Understanding Consumer Debt Relief Options | Teresa Dodson | Women of Debt Relief

Adam Parks (00:00)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with a LinkedIn Live webinar. Today we wanna talk about the consumer experience. And you know the consumer has different options available to them and we talk about a lot of things from the debt collection industry perspective, but I think it's important that we take a step back and we look at all of the different options that consumers have to relieve their current debt situation, hence the debt.

relief industry. And one of our prime guests here today, Teresa Dodson, who is very well known throughout both debt collection and debt settlement spaces in helping organizations to view and impact how they're going to be able to work with consumers in the debt relief space and helping these consumers resolve their debt. And then Katalina Dawson joining me today as well from Branding Arc, who is also on the Women of Debt Relief Board of Directors and working actively on both sides of the equation. So I thought today's conversation would be very interesting in talking about understanding the debt resolution options and the psychology behind some of these things. And I feel like psychology is going to be a recurring behavioral psychology will be a recurring theme that we're going to be talking about over the next year or two as we start applying more e-commerce technology to the debt collection industry. And as we start looking at
the changing consumer preferences and how that is ultimately going to impact the life of our businesses as well as the lives of the consumer. So ladies, thank you so much for joining me today. I really do appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights.

Teresa Dodson (01:38)
Thank you. It's good to be here. And I love this topic. Absolutely love this topic.

Adam Parks (01:42)
You and I had a conversation about this. I want to say it was the IAPDA in Fort Lauderdale back in November of last year. And I feel like that just sparked a conversation that needed to be had in front of a wider audience. But Theresa, I know you're kind of a queen around the industries and a frequent conference goer. But for everyone who has not been as lucky as me to become your friend through the years, can you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you get to the seat that you're in today?

Teresa Dodson (02:09)
Okay, so high level. So I got into the debt settlement industry 24 years ago, 24 years ago. And through that journey of being in the debt settlement industry, you also get just as much involved in the collection side of the business because you are, you know, you're settling debt. So I've built and run about four different debt settlement companies. I built a technology company during that timeframe that actually can streamline settlements between both parties. Broke off and started doing my own consulting business about eight years ago because I really wanted to focus on consulting with the entire debt settlement industry with my experience to kind of improve.

how we were offering the product to improve the process, operations, all the above. The thing that I didn't realize is that my phone was going to start blowing up from the collection side of the industry too. And so they're like, wait, we need help on how to manage these accounts. We need to understand what a consumer is going through.

Teresa Dodson (03:06)
in a debt settlement program. How do we best, you know, not only settle these accounts, but understand how a consumer got there, which is touching on a lot of what we'll touch on today, the psychology, right? And then, yeah, about four and a half years ago, I decided to start a nonprofit, Women of Debt Relief.

and it's for both sides of the industry. Anybody doing debt relief options, that could be collections, credit counseling, debt settlement. It's doing fantastic. Katalina, we were so grateful that she joined our board this past year. She's been amazing to have on the board. We've been getting a lot more done with her involved. ⁓

Adam Parks (03:40)
I can understand.

Can I throw in an applause here?

Katalina Dawson (03:41)
Thank you. Thank you.

Teresa Dodson (03:43)
Yes, please, please.

But, you know, so that's a little bit about, you know, a little bit about my background. But my main focus has always been even when I started going to my first conference in the collection space back in four or five, they finally let me attend.

That's another story. But yeah, you're in debt, so go away. You can't come. So, you know, finally I beat the door down enough to where I got in, ⁓ you know, and just, you know, watching just how the industry has evolved, how consumers have evolved throughout this entire process has been very, very interesting. But I've always wanted to be primarily focused on bringing both sides of the industry together.

Teresa Dodson (04:23)
That's been my focus since day one. What didn't seem like there was a lot of people out there spearheading that. And my passion was, look, I need to educate the collection side of the business on how these consumers got here, how this works, and vice versa. I need the debt settlement industry to truly understand what it's like to have a consumer in collections, what it is that you guys go through, understanding just the basics, like the buckets that things move through, right? You know, and terminology. So throughout the last, you know, 22 years, that's been a primary focus of mine. And it seems

Adam Parks (04:46)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (04:53)
to be kind of turning into a focus of Women of Debt Relief. We're doing a really good job in bringing both sides of the industry together and having more of those conversations.

Adam Parks (05:02)
Well, isn't that the important part, right? We can't live in two different silos. And I think ultimately we're trying to achieve the same objective. And although we may have different motivations for achieving that objective, we are ultimately trying to solve the same problem. Now, Katalina, I know you're also a frequent guest here and conference goer. So most people are probably familiar with you, but could you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you get to the seat that you're in today?

Katalina Dawson (05:24)
Absolutely. So I have a background in marketing with a focus in event management and I entered the receivables industry. I was thinking about this while you were talking Teresa and I went, my gosh, it's now like over four years or so that I actually entered the industry and I entered via a vendor who supplies AI services. And so for about two years I was working on that end of things. Then I joined Adam's team and I've been working going on two years next month. I'm very excited about that.

And it was the end of 2024 that Teresa approached me and suggested that I look into being on the board for women of debt relief. I was so honored. I took a look at it and I said, yes, this is something I absolutely want to apply for. so starting, believe it was January, I joined the women of debt relief and then I became the chair of the website and marketing committee, which kind of makes sense with my role at Branding Arc. It has been such a pleasure and I've started learning a lot more about the settlement side of financial services. So this has been a great journey for me. And also, relatively shortly after I joined, I believe it was still in January, I was able to witness one of our most popular webinars to date, which was actually Teresa coming on and talking with you, Adam, about the bridge between receivables and debt settlement. So it was amazing to talk about it then, and I'm super excited to be a part of it today where we get to talk about even more and expand on this.

Adam Parks (06:49)
Like I said, I think this is the beginning of some really great conversations around behavioral psychology and looking at, for me, was writing a white paper and I started looking at the discount behavior of consumers based on different life cycles and just trying to understand it and then realizing that there's like a subscription.

Association where they all they talk about is subscriptions and how in the behavioral psychology behind subscriptions and what that ultimately means. And as we talk about whether moving a large sum of debt into debt settlement or we start talking about moving a large sum of debt into debt collection, there's probably going to be some sort of payments made. And as those payments are being made, that kind of starts moving into subscription bases and how comfortable have consumers become with subscriptions, right? Like you used to go to Blockbuster, now you have Netflix. Like there's a difference to that because you had control over the throttling of your expenditure month over month. Am I gonna go to Blockbuster this week? Am I not gonna go to Blockbuster this week? Versus that comfort level that's been found with subscription-based services and what that ultimately is going to look like. So I think that there's some really interesting things about not only the consumer's behavior, but how that has changed over time and communication preferences, financial preferences, use of financial instruments and starting to realize that outside of the United States, credit cards will, Brazil has a platform for digital payments that will actually exceed the volume of credit card transactions in their country this year. And so thinking about how that starts to what's happening around us on a global scale and how will that start to the United States and the behavior of these consumers and their expectations. So today we're not just talking about the debt solutions, we're uncovering how consumers actually feel about the paths that they choose and how we can better guide them and build trust with those consumers through every interaction, regardless of what side of the equation we're talking about. But to kind of start this off here, I want to talk about the seven major debt resolution options that are available to a consumer.

So consumer goes into debt, they run up their credit cards, you know, they owe, let's call it $10,000 for easy numbers. What kind of options do they have, Teresa, in terms to resolve that when they can't afford to just pay it in cash?

Teresa Dodson (09:08)
Well, they have a handful of options. One option would be consumer credit counseling. So they can figure out if that's something that they can do, if they can qualify for that. Typically, that's a consumer that they're not necessarily behind on anything. They're not buried. They're not in over their heads so much. But they really want to find a way to be able to pay off that debt sooner rather than later. And I think that's a great option. And that fits for that consumer.

and meets them where they're at at that moment. Then of course you've got debt settlement. Debt settlement is typically consumers that are completely maxed out. They're in over their head. They've gotten there for one reason or another. There could be a hardship or there could be multiple is what we find. And they're trying to figure out a way, how do I get out of debt and kind of relieve some cash flow that I need monthly. But I still want to pay back a portion of what I owe.

I don't want to just abandon what I owe. I don't want to just ignore it, but I got to find a way to do it in a way that makes sense for me financially at this moment. Then there's bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is an option too. If you can qualify for chapter seven, that might be the best option for you depending on where the consumer's at at that moment. Chapter 13, a little trickier, a little easier to qualify for, but it's essentially a debt settlement program.

Teresa Dodson (10:28)
a trustee that's kind of overseeing and managing what it is that you're going to pay. They can even take some of your secured stuff as well and force you to do something with that. it actually takes away from psychologically, it takes away from the consumer's choice of how they want to handle their debt. And they have to be willing to do that. Then there's the do nothing. And that's, know, and hey guys, that's the majority of consumers out there. The majority of consumers are afraid to do any of those programs.

Teresa Dodson (10:55)
or they may not be aware of all those options and they're just maxed out, they're getting ready to default, they go into collections and now they're sitting there in collections with multiple accounts and they're just buried and they don't know what to do.

Adam Parks (11:08)
Is there anything that we're missing here, Kat, that we should be considering in terms of those options? We talked about bankruptcy, the credit counseling, and we can talk about consolidation loans and the re-lending into that space. We've got the credit repair, debt validation, which I think is a bigger problem that we should probably address.

debt settlement and relief and then direct payments to the collectors themselves, right? In terms of kind of rounding it out to seven. Now debt validation to me feels like very different than everything else here because everything else that we talk about, whether they...

Adam Parks (11:40)
you know, choose to go to bankruptcy, they're doing credit counseling, they're getting advice on how to resolve the problem versus the debt validation to me appears to be more of a try and slide out of this versus addressing what currently is outstanding and in front of you. Am I misinterpreting that in any way?

Teresa Dodson (11:55)
Yeah, I...

Katalina Dawson (11:55)
Absolutely. No,

I think you're spot on right there and that's very similar to the boat of our honorary number eight out of the seven, which is the do nothing boat. So it's very similar to that kind of choice. Now we say the seven because these are the debt resolution options. There's kind of that honorary eighth because you're not actually trying to get to a resolution when you...

Teresa Dodson (11:57)
No.

Katalina Dawson (12:18)
do nothing. I want to also throw out a statistic here. Over 64 million Americans currently have debt in collections and are currently going through these choices and looking at what they're doing or doing number eight and currently doing nothing. And when we think about these people, these 64 million Americans, we also have to really think about who are the consumers, who are we talking to, and understanding that there are different personas that you will be discussing the debt with. Whether it's somebody who's very defensive or somebody who's very combative or somebody who's genuinely interested in resolving their debt, there's tons of different archetypes.

And Adam, you did a fantastic report on this, so I'm gonna turn it back to you, because you broke down, I think it's eight personas?

Adam Parks (13:05)
We broke it down to eight. I think that it actually belongs in the 10 range. And part of that is the do nothing was pointed out to me. And when I first published the article, I got some really great feedback from the industry about what they thought.

Adam Parks (13:17)
might need to change there. But before we get into that, for those of you that are watching live, feel free to ask questions. We've got some articles and things that will drop into the chat as we're going through just based on our discussion. But if you have anything that you want to ask or you want to participate actively in the discussion, we always, always encourage that. Just making sure that we get to everybody's kind of thoughts on this because I know there's a lot of experts watching right now as well. So I'm going to drop into the chat the eight personas article just so that we have an understanding of what it is that we're kind of talking about here in terms of the eight. But what I found here was that we kind of broke it down and said, when we think about the consumer, there's different motivations that sit behind different consumers behavioral patterns. And when we sit behind the when we think about the behavioral patterns, it's not just about how are they going to behave with us? It's about what can I do to motivate them or what strategy can I use to communicate clearly and cleanly with them? What options do I have to communicate my point of view to them? And so like, and then I gave them cute names because I just felt like it. ⁓ wanted to try and make, well we wanted to make it personalized a little bit more so that it kind of became something that was more easy to use in discussion because if I called it 1.764, it doesn't have the same ring as Hopeful Hannah. And I think that...

Katalina Dawson (14:28)
Yeah, why not?

Adam Parks (14:43)
more accurately represents that hopeful person who wants to engage with this. They're hoping that something positive is going to change in their life and they're going to be able to engage that. And I think that there's some, there's a lot of value to that. And then you've got, you know, organized Olivia, who's all about structure and keeps everything in a spreadsheet and she's organized and she knows and she's making conscious and specific decisions. Well, the behavior or strategy that you would use to communicate with her versus somebody like combative Chris and you can only imagine how much fun it is to talk to that guy on the phone. But we've all dealt with from whether it be a debt collection or I'm sure from a debt relief perspective, these types of personalities and how do you engage with somebody at this level? Now, Teresa, you've done a ton of training and teaching agents how to engage, interact and assist consumers on the phone. I mean,

I'm assuming your training is talking about how to deal with some of these different personalities and how they will behave in the market.

Teresa Dodson (15:48)
100%. I always say that this is a psychological sale. And you have to know who you're speaking to. And it makes a huge difference based on age, based on geographic location. ⁓ I'm going to talk very differently to somebody that's in New York versus somebody that's in Georgia.

Texas.

Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (16:08)
Yeah, Texas,

yeah. I mean, way that they communicate, the way they digest information is going to be very different. ⁓ so you want to make sure that you, I'm always training on identifying the best way to communicate with them in age groups.

Teresa Dodson (16:26)
The way I talk to somebody that's 50 years old and 25 years old is going to be very different because they have very different needs. They've been brought up differently. They have different viewpoints. Meeting consumers where they're at and being able to identify where they're at is so critically important to the successful outcome that you want to achieve, right? Hands down. And so you really have to take... And the key thing that I always teach is listen. Just listen.

Adam Parks (16:32)
Yes.

Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (16:53)
Stop trying to over talk, stop trying to tell them you know everything, because people do that. They're like, OK, I know this and I know that, and I want to share this from a good place. But it's like, are you really learning anything about that consumer to understand where to meet them where they're at? You've to listen.

Katalina Dawson (17:09)
Yeah,

this reminds me lot of neurolinguistic processing. On my podcast, Career Path, I had Kelly Van Cleave on and she did an amazing session talking all about that. And Teresa, what you're saying is exactly what she said that training is all about. It's listening and matching the person where they're at. And also she had a great analogy about it. It's also what wrapping paper you put on the gift or rather you're wrapping up a message. And if you go to somebody and it's the
birthday and you wrap it in Hanukkah paper, it's not going to match for them. It's going to feel weird. So you're looking at the person and you're looking at the situation and you're making sure that the wrapping paper of the message matches whatever is going on.

Teresa Dodson (17:54)
Yep, that's great.

Adam Parks (17:55)
I think that's a fantastic analogy. the neuro-linguistic programming is something I spent a lot of time, Kelly and I did a webinar on it a couple of years ago because it's almost like the human lie detector. So if you look at Chris Vought from the FBI and some of these guys that have been top negotiators, Herb Cohen, guys like that, neuro-linguistic programming is something where they're looking at the body language, they're looking at the tone, the speed, the pitch, right, just the different.

Adam Parks (18:21)
aspects of a piece of communication and within that how much can you learn about that person, their motivations and their needs in this discussion? Right, isn't that a lot of what negotiating comes down to?

And 100%. And regardless of what wrapping paper you're putting on where you're meeting the person, I think the absolute root of all of it is respect. Making sure wherever, even if you're talking to combative Chris, holding a point of, or a viewpoint of respect when you're having that conversation is vital. And Adam, when you introduced us, I kind of thought about this. You said I have...

Katalina Dawson (18:57)
Two perspectives here, I've got a little bit of the receivables, a little bit of the debt relief. I would actually argue that I have three. I myself am a consumer and I have dealt with collections before. I even shared one of the stories on a previous webinar where it was something that I didn't actually owe and I ended up having to go through the dispute process. And through my experiences, I've had complete opposite experiences.

I have had a very positive one, like the one I had shared on that other webinar, where somebody helped me through it. They explained, okay, that you're disputing the debt, you don't think you owe it, here's what you do, and they had so much respect for me, and my experience was fantastic. I have also owed $12 that I had no idea I owed, and the guy talked down to me like I was the bane of his existence when I called to just solve $12. So just having basic respect means the world. And I went from just being like, let me settle this $12 to at the end of the phone call, I was so distraught. was like, why were they so, yeah, I was like, he was so mean. is. And that's why the respect is so important.

Adam Parks (19:58)
I'm gonna fight for this $12. I don't even care about the money. It's the principle.

Teresa Dodson (20:02)
Yeah.

Like, that's actually a really good point. I mean, I think if we had to tie one word, no matter who we're talking to, regardless if it's combative Chris or any of these other archetypes that we're talking to, I think if you just use the word, just respect. Come from a place of respect. Think on the other end of that phone, it's a relative or your friend. It's like, I know that sounds kind of corny, but they're humans. They're people.

Teresa Dodson (20:36)
You

Katalina Dawson (20:36)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (20:36)
know,

I know that we get caught up on numbers and everybody's a number and data, but is that really at the end of the day going to get you what you want from that consumer? Probably not. And like combative Chris, I love combative Chris because I just let him wear himself out. Go ahead. Just keep yelling dude. Go for it man. I've learned how to work with those and if you, they just want to be heard. That's all they want. They want to be heard. So just take a breath. Let them just air it all out.

Katalina Dawson (20:46)
Absolutely.

Ha!

Teresa Dodson (21:03)
Okay, well then, and then when he takes a breath, like, so why do you think you feel that way?

Adam Parks (21:08)
Well, but bringing them to that conclusion because sometimes all they can feel is the frustration. And if all they can feel is frustration, you have to find a way to diffuse and de-escalate. You have to de-escalate the situation if you ever want to get to a resolution that makes sense for everybody.

Katalina Dawson (21:09)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (21:15)
Right.

Katalina Dawson (21:15)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (21:25)
Yeah, and then to put another layer on it, so you've identified there's all these different types, right? Now you have to look at what's going on in the economy and what's going on in the world in general that could affect those types differently and the way that they're thinking. Because that's what I've been starting to see over the last, I'd say eight years. The last eight, I'd say the last eight years, I started seeing a change in

Teresa Dodson (21:51)
not only the consumer behavior towards debt in general, but just how they want to manage it. A great example of this, somebody that I had been talking to, let's say 10 years ago, would never in a million years consider doing a bankruptcy or debt settlement or anything like that. And they needed it. They were a really good candidate for one or the other. And now they're like, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to do it.

Teresa Dodson (22:17)
Like, I mean, know that sounds really, you know, crass, but it's true. That's what's happened because of everything that's happened in the world, it's taken people that were an absolute no and rigid in their thinking about something. And now they're like, look, I do need help. And they are a little bit more, they're not as defensive and they're also becoming more educated about what their options are as well.

Adam Parks (22:39)
I think some of that comes from the usage of social media. And if you have started looking up any of these things, if you've talked about it around your phone or any of it, right, you're probably starting to see the reels and advertisements. I look, I talk a lot and I do a lot of searches both on the consumer and the debt collector side to try and understand and research things you wouldn't believe the crazy that I get. And we're going to do a whole webinar on bad tick tock advice that we're seeing there'll be a whole set. We're gonna do a whole hour on some of the horribleness that

Adam Parks (23:08)
I'm seeing out there right now the inaccuracies and the bad advice that if I can't communicate with you, then you're forcing me into litigation. If you're shortening the statute of limitations, I might get forced into litigation. So it's all about trying to find these new and better ways to communicate with these consumers and to understand where they are. And that's where this eight personas really came from was me trying to understand what is the spectrum of consumers look like.

We haven't even started trying to apply numbers to this yet in terms of, know, does it look like a bell curve? Are there more people on the angry side or the organized side? Like how does the population break down into these categories? But I had to start somewhere with the categorization of it and trying to understand at least who are we trying to communicate with? Then I think we can start going to deeper layers of behavioral analytics here and saying, okay, which of these, which of these personas is going to respond to a text message versus an email. Which of these are gonna respond to messaging A versus messaging B? And I think once we get past the layer of digital communications to where we're trying to figure out which channel to communicate through, we're gonna start going real deep over the next five to 10 years into the content behind those messages. Because the differentiator in five years won't be can I send a text message? It will be what?

what, where, when, how am I sending that text message? And the what I think is gonna be that most important part. If you look at advertising, if you look at e-commerce, if you look at general web design, analytics, A-B testing is king. A-B testing all day long, every day, does this message resonate or does this message resonate in isolating those variables in the...

Adam Parks (24:52)
communications that we're sending, right? So minimizing the variables so that we can actually measure which of these is going to work. But that's how I start seeing some of this behavioral psychology starting to play directly into the cash flows of the businesses in both debt relief and debt collection. Does that make sense? Or am I just like off on a tangent? That happens.

Teresa Dodson (25:12)
Totally.

Katalina Dawson (25:12)
Yes.

Teresa Dodson (25:14)
you,

Katalina Dawson (25:14)
It completely makes sense.

Teresa Dodson (25:14)
man. You haven't lost me. Yep.

Adam Parks (25:17)
So when I looked at this, I'm wondering if this is going to distribute into a bell curve or what that's going to look like. I'll leave it to the audience. If you guys have any questions, you know, feel free to ask them. But if you haven't read the article yet, it's worth at least giving it a breeze and dropping me a comment on the article. If you think there's another personality that we're leaving out, because I want to make sure that I get as much engagement and interaction from across the industry as possible so that we have something that we can use as a baseline to further explore consumer behavior into 2026 and beyond. I think it's important for us to continue to look at that. ⁓ Now, when we talk about this, Theresa, we're looking at how

Katalina Dawson (25:52)
Absolutely.

Adam Parks (25:57)
all of this starts to break down, right? I'm going to go back to the seven options because we talked about kind of the seven options and we talked about the different kinds of consumers that we're ultimately might be facing. And now I think it would be interesting to go a little bit deeper into the seven options or eight options because the do nothing there as well. But I don't think we have a lot to talk about in the do nothing category because they're going to do literally nothing.

Katalina Dawson (26:17)
No, not really.

Teresa Dodson (26:20)
⁓ hold on. There's

a lot to talk about, but we'll circle back.

Adam Parks (26:23)
I was let's start there since that was not even

Katalina Dawson (26:23)
all right. Okay.

Adam Parks (26:25)
in an outline here let's let's start with the do nothings what do you do with someone who has no intention of doing anything

Katalina Dawson (26:25)
No, let's start there, yeah.

Teresa Dodson (26:32)
Well, a lot of times what you find out is the people that are in the do nothing category are just scared. They don't know what to do. They're frozen. It's like a possum. They're froze. They don't know what to do. And that's what I have found out with these consumers, which is a huge bulk of them, that choose to do nothing. It's because they just don't know, what their options are. Two, they're terrified to contact their creditors.

Adam Parks (26:37)
Okay.

Teresa Dodson (26:55)
because they're like, look, I don't have any money and they're just going to yell at me. So forgive it. And they just kind of like walk down. They just like, ⁓ I don't want to deal with anything. yeah. I mean, if you could figure out, mean, if there's, there's actually really good ways to break through to the do nothings. I think the do nothings need to know what, what option, what one, what options are available to them because a lot of those do nothings don't know they have any to a nice friendly way.

Teresa Dodson (27:23)
to communicate with them. And that's usually via text, via email. It's like, look, we understand that you have this issue going on right now. We would like to try to find a way to be able to resolve that issue for us or with you. Just a way that engages them to want to talk to you or they feel safe. Because that's typically what it is. I rarely come across a do nothing person that is just like, screw them. I don't want to pay them.

Teresa Dodson (27:48)
I don't really come across that that often. They're like, they're just, want to pay, but they can't. And they feel like if they even try to attempt to talk to anybody, they're just going to get yelled at and there's not going to be a solution. And they're going to feel even worse than they already feel.

Adam Parks (28:01)
What's step one for that consumer? We're talking about all these different options that the consumer has, but is there a consolidated option that they can reach out to? So a consumer who's currently in the absolutely frozen, I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't know where the first step is. What's the first step in a journey of a thousand miles for a consumer that is feeling overwhelmed?

Teresa Dodson (28:21)
I think they need to, and it depends on where the messaging is coming from, right? So if the messaging is just coming from, let's say, a creditor.

Adam Parks (28:26)
Fair?

Teresa Dodson (28:30)
or collection agency. It's really about reaching out to them and letting them know there are options and that it's a friendly, safe place for them to talk to you. However you can push that through, that is the first step because I guarantee you that's the majority of the reason why they've locked up and they haven't responded or they're avoiding your calls. If they can feel safe and like you're on their side and you really want to get them to a point to where they would feel good if they could pay you. Believe me, that consumer psychologically feels

Teresa Dodson (28:59)
like crap about themselves. They feel awful, just awful. And if you can remember that, how are you, then it's easier for you to figure out, how do I make sure they don't feel bad about themselves? This can happen to anyone. And how do I engage with you to make you feel safe to want to have that conversation with me?

Katalina Dawson (29:18)
Adam, that goes back to that what of the messaging that you were talking about earlier from A-B testing. And that's something that in Branding Arc, we work with clients on changing, you're saying the same thing, but just change the way you say it. So a lot of, you know, older websites might just say, excuse me, on their header that like we're collections, we resolve accounts. And instead just change that to say something like,

Katalina Dawson (29:44)
We're here to help you resolve your account. Something where it's like that you want to help, you want to get to a resolution, it's just the way you say it. And that approachability, even changing imagery to be instead of like just brick buildings or anything that looks intimidating to families and showing that we're here to help support you. And look, we have a consumer page that even has resources like knowmydebt.org and things like that to help you out.

Teresa Dodson (29:49)
Yep.

So I'm gonna give credit where credit is due on this one. was Mark Reinhardt on, I can't remember if it was a podcast or a webinar in which we had the discussion, but Mark had brought up the point of when we look at a collection agency or a debt relief website and think about it like a donut shop. When you go to a donut, like the local donut shops website, it doesn't say I have the most profitable donut shop.

It says I make the best donuts, right? Like I, we use the best sugar and natural ingredients or whatever, and they've got a very different approach to it. And I think the debt collection industry has started. I mean, we've clearly got started going down that path at Branding Arc. And it's been a couple of years that we've been starting to lead people down that path. But we're an e-commerce is business. This isn't this industry is an e-commerce industry. It will be in the next

Katalina Dawson (30:56)
Adam, what have you been saying for several years now? We are becoming a what? Yes, we are.

Adam Parks (31:05)
I mean, I believe it's more like 18 months, but if I say that people start panicking, so I'm going to use five years just to keep just to keep the comments calm. We did have a question come through, though. How do you feel about AI guidance affecting discussions with consumers? That's a great question.

Teresa Dodson (31:10)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (31:22)
you got to be really careful. mean, you know, it's like there's a lot of there's some good AI out there and there's some not so good AI and

Adam Parks (31:30)
I'm gonna use

ChatGPT as a baseline because I feel like it's what the audience is most familiar with and garbage in, garbage out.

Adam Parks (31:40)
So I think over the next couple of months, I'll have a much better indication as to how I feel about that, because what's happening right now is that the LLMs don't necessarily understand what good and bad content is, and they're giving credence to collection attorney or let's call them litigation attorneys that are going after collectors versus the debt collectors themselves, because those companies tend to be better at search engine optimization. And that's where I think the battlefront is going to be when it comes to artificial intelligence over the next two years is going to be how good is your SEO and how good is your SEO as it changes because as Kat and I witnessed over the last call it three months, it's literally been flipped upside down on its head. Like Google search results were literally flipped upside down last month or was it June. Not only did they add the AI overview responses to everything that now gives more credit to Reddit threads than it does to actual experts on subject matters and topics. So now we've got, you know, the Wall Street boys that are running that which makes zero sense to me and I think actually causes some level of risk because again when you start feeding garbage in you're going to get garbage out and I don't think people are going to have a good understanding of how to evaluate what's coming out the other side of their responses. So when you say what do I do with this debt in these things if the LLM is being fed by the companies that are suggesting that you dispute everything. mean, look, disputes are becoming more more automated and easier to respond to over time. There's a lot of technology and tools that are there to assist in that process. Yeah, I think you can flood debt collection operations with it and you can cost them expenses, but I don't think you're actually resolving anything. I think you're actually putting the consumer in a situation to where it's more likely that I'll litigate, because why argue?

Katalina Dawson (33:28)
No, you're not.

And it's hurtful overall because if you're just disputing everything and you're not paying attention to what's actually real, then you're actually harming people in the case that it's an honest dispute because it gets lost in the noise of everybody who's doing all these false disputes left and right.

Adam Parks (33:50)
Agreed, the good things get lost in the shuffle when we have so much garbage. Now I'm hoping that over time these models will improve and they will better understand where to draw reputable content from. Reputable advice because I mean look, we're standing here right now as 20 plus year experts of the space and having this type of a discussion but to have a Reddit thread that overrides.

Katalina Dawson (34:02)
Yes.

Adam Parks (34:15)
our understanding after viewing literally the result of millions of records in comparison to what's happening on a Reddit thread in the one off situations. There's always going to be these anecdotal stories that you know make for great headlines and I feel like that's going to be the problem with the LLMs is their view of debt collection is going to be driven based on that inaccurate visibility of who we are and what we're trying to do.

Katalina Dawson (34:40)
For the sake of time, I think we should dive into those seven items, because I just looked, I was like, my goodness. ⁓ Let's kick it off with bankruptcy. Let's talk about some of the pros and cons. Teresa, would you like to take this one?

Adam Parks (34:42)
Yeah, I know 40 minutes in here. Good.

Teresa Dodson (34:53)
Sure, why not? So it's definitely a con no matter what. Nobody wants to do that, but if a consumer finds themselves in a situation where it's really, that's the only thing they can do, and if they can qualify for a chapter seven, I think that's in a consumer's mind psychologically.

Teresa Dodson (35:09)
I don't think a lot, most consumers that I've spoken to don't understand the difference between a seven and a 13. They really don't. They just think bankruptcy, all my debt goes away and I'm free. Yeah, it's gonna scar me for 10 years, but whatever, right? At least I don't have the headache to worry about anymore and I can take the stress off of me.

But most people can't really qualify for that. They just can't. So I think when they start talking to a bankruptcy attorney and they realize that what they're really qualifying for is a 13, it kind of makes the consumer think, well, wait a minute. Do I really want to do this? Is there other options? So yeah, I mean, it's a good option for some consumers. Again, it's meeting the consumer where they're at and how you identify where they're at is really understanding their finances. For instance, in debt settlement, we go through a budget analysis. So we find out exactly what their expenses are, how much money they're making. We understand what their hardship is. We pull the credit report. We see what's going on there. And we are able to identify if they are a better bankruptcy client or not. And so that is always an option for a consumer that fits into that category.

Interesting. Now, when we talk about the bankruptcies, one of the things I think it's important to point out here is that bankruptcies are on the rise. If I'm not mistaken, in 2024, US bankruptcy filings rose by 16 % in a year.

I don't have 20, 25 figures here, but I will post where I found this just so that everybody speak in the same language here. But I find it to be interesting that this seems to becoming a more popular resolution method, even though the long term impacts that it has. And I would think that the impact that it has is actually risen over the past few years, as interest rates have risen because that bankruptcy is going to cost you significantly more when you go to buy that next car, even five years from now.

And I think that short-term visibility or that short-term thinking on a long-term problem is definitely something that we need to start considering. But as we go down, so like think bankruptcy is something that most of our audience is gonna be pretty familiar with, but now let's talk a little bit about the pros and cons of the credit counseling and how that contrasts with the debt settlement and debt relief space.

Teresa Dodson (37:24)
You know, again, it's I think I touched on this in the beginning of the call with credit counseling. It's a good option. But again, does that consumer fit into that category? Are they qualified? You know, it's all about qualification, right? It's all about it's all about are you really more suited based on your financial well-being right now? Or is that something that you could successfully go into and complete?

Teresa Dodson (37:49)
And there are ways, and I know credit counseling does the same kind of, they do underwriting, right? And they do a financial analysis and they can determine based off of that, if this is somebody that will successfully be able to get through a credit counseling program or not. Now the thing is with some of the credit counseling programs from the credit counselors that I've spoken to, they get a year into the program and something else happens, right? And so that derails the whole thing. Yes, and it derails things.

Adam Parks (37:53)

It's another life event.

Teresa Dodson (38:17)
That's okay. I mean it happens, but they probably can't complete that program and they have to think of some other options But I credit counseling is great if it fits where that consumer is in that moment

Katalina Dawson (38:28)
That derailing makes a lot of sense. I'm going to throw out some more facts and figures here because typically the completion rate is between 55 to 70 percent according to Experian. So.

If those life events happen, that would make a lot of sense at like a 55 % completion rate. But overall, the same report reported improved financial behavior overall, 67 % reporting better money management, 73 % paid bills more consistently, and the average revolving debt decreased by roughly $8,000. So there's a lot of positivity in this option.

Teresa Dodson (39:02)
Well, and I tell you it's because of the qualification of that consumer up front. the qualification of that, I know, it never stops.

Katalina Dawson (39:09)
Hahaha

Adam Parks (39:09)
It's

inevitable. I thought I was looking to see if it was me.

Katalina Dawson (39:13)
Ha ha ha!

Teresa Dodson (39:14)
You know, because consumers that are coming into a credit counseling program, again, they're not maxed out. The ones that are really qualified and will actually hit those numbers that you spoke of, Katalina, are consumers that they're not broke. They've got good paying jobs. They're not strapped for cash. They're not on the edge. They want to find a way to pay off their debt sooner rather than later.

Teresa Dodson (39:35)
That's why those people can successfully actually complete that. The ones that I guarantee don't complete are the ones that probably weren't qualified for it upfront. ⁓ And the reason why I think, Adam, we're seeing a bigger rise in bankruptcies is because I'm seeing with the consumers that we speak to, they're in a much worse financial situation than they were five or six years ago. Like we're seeing people that are, they're not qualified.

Adam Parks (39:58)
do we want to talk about that? We can go we can go into depth here.

Well, look. Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (40:01)
Yeah, they're not qualified. We

can't enroll them. We're like, you can't afford this program. I have to turn away more people today than I've had to turn away in, well, since I've been in the industry. So I think that's why bankruptcy is on the rise. That's the only choice they got.

Adam Parks (40:14)
Well, for those of you that have not read the TransUnion 2024 Debt Collection Industry Report, where we start talking about in detail the aggregated excess payment. And so I think the AEP and even if we don't get to some of the other stuff here, you know, we can always continue on for a few minutes. But you know, when we start thinking about the aggregated excess payment, consider this, you have right now, the aggregated excess payment is how much the consumer can pay above their minimum balances, like their minimum required payments.

Katalina Dawson (40:14)
Yeah.

Adam Parks (40:40)
Okay, so what does that look, that's been decreasing for an extended period of time, which indicates consumer stress, like significant consumer stress. At the same time, last year, we talked a lot about the bubble that's coming. And we said, look, we're expecting a rise in the volume of accounts. And historically, when we've had this rise in volume of accounts, we've seen a decrease in liquidity simultaneously that has happened through multiple economic cycles in the time that I've been a debt collector, which is interesting to me. But now, On the tail end of this, we're not like we're seeing the rise in volumes, but we're not seeing the liquidity drop at the same rate that we had predicted. But at the same time, credit card originations are at the highest point they've ever been since TransUnion started reporting on credit card originations. So to me, I look at this and I say, yes, that consumer is more stressed because that consumer is currently living in 2006. Financially,

They're living in 2005 and 2006 as they're continuing to blow into the balloon and the balloons getting, you know, the debt balloon is getting bigger and bigger and maybe it hasn't popped. But if I double the size of the balloon because I've extended people's availability of credit, that's gonna start to have an impact or how much of the credit that they're able to take right now, by now pay later, that they're able to take that's not being recorded that's not being reported to credit bureaus and when it's not being reported to credit bureaus, lending is being like it's the the current accurate position of the consumer's finances is not apparent to new lenders. And that starts to deteriorate the value of our entire credit-based system when the scores don't make sense anymore. So I think we are at a strange transitional point. And as we wrap up the 2025 TransUnion Survey and we start to dig into the data after September 1st, and I'll drop the links to this for anyone that wants to go take a few minutes and participate in us having the kinds of statistics that we need, the source of truth required for us to empower these types of discussions going forward, I appreciate your participation. But that's kind of what we're seeing right now. The balloons just continuing to get bigger, now what? Right, because they're not qualifying and it sounds like, are you seeing the same challenges across some of the other channels?

Katalina Dawson (42:52)
You

Adam Parks (43:02)
Are you seeing the the so when you're talking about the consumer not being able to qualify right like we're seeing them bankruptcies are rising they're not qualifying at the same rate for credit counseling. Are you seeing that in debt settlement in other debt relief areas.

Teresa Dodson (43:03)
channel.

yeah, right.

Yeah, I'm finding it more difficult to one, have people be able to qualify for debt settlement because they're in a much worse situation than anticipated, but also lack of visibility. I love how you throw in the buy now pay later and things that are not necessarily reported on their credit bureau. And we have no visibility as to what else they have going on. And so we get on the call because all we have is a credit bureau report to look at. All we have is a budget analysis to look at. And as we get through the budget analysis, they go, but wait, I have this other debt. but I have this other debt. And we're like, well, wait a minute. Well, now guess what? You don't qualify you know, because those expenses are way too high and they're not bringing in enough income to be able to justify the monthly payment. So yeah, lack of visibility of being able to really see truly what their financial situation is impacts every industry and every option. Yeah.

Adam Parks (44:09)
in the consumer themselves because now we're

Adam Parks (44:11)
lending on top of lending on top of lending for a consumer that's already stressed who already can't make the minimum payments on their other lines of credit. I see this as a problem. If you can't tell by how excited I get, not excited is probably the wrong word, but how animated I become when we start talking about this because I'm truly concerned for the underlying consumers here and that we're almost setting them up or not. We're setting them up, but they're being set up for failure right now.

when they can't make these payments because lenders can't accurately predict their ability to repay these situations and it sounds like you're facing the same thing on the debt relief side. But speaking of debt settlement and debt relief, talk to us about the pros and cons related to a consumer choosing that path.

Teresa Dodson (44:52)
Well, there's a lot of cons. I mean, there really is. I said this last week at a roundtable thing I was at. I'm like, nobody wakes up and says, gee, I want to do debt settlement. Or gee, I want to default on all my credit, everything that I owe. The pro for the consumer is, if they qualify for the program, it's a way to be able to get out of debt within, let's say, three to four years, opposed to bankruptcy.

Teresa Dodson (45:19)
right, and be able to get their debt resolved and feel good about that, right? And I think that's the good thing. And I've been doing this for 24 years. So guess what, guys? It works. So anybody that wants to say, oh, debt settlement, you know, that's just, you know, fake and it doesn't work, it works. It does. I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't still be in this industry if I didn't believe that we were truly helping people.

Adam Parks (45:30)
You

Teresa Dodson (45:41)
And you talk to any of the collection companies that I work with that have special, you know, internal units set up for debt settlement and how to manage, you know, those accounts coming through and the liquidation rate on those versus other kinds of accounts they're collecting on, they kind of like it.

It's because these consumers are actually putting away money to be able to pay you something versus nothing. They have a plan to be able to do that. And so I think that's the big pro. The con is everything that comes along with it. There's some consumers that come into the program and they haven't defaulted yet because they're just maxed out and they've been doing minimum payments. Their credit score is definitely challenged. They're probably sitting at like a 660, which it's not that great, but it's going to get impacted more.

Teresa Dodson (46:30)
we have to go through all the disclosures.

in debt settlement, before they even enroll. This will impact your credit score. You might get a 1099 on anything that is the difference between what you settled that debt form, what you owe, and you may owe taxes on that. You might get sued. All of these things, there's a lot of cons from the consumer's perspective. But the biggest pro is you're going to be here to hold my hand. You're going to be here to help me walk through this process. And ultimately, in three to four years, I'm going to be debt-free.

Teresa Dodson (47:02)
I will tell you that we are tracking data now and I'm saying one of my companies is because the industry hasn't really tracked this before people that come in with a certain credit score and once they leave a debt settlement program what their score looks like because we have heard from years from regulators You know, you're just wrecking everybody's credit score and they never recover. We know that wasn't true But we had no proof. Well, yeah, right now through a company that I own we're starting to track that and

But yeah, you gotta validate it.

Teresa Dodson (47:31)
the numbers are really encouraging. People are coming out of a debt settlement program with a better credit score than what they had coming in. And that was kind of like, that's scary for me to say out loud, but when you've seen almost thousands of cases come through so far, and that's what you're consistently seeing, as long as they haven't defaulted on other stuff, how fantastic is that? It's like, it's their way of getting back on their feet again in a short period of time.

Katalina Dawson (47:41)
Huge.

Teresa Dodson (47:56)
So those are the pros and cons of it.

Adam Parks (47:58)
I volunteer as tribute to do analysis. You drop a bunch of data on me. I would love to see what that looks like. I volunteer as tribute.

Katalina Dawson (47:59)
So some of the ben... ⁓

Teresa Dodson (48:07)
Done. ⁓

Katalina Dawson (48:09)
So talking about that benefit, the American Fair Credit Council has some data that in 36 months, 74 % of consumers settle at least one of their accounts that's in debt settlement, and 23 % can settle all accounts enrolled in that period.

Adam Parks (48:30)
I mean, those seem like pretty strong numbers, right? was 55 % of accounts enrolled in Zest Settlement programs are successfully settled. being able to settle, yeah, overall, but within 36 months, 74 % settling at least one account, 23 % settling all their accounts, I think is still a pretty positive outcome in terms of the consumer because again, everything is situational.

Katalina Dawson (48:38)
Overall, not just in the 36 months. Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (48:42)
Right.

Adam Parks (48:56)
right for each one of these individual consumers, what are their life events Teresa as you brought up and I hadn't really considered previously, like what about that next life event when the car breaks down when this happens when that happens and I'm really interested to do some work here on the payment hierarchy because I believe there's been changes in the consumers payment hierarchy over the last five years. How do they prioritize what they're going to stop paying first when they run out of money? And how what is that order of dissolution look like?

It's going to be different than a business, right? And we've got our order of dissolution should something go under, like we know exactly how things are going to get liquidated. But consumers make that choice independently and individually.

and how has that changed over time as we look at the implication of student loans, as we look at buy now, late, or as we start looking at some of these new credit products that have started coming into the mix and how all that is going to break down. So I'm interested to see how this is gonna continue to impact into the future here. Now we've talked about the debt settlement piece. How different is that from the consolidation loans themselves? Because from a consolidation loan standpoint, isn't this like a new underwriting? You just have to find a

more liberal lender with looser underwriting guidelines and probably a higher interest rate.

Teresa Dodson (50:12)
which is more difficult to find these days. Because a lot of those guys that were very liberal about that and under underwriting guidelines weren't as stringent. They're the ones that their default rates have gone through the roof over the last three years and now they've pulled back. I think again, it's finding the right bucket for the consumer.

Adam Parks (50:15)
I would think so.

Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (50:29)
And a consolidation loan is really good for a consumer that has a good credit score because you're not going to get a consolidation loan unless you're like a 700. ⁓ You're not necessarily, which means you're not maxed out on everything. You're not really struggling. You just want to consolidate everything into one payment and pay that off a little sooner.

Teresa Dodson (50:48)
Okay, there's a definite market for it, but that market compared to consumers that are distressed with debt is about that small. You know, it's a lot smaller market, but it's a good solution for those particular consumers that qualify.

Well, creditors only have two levers they can the availability of credit and the interest rate that they're going to charge like those are the only two levers that we have to pull.

It sounds like there's, you know, limitations on how that has been done in the past, because I'm sure that they're borrowing syndicated money in order to lend and they're doing it on margins. But as the cost of capital has continued to rise, I can imagine that the margins start to get a little squished in what you're still able to charge the consumer without getting into usury rates or turning it into a, you know, payday loan of sorts. So I can imagine that there's been some challenges based on the economic environment over the last five years.

Now, how do we look at debt relief differently than credit repair? How do we start thinking about the pros and cons of the credit repair aspects?

Personally and just say I could probably speak for a lot of people on my side of the fence in the industry Credit repair I think is good if you really have stuff on your credit report. That's inaccurate I don't like credit credit repair companies that are out there telling the consumer we're gonna get rid of all of this stuff, you know, and you know what? No that it yeah I'm like but that is your debt, you know You did you did do that and that that doesn't need to be removed. I mean, that's so

Adam Parks (51:59)
Interesting.

Yeah, that's TikTok.

Teresa Dodson (52:15)
dishonest and I don't like you know they do they do a lot of them will still charge upfront fees for that stuff and then they don't really deliver anything so I think it really harms the consumer can it be done correctly yes like anything but it has to be stuff that is legitimately on your credit report that shouldn't be I wrap this into debt validation. I mean, it's, that's ultimately the strategy that they're trying to use, right? They're trying to go out and force validations, which based on RMAI certification and other things that have been put in place from a collector and a debt buyer perspective, that documentation is usually pretty readily available.

Katalina Dawson (52:34)
There seems. Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (52:36)
Ugh.

I hate it.

Yeah, I mean, there's... I'm sorry, you go. I'm talking too much.

Katalina Dawson (52:59)
In 2022, the CFPB received around 2,600 complaints actually about credit repair companies. So this idea of the misleading claims seems to be pretty prevalent. That comes out to be about one complaint per every 18 US credit repair companies. And we do have this actual link to those statistics that we can provide for you guys as well. Good.

Adam Parks (53:22)
I've been dropping all these links in the chat as we go.

Teresa Dodson (53:25)
Yeah, and debt validation is just, mean, we've had to do, unfortunately, debt relief options get all grouped into one thing. And unless you're talking to somebody who can explain the differences of what each one of those are, like we're doing today, a lot of people still don't understand that, you know, that's not debt settlement, that's not credit repair, that's not credit counseling. You know what I'm saying? They just don't have any idea. But debt validation to me is just another way.

Katalina Dawson (53:25)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (53:50)
for a consumer to get out of what they owe. And right, and now, now don't get me wrong, believe me, in the negotiations department, it's a tool in the toolbox.

Katalina Dawson (53:53)
Yeah. And... Yeah.

Adam Parks (53:54)
At least attempt it.

Teresa Dodson (54:01)
Okay, if I'm dealing with a really old debt and they're being very difficult, I may ask them to validate the amount. I want the validation of that debt. And it's a tool that I'll pull out every once in a blue moon, but only when I have to. But to make it as your whole 100%, this is what I do for a business and I'm gonna charge the consumer upfront fees to do this. And guess what? 90 % of these consumers never finish the dang program because everything gets validated. ⁓

Teresa Dodson (54:29)
and now they're out all this money and the consumer has gotten no benefit. I mean, it's just a horrible practice.

Katalina Dawson (54:35)
Now debt validation again can be very beneficial in the case of true disputes. It can eliminate those illegitimate debts, but it does not eliminate legitimate debt obligations. So these still have to be attended to and it's also very time sensitive. So just going the debt validation route is like trying to sneak out of your own responsibilities.

Adam Parks (54:35)
Agreed.

Teresa Dodson (54:42)
Right.

Exactly.

Adam Parks (55:02)
So as we talk about all of this, sounds like we have kind of worked our way through the seven, the last one being the direct payments to collections. And I think the debt collection industry understands that portion pretty well. So I won't belabor that in our final minutes here. But Kat, we did put together a slide that had some data points here. I'm just trying to get that up to share here. I got to convert it to a PDF. I got to turn it into a JPEG.

Katalina Dawson (55:23)
you got it here

all right, so we wanted to share some of this. On this, we have each of those seven items broken down in the same ⁓ order that we went over them in, and we've got the success rates, the credit impact, both short term and long term, as well as the overall consumer experience. And each of these also have data points that you can click on and see where we're getting some of this data from. Teresa.

Adam Parks (55:53)
So I'll drop

this into the chat here as well in a minute.

Katalina Dawson (55:57)
Theresa, do you have any last minute thoughts that you want to share about this data?

Teresa Dodson (56:00)
No, I I think it's really important. I'm glad that you guys pulled this data together and I'm glad you're sharing it with everybody because I think this is. It's just good data for people to look at because it's not readily available or it's not easy to find sometimes. So this is a good baseline for what you can expect. Is it completely accurate? Who knows? And could it change and could it evolve? Exactly. Because I tell you, it's been very challenging for our industry. Even some of the statistics that you pulled out of ASCC was probably the Reagan report.

Adam Parks (56:23)
Best data we had available, right?

Katalina Dawson (56:25)
Yes.

Teresa Dodson (56:34)
That, there's just a lot, can change and it depends on how many companies you have participate in getting that data, right? But I think this is a great baseline for people that don't know just to get an idea.

Adam Parks (56:43)
100%.

But like you just said, Teresa, it depends on how many companies and how many people help support the data. So I wanna bring up again, the TransUnion report. If you have not had a chance to complete that yet, please do. This gives us the best data that we have in the industry.

Adam Parks (57:06)
We need a source of truth, we need one place that we can come back and have these discussions and being able to put together this type of information empowers the trade associations to go have government discussions and help educate those around us that are making the rules around the financial services industry and being able to provide them with our perspective beyond anecdotal statements, right? Actually being able to route it in a data set that's being checked and validated. So we're just hitting the top of the hour here. I really do appreciate your insights today, Teresa Katalina. Thank you so much for joining me and participating in this discussion. This was a lot. This was a lot of fun, but I feel like this is the beginning of a series as we start digging more into the behavioral psychology of consumers and understanding how we can add more value for them.

Teresa Dodson (57:57)
Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was great. And I definitely think this is kind of like the beginning of more discussion getting down into actually all eight, all eight categories. Okay. We can have a discussion just, okay, let's take one category and dive into it psychologically. What's going on with the consumer? What's the best ways to deal with it?

Katalina Dawson (58:07)
Yes.

Adam Parks (58:15)
I think that's exactly where we're gonna where we're gonna end up here. So for anybody who has questions, comments, concerns, or wants to see us discuss additional topics here, can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn, or on YouTube when we post the replay next week. And we'll be happy to continue responding to those and hopefully I get these ladies back to help me continue to great, great content for a great industry. So until next time, everybody, we really do appreciate you and we'll talk to you all soon. Thanks so much.

Katalina Dawson (58:15)
Yeah.

Teresa Dodson (58:39)
Thank Bye.

Katalina Dawson (58:39)
Thank you.