Daily Payroll for Employees

Visit Brett at: https://www.everee.com/

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You have found Authentic Business

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Adventures, the business program that brings
you struggle stories and triumphant

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successes of business
owners across the land.

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Downloadable audio episodes can
be found on the podcast link

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found at drawincustomers.com. We are locally
underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,

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author, speaker, and helpful coach to
small business owners across the country.

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And today we’re welcoming/preparing

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to learn from Brett Barlow,
the CEO of Everee.

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And I’m excited because Everee, I guess

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Brett, you’ll tell us more,
but I was poking around your website,

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and it sounds very intriguing,
especially to a guy that runs a business,

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and I have to deal with
employees and employees

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turns out want to get paid.
Yeah.

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Strange.

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So let’s start with there.

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What is Everee? Okay, well, first of.

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All, James, thank you very much
for having me on your program.

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It’s a pleasure.

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Sounds like the topics that you’re

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covering are super helpful to business
owners from all different phases.

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So I’m really excited to be here.

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Everee was built on the premise of we want

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to pay workers the wages they’ve
earned as soon as they’ve earned it.

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So in many ways,

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the current payroll system is failing
Americans, and we see that because 68%

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of Americans are currently
living paycheck to paycheck.

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It’s a pretty large number.

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So if you think about seven out of ten
of your workers are distracted in some way

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for financial kind of stress or strain
that they might be having in their life,

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and what happens there is there are
industries that are popping up that we

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consider to be somewhat predatory, that
are taking advantage of these people.

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Like another stat just to throw out there

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12 million Americans
are using payday loans.

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12 million Americans?

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12 million Americans,
with an average APR of 390%.

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Yeah, it’s brutal.
Brutal.

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It’s it’s criminal, in my opinion.

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But then you also have credit cards

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that people lean on, and they have their
fees or bank overdraft fees and so forth.

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And so it’s just a really
challenging time.

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So one we see paying people the money

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that they’ve earned is a kind of call
back to when we were younger.

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I remember when I would
mow my grandfather’s lawn.

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At the end of the day, I’d go to the front
door, he’d give me a Coke and a $10 bill.

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All right, you got paid well by your Grandpa.
I did my work.

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I did when I was asked,
and I was compensated for that.

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All right.

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The way that we brought
that into the market is we build a payroll

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platform, which in itself,
payroll is I don’t think I’ve ever heard

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somebody say, and I can’t
wait to run payroll.

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It’s really exciting.

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No. What we do differently is we build

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an application that is
Uber ask for payroll, I guess you’d say.

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It’s mobile, friendly.

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You can process payments within a minute.

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It’s quite simple,

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but it has all the functionality time
clock, scheduling, taxes, garnishments,

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those types of things that you would
expect from a payroll platform.

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In addition to that,

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what we are able to do, or where we
started was through same day ACH.

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The manager receives a text message,
they slide, they approve it,

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and that person is paid by 03:00 p.m. The
same day that they work.

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Or if it’s submitted in the morning
by two or 03:00 p.m, in the afternoon,

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so same day.

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So when we founded this four years ago,
that was really fast. Incredibly fast for anything,

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still fast.
Yeah.

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And that was becoming kind of
not the expectation,

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but people were tuning into you,
why don’t I have access to these earnings

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when I’m giving really
a labor free loan to these companies

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for two weeks and they’re just
kind of holding on to my money?

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Well, now, with Zelle, Venmo, Stripe,

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all these things,
the new kind of age workers,

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it’s more of an expectation
that they’ll be paid faster.

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So some people have moved to weekly.

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We have just released
and released Instant Pay.

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So what we’re able to do,

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in addition to our platform, is we
also integrate with other platforms.

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So vertical specific platforms that are

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say, providing services for say,
landscaping or lawn cutting or

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food delivery or last mile
delivery, things like that.

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Well, we’re able to connect with them
or embed into their application.

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So once a worker completes their task,
their delivery, their

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requested job, we’re able to pay them
within 30 minutes of that job being done.

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So, it’s instant. Sometimes it’s in honestly,
within less than five minutes.

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So it’s very fast.

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We accomplished that through we have

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a card program where we can put the money
on the card in your pocket right now

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that you have, which allows us
to pay people 365 days a year.

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Wow.
Weekends, holidays, instant pay.

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It’s vertically integrated or standalone.

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And I guess one of our secret sauce is
we’re able so people, when they hear this,

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it sounds hard, sounds
really hard to them.

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How am I going to handle

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that with my accounting, my general ledger
books, processing payroll every day?

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Well, we have a credit facility,
and for our customers that are approved

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for that, we make the payments for them
on our credit, and then they just settle

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up with us at the end of their
regular payroll cycle.

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So actually nothing changes
for the company at all.

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We make the payment, the approved payments

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for them pay their employees
instantly and at a time.

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Post pandemic that we’re in recruiting
and retaining is,

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as you and I were chatting about earlier,
is a real challenge for companies.

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You’re not going into an office and you
have things like gym memberships or free

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lunches or some of the things
to entice workers to come in.

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There’s something now tangible

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that an employer is able to offer to their
workers that we will pay you instantly.

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There’s a dirty little secret actually out

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there in payroll where large,
traditional payroll companies.

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So if your payroll is due on the 15th
of a month, you typically have to submit

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your payroll on the 12th, something
like that, a couple of days early.

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Well, companies like ADP have interest
income, so they’re making hundreds

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of millions of dollars by holding
on to people’s payroll funds.

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So they’re not really
incentivized to move quickly.

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Their businesses are built around it.

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It’s five to 7% of ADP’s revenue.

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Wow, I messed up.

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I forgot about Martin Luther King Day
being a bank holiday.

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Right.
So I submitted payroll.

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It was due on the 15th.

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15th was a Sunday or something like that.

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So the crew should have been actually

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received their pay on Friday, but they
didn’t end up receiving it until Tuesday.

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Tuesday, but the money was out of my
account on Wednesday like the previous.

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That’s exactly what we’re talking, five,
six days for the bank or payroll company

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to just camp on the money with no,
like, there’s nothing that I can’t get.

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There’s no reason for them to innovate
because they’re making that money.

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And it’s kind of been kind of the four or
five standard companies that have done it.

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And now there are a lot of other companies

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like Everee that are focused on this
kind of new age of payroll and payment.

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So something that’s unique to us is we’re
able to handle 1099 and w two workers,

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and we’re really focused
on contingent workforces.

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So gig economy, businesses, delivery, door
to door type sales, hourly workforces.

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Those are kind of,
I would say more vulnerable to pay

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discrepancies or not quite making it to a
pay cycle, to the end of the pay cycle.

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And they’re coming to their
employers for short term loans.

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They’re saying, can you front me some
money so I can get through the paycheck?

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Well, now you don’t have to do that.

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They can come into our app and just press

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cash out, and they get paid the money
that they’re earned when they want it.

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Interesting.
Yeah.

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So I want to ask you,

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you raised a ton of questions because,
one that sounds very interesting,

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especially as an employee,
but I wonder just the technology

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rules about ACH, because ACH
in my world takes a few days.

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It’s slow, relatively speaking.

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It’s not like the money is out of our

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account, but it’s not yet
reached the other counts.

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And I always think of those movies where
they’re like, give me all your money.

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Transfer $40 million at this moment.

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And they’re like, It’s in your
account, in your account.

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And I’m like, I don’t think
that’s how banks work.

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Yeah.

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Well, something that really facilitated
the launch of Everee was 2018.

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Same day ACH was brought to the table
in an affordable and affordable manner.

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So we’re able to process same day ACH,

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where ACH is typically were at least
24 hours, maybe 48 hours in the past.

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If you approve your payroll
by 11:00 a.m. In the morning.

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We can have money in your account
by 03:00 p.m. That afternoon.

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So it’s built on same day ACH.

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But what we’ve done is we’ve
built other avenues to pay fast.

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So same day ACH goes to banks.
Right.

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The banking rails or banking network,
we also are able to push to a card

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which is outside of that,
it’s a completely different rail

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which allows us to pay on, say,
Martin Luther King Day or say you’re

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having to remove snow from a
business on Christmas Eve.

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We could pay you Christmas Eve
for the work that you’ve done,

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which takes a little bit of a sting out
of having to work Christmas Eve if.

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You’Re paid
for myself as well as our audience,

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because I don’t necessarily know
that people, broadly speaking,

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understand all of the eccentricities
about how moving money actually works.

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Because I always joke it’s a small world

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until you have to ship something and it’s
a small world until you pay someone.

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Because if it’s not green cash,
just tangible cash in front of someone.

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Yeah, to me,
I guess to get a little bit of a side

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tangent, I had
a vendor that I had out of Europe,

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England somewhere, and there
instant pay is just a thing.

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And I was like how this girl,

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she was asking for pay right away,
like right away.

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And I kept looking like I don’t
even know how how to do that.

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Because you look at PayPal or Venmo
and stuff like this to cross the ocean,

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apparently there’s a delay,
all this kind of stuff.

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So it’s interesting.
So can you talk with us about how ACH

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typically worked, how same day ACH works,
and then how the logistics of how putting

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the money on the card
bypasses a lot of that?

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Yeah, our banking system in the
United States is federally monitored.

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And so there are banking rails
where you have to be FDIC approved.

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They’re heavily regulated.

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There’s a lot of,
I guess, paperwork or some bureaucracy

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that goes into that,
but it’s highly regulated and even more so

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post 911 where there’s just a lot
of tracking things to go on.

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So there’s the banking rails where
you’re using the federal system.

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And nothing that happens in the federal

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system is usually
just universally yeah, universally.

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So card programs like Visa or Mastercard,
they’re built outside of banks or they

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have their own kind of banking ability
within their companies.

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And so they have their own processing
routes that are outside of the federal.

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They’re still accountable to the laws
and regulations and things like that.

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But they built their own payment
rails that kind of go around that.

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So we’ve just kind of diversified

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how we distribute money to make it the
most and most convenient for the worker.

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All right, so as an employer,
is the money.

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Let’s just say the employee has
a card and the employee worked a day.

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So we got to pay him $100 or whatever.

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Is that money coming directly out of my
account to their card or my account?

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To your account to their card, yeah.

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So we can do it a couple
of different ways.

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We can do what’s called kind of a round
trip where we’re at the same time.

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Like, when you’re selling stock,
you can do a cashless transaction.

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You buy and sell at the same time.

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We can take your money out of a given

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account and send it right to them
through the card or through the ACH.

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Or if you only want us to withdraw

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from your accounts once or twice a month,
we make those payments for you,

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and then we just settle up at your
regular interval, your regular pay cycle.

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All right.
Because I can imagine reconciling.

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I don’t know of any employer or
entrepreneur that’s like, you know what?

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I wish I had more stuff to reconcile.
Right.

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Longer bank statement every month.

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Yeah.

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Every time we make a payment,
we take taxes out.

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We remit what needs to, so you don’t
have to worry about any of that.

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We take care of all those things.
W.

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Two S at the end or.

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1099 or you’re doing all that.
Okay.

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Yeah.

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Let’s just say an employee has benefits

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of some kind PTO, health insurance,
whatever, 401K, all that jazz.

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How deep do you guys get into that?

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Yeah, so we don’t sell 401,

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KS or benefits, but we have middleware
integrations with the largest benefits

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providers, and so you can make a change
in your benefits, and it will be reflected

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in our platform as we make the integration
integration QuickBooks online.

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There’s a company called

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Employee Navigator that connects to,
I think, 80% of benefits providers.

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We just use those integrations.

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But where our mission is fast pay,

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meeting the employee where they are,
the worker where they are,

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and by whatever means necessary, getting
them the funds as fast as possible.

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All right.
Interesting.

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I want to play devil’s advocate
a little bit, if you don’t mind.

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Sure.
As an employer, just like just about every

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employer, even more so in the past few
years,

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ghosting has become a thing where
employees just decide,

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today is not a good day to go to work, and
tomorrow doesn’t look that hot either.

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I’m not really interested
in telling my employer at all.

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Come in the morning and leave the lunch.

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Yeah.

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I didn’t even know that was a thing
until I started hiring people,

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and then it turns out it’s
definitely a thing anyways.

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Is there any measurable statistic that you

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guys have that shows whether something
like this makes that more common or so.

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What we found is that retention rates

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for employers increased by 30%
when they’re paying faster.

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90% of US.

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Businesses say it’s very
difficult to hire people.

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83% of workers believe they should
have access to their funds faster.

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So we’re seeing that as a recruiting

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and a retention tool
for all types of businesses.

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I would say that our product isn’t really

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designed for higher salaried people
or higher compensated people.

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But if you’re an hourly worker
and a contingent workforce and you are

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potentially living paycheck to paycheck,
it’s super meaningful job.

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You might quit to go to another
job for one dollars more an hour.

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Well, if you’re being paid every day,

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that dollar maybe doesn’t become so
enticing and you stay where you are.

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So a great retention tool.

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All right.

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Yeah, I lost employee.

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I wouldn’t consider it a loss.

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An employee left over a quarter an hour.

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But again, the cost of you transitioning

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is probably you won’t make that up
for a year and a half, but whatever.

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Continuing on with the devil’s
advocate thing, sure.

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A lot of people that I imagine are

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essentially your target market
from an employee standpoint.

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I don’t mean to sound judgmental or
anything, but if you’re not making a lot

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of money, it’s probably
tougher to be good with money.

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It’s probably pretty easy for people
with a lot of money to say that they’re

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good at money because they
have enough, quote unquote.

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Right.
So if you’re not that great at money

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and you get it every day,
and at the end of the month,

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you got to pay rent or buy groceries or
something like that,

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then you’ve been getting your money and
spending your money as you bring it in.

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And it goes and you’re like, oh, crap.
I got to pay rent.

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Maybe it’s doing a disservice
in that instance.

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Yeah.

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So I would say that 10% of all workers
are going to mismanage their money.

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And nothing that I do or you do or

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a relative or financial
consultant is going to help.

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They’re going to spend beyond their means,

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maybe rely on credit cards or, you know,
there’s just going to be some problems.

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The other 90%, though,
I think companies have had this I would

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call it erroneous opinion that they’re
the savings accounts for employees.

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They’re holding on to their
money for employees.

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Interesting.
Okay.

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Or they’re good.

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And I would say that’s not really giving
credit to the worker or the employee.

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Are people going to mismanage money?

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Yes, sometimes.

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But also when you have access to money

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faster, it gives a greater value
to the dollars that you’ve earned.

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So for example, if you’re looking to buy
a television set and you’re an hourly

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worker may be working part time,
and that television set is $500.

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When you go into your bank account
and you’re being paid every day,

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that television set equates to five
days of work as an example.

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So it causes additional thought of,
okay, is it really worth it?

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Because I worked hard those five days.

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Is it really worth it?

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Interesting.

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What I found is it puts a greater value

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to the money and the way that they
save it, spend it, use it.

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So there’s certainly a risk of it.

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There are some people, I agree with you,
that just for all the efforts

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in the world, they just don’t
manage their money well.

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Right.
But for the majority,

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I think it provides a greater value
to the money for the hours they worked

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and the time they put in and puts
a value to those dollars.

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Interesting.
All right.

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The other thing that I wonder is,
from an employer standpoint,

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I’m doing payroll or having payroll
taken care of twice a month.

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And I guess I never even thought about
doing it day to day,

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because that’s more paperwork, and I hate
doing payroll when I have to do payroll.

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So I can only imagine I got to collect all

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the hours at the end of the day,
send them out.

[00:20:03]
That means that I or my bookkeeper is

[00:20:06]
spending more time, because that’s
every day instead of twice a month.

[00:20:10]
Right.

[00:20:11]
Well, in our platform,
we have a built in time clock.

[00:20:15]
Okay.

[00:20:15]
And we also have a scheduling app within
our platform so we can get a view

[00:20:20]
into what hours are scheduled to work
and what hours have been worked.

[00:20:25]
So with the time clock,

[00:20:26]
when they punched in,
if they want to collect their dollars,

[00:20:30]
we’re easily able to say, okay, well,
you’re requesting 40 hours of payment.

[00:20:36]
You’ve only worked 35.

[00:20:38]
We send a text message to you and say,
hey, we could we could pay for 35 hours,

[00:20:43]
but you don’t have 40 hours available,
and we take care of all of that.

[00:20:47]
All right?

[00:20:51]
The bane of the existence of a payroll

[00:20:54]
administrator is collecting hours,
tracking people down.

[00:20:59]
Totally agree.
Right.

[00:21:01]
Especially when the room puts the onus
on the worker to be accurate with their

[00:21:06]
time punches so that they have
access to those funds faster.

[00:21:10]
All right.

[00:21:11]
It really shouldn’t be creating any
additional work for the administrator.

[00:21:15]
We built it to minimize all of that.

[00:21:19]
We pay our employees whenever they want
to be paid, but for those that are paid

[00:21:24]
daily, our payroll person,
he’s told me 90 seconds to run.

[00:21:31]
So just so I understand,

[00:21:33]
is this something where the employee says,
hey, I want to cash out?

[00:21:37]
So it could be daily, weekly,
or just whatever the wind blows in their

[00:21:42]
direction, or is it
automatic daily or weekly?

[00:21:44]
So we have in the onboarding
process this is another thing.

[00:21:48]
We take the onboarding away from the HR
manager and put it to the worker.

[00:21:52]
So we have a really slick
onboarding process.

[00:21:55]
And in that onboarding process,
the administrator has said,

[00:21:59]
this is what I want to offer
to my employees daily, weekly, bi weekly,

[00:22:04]
sewing, monthly, pay your way is something
that we call just kind of a cash out.

[00:22:09]
So whatever options are made available

[00:22:12]
by the company, the employee can
choose those in their onboarding.

[00:22:16]
So if they want to be paid daily,
we just send a text message

[00:22:20]
to the administrator at the end of the day
that says, these are the hours.

[00:22:24]
And generally, you know what your normal
payroll is within a certain delta.

[00:22:30]
So if it’s within that range,

[00:22:32]
you just swipe the left and you
can pay them pretty straight.

[00:22:37]
It’s not automatic because
someone has to approve it.

[00:22:42]
We’re sending dollars,
so somebody has to approve it.

[00:22:46]
But the approving process is quite simple.

[00:22:49]
It’s just based, and you can do it
from your phone, in your car, wherever.

[00:22:53]
Interesting.
Tell me about PTO.

[00:22:56]
Like, an employee takes a day off,

[00:22:57]
but they still want to get paid for
that day, essentially accrues the PTO.

[00:23:02]
So we take care of the PTO.

[00:23:04]
We have PTO policies
built into our product.

[00:23:09]
So if they have PTO that’s available
to them, we’ll keep track of that,

[00:23:13]
and we’ll know that those hours are
available for them to pay cash out on.

[00:23:17]
Interesting.
All right.

[00:23:19]
Sounds like we thought and it’s hard,

[00:23:22]
so we did the hard stuff first
by building a payroll platform.

[00:23:26]
Right.
But having that has allowed us to move

[00:23:29]
into these contingent workforces where
there’s maybe 1020, 30 W,

[00:23:34]
two employees that are working
in a business and maybe 10,000,

[00:23:39]
1099 that are doing kind of gig work,
part time work or something like that.

[00:23:44]
And we’re uniquely positioned where
we can serve both of those groups.

[00:23:49]
Interesting.
Yeah.

[00:23:50]
It’s funny because I’m
in the process of hiring.

[00:23:53]
I’ve looked at a lot, like,
hundreds of resumes,

[00:23:56]
and it’s interesting because you look
at a lot of them and you think,

[00:23:59]
maybe these guys are treating their jobs
like gigs instead of careers or even

[00:24:05]
something that you want
to stay more than a weekend.

[00:24:07]
Yeah.

[00:24:08]
And this has come, I think,
out of the Pandemic.

[00:24:11]
A lot of people have these gig jobs.

[00:24:14]
Some of them have three or four that they

[00:24:16]
work they work for Uber, Lyft DoorDash,
and they love the flexibility.

[00:24:21]
This goes into the payments.

[00:24:23]
There’s a flexibility or a desired outcome
for time and access to things that is kind

[00:24:29]
of sped up over the last couple of years
with expectations,

[00:24:34]
and I think we fit like a glove
to where the market is going with that.

[00:24:38]
Yeah.
When did you guys first launch?

[00:24:41]
We launched in April of 2018.

[00:24:45]
Okay.

[00:24:47]
It’s been around a little while, and.

[00:24:48]
Then I came around in 2019 or
February 2020.

[00:24:56]
All right.

[00:24:58]
Perfect time, ready or not.

[00:24:59]
Perfect timing to come in.
Started.

[00:25:02]
So I was on the board of directors

[00:25:04]
and then was asked by my partner,
Ron Ross, to join a CEO.

[00:25:09]
He’s the president.

[00:25:10]
I can tell you a little
bit about our history.

[00:25:12]
It’s kind of interesting, but it was six
weeks before the Pandemic really hit.

[00:25:17]
So that was a crash course in leadership
and management because we were

[00:25:22]
an in office company,
and now we’re fully remote.

[00:25:26]
Or I would say we’re flexible.

[00:25:28]
We have an office, but it’s flexible work.

[00:25:34]
The majority of your employees,

[00:25:36]
software and developers, HR people,
the majority of product and engineering.

[00:25:42]
We have some operations

[00:25:44]
a little bit smaller in sales
and marketing, but given that we want

[00:25:48]
to be a product led organization,
we’ve really heavily invested in our

[00:25:52]
product and engineering
to stay ahead of the curve.

[00:25:56]
Got some great people there.
All right.

[00:25:59]
You, I believe, had to go through or I

[00:26:01]
guess every year to go through funding,
or chose to go through funding.

[00:26:05]
Is that right?
Yeah.

[00:26:07]
Funding is an adventure.

[00:26:11]
It’s not fun.

[00:26:13]
It’s really hard.

[00:26:15]
It can be very rewarding
once it comes through.

[00:26:19]
And I don’t think people understand

[00:26:20]
the amount of work that goes
into raising money.

[00:26:24]
It becomes a CEO’s primary job
when you’re in that phase.

[00:26:28]
But it takes people from all finance,
product and engineering, like

[00:26:34]
our operations, to really
put something together.

[00:26:37]
We raised a seed round of four
and a half million dollars in 2019.

[00:26:43]
Wow.
Created a round in 2020 in April.

[00:26:48]
So three months after I
arrived, $10 million.

[00:26:52]
Wow.

[00:26:53]
And then last year,
we signed an exclusive partnership deal

[00:26:57]
where we received $45 million in funding
that was non dilutive because it was

[00:27:03]
a partnership and not
venture or private equity.

[00:27:08]
So the gap in between those,

[00:27:13]
I can tell you when your sales aren’t
growing quite the way you’d like them to,

[00:27:17]
or feel like you need them to, and your
cash deposits, your runway is decreasing.

[00:27:23]
That’s an incredibly stressful moment
for people in the business,

[00:27:27]
but I would say specifically for the CEO,
because families lives are impacted,

[00:27:33]
and you see these layoffs
that are happening around it.

[00:27:36]
And fortunately, we’ve avoided all of
those reduction in force, knock on wood.

[00:27:43]
And we’re on a great trajectory right now.

[00:27:46]
But raising is important.

[00:27:49]
One thing is I’ve been involved.

[00:27:52]
I came up through marketing,
so I’ve been in the C suite for 15 years,

[00:27:59]
been around fundraising,
reported to boards in small increments,

[00:28:03]
but I’ve never been kind of the guy
the guy that they called.

[00:28:08]
Right.

[00:28:08]
And so that’s been a thing like,
how do I manage a board of directors?

[00:28:12]
And one of the challenges in fundraising
is making sure you get the right types

[00:28:17]
of investors, because there are
dollars out there that you can go get.

[00:28:24]
But I think there’s kind
of smart money and dumb money.

[00:28:27]
You can get money, but are you getting it
from someone who doesn’t really believe

[00:28:31]
in what you’re doing, or
they’re challenging to work with or any

[00:28:36]
number of things that could go
wrong in those relationships?

[00:28:40]
Because you’re basically
getting married, right?

[00:28:44]
Yeah.
It’s a relationship.

[00:28:45]
You don’t divorce an investor.

[00:28:48]
You don’t do that.

[00:28:50]
Not easily.

[00:28:51]
So that’s another kind of checking

[00:28:54]
referrals and understanding how they work
with other people

[00:28:59]
and reputation and just meeting
with them and not rushing to decisions.

[00:29:04]
But I think the most important thing

[00:29:06]
for fundraising
is making sure that your business is

[00:29:10]
healthy, and you have the metrics,
the KPIs, the discipline within your

[00:29:16]
business that makes it kind
of a no brainer for them.

[00:29:20]
Right.
So if you’re going in and you have

[00:29:24]
some pretty healthy growth,
say three digit growth, that’s appealing.

[00:29:28]
But your margins are really bad.

[00:29:33]
There’s a mismatch there.
It doesn’t work.

[00:29:35]
Right.

[00:29:36]
So you need to have healthy margins,
healthy retention rates, healthy growth.

[00:29:40]
And if you can hit those main points,

[00:29:44]
most people, you can get money and you
can have your choice of people.

[00:29:50]
If you end up in a place where you maybe
don’t have the discipline in your

[00:29:53]
business,
your options get limited in who is willing

[00:29:58]
to give you money, and therefore,
you might end up with a partner who

[00:30:03]
honestly could make your
life kind of miserable.

[00:30:06]
All right, tell me the 45 million.

[00:30:10]
That’s a huge nut.

[00:30:12]
Somebody or a few people think that things
are going well or will go well.

[00:30:16]
Yeah.
So one of the main things that verticals

[00:30:20]
that we were trying
to penetrate were restaurants.

[00:30:23]
It’s a huge total addressable
market tips, hourly wages.

[00:30:28]
And we’re finding it really challenging
to penetrate that market because they have

[00:30:33]
point of sale solutions
that everything is connected with.

[00:30:36]
Their back end accounting, inventory,
job costing management, all those things.

[00:30:42]
And they either had their own payroll or

[00:30:45]
they were connected with toast or
some of these others were big.

[00:30:49]
So we were having a hard
time penetrating that.

[00:30:52]
We ended up speaking with
a point of sale group that does I think

[00:30:59]
they have something like
40,000 restaurants.

[00:31:01]
And they came to us thinking
that they might acquire us.

[00:31:05]
And then that conversation turned

[00:31:07]
to a partnership because I felt like we
had too much runway,

[00:31:11]
and I didn’t feel like it was
an appropriate time for us to sell.

[00:31:16]
And they were trying to extend their
platform or their product offering.

[00:31:23]
And payroll was a natural fit.

[00:31:25]
And they’ve gone to a lot
of different people.

[00:31:27]
We just happened to be at the
right size of our business.

[00:31:30]
Like, if they went to an ADP, ADP is huge.

[00:31:34]
They’re not going to kind
of work with them like that.

[00:31:36]
So we actually put our teams together.

[00:31:38]
We sold them a copy of our code,
and it’s fully integrated and running.

[00:31:43]
And we were able to do that again
for that 45 million cash and stock.

[00:31:48]
Wow.
Yeah.

[00:31:51]
I’ll tell you, that was a good day,
knowing that you have runway,

[00:31:57]
people are safe in their jobs,
but also it gave us the opportunity as

[00:32:00]
a small business to invest in
in places that we’ve been holding off on.

[00:32:06]
So we’ve seen some of that growth
and impact because of that.

[00:32:12]
It was a good day.

[00:32:14]
All right,

[00:32:18]
did you say they came
to you or you went to them.

[00:32:20]
Or you were mutually introduced by a VC
firm that we had both worked with,

[00:32:26]
so there was a mutual introduction, and we
just kind of started kicking the tires.

[00:32:31]
We’re in the same kind of arena,

[00:32:34]
developing a friendship relationship,
and then conversations just.

[00:32:38]
Kind of progress from there,

[00:32:40]
start to finish it with about three months
relatively fast.

[00:32:45]
Yeah.
And they’re great people.

[00:32:48]
I’m not going to mention who they are,
but they’re really good people and they’re

[00:32:52]
doing great with the product,
and we’re proud to be working with them.

[00:32:55]
Nice.
So as you or your crew makes updates,

[00:33:00]
does that get shared, I imagine
with them as well, it gets shared.

[00:33:03]
And will they have the opportunity to take

[00:33:05]
those updates or not if
they don’t want them?

[00:33:07]
But they also now have the ability

[00:33:09]
to build custom things into our
code just for restaurants.

[00:33:15]
Oh, wow.

[00:33:16]
So they can build on it.

[00:33:17]
We can build on it,
and we can share there.

[00:33:20]
But yeah, they’re definitely
focused on restaurants.

[00:33:23]
But what that deal did

[00:33:26]
was it opened my eyes to the fact we’ve
been selling one to one kind of small

[00:33:31]
businesses, dry cleaners,
construction sites.

[00:33:34]
We rip and replace.

[00:33:36]
We rip and replace from
their existing payroll.

[00:33:39]
That deal really opened my mind to, hey,

[00:33:42]
wait a minute, there’s a vertical
SAS play here with our product.

[00:33:47]
We weren’t built for it at the time,

[00:33:49]
but it was kind of a forcing function
to think we could have a one to many go

[00:33:55]
to market approach where we’re selling
to one account, but they might have

[00:33:59]
hundreds of businesses
that they’re selling to.

[00:34:02]
So I mentioned retention and acquisition
and retention of employees is a benefit.

[00:34:08]
There’s also an addition of revenue

[00:34:11]
streams for businesses that want to either
white label or embed our product

[00:34:15]
into their existing
because it’s hard to build.

[00:34:19]
It’s hard to build product, but it’s
really hard to build payroll products.

[00:34:23]
There’s so many complexities with taxes

[00:34:25]
and just regulations
and compliance and policies.

[00:34:28]
So if they can essentially buy
into that by embedding with us or helping

[00:34:34]
us embedded them,
we’re seeing a lot of demand there.

[00:34:38]
Really excited about
what the future holds.

[00:34:40]
Nice.

[00:34:41]
Tell me about some of the challenges
that you’ve had since you got on board.

[00:34:46]
Let me back up a step.

[00:34:47]
When you were on the board
before you were CEO, right?

[00:34:50]
That’s correct.
Okay, so you knew, I imagine,

[00:34:53]
this challenges before you
get in the fancy chair.

[00:34:56]
Sure.
At the big table.

[00:34:57]
It’s not as fancy when you’re sitting
in the chair, I’ll tell you that.

[00:35:01]
It might seem fancy from the outside,

[00:35:03]
but it’s not as fancy
when you’re in the chair.

[00:35:06]
No, I get it.

[00:35:07]
What have been some of the challenges just
from start, and I guess as long as you’ve

[00:35:11]
been in there, have you seen that you
guys have had to conquer or tolerate?

[00:35:15]
Well, when I first talked to the position,

[00:35:18]
this is my first time being a CEO,
I had it in my mind that if I wanted to do

[00:35:24]
something or I wanted to take the company
in a direction, we would do that.

[00:35:28]
Because I’m the CEO.
Yeah.

[00:35:30]
I’m the boss.
I’m the boss.

[00:35:32]
Right.

[00:35:33]
And it’s just not that way.

[00:35:35]
If you want to lead a healthy executive

[00:35:37]
team and organization, there’s
collaboration that takes place.

[00:35:40]
You have to be open and listen to other
ideas, be able to admit when you’re wrong.

[00:35:46]
And there’s been a learning process

[00:35:49]
of that of I don’t have
to have all the answers.

[00:35:52]
I don’t have to be
the expert at all things.

[00:35:54]
I have really great people around me

[00:35:56]
that are subject matter experts
and finance and product and go to market

[00:36:01]
and so relinquishing some
of that responsibility to them.

[00:36:05]
And just trusting was
a real learning for me.

[00:36:09]
And the benefits are great.

[00:36:12]
My kind of history has been,

[00:36:16]
if I need something done, I just
do it because I feel comfortable with me

[00:36:21]
doing it, and I just
can’t do that anymore.

[00:36:24]
All right.

[00:36:25]
Trusting and team something that I’ve
learned

[00:36:29]
really just not being afraid to ask
questions and admit when you’re wrong or

[00:36:34]
you don’t know something that I’ve had
to do and had great results from it.

[00:36:41]
I’ve been humbled.

[00:36:45]
I have definitely been humbled.

[00:36:47]
I’ve had some really hard times.

[00:36:50]
Raising money is challenging.

[00:36:52]
Maybe some people in the company
have personal issues.

[00:36:56]
It all becomes your issues
in some fashion.

[00:37:02]
And that’s why I feel accountability

[00:37:05]
to that mental and emotional
health of our employees.

[00:37:08]
And when they’re all virtual or remote,
that can be somewhat challenging.

[00:37:14]
I’ve found a group of mentors.
Oh, nice.

[00:37:17]
Okay.

[00:37:20]
They don’t even have to be expert

[00:37:22]
in the sense of doing what I’ve
been doing for 20 or 30 years.

[00:37:26]
I just need someone who maybe crossed

[00:37:28]
the bridge that I’m trying
to cross two or three months ago.

[00:37:32]
They’re just a little bit ahead of me.

[00:37:34]
There’s other people that have far greater
understanding or expertise they can share.

[00:37:39]
But a mentor doesn’t have to be
someone who’s 20 years older than you.

[00:37:43]
It could just be someone who’s just a
little bit further on the path than you.

[00:37:47]
And I found that really helpful.

[00:37:49]
They have an outsider’s view looking in.

[00:37:52]
Maybe they’re not so
close to the challenges.

[00:37:54]
So finding mentors is something that’s
been really helpful to me as well.

[00:38:00]
All right, so finding them,
how did you find them?

[00:38:04]
Did you figure out who or roughly what

[00:38:07]
type of industry you want to target
and then just call people up and say, hey,

[00:38:11]
let me take you out to lunch,
kind of thing?

[00:38:13]
Or how did that work?

[00:38:14]
Well, I was kind of prospective, right?

[00:38:17]
I would go to lunch with someone who was

[00:38:19]
helping me out, and I would leave
the lunch with another name.

[00:38:22]
All right, who else should I speak to?

[00:38:24]
Because I’m kind of going through these

[00:38:25]
things and then that person begets
another person begets another person.

[00:38:30]
I’ve got a great board of directors who

[00:38:34]
some are independent,
some are with VC firms that have been

[00:38:37]
really great colleagues
and advisors to me.

[00:38:41]
And they’ve recommended
people to me as well.

[00:38:44]
And there’s also just years and years

[00:38:46]
of mistakes that I’ve made
in acknowledging those and trying to help

[00:38:52]
the team avoid them or asking these
mentors how did they avoid them.

[00:38:58]
So I can hopefully skip over
those landmines moving forward.

[00:39:05]
But it’s been very helpful.
Yeah.

[00:39:07]
Humbling in the sense of just not.

[00:39:14]
There are situations where questions come

[00:39:16]
up where we’re trying to find product
market fit and there’s two really

[00:39:22]
great options and getting a team around us
to figure out a decision and how to make

[00:39:31]
that and be the person that finally makes,
okay, this is the decision that we’re

[00:39:35]
going to I’ve chosen
incorrectly sometimes.

[00:39:40]
Yeah, we all do.

[00:39:42]
And that’s humbling that loses us months
or dollars or whatever that may be.

[00:39:49]
And so I found great empathy in this role
for the CEOs I’ve worked with in the past.

[00:39:58]
Oh sure, okay.

[00:40:00]
I understand where you find yourself being

[00:40:02]
maybe critical of your boss at different
times and then you start wearing their

[00:40:05]
shoes and you’re like, okay,
yeah, I didn’t have all the answers back

[00:40:09]
then and they were doing
the best that they could.

[00:40:11]
So I’d say that’s something major

[00:40:13]
that I’ve learned is maybe don’t
judge a book until you’re here.

[00:40:20]
Totally fair.

[00:40:22]
Tell me when you come to the board.

[00:40:26]
Well, first let’s start with the board.

[00:40:28]
How do you put together and figure out

[00:40:29]
who you want on your board and how much
of a choice do you get versus the other.

[00:40:34]
I suppose VCs just get a chair.

[00:40:36]
That’s part of what they’re buying.

[00:40:37]
Yeah, the VCs typically get at least one

[00:40:40]
chair and then an advisor
seat or an observer seat.

[00:40:44]
So that happens.

[00:40:45]
I try to keep odd numbers of boards.

[00:40:49]
There are seven people
on our board right now.

[00:40:52]
Oh, so you don’t come into standstill?

[00:40:54]
Yeah,
I would say

[00:40:59]
me and my partner on the board,
we have three kind of institutional

[00:41:03]
investors and we have one
independent investor.

[00:41:07]
And so I try to find people that are
maybe experts or have scaled business

[00:41:14]
in areas that I feel like
we need a lot of help.

[00:41:18]
So I look for product people,

[00:41:20]
I look for go to market and salespeople
finance people in different times.

[00:41:27]
So if there’s parts of the business

[00:41:30]
that need assistance or guidance,
I look for people that have that expertise

[00:41:35]
that can be on the board or in an area
where I’m weak or I’m not maybe as strong.

[00:41:43]
Someone that can support me and
help provide that guidance.

[00:41:48]
Board members will often refer or talk
about other people that you can go after.

[00:41:56]
But it’s a lot of networking and just
trying the right person on there.

[00:42:01]
But you need to have some
independent members coupled

[00:42:05]
with the institutionals because
they don’t really have an agenda.

[00:42:09]
The institution is as good as they are,

[00:42:12]
they want to return and they’re
business people as well.

[00:42:15]
So I think the independent having
the independence value

[00:42:20]
I would call the independent
kind of subject matter experts.

[00:42:23]
And the institutions are more like

[00:42:25]
the market trends,
raising money and helping through that.

[00:42:33]
And the independents are more

[00:42:35]
of the subject matter experts
that they kind of balance out.

[00:42:38]
All right, interesting.

[00:42:41]
Tell me about working with employees,

[00:42:43]
specifically programmers
and remote programmers.

[00:42:49]
To me, programming I know enough to be
dangerous, probably not even that much.

[00:42:54]
Nothing near what I would
consider to be professional.

[00:42:57]
Sure.
And when I see or try to hire a programmer

[00:43:02]
like, hey, I want this built,
this little app built, whatever,

[00:43:05]
I have no idea, no practical
idea how long that should take.

[00:43:10]
Were you just in my Exec
meeting yesterday?

[00:43:13]
I was not just bug on the wall, right?

[00:43:16]
Are you just there?

[00:43:17]
Yeah.

[00:43:18]
There’s a couple of ways that you
can look at programming.

[00:43:21]
One, there’s a traditional kind
of waterfall where you’re spending a month

[00:43:27]
or two months planning to the last
detail what a product is going to be.

[00:43:33]
And then you can say, in week two,

[00:43:35]
we’re going to have this week three,
we’re going to do this.

[00:43:37]
In week four, we’re going to do this.

[00:43:39]
Well, oftentimes what you find is when you
get to week eight, when you’re delivering

[00:43:43]
the product, the marketing market has
changed or the needs of the business have

[00:43:46]
changed and you built the wrong thing,
or it’s not quite what it needs to be.

[00:43:51]
So we work on an agile,

[00:43:54]
more kind of agile environment and
pick our priorities by the business.

[00:43:59]
And I try to lock it down by quarter

[00:44:01]
with our product and engineering teams
where they’re delivering things on.

[00:44:05]
We reevaluate on a quarterly basis,

[00:44:08]
but we’re able to make kind of with
Guardrails kind of quicker pivots.

[00:44:14]
One of the challenges that I have faced
in leadership is there are certain

[00:44:19]
elements of a business that are highly
quantifiable and highly accountable.

[00:44:25]
Finance and sales are two of those.

[00:44:28]
You close the books and the
numbers are what they are.

[00:44:31]
You either hit your quota or
you didn’t hit your quota.

[00:44:34]
You drove a certain amount
of leads or you didn’t.

[00:44:38]
On the programming and engineering side,

[00:44:41]
there’s much more art
to that than science.

[00:44:44]
So what I ask my team to do is to size

[00:44:47]
projects without it causing weeks
of planning of a small, medium, or large.

[00:44:58]
Those three, if it’s in one of those.

[00:45:00]
So if it’s a small, we think it’s
going to be about three weeks.

[00:45:05]
If it’s a medium,
it’s probably going to take us

[00:45:09]
a quarter to get that done or
two months to get that done.

[00:45:13]
If it’s a large, that’s going to take
one team an extended period of time.

[00:45:18]
Work through that.

[00:45:19]
So what you end up having are
kind of pebbles and rocks.

[00:45:24]
You pick the big ones.

[00:45:25]
You probably heard the analogy before.

[00:45:27]
I certainly didn’t make it up.

[00:45:28]
You pick the four or five biggest rocks

[00:45:31]
that you want to accomplish and make sure
you’re resourced for those things

[00:45:35]
with somewhat of deadlines or
deliverables attached to them.

[00:45:39]
And then you can put the pebbles in there.

[00:45:44]
You can kind of fill them in as needed.

[00:45:48]
There’s a lot of trust that goes
into that because I’m not an engineer.

[00:45:55]
When someone says to me,

[00:45:59]
no one ever says,
we absolutely can’t do that.

[00:46:02]
I’ve got a great team that’s good

[00:46:04]
creatively, but I will hear oftentimes
that’s a really big and I don’t know how

[00:46:11]
to quantify that as opposed to other
priorities and initiatives.

[00:46:17]
So there’s a lot of trust
that goes into it.

[00:46:19]
And trust is earned by okay,
you said this was small.

[00:46:22]
You said it was going to take three weeks.

[00:46:24]
After four of these projects,
it’s taken about three weeks.

[00:46:27]
So we’ve got some history there.

[00:46:31]
So some of that trust is earned.

[00:46:33]
And on our executive team,
either me or my partner Ron Ross,

[00:46:39]
have worked with everybody
on the executive team in one capacity,

[00:46:43]
not necessarily together,
but in different places.

[00:46:45]
So we formed a team
that we worked together.

[00:46:47]
So there was that inherent kind of
relationship or trust that goes into it.

[00:46:52]
But analyzing the efficiency

[00:46:54]
of engineering,
I don’t think anybody masters it,

[00:47:01]
but you can’t treat it like
other parts of the business.

[00:47:05]
And there can be some challenges where

[00:47:07]
a salesperson might feel like,
why am I getting hounded because I didn’t

[00:47:12]
hit quota but product was delayed
two weeks or something like that?

[00:47:16]
Oh, sure.

[00:47:18]
And so you can get these kind of silos

[00:47:21]
that create, well, why can’t
the sales team sell what I built?

[00:47:25]
And the sales team is like, why can’t they
build something for me that I can sell?

[00:47:30]
So bridging those gaps and making sure

[00:47:33]
you’re having I would say healthy conflict
is not a bad thing.

[00:47:39]
Having the hard conversations and figuring

[00:47:41]
things out is a learned talent
that I haven’t always had.

[00:47:47]
The underlying premise of it,
and I actually got this

[00:47:51]
from Patrick Glencioni, is there’s
a pyramid of an effective executive team?

[00:47:55]
And the base of that pyramid is trust.

[00:48:00]
And if you have vulnerability and you’re

[00:48:02]
like, we’re humans, we’re all trying to do
the same thing here,

[00:48:06]
give grace to people when they make
a mistake or assume positive intent,

[00:48:13]
then you can have more of those maybe
conflict conversations and working through

[00:48:17]
things that actually get you to a better
place because nothing is ever perfect.

[00:48:23]
Nothing.

[00:48:25]
The road to success is circuitous, right?

[00:48:29]
It’s like this,
it’s never directly up and to the right.

[00:48:34]
So you have to be able to work through

[00:48:35]
conflict with your teams
in order to get to the right place.

[00:48:42]
Fairly fair.

[00:48:44]
That might have been long winded.

[00:48:45]
I apologize for that.

[00:48:46]
No, it’s good.
Top of mind.

[00:48:49]
And I’m not perfect at it, but we’ve had a
lot of conversations about it internally.

[00:48:54]
It’s accurate because we,

[00:48:56]
I guess on a smaller scale and I would say
less subjective,

[00:49:02]
but still relatively subjective,
with my call answering service.

[00:49:06]
Measuring administrative time for agents

[00:49:10]
on individual clients and stuff
like that is similar.

[00:49:14]
Not nearly as difficult
as measuring time spent by an engineer

[00:49:20]
coding, especially when
the engineer is remote.

[00:49:22]
And you’re going to have some
engineers that just are in the zone.

[00:49:26]
They know how to get it done.

[00:49:27]
An ex engineer could knock this thing
out in a week, maybe a day or another.

[00:49:32]
Engineer that they’re good,
but they’re slow.

[00:49:34]
Maybe they need more
Mountain Dew or whatever.

[00:49:36]
Yeah, but you’re still like it’s still
good, but from if we’re paying them hourly

[00:49:41]
or salary or something like that, we’re
not necessarily getting apples to apples.

[00:49:48]
Yeah.

[00:49:48]
I’ve had to really be careful
about the language that I use.

[00:49:55]
Can’t you just do this?

[00:49:57]
Couldn’t you just put a button on it?

[00:50:01]
And that doesn’t land well?

[00:50:03]
That’s really minimizing and showing
my ignorance of the process.

[00:50:07]
Sure.

[00:50:08]
So I’ve tried to be better about that,
but when I ask a question,

[00:50:11]
I try to make it look, I understand
that this is going to take work.

[00:50:16]
This is the reason why I’m
asking for this thing.

[00:50:20]
And so it doesn’t just feel like what
engineers really want to know is

[00:50:24]
that the work that they do is
going to put people to use.

[00:50:27]
All right.

[00:50:27]
I think there’s stacks of code that just
never gets used for because the company

[00:50:31]
didn’t have the right vision or
direction or priorities changed.

[00:50:35]
They want to feel valued,
and they want to feel their work is done.

[00:50:39]
And if they understand the purpose of what

[00:50:41]
they’re building and why it needs
to be in a certain time frame.

[00:50:46]
I’ve seen them pin their ears back
and really just dig in and go after it.

[00:50:53]
But if you’re just kind of saying, like,
hey, I had this thought over the weekend.

[00:50:56]
Why don’t you change this?

[00:50:57]
And with no context or reasoning behind
it, that’s not really motivating.

[00:51:02]
In fact, it’s probably
demotivating because all.

[00:51:05]
Right, you’re taking away their purpose.

[00:51:06]
They’re not even defining
what that purpose is.

[00:51:09]
If you do that yeah.

[00:51:11]
You get worse results, in my opinion.
All right.

[00:51:13]
Interesting.
It’s interesting you say that now.

[00:51:16]
I guess it’s pretty timely because I’ve
been giving tasks to my crew and I’ve been

[00:51:21]
getting much better results when I tell
them why I want the certain project done

[00:51:26]
or before, I was thinking,
just do the project.

[00:51:28]
Because I said, do the project,
and you have the bandwidth to do

[00:51:31]
the project, so there’s no
reason that you need to ask why.

[00:51:35]
And nobody outright told me,
but there were times that I was getting

[00:51:40]
something, I was like,
it’s not exactly what I want.

[00:51:42]
So I tell them the purpose one so

[00:51:45]
that they have a reason
for why I’m asking for that.

[00:51:48]
But it also gives them a little bit

[00:51:50]
of guidance from Guardrails, like, is this
what I’m doing, achieving that purpose?

[00:51:55]
Yes or no?

[00:51:56]
Is it important and why you could
correlate that to I don’t know if you have

[00:52:01]
children, but just when you’re like,
just do it because I said so.

[00:52:06]
Right.

[00:52:08]
Let me ride home.

[00:52:10]
You get, I think, better results from kids
when you explain things to them and help

[00:52:15]
them understand
the reasons why they’re being asked to do

[00:52:19]
something not than engineers
or children in any way.

[00:52:21]
I just think it’s human nature to not
just be, like, ordered around.

[00:52:26]
Even if you’re in the military,
there’s some I can’t say all the time,

[00:52:31]
but at least some, this is an order, but
this is why I’m giving you this order.

[00:52:35]
And,
yeah, I’ve found that that increases

[00:52:39]
the health and the morale
of those relationships.

[00:52:43]
And then I would add to that empathy,
the salesperson saying,

[00:52:49]
why don’t you build something
that I could sell or vice versa.

[00:52:53]
Well, if either one of those groups could
just stand up and have some empathy

[00:52:57]
and say, look, I understand it’s really
challenging to go to market with this.

[00:53:00]
This is what we’re building.

[00:53:01]
Tell me what your struggles are and if you
have teams that are willing to do that,

[00:53:08]
it’s just a much more pleasant
and productive work arrangement.

[00:53:13]
Not everybody is able to do that, though,
because I think we mostly just kind of get

[00:53:16]
focused on what we have been asked
to do and what’s important to us.

[00:53:21]
Yeah, you have that tunnel vision because
you want to get the job done,

[00:53:25]
and a lot of times you forget
that there’s other people.

[00:53:28]
Yeah,
you raised a very good point that I have

[00:53:32]
to constantly remind myself of is assuming
that the other person has good intentions.

[00:53:40]
Right.
Because a lot of times I’ll see somebody

[00:53:42]
mess up and I’m like,
what are you trying to do?

[00:53:46]
You trying to destroy the company?

[00:53:47]
How could you messed that up?

[00:53:49]
Or what’s really hard is, like,

[00:53:51]
Slack or written communication
when somebody puts something in all caps

[00:53:57]
to emphasize it, and your reaction
is like, why are you yelling at me?

[00:54:04]
We just have to be careful in our

[00:54:05]
communication style,
and remote work is challenging because

[00:54:10]
a lot of it is written, and so I
try to lead with appreciation.

[00:54:17]
Thank you for doing this and please and
being careful with my language on that.

[00:54:22]
So it’s not left to maybe
a misinterpretation of why is my CEO mad

[00:54:27]
at me, when I’m really not.
Everyone’s delicate flower, right?

[00:54:31]
That’s right.

[00:54:32]
Delicate flower.

[00:54:34]
Especially a CEO, right.

[00:54:36]
You got to tiptoe round,
walk on egg shells, whatever.

[00:54:40]
Yeah, I’ve had to learn about that.

[00:54:43]
Not everybody thinks about things

[00:54:45]
in the world the way I do,
so I have to be myself for sure.

[00:54:51]
But there’s a language check in things

[00:54:54]
and sensitivity to trying to create
an environment where everybody feels safe

[00:54:59]
and welcome and comfortable so
they can do their best work.

[00:55:03]
Right.

[00:55:05]
I didn’t realize how fast
time is moving here.

[00:55:09]
How can people find you? So website,

[00:55:13]
first of all, the company’s name is Everee.

[00:55:15]
E-V-E-R-E-E.

[00:55:18]
So, everee.com. Brett Barlow on LinkedIn,

[00:55:22]
if anybody would like to connect with me.
We serve businesses in every state

[00:55:28]
in the country, and I personally just
like connecting with other people.

[00:55:32]
So if there’s anything I can do to help or
maybe I can be that person that’s done

[00:55:36]
something just a couple of weeks before
somebody else to help them out if I can.

[00:55:42]
But more than anything,

[00:55:43]
I’d just like to thank you for having this
interaction and conversation.

[00:55:48]
I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m really

[00:55:50]
grateful that you invited
me to talk with you today.

[00:55:54]
Yeah, happy to.
You have a ton to share and I mean,

[00:55:58]
payroll, I don’t know of any employer
that’s just like yeah, it’s payroll day.

[00:56:02]
No. Nobody does. So we want to make it easy and fast.

[00:56:06]
Yeah, that’s pretty clever.
That’s very clever.

[00:56:08]
So kudos to you for being on the top
of that mountain, I suppose.

[00:56:14]
We’re trying to get
to the top of the mountain.

[00:56:16]
I don’t know if you ever really

[00:56:17]
get there, but we’re working. It’s a journey, it’s fun.

[00:56:21]
It’s all good.
Cool.

[00:56:23]
Thank you so much for being
on the show, Brett. James,

[00:56:25]
thank you so much.
Have a wonderful day.

[00:56:27]
Take care.
You as well.

[00:56:28]
Okay.

[00:56:28]
This has been
Authentic Business Adventures,

[00:56:30]
the business program that brings you
the struggle stories and triumphant

[00:56:33]
successes of business
owners across the land.

[00:56:36]
We’re locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:56:38]
If you’re listening or watching this

[00:56:39]
on the web, if you could do a huge favor,
hit the big old like, hit the big old

[00:56:43]
subscribe, and of course comment to myself
or Brett below and let us know what’s it

[00:56:48]
like doing payroll as an employer,
what’s it like to receive pay as

[00:56:50]
an employee, and what are the things
that you’d like to be improved on either

[00:56:54]
way. My name is James Kademan,
and Authentic Business Adventures is

[00:56:57]
brought to you by Calls on Call,
offering call answering and receptionist

[00:57:01]
services to service businesses
across the country.

[00:57:04]
On the web at Callsoncall.com. As well as

[00:57:07]
The Bold Business Book, a book
for the entrepreneur in all of us.

[00:57:10]
Available wherever fine books are sold.
We’d like to thank you,

[00:57:13]
our wonderful listeners, as well as our
guest, Brett Barlow, the CEO of Everee.

[00:57:17]
Brett, can you tell us
that website one more time?

[00:57:20]
Yeah, everee.com. E-V-E-R-E-E.com. Perfect.

[00:57:25]
Super easy.

[00:57:26]
Past episodes can be found morning, noon,

[00:57:28]
and night, podcast link found at
drawincustomers.com. Thank you for listening.

[00:57:31]
We’ll see you next week.
I want you to stay awesome.

[00:57:33]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.