- 1Fidelity Funding Group funded $24M in July, topping records set in May and June.
- 2The brokerage has eight offices and uses outbound phone sales.
- 3Rose is capping growth and has managers in each office report to him daily.
Fidelity Funding Group, a revenue-based financing brokerage, funded $24 million in July. CEO Mike Rose posted the result on Instagram as a new record for his team, which he calls the Rhino Army. The previous record came in June, and the one before it in May.
The rhino philosophy
Rose credits his approach to Rhinoceros Success, a 1980 book by Scott Alexander arguing that a rhinoceros mindset is the key to success. New hires get a roughly 40-page success guide, and Rose says its first seven pages never mention cash advances; they cover how a rhino conducts itself. In his telling, most of the world is cows, which eat the grass at their feet, while Fidelity trains rhinos.
Eight offices, capped growth
The firm spans eight locations: Wall, New Jersey, where Rose spends about 80% of his time, plus two more in New Jersey, St. Petersburg and Plantation in Florida, and Brooklyn and Staten Island in New York. Each office specializes in traditional outbound sales, working almost entirely by phone, and has a manager who checks in with Rose daily.
Rose says there is demand for more locations but he is capping growth to maintain control and give his team the infrastructure and time they need.
How he got here
Rose previously owned several AT&T authorized retail stores, after cold-calling phone plans at 18 or 19. When AT&T changed commission structures, he looked elsewhere and was introduced to merchant cash advances in 2017. He joined Universal Merchant Funding that July and learned the business from CEO Michael Genovese. Genovese and a manager, Carl Clark, were killed in a double murder in January 2018. The perpetrator, a former employee, was convicted and is serving 30 years to life.
Rose then joined another Staten Island brokerage and, with a partner named Phil, built an operation from a basement that funded $150,000 in its first month. He learned every role, from hiring and training to signing up funders and closing deals. After a later upheaval left 30 employees looking to the two of them for answers, they launched Fidelity at the end of 2021, and the team came along.
Volume rose from $2 million to $4 million a month, then to $5 million to $7 million, and a second New Jersey office opened to shorten employee commutes to Staten Island. Smaller brokerages began asking to join under Fidelity's umbrella. Rose notes that new brokerages struggle to get signed with funders, which often require two years in business and cut off shops that do not produce volume.
We teach our guys to be rhinos: wake up every day, brush your horns, charge after what your heart desires, and don't take no for an answer.
Human contact stays central
Fidelity's brokers interview merchants themselves before submitting full paperwork to any funder. Rose says he wants a relationship, not a name on a page, and wants to know how the money will be used. He argues that even in the age of AI, owners want someone to talk to about a business they treat like family.
Source reporting: deBanked.
