurtured as an alternate funding source no matter how successful you are with your other funding sources.

 3. Be all that you can be. Never accept doing shoddy work or cutting corners since you will not win in this competitive industry if you do. If you can’t help your vendor meet their objective, you will never reach yours.

Acting: Bob Bell as Nitpick, President of Never Approve Leasing, Chris Raley as A.D. Cline, Credit Manager and Barry Reitman as Sally Sincere—the sincere broker, who has just completed her sex-change operation to a man, were amazing. Only in the NAELB can you find three men that can act this badly and insult every attendee in 15 minutes or less and get away with it. The bad news, most of the “ridiculous” lease proposals presented by Sally Sincere to Nitpick and A.D. Cline were taken off the NAELB “funder needed” website.  You had to be here to appreciate the humor.

The value of networking is over used at times, but the networking at a conference like this one is probably as important as the session contents. Brokers share what works and what does not work for them unselfishly and most of the brokers seem to taken advantage of this sharing.  The use of 4506’s seemed to be hot topic along with Google searches and state websites for UCC lien searches. I thought Google was a character in a cartoon strip years ago so it is back to the drawing board for me.

Two recommendations for future conference topics:

1. Exit strategies for the older broker looking to retire. Tax consequences, personnel considerations, legal considerations, etc. (Jim Borland and a cast of 5-6 others, including yours truly came up with this topic at the Mix and Meet on Friday night—we were having our daily dose of Geritol). This is a topic that all associations should be considering given the number of older brokers in their late 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s that are looking to retire or cut back soon.

2. Why do funding sources limit points?  Here is the picture as it was described to me---Brokers may work for months to nurse a vendor or program along then find the funding sources has a limit on points so they cannot recover their investment of time and money. The funding source looks at one deal and limits the points, but does the funding source take into account what it took for the broker to develop that deal?   At least four brokers asked me to pose this question so it is being done without my editorial comments.

This meeting was special for me since I had the opportunity to have my son-in-law, Kurt Hess meet so many of my old friends from the past 19 years and for me to renew old friendships and to meet many of the new and very bright young brokers that will take over for us old folks in the near future.

 Good meeting, great networking and well worth the price of admission and time.

Thank you and congratulations to the NAELB,

Charlie Lester