# Twenty-Five Desks and One Man Asleep > Twenty-five desks. Three people. One of them asleep. By MCAFax · Published July 23, 2026 · Updated October 2, 2026 Section: Brokers & Harassment › Broker Tactics · Series: Confessions (https://mcafax.com/notebook/series/confessions) Canonical: https://mcafax.com/notebook/confessions-of-a-former-mca-broker-part-2-the-room-your-phone-calls-come-from Source: MCAFax, The Broker's Notebook (https://mcafax.com/notebook). MCAFax is not a lender or a law firm. --- Twenty-five desks. Three people. One of them asleep. That was the office I walked into on the first business day of 2023, my first morning in the merchant cash advance world. The whole floor had flown off to a company retreat. Nobody told me. I showed up in a pressed shirt to a room of empty chairs and a headset with my name taped to it. The sleeper was supposed to be my mentor. He had a fever you could feel from the doorway, and he came in every single day anyway, shut his office door, and slept until five. Once, around two, he opened the door, looked at me like I was a rumor, said "Pitch slow," and closed it again. That was my training. I had been fired from a marketing job that October. Five jobs in two years, if you're counting. My résumé was a crime scene. The beautiful thing about this industry is that nobody asked for one. You needed a pulse and a willingness to eat only when somebody said yes. Sit with that the next time your phone rings. The voice offering you sixty thousand dollars of "funding" may have qualified for the job by being alive. I learned the scripts from a group chat of strangers in other cities, answering me between their own calls. And it was warm. People rooted for each other. Veterans sent rookies their best rebuttals at midnight. All that warmth pointed inward. None of it pointed at you. In week one, alone, I closed a deal. Pitched it, got the signature, sent the merchant to his funding call. I didn't know rookies weren't allowed to do that. We were openers. Find the merchant, warm him up, hand him to a closer, split the check. Nobody stopped me because nobody was there. But also, nobody wanted it. The merchant asked for twenty-five thousand and qualified for ten, from a lender so high-risk the rate sheet looked like a dare. To a veteran, that file was worth less than the phone call it would take to work it. I worked it anyway. Talked him from twenty-five down to ten. Gathered every statement. Felt like a genius for six days. It died in final. The merchant was a fraud. The veterans' instincts had been right before they ever opened the file, and mine didn't exist yet. Here is what that room does to your afternoon. Every seat is commission only. The rookie calls you because he has nothing else. The veteran calls you because you look like a layup. The guy in between calls you because he is three weeks from missing rent. And the pitch they all share starts with "you're preapproved" for something you never applied for. On my last day before the floor came back, the sleeper finally woke up for good. He walked over, looked at my one dead deal on the board, and tapped the merchant's phone number with his finger. "Don't feel bad," he said. "Somebody else is calling him right now." --- ## Questions merchants actually ask ### Are merchant cash advance brokers required to be licensed? No, in most states merchant cash advance (MCA) brokers are completely unlicensed and unregulated. They do not need background checks, finance degrees, or prior financial experience to solicit business owners. Most operate strictly on commission without salary or formal qualifications. ### Why do MCA brokers call my business repeatedly every day? MCA brokers call incessantly because they are commission-only salespeople working off shared lead lists with zero salary safety net. Because commercial business phone lines are excluded from standard Do Not Call Registry protections, brokers use automated tools to contact the same numbers endlessly until someone signs. ### What does it mean when an MCA broker says I am pre-approved? When an MCA broker claims you are 'pre-approved', it is a standard sales hook with no legal or underwriting backing. No actual approval occurs until you submit months of business bank statements to funder underwriters. ### How do I make MCA brokers stop calling my phone? You can stop unwanted calls by sending a written stop request directly to the brokerage. Utilizing a service like MCAFax allows you to automatically deliver written stop requests via email directly from your own account to block harassment. *Confessions is a series of stories from inside the MCA world. Names and details are changed, and some are dramatized.* ## Questions readers ask **Are merchant cash advance brokers required to be licensed?** No, in most states merchant cash advance (MCA) brokers are completely unlicensed and unregulated. They do not need background checks, finance degrees, or prior financial experience to solicit business owners. Most operate strictly on commission without salary or formal qualifications. **Why do MCA brokers call my business repeatedly every day?** MCA brokers call incessantly because they are commission-only salespeople working off shared lead lists with zero salary safety net. Because commercial business phone lines are excluded from standard Do Not Call Registry protections, brokers use automated tools to contact the same numbers endlessly until someone signs. **What does it mean when an MCA broker says I am pre-approved?** When an MCA broker claims you are 'pre-approved', it is a standard sales hook with no legal or underwriting backing. No actual approval occurs until you submit months of business bank statements to funder underwriters. **How do I make MCA brokers stop calling my phone?** You can stop unwanted calls by sending a written stop request directly to the brokerage. Utilizing a service like MCAFax allows you to automatically deliver written stop requests via email directly from your own account to block harassment.