By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.

BigDeal by Codie Sanchez

Billionaire Business Expert: How Small Businesses Can Get Money - SBA Head, Kelly Loeffler

My new book Own Or Be Owned is out now! I wrote Own or Be Owned to answer one question: How do you make more money, less miserably?

Codie SanchezhostKelly Loefflerguest

May 14, 202535mWatch on YouTube

Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.

Great conversations run long. Their best ideas don't have to.

uListen is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, and Claude.

CHAPTERS

Jump to publisher timestamps

Chapter summaries

Farm upbringing that shaped work ethic, markets curiosity, and small-business empathy
Kelly Loeffler describes growing up on a family farm and seeing firsthand the hard labor, thin margins, and family teamwork that kept the operation going. She connects early exposure to commodity prices and her parents’ trucking business to her later interest in finance and small business, framing why she values the SBA role.
- •Life on a farm with limited comforts built resilience and a “love of work.”
- •Early exposure to commodity prices sparked curiosity about finance and markets.
- •Watching her parents build a trucking company showed how small businesses provide livelihoods.
- •Hands-on jobs (farm work, waitressing, retail, sewing clothes) shaped a practical understanding of small business realities.
- •She ties those experiences to why she feels honored to serve small businesses at the SBA.
Choosing and building with a spouse: values alignment, ambition, and staying grounded
Codie asks about working with a spouse and what makes business partnership succeed. Kelly emphasizes shared Midwestern values, competitiveness paired with altruism, and focusing on what matters beyond money, while also sharing a personal detail about being comfortable living non-flashily.
- •She credits shared values, work ethic, and a mutual drive to improve and give back.
- •They enjoy talking about business and stay aligned on priorities beyond wealth.
- •She describes herself as not flashy day-to-day, mentioning what she drives.
- •She shares a long-held personal goal of owning a Porsche, rooted in a childhood memory.
- •Codie frames working with family as difficult but deeply rewarding, challenging the stigma around it.
Family enterprise as a model: multi-generational business pride and resilience
Kelly reflects on seeing her parents work together daily and how adding trucking to the farm helped the family through lean years. She argues that building with family is rewarding and notes a broader cultural shift away from small business ownership, contrasting her hometown’s entrepreneurial norm with today.
- •Her father added trucking to the farm, helping stabilize the family during negative-cash-flow periods.
- •She emphasizes the pride and grit of working through challenges together as a family.
- •She notes her family farm continuing into a fifth generation.
- •She agrees with Codie that the country has moved away from widespread small business ownership.
- •She observes that in her hometown people lived entrepreneurially without using the word “entrepreneur.”
Setbacks, rejection, and the habit of refusing the first “no”
Asked about moments of potential failure, Kelly says she experienced them repeatedly and remembers rejection more than wins. She describes returning for jobs she didn’t get, persisting through deal and business setbacks, and credits her farm upbringing for learning to push through uncertainty.
- •She says doubt and fear of failure happened “over and over.”
- •Early career: applied for roles, didn’t get them, and kept pursuing opportunities.
- •She frames tenacity as refusing to accept rejection as final.
- •Farm life taught her to operate without guarantees and keep working until it’s done.
- •She highlights curiosity, asking questions, and not accepting the first no.
Owning a pro sports team: high-stakes decisions, community impact, and visibility work
Kelly recounts the decision to step up as a 50/50 owner of a WNBA team and the financial commitment involved. She explains viewing sports ownership as a business and community investment, including doing grassroots work to build visibility and connecting her vision to what she saw sports do for a city.
- •A pivotal decision: stepping up from minority ownership when the majority owner sold.
- •She describes the cost as significant and an ongoing annual commitment.
- •She chose to walk through the opportunity rather than walk away.
- •She did hands-on, grassroots promotion to increase visibility.
- •She saw sports as a force for community connection and invested with that intention.
Scoreboards and leadership: decisiveness, consequences, and team dynamics
Kelly explains what sports taught her about leadership: results are visible daily, so indecision is punished. She says she began running businesses more like a coach runs a team—more decisive and less afraid of what’s next—and she and Codie discuss leadership lessons drawn from watching elite teams.
- •Sports makes performance measurable daily through results and ticket sales.
- •She says sports forced her to make “game time” decisions rather than delay problems.
- •She applied a coaching mindset to business to become more decisive and effective.
- •Codie references leadership lessons she’s taken from reading about Phil Jackson.
- •Kelly highlights team dynamics and managing disagreement while still producing results.
How she defines winning: embracing hard seasons, outworking, and treating everything like a challenge
Kelly reframes success as being shaped by losses and hard periods, recalling early startup life as some of the best times. She rejects the idea of building huge outcomes on minimal work, emphasizing the people and learning that come from intense effort and real experience.
- •She says there are more losses than wins, and hard times can be the best times.
- •She recalls startup intensity—long weeks, canceled plans—as foundational to success.
- •She challenges the appeal of a “four-hour workweek,” focusing on building and creating with people.
- •She credits curiosity and willingness to “run into the fire” as a key driver.
- •She mentions starting a crypto company in 2017 as an example of taking on challenge.
Debate culture at work: flat teams, loyalty through candor, and pressure-testing ideas
The conversation turns to organizational culture and how to get better decisions. Kelly describes promoting internal dissent and debate, pressure-testing before going external, and rejecting “press release leadership,” while defining loyalty as telling the truth rather than agreeing.
- •They encouraged internal dissent and debate to pressure-test plans.
- •She criticizes announcing plans before execution; prefers doing the work first, then sharing results.
- •She describes a hands-on style and building flatter organizations focused on team-first outcomes.
- •She says loyalty includes telling her when an idea isn’t optimal and not surrounding her with yes-men.
- •She stresses communication and dialogue as essential and increasingly rare.
What small businesses say they want: taxes, deregulation, fair trade, workforce skills, and capital
Codie asks what Kelly would tell small business owners facing a tough environment. Kelly reports what she’s hearing while traveling: permanent tax policy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, fair trade, reshoring manufacturing, and a focus on skilled workforce development, with access to capital as the SBA’s core.
- •She says small businesses want tax cuts extended and made permanent for certainty.
- •She reports a consistent request to cut regulations and pursue fair trade.
- •She notes excitement about producing more in America and onshoring manufacturing.
- •She emphasizes skilled workforce needs and aligning education with future trades.
- •She frames access to capital—via lending partners—as the SBA’s “bread and butter.”
How SBA support works: government-backed guarantees, self-funding programs, and what’s “hidden in plain sight”
Codie asks what business owners often misunderstand about SBA support. Kelly explains that the SBA primarily provides government-backed guarantees to private loans—intended for qualified businesses that can’t get capital elsewhere—and says these programs can be self-funding when run with proper underwriting.
- •She says the SBA isn’t well understood and focuses on loan guarantees, not simple grants.
- •The goal is enabling loans that might not happen without a government guarantee.
- •She describes the programs as self-funding when underwriting is done properly.
- •She frames the model as a private/public partnership that expands access to capital.
- •She emphasizes improving and expanding accessibility of these loan programs.
How to engage the SBA: field offices, counseling, lender match, and federal contracting navigation
Kelly encourages owners to engage early—even if they don’t need capital immediately—through local offices and counseling partners. She also points to online lender matching and explains the SBA’s role in helping small businesses access federal contracting, while acknowledging contracting can be hard to navigate.
- •She says there are 68 SBA offices where owners can start conversations and find guidance.
- •Beyond loans, she highlights counseling and planning support through SBA partners.
- •She describes district lender relations specialists who can connect borrowers to lenders.
- •She notes an online lender match service for those who prefer not to visit an office.
- •She explains SBA oversight of federal contracting and efforts to demystify onboarding for small businesses.
Underwriting, speed, and red tape: protecting taxpayers while improving the borrower experience
Codie raises common complaints about SBA loans being hard or slow. Kelly explains the balance: lenders take first loss, underwriting must protect taxpayers, and the SBA is examining bureaucracy to reduce needless friction—plus a hotline for reporting red tape and regulatory burdens.
- •She says SBA loans follow traditional underwriting standards; lenders take the first loss.
- •She emphasizes the need to avoid saddling borrowers with loans likely to fail.
- •She notes the SBA runs a large loan portfolio and focuses on prudent program performance.
- •She acknowledges timing concerns and says choosing the right lender matters, alongside internal process improvements.
- •She mentions a “red tape hotline” email for reporting loan friction and burdensome regulations.
Looking ahead: Made in America manufacturing initiative and an “America First” small business opportunity
Kelly outlines an SBA initiative focused on manufacturing, positioning it as a major opportunity for small businesses. She describes visiting factories, hearing from small manufacturers, and arguing that a broader resurgence would benefit suppliers and local service businesses that support manufacturing communities.
- •She introduces the SBA’s Made in America Manufacturing Initiative aligned with an America First agenda.
- •She describes traveling to factories and hearing owners’ experiences and frustrations.
- •She frames manufacturing as a small-business story, describing most manufacturers as small businesses.
- •She highlights ripple effects: suppliers, parts makers, restaurants, and local retail benefiting from manufacturing activity.
- •She ties the outlook to extending tax cuts and continuing deregulation to unlock investment and hiring.
Wrap-up and resources: where to find SBA links and the show’s broader “hidden money” focus
Codie thanks Kelly and points listeners to a compiled resource report with links discussed in the episode. She closes with a message about subscribing, finding more “hidden money,” and her view that cash flow and money are central to small business freedom and life design.
- •Codie directs listeners to a compiled report of SBA resources linked below.
- •She encourages subscribing to catch upcoming episodes focused on finding more hidden money and learning from leaders.
- •She reiterates the show’s premise that the audience is “a big deal,” regardless of business size.
- •She frames cash flow as the lifeblood of small business and connected to freedom.
- •She closes with a commitment to delivering practical, weekly content for business and life improvement.

Publisher timestamps

Get more out of YouTube videos.

Read along on your phone, search it beside the video, or ask your favorite AI app what was said.