117: Leading A Growing Company With Suneera Madhani

Thank you to our partners, SalesLoft, LeadIQ, and Costello for helping us put this one on. Find all our upcoming events at jbarrows.com slash events. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hope you all had a fantastic weekend. I have a very interesting guest coming on today, which I'm super excited about because we met when I went down and did some training. She actually introduced herself to me, and I didn't know exactly who she was. It was a shame on me for not looking at the profile, but she's like, you think I'm a rep, don't you? And I'm like, no, just by you asking me that, I don't think you are. And she ended up being the CEO of the company I was training.

So, Sanera, you want to tell everybody hello and where you're coming from, what you're up to these days? Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Sanera Madani, and I'm CEO and founder of a payment technology company in Orlando called Fat Merchant. And we are a payment processor, so we do credit card processing for the SMB market. We do things very differently because we're the first subscription-based processor, so it's an all-you-can-eat model. So it's unlimited credit card processing for the business for a flat monthly subscription. We do it even cooler, not just on the savings and the transparency component, but we have some incredible tech. Our Omni platform, which is our analytics platform, consolidates, and aggregates all the which ways a business takes payments.

So it's 2019, and if you're a business owner or if you are operating a business or in a business, you're not just accepting payments from a single solution. So it's not just a point of sale or a terminal or just an invoice. You've got an online shopping cart. You've got mobile. You've got recurring transactions. So right now, the business owner is taking payments in so many ways, and none of these systems talk to each other, and they have to go through several different processors to get what they need. So Fat Merchant is a one-stop solution for that SMB where we, one, save the money on their processing across the board, consolidate everything onto a single platform, and integrate with what they're using today without disrupting their current workflow.

And so once we take in all that transactional data, we display it back with beautiful UI and analytics of how your business is performing month over month, which customers are loyal and which customers are returning, which customers owe you money, what's your outstanding receivable. So it's just making your payment data smart. And so that is what we do. Cool. I love it. Now, you would, I think when we were chatting, you know, you had said when you started this company, you had no real expectations of it blowing up the way it has. Could you kind of like, well, I'm always fascinated of why people start companies, why they decide to go off on their own and take that risk? Um, and then, you know, how it marries up to what their expectations of the business was.

Could you kind of like, why didn't you think that this was something that was going to take off like it has? Yeah, that's a great question. So I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like this was just not in my, um, wheelhouse. I never thought that I was always down the corporate path. It's because I came from a family of entrepreneurs, my husband's an entrepreneur. And so I was just always around that, which naturally it's in my DNA. So it did, it did, it did take its course. Uh, but I was always a reluctant entrepreneur just because it's always that up and down it's that rollercoaster. So my background, I graduated with a degree in finance from university of Florida. And from there I had a couple of big corporate positions and I ended up, my third position was with a payments company and it was a credit card processor, a really, really large one.

And once I got into the, you know, into this, into the field, I just hated everything about the industry. It was, uh, very stagnant. There was no disruption from a technology standpoint. It was non-transparent whatsoever. Like business owners are just being, um, tackled on fees after fees, after fees. No one really knows what they're paying for. Um, and it was, everyone had just said like, it's super male dominated and it's just the way that it's been done. So for 20 years, this is just the way credit card processing is done. Well, just real quick, you, I mean, you said something that blew my mind. Like there's no standard for what people can charge. Is that right? Like, I didn't know this, like it's from a, from a, what's that?

It's not regulated. Like there, it is the most, it's the most absurd thing ever. I mean, this is money's, this is, you know, businesses, money transactions and processors can literally tackle on it. You hear it all day long in the news of giant processors now getting called out. Um, you know, Wells Fargo just want to be being like one of the most recent ones that comes to mind. Um, it's, it's hidden fees and charges and they're making money, um, on the backend through these transactions. And there's really no transparency in our marketplace today. Yeah. When I was working for one of these giant companies, I'm not going to say which one I kind of saw all of the backend shadiness that was happening.

And I was also front facing. I was a, I was in sales. I was a territory sales manager and I was door to door. Um, you know, for the first three years, I was a hundred percent commission. I mean, people don't know that about my stories that I am, I am, I am true sales, hard sales. And it was, and it was legit door to door. Like you went legit door to door selling on this stuff. I have like another podcast on just like what you have to, like, it takes a different type of tenacity to show up every day. Um, it knows to your face. It's one thing from an inside sales, like you can hang up the phone and move on fairly quickly. But when someone wants to kick you out of their business, it's, it's a different level of, uh, of, of, uh, yeah, exactly.

Can I swerve here? I don't know. Please. Yeah. No, I think I'd be, my audience would be disappointed. It's fucking hard. It was probably the hardest job I've ever had. And I grew within the company, but one of the things that I recognize, so I used to carry a notebook and I would listen to, um, what my customers were complaining about. And it was always, it wasn't necessarily that the fees are expensive. That was a huge component of it, but it was really the lack of transparency, the shadiness. They've like, nobody had a story that I love my processor. Like I never walked into a business and they're like, I love my merchant processor. They're the greatest. You never heard that. And I was, you know, a millennial, or I like to call myself an elder millennial, um, to subscription based products.

And this is pre subscription economy. So this is 2012. This is when there were barely a few cool subscriptions in the marketplace, but I love that experience that I was getting with my subscriptions. I love the unlimited use. I loved the, um, that I could add on families as like, as users. I loved, you know, when I received that box in the mail that it created this, you know, joy of opening that package. And when I learned that cost was the same for every providers, it didn't matter if you're a Wells Fargo, First Data, Chase Payment Tax, Square, PayPal, Stripe, Fat Merchant, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, they set the rates every year. And that's known as interchange. So that's like the base cost on how we get rewards and things like that.

But pretty much credit cards cost anywhere from half a percent to about 3%. But how processors make money is they charge a percentage on top of the direct cost. And so I propose, so light bulb goes off, this is 2012. And I'm like, why isn't subscription being applied to payments? Like instead of charge nickel and diming customers, let's charge them a flat monthly subscription upfront, tell them what we're going to charge them and let them process their hearts out. Our cost is the same. We're still going to pass through those direct costs to the, to the customer. And, uh, that did not go over well with my executive team. I mean, I was, I left so disappointed with this giant presentation that I had ready.

I'm a really smart, you know, I was a really smart kid. Um, and I had put in a lot of work on why this model would work and how I would run it in the Orlando territory that I was running. So I had no desire, passion, even like I wasn't trying to take this for myself. I was truly trying to create a competitive advantage for the company that I was working for. So the idea gets shut down and I want to flight back, uh, from Texas back to Orlando. And I was just, I was 25 years old. Yeah. 25. Um, so disappointed. And I'm like, I can't fucking go back and work for this like piece of shit company that one doesn't believe in me to that continue the practices that they want to practice. Um, there's gotta be a better way.

And so I was like, fuck it. I'm going to go and go try to get this ideal launch with other processors. I had probably like $20,000 in my bank account that I was saving for an MBA. And I get back and I probably had about, I think 12 no's from various processors. So I pitched this idea. I mean like one no at a time after another, after another until pretty much on, I was my last choice. So that's, that's, that's the story. And I took the savings. I'm like, I'm going to go for it. Let's go find Mr. Visa. Where do you even go find? Like, how do you even become regulated to go start a payments company? I mean, this was like giant mountain for me to climb. And, uh, it took about six months and April of 2014, we got registered with Visa MasterCard and we had to get a sponsor bank.

I mean, there was so much shit that we had to go through and I gave myself six months to go get this company, um, revenue. I had to give up. Like I had a ton of non-competes. Like there was so much stuff that I had to leave behind to go do this and kind of put everything on the line. And I started pitching, uh, every stage, uh, competition, like at meetups that I could go to, um, talking about fat merchant, which stands for fast, affordable transaction technology. And it was meant to be fun. Like I didn't want to be, you know, the traditional processor, the blue logo, the trans this, or the card that, or the pay this. Um, it, we really wanted to create an incredible user experience through technology, really providing the customer's value and just creating joy, having fun.

And so that's kind of the premise of it. And while I was pitching at these pitch competitions, I took home about 200,000 in prize money my first year. Holy shit. Yeah. And so that's how I bootstrapped the company. So that's the initial start of fat merchant, uh, was every time I go to a competition, we took home a giant check. We take the giant check and I couldn't afford salespeople. So one, I couldn't afford to do rev share two. I couldn't afford feet on the street. And so what I ended up doing was taking those dollars and putting it into Google. And I knew digital advertising and like literally that became the core business of fat merchant. And now we are a hundred employees. We've got four offices.

We're doing 5 billion in payments today. Um, and we have triple digit, like triple digit growth rate year over year for the last, uh, for the last five years running straight, we've raised 20 million in venture capital. Our story has been featured everywhere. Forbes, fast company, tech crunch, Huffington. I mean, you name it. Um, everyone's talking about the women trying to change the credit card industry. And last year I was given the most influential woman in payments for 2018. That's fantastic. So congratulations. Well deserved. Um, let me ask you to go back a little bit. When you were pitching 25 years old, you were pitching this big company on this new idea. I'm curious, do you think the, their, their nose, their, their disregard, you know, saying, ah, no.

Do you think that was because of the idea and they just didn't want to change? Or do you think there was a little bit of ages in there where they were like, who is this 22, 25 year old woman, you know, trying to tell us how to, how to reshape our industry or reshape this territory? Like, do you, do you think there was a little of that? Or do you think they were just so stuck in their ways in general that they just disregarded the idea? I actually love that you asked me this question. People don't ask me this question. It's both a hundred percent. It's both. So one, it was just too novel. Like it was too, um, unique in terms of it was, we're going to, they're going to lose money is how they kind of thought about it.

If we're transparent or giving away 40% margins, we're never going to grow. Um, and so it was a, it's just been done this way. Why fuck with it. Right. So that was definitely that piece of mentality to, I'm not an old white guy. Right. So that is also a part of it. Um, I don't look like your average CEO. I'm 31 years old. Now I have two daughters under three. I am a Pakistani female. Um, I mean, definitely. I, I think that fit the mold. And I was also very young when I pitched it. So I didn't have a ton of experience. Right. Like, and I understand that, like, why the hell, you know, why should I be the one, um, to do this? And so, you know, and that wasn't my, and that wasn't the, my take when I went to go pitch this, it wasn't for me.

I wasn't trying to go run it. I mean, I was growing in the company. I had just been promoted to like a unit manager. So I was, I was, um, I had about five sales agents underneath me running a territory. And so I was looking to make, do it for the company. Uh, but still model was too novel. And then I agree there definitely is ages in there. And I think we're always going to face that. And I think most disruptive companies that have young founders, we're thinking about things from a different perspective and we're getting it's out with the old. I mean, it's, it's, we're an on-demand economy right now. We want transparency. We want the best fucking user experience for everything. We know how to research our own stuff.

Like it is a competitive market for any product. Like you have to have the best of everything now. No one's taking, like, there's no such thing as we have better customer service. No, like we don't, you don't have that anymore for companies. So. And if you have like that, that's almost table stakes at this point. Like your, your product has to be legit. Your customer service has to be legit. Like you don't even get a shot at the table if those things aren't at least above average, if not great. Right. I mean, with the reviews and G2 crowd and all that other stuff, like people can do a quick search and say, okay, their, their customer success is three out of five stars. Fuck them. You know what I mean?

Like I really have no interest in working with companies that don't step up to the plate. So, so that, that new experience is the part that really has to, you know, to your point from an evolution standpoint, if you don't right now, if you don't evolve, you don't, you die fast with what's going on right now. So let's talk. So, so you, you, you, you, you know, you kind of went through all that whole process. You kind of put this thing in place. You went out and you got to be like, you pitched that, you got some money. And then all of a sudden this thing took off and you are where you are. You're 5 billion. You get a hundred people. You know, one of the things I'm always fascinated with is, you know, when I came and trained you guys, it was, it was pretty evident.

You got a pretty kick-ass culture, like fun team, everybody's on the same page, you know, and, and just really had a, had a, I could feel the vibe of, of just wanting to succeed and, and everybody wanting to succeed. Right. And so I'm, I'm wondering, I wonder like, what were some of the things you did early on to like, first of all, did you, did you think about culture early on, uh, as you were building this? Um, and then as you, as it became potentially more and more relevant, the importance of, of maintaining that, how, how do you maintain that, that vibe? Because, and just for some context here, I think some people have heard me say this on this podcast before when I started my first company, you know, when we were 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, everybody was all fired up.

Everybody was all in right. Working out, you know, ridiculous hours and taking less money than they would have otherwise, whatever, going the extra mile, 40 people around 50 people. is when I kind of felt this at the next person that I hired, they just didn't have the drive and the passion like we did. Right. And I had a really hard time at that young age. I think I was 25, 26 of, of accepting that we needed B players. You know what I mean? You can't have all a players or your company literally rips itself apart at a certain stage. You have to have role players. Right. But I was struggling with like the, the, why aren't you as bought into this? And I remember going to a conference with Jack Welsh and he had asked, you know, he, you know, he does a Q and a and I asked him, Hey Jack, you talk a lot about passion and that's, I said, how do you instill your passion on other people?

That 51st person. And in front of about a thousand people, he effectively told me I was an idiot because that's not the way you look at it. You can't instill your passion on anybody else. You have to hire it. Right. And so that changed my whole hiring profile and everything else. Now I hire a passion and I teach skill, but for you, how have you, what were the, some of the things you did early and then how are you currently working to maintain that, that vibe and that culture that you have? So, I mean, I think we're going to share very similar experiences here. So first when I, when we started, culture was just organic. I never thought about future as in like, here's going, this is what's going to be our culture.

This is what I'm intentionally setting. It was just who we are, what we did. Um, our T like our founding team of probably the first five of us and 10 of us. I mean, it's the same thing. We worked, um, every weekend we worked all night. I mean, we were, we rented our office was a 200 square foot office above a bar that we were renting. Um, and then fast company did a piece on us in 20, end of 2014 that went viral. Um, and we had to get like phones installed. We had to all the stuff on the floor. No, it was like, we've gone through some really fun shit, but it took a lot of, it was that hustle. It was that drive. It was the get shit done attitude. Um, and so that was kind of, that was our, that was our thing.

And then as we continued to grow, um, we tried to ensure that we were hiring the same value set people, people. So that was something that we did intentionally, um, because you heard all the horror stories. Like we weren't the first people experiencing growth or, um, in every single company, like every single founders talk that I went to all talked about how culture starts to disseminate post X employee. Like that was a very standard thing. I'm like, Oh, it's never going to happen to me. We have the greatest culture ever. We've got the greatest people ever. So we got like our first round of funding. We, we double it every year. We've doubled in size in terms of team as well. And so going from that 10 to 20 was fine from that 20 to 45 was great.

Um, we're still able to maintain all the shit that we did. And there was things that were organically there. And I, I always say this and you know, you can't, we see a lot of big companies that will have fancy offices and put in a keg and, um, have the ping pong table, but it's not that the kegerator doesn't make the culture. The culture makes the kegerator. Exactly. And so that's where it was organic. And, um, when we kind of hit that last, last year, we have, we, you know, added, we did about a $10 million raise and, uh, we're scaling super fast or every team doubled. So we're now, it was like 50 additional bodies that we added in a year. So as one, we're, it's not even just where we did double our team.

We were scaling processes. We took, we're, we were literally booking, we're at, we're booking 2 million in ARR a quarter right now. And, uh, we were less than a million last year in bookings per quarter. And so we're literally almost tripling every fucking KPI. And so that's a lot of pressure. What we stayed true to was just making sure, again, hire for passion and ensure that the core values that we have in our three core values are one team. So it's funny that you said you're a one team. That's our fucking core value to get shit done. So we need to have that attitude. And three, I mentioned it. It's creating joy. Like that is why we exist. We actually, we do credit card product. We're payment processor, but it's like the, that's like the end product that we sell, but we create joy for SMBs.

Like that is what we do. And so kind of trying to ensure that every interview, that every next hire has those things. And that's, that's the clean sheets. That's the table stakes to walk into the fat merchant door. And then we continue from there. But it was definitely tough. Like going, you, you, I have seen that shift from, um, that 50 to where we are now. And it took like, we, we had some bad hires. Like as we're hiring that quickly, we had turnover last year. Um, and it was, it was difficult for us. Cause we're like, how that, like it's, we haven't been wrong. Like we haven't been wrong in the past and then we'll hire a teammate. And we're like, we thought this person was going to be fantastic.

And they just have that. They don't have the same attitude that the rest of the team does. And so they fail out fast is what I'll say. So if your culture is strong, the ones that truly, um, you know, have like our core to, to that culture will weed out the rest. Like they will easily stand out and they'll turn over, they'll get other positions like, and we're happy to see them go, or we're happy to let them go. Uh, but you also don't want a lot of instability, but I will say that there was a little bit of a shift and then now we've had to become very intentional with it. So for the first time in five years, now it's, we're talking about, you know, we always talk about our core values, but now it's like, this is who we are.

Like we all need to ensure that we are keeping this top of mind. We're keeping our traditions alive where, you know, everything has a why behind what we do. An example is we do bagel Mondays, um, at the office and it's not just bagel Mondays. Like the reason why we started bagel Mondays was one, I couldn't afford if we'd be working like crazy. And Einstein's used to have $6 buckets of bagels on Monday morning. And so I would bring in a bucket of bagels and it would feed all of us. And it was like a nice little Monday morning treat that we would have when we'd have breakfast together. And then as we grew, we had new hires. We would move that, like that bagel bucket on a Monday to whoever the new hire was.

And so you had to go get your bagel. You had to go talk to the new hire. So there was like a reason why like these bagels were important. It's not just for the sake of having bagels in the morning. Um, there's let's, let's ensure that we understand the why behind it. Um, and continue those traditions, not just for the sake of, we just have bagels and cereal at the office. Like, so I'm trying to make sure that the team understands the why behind what we do, but things will have to shift, right? We're a hundred people now. We used to all go to universal studios. Like we'd all go to universal together, like once a month on a Saturday, people don't really give a shit. Like not everyone gives a shit to go hang out on a Saturday, but you know, but I will say that like most of the organization, like you're going to have those B players, but I'm really proud to say that we have, like I was at, like last Sunday or the Sunday before I went to a brunch spot, uh, downtown and I saw like four of our sales reps, two from our customer success team, one marketer, and they're all just having brunch, like on a, on a Sunday on their own by themselves.

And when you kind of see those friendships outside of the office, you're, you want, you're already with them so much and you still want to hang out with them on the weekends. And you still want to have, we have all these leagues, soccer leagues, uh, softball leagues, flag football, like everyone's in fantasy, like football season's about to start. There's so much activity always happening in the office and it's fun. We have real true solid friendships because we spend most of our time here at work. So you want to hang out with the people that you want to be around. I love it. I mean, that, that to me is so important as far as the, the likability factor to like hiring people that I don't necessarily would, you know, would go out with every weekend, but wouldn't, wouldn't mind going out with every weekend.

You know what I mean? Like I got my core group of friends that would go out and get banged up and that type of stuff, but the whole, like, you know, have a beer factor with, you know what I mean? Like, is this person that I would actually genuinely enjoy having a conversation with outside of work is a huge factor for me. Um, because if you, and I, going back to your core values thing, I've always said that if you don't have core values, like as long as you have core values, you can debate, you can argue, you can, you can disagree as long as the core value system is the same. But if the core value system isn't the same, none of it works, none of it works. And so it's interesting to hear you kind of how you're keeping those live, even on the micro stuff, like the bagel Mondays, and there's a purpose behind that.

And it feeds into the whys though. It feeds into the values. So I love that. Um, let me do, let me kind of shift a little bit as it relates to the diversity factor here, um, of, of growing an organization. Now I think it, it seemingly comes probably inherent to you just based on who you are and your backgrounds of ensuring that there is a diversity. Um, is, but is that a, how do you do that? Like, you know, from a, from a hiring standpoint, how do you consciously make sure that you're, you're attracting and, and, and, and interviewing the right, the, the, the, the diversity mix here? Cause, cause I, I see a lot of what I hear a lot of the, you know, the old white men type of scenario, which is, well, we just don't have women apply.

We just don't have people of color apply. We just don't, you know, so I want to, I want to hire diversity, but you know, if we put out, uh, if there's 10 people that show up for a job interview, there's eight white guys, one woman and a Chinese kid, you know what I mean? Like, so what do you want us to do here? So how are you like making sure that happens without basically saying, but also making sure that you're attracting the best talent, right? And this is, and I, and I, and I, and I know this is probably going to rub some people the wrong way, but the whole like affirmative action piece of it where like, we have to hire a certain amount of people because we have to hit a quota versus organically wanting to do it.

Cause it's the right thing. You know what I mean? So how? I think that's where you nail it. It's organically wanting to do it. It's not the, you can tell when organizations are trying to hit KPIs once you're a certain size and you have to have team members, that should never be the mentality. And, um, there, I will also say there are probably certain positions that are, that are tougher. Like I wish there were more women, uh, developers and we're catching up, right? Like it, it is a field that is not, um, from like, even from college and university, you don't even have applicants that are completing, um, uh, these degrees. And so how are we supposed to have a, a stronger mix? Uh, because just the applicant pool itself is that you're going to have those challenges across from every department.

And you're going to have some departments that are going to be very heavy in certain backgrounds, ethnicities, genders. But I think you nailed it when you said it has to organically, you want to be diverse. I mean, I am a Pakistani woman. Like, I mean, I am as diverse as it comes. I am an immigrant family background. And, um, my, you know, my, literally my parents have the, we came here with a hundred dollars in our pocket story. Um, and for me, diversity is very important. I want our organization to look a certain way because we act a certain way when we look that way. I mean, if we're going to have all the same minds, the same type of people in every department, even across the organization, you may think that you're diverse, but it's important to even have subsets of diversity in your teens because you will start behaving and thinking about things from a different lens, right?

Um, women just naturally, we're more empathetic. It's just, it is our tendencies. And so we are going to bring empathy and apathy to situations and to customers and to different sets of departments. Um, and it's important for us to have all these varied mix of perceptions of, of, of viewpoints to create good business. And so I think it has to come organically from within and then it's just being conscious about it. Right. So, I mean, we had a huge, like every year, like we're always hiring. Um, but it's important. Like it's, it's something that, you know, my head of talent and I talked about, uh, you know, every one-on-one is how are, you know, how is our team? And it's not just diversity and, um, it's across the board.

It's, it's in age too. Like I just want to be, and that's something that we naturally, something that I've become very conscious of is we attract a lot of the same type of people just because our culture is a young culture, um, where I definitely a very millennial heavy culture and most startups are, but it's important for us to, as we like, we're growing up as an organization and we're having, um, we need to have more experience at the table. And so even from an age, uh, diversity standpoint, it's important for us to be thinking about that as well. And so just being on top of it and, you know, for the guys that are for, for even the women that are like, Hey, no one's applying. We'll go find those candidates.

I mean, that is it. That's why you have recruiters. That's why you have head hunters. The best people actually aren't applying for your job. You're pulling them out. So if you're pulling them out and you're actively having to go seek them and go seek what what's missing in your organization. Another thing I want to add before we close this topic is, um, you don't want to have the same type of like disc, whatever assessment that you do. I see a lot of organizations where we're like, Oh, we want only this type of person for this team or, uh, from a sales standpoint, you've got to have a mix of minds as well. So I don't know if people really, really talk about that from a diversity standpoint, but, um, we look at it all.

Yeah. It says, it was one of my favorite go, going back to the age thing. You ever seen the movie, um, uh, the intern with De Niro? That's my life by the way, except I hope my husband doesn't leave me. So yeah. Right. But, but it was so funny to have somebody like De Niro who's, you know, super experienced, whatever, come in and talk to these kids, you know what I mean? Even about how to dress and how to treat a woman, you know what I mean? Like, and they were all just like, Holy shit. And the value that that brought. And I think to your point, a lot of people just disregard like, cause it kind of stuck with the start of our conversation. Like you were in an industry that was a bunch of old white men, that type of stuff.

And a lot of times I think there's a little bit of a backlash right now. And rightfully so of, Hey, like enough of that shit, like enough of the old white guy stuff, we need to do stuff different here. But, but then there's the value of the experience level that comes to play there where you can at least bounce some ideas off of people who have been there, done that, who, who might be the old white man, if you will, but not necessarily. He just has one of the coolest old white guys I know. And he's not old. He's going to kill me if I say he's old, um, to lead one of the divisions of our sales team. Um, and we're so excited because he brings such a different perspective, uh, to also this mix of, of what we have.

Well, and I think it's important to recognize that what, at least when I talk about it, I know when you do too, when you talk about old white male, it's not that that's the, the, the visual representation, but it's not that that's not it. It's the mentality. You know what I mean? It's that mentality of the old school mentality, the hierarchical, you know, like I'm the CEO and you're going to do what I tell you to do, you know, that type of stuff. And I'm not going to be, and that's why I actually broke from corporate America because I just fundamentally, I, I have a similar kind of, I'm not even close as far as coming from Pakistan at a hundred dollars, but from an entrepreneurial standpoint, um, my mom, I was a, I was a happy surprise.

Okay. So I was, I was nine years after my sister. Um, and, and my mom had a killer job at Wang Laboratories, which at the time was like IBM or Salesforce today, you know, Salesforce today. And she quit her job and she had an entrepreneur, like she started a business out of her house. And so I had that. And, you know, it was, it was interesting to have, when I went into the corporate world, I was doing what I was supposed to do. Right. I got a job, I got a job in sales. I kind of worked for DeWalt and then I worked for Xerox. And I just remember being at Xerox being like, this doesn't feel right. Because I remember I was getting a bunch of smoke blown on my ass about me being good at what I, and I was just doing my job.

And so I was like, okay, fine. So here's my job today. Here's my, here's the next job, whatever, here's the job I want. You know, how fast can I get there? And the answer was always, well, you have to spend two years doing this and then two years doing that and then two years doing this. And I just was like that. So I'm going to get the same opportunity for a promotion as that kid is. And that kid sucks. And you've told me that like, that doesn't work for me. I like to be paying, you know, based on performance. Right. So the old school mentality of you have to kind of merit and you got to do this, just, it, it fundamentally didn't fit with my, my disc profile, if you will. Um, and, and so I think that, that, that itch and, and doing things differently, but also respecting that there are people out there.

I mean, I think probably one of my faults is I don't look enough at history, if you will, and learn enough from people who have been there, done that. I'm, I'm typically like, fuck it. I'm just going to do my own thing. And I'm going to make as many mistakes as I possibly can and see what happens here. Whereas I wish I had done a little bit more learning from people who have been there, done that. Um, too, because I think my life would have been a little bit easier as far as getting to where I am right now. But I guess where, where do you fall on that, uh, on that spectrum of learning from the past versus blazing your own trail? That's funny. I'd say it's a, it's a mix. I mean, I'm definitely, I'm blazing my own trail for sure.

I think more heavily there. However, I think now that I've come to the size of a company and like where we are, um, I have some really great peers and mentors and, uh, people that have had very successful exits and B2B SaaS, you know, like that just know the space and their mistakes is crucial. Right. So I do have, um, I always say like a quote that I'm always quoted for, like in almost every publication, it's, I didn't go to CEO school. I did it. This job gets harder and harder as we continue to grow, but I'm still the one leading the team. I'm still going to be the one that's going to take this thing to exit. I have the most incredible leadership around me. Um, what I do well is ask for help.

What I do well is raise my hand and what I do well is put together the right team with the right mentality. Um, and so from a, uh, experience from an experience and learning standpoint, I'm always fucking making mistakes from like all different sizes. Uh, and I've made very small ones and I made some really large ones, but I learned very quickly. Uh, that's definitely something that I have. It's you learn fast or you feel fast and you learn fast. And then also ensuring that you do have a good network to go bounce shit off of. So you can learn from their experiences as well. Now you're never going to be, uh, you know, if you're trying to be a lookalike of a company or a CEO or like everyone's their own experience or like their experience is going to be ultimately different than your experience.

So all you can do is kind of gather all that information and then make your best educated guests. Um, I did a, so I, I get to work with my brother every day. Um, he's our president and co-founder of the company and he's the one that actually heads up our, our sales and operations while I handle tech marketing. Uh, we did a piece together in, I think it was in fortune. We did like a thought leadership piece and it was called fact first gut and where he's more of the fact and I'm more of the gut. We can be like super analytical and have all the data in front of us, but if it doesn't sit right and you kind of have to trust that, um, you have to make decisions based on your gut too. And then you can't be so far winged that you're just making decisions on your gut that you're ignoring the data.

And so I kind of am in a very, um, great situation where we have kind of like two heads of the organization. We have very different viewpoints, um, but we bring kind of each other's, um, differences and, um, experiences to the table and kind of act as this like co, uh, leader, um, of the company. So we benefit a great deal from that. Yeah. And I think actually that was one of my biggest learning lessons too, is when you start a business, you, you have to surround yourself with people who, who bring something different to the table than you do to your point earlier about having a singular mindset. That's such a dangerous thing because then like, I remember my first startup and the three founders, one was a tech guy, one was a finance guy and one was a strategy kind of CEO type guy.

And, and so they all complimented each other extraordinarily well. Any one of them being the head would have failed miserably, but because they work together. And then I remember having a hard time because that team that we had, we worked so well together, right? Like my CTO, for instance, we would beat the shit out of each other during team meetings and stuff like that. And I would challenge the shit out of it, but ultimately he was the CTO and he knew more than I did about technology. So I would, I would, I would trust, I would question, but I would trust. I knew more about sales. They would question, but they would trust. Right. Then after we sold that company, my problem was, and it was actually my wife who helped me figure this out.

I was having such a hard time working with anybody else after I left. I was, I was constantly like, like combative with, with my peers at, from an organizational standpoint. And what I realized was I went from, from thrive networks, that first company where I was marketing and sales. Right. And, and all the, everybody else did their own role. Then we got sold to Staples and then I was talking to other sales leaders. And I was, I was, I had to be them and, and, and, and it, and I clashed. And then we, then I went to Basho and again, and I'd started my company with my business partner and we both did sales. And so inevitably it became a competition, even though we were, we respected each other and everything else.

I kind of looked at him and said, I can do your job better than you can. And he looked at me saying, I could probably do your job better than you can type of thing. And that, and that's why it didn't work. And so I think you have to build a company with people that come with different skill sets and different, like, so you can trust that they do that thing. And you can focus on what makes you special, right? To your point, guts and analytics, those two art science, almost they have to combine to, to get you to where you need to go. So. No, I love that. It's, it's so true. And it's so funny that you say that, cause I'm kind of nervous about what's going to like, I mean, we still have so much growth ahead of us, but our team is exactly that.

So our founding team, Sal's the one who, so our, you know, my brother, he's like a sales, he's the sales and operations guy, Jacques, who's our CTO. He's our co-founder. Lindsay, she was like, had a strategy. I was leading up marketing. Like it was like the same, it was like four different viewpoints at all time. All we do is challenge each other, like literally close door. We walk out like unified front, but behind that door. Screaming, yelling. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but I used to have some knockdown, drag them out. Like, fuck you. You're full of shit conversations, you know? And then to your point, as soon as the door opens to everybody else, like, Hey, everybody, we're good.

Right. They call it skillful discussion. Right. Like those are as long, again, I think it goes back to as long as you have those core values, you can have those debates, you can have those fire, you know, conversations, but you got to come back to, because we all believe in what we believe. Right. Well, let me ask you before we wrap up here, what's outside of the massive growth and trying to retain it and, and, and, and manage it? Like what's exciting for you next? You know what I mean? What's the next thing that really has you fired up about? Is it, is it getting to a milestone? Is it getting to that exit? Is it, is it, you know, what is it, I guess that right now that you're just like, yeah, this is what keeps me coming in like, and moving forward here.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's, it's the exit's not there. I mean, we are, I have, we've so much growth ahead of us. So right now it's like heads down execution. Like I'm not even thinking about that nor wanting to entertain that where it's down the road when it happens, but we want to be heads down and get this company to as big as we can. We know that we can take it to, I want that merchant to be a household name. Um, my vision for this is it's mint.com for the SMB. And so right now what gets me excited is all the integrations that we're doing. Like we have the leading integration to QuickBooks, um, from a payment processing standpoint. Um, and we're integrated with like, with Sierra, like all their accounting platforms.

We're integrating with MailChimp. We're integrating with Salesforce and HubSpot. And so really being that connected platform that ties everything together for the SMB tech is what excites me. Um, what also excites me is just, it's, it's fun. Like it is, it is like a, it's a rocket ship to the fucking moon. It's so fun to kind of bring people along on this rocket ship and each other pushing, like, you know, I didn't go to CEO school and we're going to like, we're going to take this company to massive, we're already in double digit error, you know, standpoint right now. And we want to hit that triple digit. And so we want to grow. And it's really amazing to see our people grow with us, you know?

So it's amazing to see an intern that started here with a manager title now, or a director title. And so it's really, that's something that I'm really passionate about is growing our team and our people. And this is just such a fantastic experience for, um, you know, just startups in general. It's a great experience if you get on the right one, um, to really scale your career and, you know, get a lot of experience in a short time without all the boundaries of corporate America. And so I'm just excited about the people and we've got a lot more people to hire. Uh, we need more salespeople. So if you're listening, uh, check out fatmerchant.com. So I'm going to throw in a shameless plug there. Please do.

And then, so, yeah, so it's just growth and just excitement, um, excitement to keep on going. So seeing ourselves, right. Let's see how far, you know, you make, make our yesterday self jealous. And, and, and, and actually, and for you personally, like we had talked when I was out there about your personal brand and kind of taking your personal brand to the next level. Like, where are you on that right now? As far as your, like your desire to versus you being almost forced to based on who you are and what you've done so far. No, no. So something that I didn't get to talk about, you know, so far is, uh, my journey of, I'm a mom of two and one executive life is crazy. Working parent life is any parent out there that are listening.

It's so fucking hard juggling when you're hyper growth or you're super type a, and you're growing your career or your business. And then of course, when you get little ones in the mix and your heart's kind of always torn between those two places, work life, uh, where we are in today and today does not integrate well with parent life. And I am a full-time executive mom. I travel like crazy. Um, and I have really big responsibilities day in and day out, but I also have a seven month old baby at home. Um, and so in a, in a three-year-old. And so I'm always in this, um, conundrum between juggling mom life and boss life. And so I always like get coined and started using that, you know, hashtag mom boss.

And so you'll see that I don't know if anyone's watching, but this is on my, uh, nice nameplate says mom boss here. So I started sharing, um, just on social, on Instagram. So you can follow me at mom boss co. Uh, and if you just search my name or you search mom boss, I'll be one of the top accounts to show up. And I was just sharing like our day-to-day stories. I'd be like dropping off Mila to school or, uh, doing some, some like having breakfast with my kids. And then I'm like on a plane or, you know, I'm like showing up to a board meeting or I'm pitching or I'm on a giant stage. And so it's like my crazy, crazy working mom life. And what I learned after being a parent, it's not just from an executive standpoint, every position in our company, or we have like an amazing Slack parents channel and a mom channel.

It's really difficult. Um, like I was just telling the, you know, on our channel yesterday, my daughter wants to do ballet. Um, ballet classes are at like two o'clock, three o'clock and four o'clock. Like why the fuck are they at four o'clock? Like six o'clock or on the weekends, like we want to do cool shit with our kids too. It just doesn't integrate. And so it's so tough and finding a community and, uh, kind of balancing it all, uh, is really difficult, but it can be done and I'm doing it. And I am a hundred percent like just as much as I operate my life, my business, I operate my life as a business. And so I kind of share all my tools, tips for like productivity. I still cook every meal.

Like I'm still like as like great of a mom as I want to be, or I can be to my kids and my family. And I'm a great wife. And that's a huge priority for me. So I showcase that on my Instagram account and I kind of started building up this organic following. And now we're at like 25,000 followers. I get like a hundred DMs a day from various moms. It's, it's mostly like 82% as women. Um, but it's, it's really exciting. And I want to kind of take that and I'm learning that there's a big community out there. Um, and I just want to be able to support and inspire as many, you know, working moms as I can. And, um, women to go pursue their dreams because John, I was told no, every step of the way, like every step of the way.

And I keep those no's with me and that continues to fuel me. And so just want to approve all the naysayers and I'm here and doing really cool shit and want to help other people to do cool shit too. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's out of all the things that, and thankfully, you know, I have a very supportive wife who used to travel quite a bit, um, and runs her own business and takes a lot of the burden off of my shoulders to, to, while I travel, uh, to take care of our daughter. But I'll tell you right now, the, the hardest thing I, I have to deal with is leaving, uh, my eight-year-old daughter when she, you know what I mean? And so that's so kind of to you, as far as I've run my life, my business, like my life, you know, I'm actually trying to find ways of integrating my daughter into some of the stuff that I do, which is, and we had talked about this, the book that I put together and stuff.

And so, you know, one of the things I'm super excited about is in about, uh, in October, on October 23rd, um, uh, uh, Lori Richardson, who runs score more sales, and she's been a huge champion of women in sales. They're having a women's sales pros conference here in Boston. And they're, they're, they want me, my wife and my daughter to stand up on stage and talk a little bit about the book and all that other stuff. So it, it's fine. Like, uh, like I'm, my daughter's finally going to get a chance to kind of see what I do. And, um, I'm super excited. Cause I, cause I put a post, like I actually did a post, a LinkedIn post saying, Hey, you know, I'm struggling with this, this, this, this component of my daughter.

And a lot of the feedback was, you know, Hey, I travel a lot. And you know, if you can ever bring your daughter with you to like, see you present, like that'll make all the difference. My daughter thinks I'm a speaker. So whenever I travel, I do my best to try and take her and then she'll like, she's like literally falling asleep at conferences. Like, I don't know how many times, uh, she's literally slept like underneath, like front, front row seat, my daughter's sleeping while I'm on stage. So she thinks mommy's a speaker and it's really cool. I think it's awesome that when kids get to see what their parents do, it's, it's so exciting. I love your mission behind that. How much you promote that.

I relate so much to that last year I got CEO of the year by business journal and it was like, it was just like an incredible, um, day for, for, for me, personal family and for the business too. And, um, I took Mila was like, she was two and I was pregnant with Anna and I literally went on stage like with Mila in my hand and she accepted the award and like full room was standing up clapping. Cause you just don't see that. And people need to show that more because we're all humans doing business too. Right. Like we, we feel, we feel like we can't be vulnerable at work. Like we feel like we can't share our vulnerability of what's happening. So we can talk about, um, communication and vulnerability and all of that on another topic, but it's exciting.

Do good business and, you know, show up to be your best self. So, you know, and I think that's, uh, you know, one more, like remember, I don't know if you remember, but there, there was that CNN interview where that guy was interviewing and the kid came in and he like got all pissed off and he was like mad about it. I'm like, dude, like that would have, like, you would have been, you would have gone viral in a sec. I mean, he went viral for the wrong reasons, but he would have gone viral in all the positive ways. If he had just turned around and been like, all right, sweetheart, come here, sat him on a, you know what I mean? Sat on the lap and let's, Hey, let's do this interview this way. Sorry.

I'm a, I'm a stay at home dad. You know, I work out of my house. My daughter's here. I can't tell her. No, what do you want to talk about? Like if he had done that, he would probably be fucking like asked to speak at conferences and all sorts of stuff. But he was like, Oh, get out of here. I'm like, dude, you missed an opportunity. And that's what happens to me a lot. Like sometimes we'll be doing this podcast and my daughter will literally walk in and I'll be like, Hey, sweetheart, what do you want? Right. Cause if you, cause if you constantly are telling no, leave me alone, I'm working. That's the mentality that, you know what I mean? And that's a negative mentality, at least in my opinion.

So follow up sales parent podcast. There you go. You can get, you can get your kids on. I'll get my daughter on and we can have a conversation about it. This was so fun. Thanks so much for having me. Um, you guys can find me at mom boss co on Instagram. Um, it's my first name scenario at fat merchant. So I'll just throw that out there. Don't try to sell more products that I don't need, but if you are actually interested in our product or learning more or learning about applying for a position, you can also go to fat merchant.com and that's F A T T M E R C H A N T.com. So shoot me a note. Um, if you heard it and if you loved it and I'm so excited to be here, Don, this was so fun. Thank you. Thank you for coming on.

And like, and we'll, let's keep talking about like that personal brand stuff. Cause if there's anything I can do to help along the way there, um, you know, I'm looking to be on bigger stages. So that should be, it should be fun. I mean, the stages are getting bigger and bigger every year, but I'm looking to kind of continually up that, up that as well. There you go. Love it. Awesome. Well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Um, and hope you walked away with something that you can do and at least a mindset that you can change. And like I always say, um, if you do nothing else today, go make somebody happy, go make somebody smile. Cause even if you had the worst day out there, if you can make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day.

Right. So, uh, scenario again, say hi to the fab merchant team for me. Uh, hopefully we'll be doing some more stuff together here in the near future. And I'm, I'm really excited to keep watching your, uh, rocket ship grow here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right, everybody have a great week and let's make it happen.