On this episode of Buy Build Exit, Charles and I sit down with Nimi Natan, President and CEO of Gulf Coast Small Business Lending, the national SBA arm of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust. Nimi has spent more than 30 years in finance, but his path is anything but ordinary. He started in commercial photography at Polaroid, grew up around small businesses, ran a burger operation himself, and built an SBA lending platform from scratch in Dallas before selling it to Gulf Coast in 2016.We get into the biggest rewrite of the small business lending rulebook in years. The new SOP 50 10 8 took effect June 1, 2025 and brought back stricter underwriting, a 10 percent equity injection on startups and change of ownership deals, lower collateral thresholds, higher minimum credit scores, and a major change to how seller notes count toward a buyer's equity. If you are buying or selling a business, these changes hit your deal directly.We also cover why defaults climbed, what Nimi means when he talks about the industry coming off a sugar high, and how the health of the 7(a) program actually affects real borrowers. Then we get into the story everyone in our world is talking about, the Silver Tsunami of retiring owners and the record wave of acquisition lending, plus the uncomfortable truth about how many of those businesses are actually salable.Nimi calls this his fifth rodeo across five decades of crises, and his core belief is that small business backed by the SBA comes out of every cycle stronger. This one is packed with real talk for anyone buying, selling, or funding a business right now.Some figures and rules discussed are time sensitive, so always confirm the current standard with a qualified lender or advisor before you act on a deal.dealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...IG: @buybuildexitFree Class — Buy Build Exit Academy: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...