He Built 0% Turnover by Rejecting Talented People—Here's Why Culture Beats Skill

There's a lot of noise in tech about scaling fast, raising money, and pushing hard early. But no one talks about what happens after: exhaustion, team turnover, and the business running you. Dean Matthews bootstrapped On The Clock without VC, built a 24-person team with zero turnover, and proves that culture beats talent every single time.

Dean Matthews bootstrapped On The Clock—a SaaS time tracking, scheduling, and payroll software—without venture capital. What makes his story different? Zero percent turnover. His team of 24 people stays. People actually fight to work there.

But here's the thing that shocks most founders: Dean has turned down talented candidates. Repeatedly. Because they didn't fit the culture.

THE PROBLEM DEAN SOLVED

22 years ago, Dean was a software consultant in Metro Detroit. He saw a real problem: small business owners and accountants needed easy, reliable employee time tracking. So he built it—as a passion project, working evenings and weekends while maintaining his consulting business to pay the bills. For 10 years, it was just him.

But around year 10, he realized something: "You can't go far alone. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

The problem? Dean had witnessed toxic cultures his entire consulting career. Management hated operations. Nobody got along. So when he finally hired people, he made a radical commitment: build a culture the way he wanted, not the way it's always been done.

THE COUNTERINTUITIVE HIRING STRATEGY

Most founders hire for talent first, culture fit second. Dean does the opposite.

In every interview, he asks about previous managers, conflict resolution, and how candidates talk about former coworkers. He digs deep. If someone has a big ego, or they blame previous conflicts on others, or they can't speak well of the people they worked with—he passes. Even if they're talented. Even if they're exactly what the business needs on paper.

He's made these calls multiple times. It's uncomfortable. But he's willing to lose talent to protect culture.

The result? An eNPS score through the roof. Glass door ratings that stand out. A hybrid team (75% in-office Tuesdays/Thursdays, rest remote) that actually stays together.

THE LESSONS THAT SHAPED ON THE CLOCK

Simplicity beats complexity. Dean's a developer, so he fights the urge to over-engineer everything. His rule now: build minimal viable, then bolt on features. He's found 100% of the time that simpler rollouts are easier to understand, adopted faster, and work better. This applies to product design, internal systems, training programs—everything.

Energy management prevents burnout. Dean had a major burnout moment about a year and a half ago. What changed? He started monitoring energy output. Five-to-ten minute walks every hour. Cutting off work at 5pm. Protecting family time. His non-negotiables: prayer, meditation (which creates "open space in the mind"), and staying in the Word. Burnout isn't inevitable—it's a management problem.

Values only matter if you embody them. Don't invent values. Write down what's already important to you (5-8 max). Talk to your team. Take 3-6 months. Then live them out as a leader. Values on walls without embodied leadership create subcultures and toxicity. Values lived by leaders create alignment.

Bootstrap when you want control; take VC when you want speed. VCs call Dean constantly. Every single day. He turns them all down. Taking VC means taking a controlling force into your company—deadlines, exit pressure, growth-at-all-costs mentality. Bootstrapping meant slower growth but intentional growth. It meant protecting culture over revenue. It meant Dean staying in control.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Dean's long-term goal: serve 1 million people monthly. Currently at ~180,000. But that's not time-bound. It could be 3 years, 5 years, or 10 years.

More importantly, he's building what he calls "HR light" into On The Clock—basic HR functions for small businesses. Not because it's trendy, but because he wants every customer to experience what he's built internally. Teaching managers to lead, not manage. Teaching companies that people aren't resources—they're humans.

THE OPERATING SYSTEM THAT DRIVES CULTURE

Dean credits "Scaling People" by Claire Hughes Johnson (former Stripe COO) for introducing the concept of an operating system—a documented SOP for your entire business covering people, processes, and projects. Dean built this. Updates it every year. Shares it with everyone. It's his cultural anchor.

He also created a "Working With Me" document listing his personality, preferences, communication style, and best contact times. Simple. Elementary. But people tell him they're grateful for it because they'd never know otherwise.

THE COUNTERINTUITIVE TRUTH

Dean proves something most founders don't believe: you don't have to choose between building a great business and maintaining a healthy culture. You don't have to sacrifice people for growth. You don't have to burn out to win.

What you have to do is protect culture with the same intensity you protect revenue. Hire for values. Embody your values. Trust simple over clever. And know when to turn down talent to protect what you've built.

🎯 KEY INSIGHTS

✅ Culture alignment beats technical talent—always
 ✅ Simple scales faster than complex
 ✅ Energy management prevents burnout
 ✅ Values without embodiment create toxicity
 ✅ Bootstrap gives you control; VC gives you speed
 ✅ Zero turnover is possible (and it's a competitive advantage)
 ✅ People stay when treated like people, not resources

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED

"Scaling People" by Claire Hughes Johnson — Former COO of Stripe. Inspired On The Clock's operating system approach.

"Multipliers" by Liz Wiseman — Leadership framework for scaling people, not just revenue.

💬 KEY QUOTE

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And if you're going to build a team, do it with culture first—because one bad seed can poison what took years to build."

If this resonated, hit subscribe. Share with a founder who's burning out or tolerating a toxic team. Let's build businesses that actually work for people, not the other way around.

This is Inspired by Success.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So success to me, I know lots of people have different uh different definitions of it, but success for me is going home at the end of the day knowing that I made a difference. The people up front thought the people out back just didn't work, didn't care about their jobs, and and I built over probably a decade or so this model in my head that I never wanted a team, right? I never wanted employees. Even if the talent and the drive and the you know all the other things are there, you know, if we don't think they're a culture fit, I sorry, you know, I can't bring it on.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

As an entrepreneur with a global team, one of my biggest challenges was managing international payments. I was stuck with high fees, slow transfers, and endless complications. Whether it was paying my team in the Philippines or buying products from Japan, I tried multiple banks and services like PayPal, but nothing seemed to work. Then I found WISE. The savings have been huge, and transfers that used to take days now happen in hours. It's fast, simple, and has become a vital part of my business strategy. If you're not using WISE for international payments, you're missing out on a game changer. Click on the link in the description to get started with WISE today. There's a lot of noise in tech about scaling fast, raising money, and pushing hard early. But no one really talks about what happens after that. When you're exhausted, your team keeps leaving, and the business starts running you instead of the other way around. Today's guest chose a different path. Dean Matthews is the founder of On the Clock, a bootstrapped SaaS company built without venture capital and with a team that actually stays. We talk about how Dean built a company people don't want to leave, how he competes without burning cash, and why clarity, consistency, and health matter more long term than speed. We also get into leadership, what earns real trust, what what quietly breaks culture, and the trade-offs founders don't see until it's too late. I'm Linda Vaux, and this is Inspired by Success. And without further ado, let's welcome to the show Dean Matthews.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Hi, Linda. Thank you so much for having me. Uh I'm very honored to be on your show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Thank you. Then you chose to bootstrap when raising money is the kind of thing that everybody does in SaaS. What made you stick with that, especially in the early days?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

I would say if you want a really honest answer, it was probably naivety. Uh back at that point, uh, it was really me on my own. And I was, I came from a consulting background. So I was, I had, I was a consultant here in the Metro Detroit area for several dozen uh companies, small businesses, small and medium-sized businesses. So I just really found this. Uh I was following some posts, some forums, if you remember those, and I just really saw this problem that these small business owners and accountants were complaining about. They were looking for a system that could track employee time that uh they couldn't find something. They were looking for easy and reliable. Those were the two uh terms that I kept seeing coming up. And so when I saw that, I just really thought to myself, you know, I could build that for them. So to your question of bootstrapped versus VC, really at that time, I really honestly didn't even consider VC. I was just thinking, this is my time. Uh, it was more of a passion project in the beginning, too. So it was just something that I was looking to just to build, to build something that would make a difference. So really that was the choice. It was just bootstrapped was just the natural thing to do, and that's the way it went. And you know, fast forward to today, it's paid off very well.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

And you've been consistent as well. But I'm curious to know, um, because you chose to bootstrap, there are things that you were able to do, you know, that when you when you get VCs, you sometimes lose control.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

You do, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, you were able to do it all by yourself, and it you've learned a lot of things over the years and things you you've avoided. So what um, you know, tell me some of the learnings from that, and uh we'll get into the culture part and how you built it, but I want to hear some of the challenges, uh, you know, the the nitty-gritty stuff that sometimes as businesses, you know, entrepreneurship is not easy and the mindset is pretty um you have to have a certain mindset. And there would have been so many different challenges, especially bootstrapping and not having that, like I don't know, the resources to fund because it's yeah. So give us a little bit about the challenges and the nitty-gritty of how you built that without VC funding and you know having to manage the money as well. There's a few questions there, but I'm just fascinated of um how you kept it going for so long, bootstrapped as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Absolutely, those are really good questions, Linda. Um the first challenge, uh, you could relate this to the bootstrapping. So for me, it it was like I said a minute ago, it was really my my passion project. So it was my time. That was the only thing that I had to contribute. I uh also was a software developer, so I could come up with the ideas and uh through my customers, through talking or talking with customers, come up with ideas, and it was really just my time that I had to allocate to that. But there was a challenge in that because every moment that I spent with on the clock, our product, I was taken away from earning money with my consultant, consulting companies, right? So, and I did spend a lot of my time where I could have been billing hours building on the clock, OTC we call it. So there was a little challenge there. I had to make sure we had income coming in while I was building this project. Uh, there was I had several other projects along the way uh that were kind of sister projects as well. So it was really, I had to watch my time to make sure I could still pay the bills while still building my passion projects. So that was probably challenge number one. Um, there was a lot of evenings and weekend work that went into that as well. That was a challenge as well, you know, had to sacrifice family time and such, you know, but you know, got through it and made it. So that was great. Uh the second challenge, which really came a bit later, is that in my consulting career while I was uh doing software consulting for these, you know, couple, three dozen, maybe four dozen uh small businesses here in the Detroit area, I learned and I got to meet a lot of people there. So I worked with the people up front, you know, the the uh VPs, the CEOs, then I worked with the people out back, you know, the people that were sweeping the floors a lot of times. And I'm a friendly guy, so I got to meet and become you know work friends with a lot of people, and I saw this these cultures, these really bad cultures evolving. You know, the people out back hated the people up front, you know, they just golf all day and are in meetings all day. And the people up front thought the people out back just didn't work, didn't care about their jobs, and and I built over probably a decade or so this model in my head that I never wanted a team, right? I never wanted employees because that's the way it was, you know, and I was young and naive. And but when it came to the point, you know, at this point, this is probably about 10 years ago, where really realized I can't bring OTC uh on the clock to where I want it to be without people, right? I mean, you can't go far on your own, you're kept. So I really the first lesson that I had to learn, or the second lesson I had to learn, was to bring people in. And it's not that I'm anti-people, I love people, don't get me wrong. I just didn't want that environment, that culture. So I had a a really, really strong ambition that if I was gonna build a team, that I would do it the way I wanted to do it. So, and to have a good culture and to have good values and to have people that cared about each other and cared about their work and that got along. And really, that was one of the founding principles uh that that went in, you know, 10, 10, 11 years ago with on the clock. And uh one of my favorite quotes is if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So I found that quote a number of years ago, and that really summed up my that that second challenge that I had there. Um, and you know, today, you know, here at OTC, there's uh we just brought on a few more people, so I think we're at right around 24 people now, and we really do have that culture. Uh, we have basically a 0% turnover, so people that come tend to stay. Uh, we have uh extremely high ENPS score. Uh we glassdoor ratings are through the roof. Um as far as the team internally, you know, we all get along. We don't have subcultures, we have one culture, and it's just a really good a lot of people talk about it like it's a family culture or it's a uh a very good culture to learn and be productive in. So, you know, I'd have to say we've pretty much hit the mark with that. So that was really that second, that second challenge, and you know, I'd consider that one a win. We're doing really well, and and you know, that's you know, proof is in the pudding, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, you mentioned um you had a few other things like side hustles as well. When did you decide to go all in and and focus on this? Is that when you you you knew it was profitable? And um, who did you hire as your first employee? Was it a salesperson or was because you know we want to obviously you need cash flow for the business and you're doing it bootstrapped as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

So yeah, yeah.

unknown 10:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

First employee, uh Samantha is her name, and she's still with us. She has made a lot of leaps throughout the years, so yeah, she's coming up on 10 years. She is now uh product owner, she works in our product department uh under Steve. So uh they build, well, I'm I'm also in product as well, but we build the product. We're we're the ones that spec uh spec out what we're going to build, and she is now the product owner. She's she's moved up from customer support in the early days up to product owner now. So that's she's she's awesome. She's with us still, and yeah, we're yes, we're still moving up into the right with her. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

So was my salesperson. It wasn't like um, you know, do you because I'm thinking you know, to bootstrap, you need to be able to be bringing the cash flow. So you did you hire good salespeople to actually get the message out, or how are you promoting it? Is it big through your contacts, your networking, you know, your your previous consulting clients that that helped, or what?

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, so actually another really good question. Um, for the most part, up until about a year ago, we were all product-led. So we were actually at a price point that was very difficult to bring on a sales team uh for for quite a few years. So we really did product, you know, PLG, product-led growth. So we built into the product, it was so easy that it just really uh uh marketed and grew itself. Of course, SEO marketing, you know, we've all we've been hard at that for many, many years. And word of mouth is a big one too for us. You know, we our customers really do love our product, and there's a significant portion of new accounts that when they sign up, they select uh, you know, a friend or a coworker told me about OTC, and that's how I found out about it. So, really, we were just uh like I said, up until just about a little little less than a year ago, we started our first sales team. And so now we're continuing to build the sales team. Now there's three people in sales, uh BD business uh development and sales right now. So yeah, that's all brand new to us. So it's that's kind of the fun and new thing we're doing. Uh Jamie is is our sales manager, and yeah, we're having a great time, you know, speculating out BD and sales plans. We have four pillars. Yeah, it's it's a great we're having a great time with that.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

I love that. And the the fact that you've got zero turnover, that's pretty compelling. I want to dig deeper into that afterwards, but first of all, everyone says, you know, people often sometimes leave for better money or better opportunities. So, from what you've seen, what do people actually leave over? And why do you think you've got you know you mentioned the family culture and that helps like are you all based in Australia? I mean, sorry, in the US, or do you have remote workers as well?

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Um well, no, all of our uh work all of our team members are here in the United States. We're about I'd say about 75% uh hybrid. So uh 70 uh three-quarters of us are in the office Tuesdays and Thursdays and at home the rest of the days. And we have well, about five, six people now that will be fully remote, but they're they're still in the states, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Is that what do you think helps your culture stay strong as well? And you know, what what are the lead leadership values and principles that have helped you you know maintain this zero turnover? Yeah, it's you know, because when I hire someone too, if I hire the wrong candidate, I've done that multiple times. And I think it starts from the beginning as well, as you know, the way you find people, but maintaining especially what you're doing in SAS, like maintaining that culture in zero turnover, that's hard. So I'm curious to dig deeper into that as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Sure, absolutely. So uh I I think you had asked about the remote team a little bit. So remote teams are pretty new to us. Uh only this last year or so we've really been in the remote. So with that, that brings on its own set of challenges to keeping the culture going, right? You're not in the office, you don't have the proverbial water cooler talks, the hallway talks. Um, so we just do our best. We we have uh several meetings that everybody attends. Um, and we really do encourage uh all every all team members to jump on video whenever you need to. We prefer video over a call or anything like this. So there's uh one-on-ones. You know, I have one-on-ones with all of my direct reports, uh, generally a lot of times every week, every two weeks at most. Uh, we have all hands meetings where everybody, including the remote people, join in. Um, you know, a lot of times we'll turn the camera on, uh well, not a lot of times, but every now and then we'll turn the camera on, maybe during like a party or a lunch or something, so everybody can join. So that you know, it's little things like that. And I think it's really just the biggest factor there is just caring for the person as a person, right? I mean, when you when you promote a culture where people are people and they're not a resource, you know, or a number, that it it somewhat automatically happens, but you have to have that framework in place to where you treat people like people. And you know, that's extremely important to me. And you know, leading remote teams, you know, we have to just pay extra attention to that.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and is there any secret to when you find when you're hiring, who what what type of things do you always look for when hiring in order to get that you know the the the level of the zero turnover? What do you look forward to?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

No, it's a that's a super super good question. So for me, uh I and when I'm in in hiring meetings, uh interviews and such, uh, which pretty much I am for the most part with everybody at this point still, uh, I am looking for a culture alignment, values alignment. So I will ask questions, I'll ask questions about your previous job, about your previous manager, about how you dealt with conflict resolution. And I'm looking for a person that will fit into our culture and that uh doesn't have a big ego, that does care about their coworkers, that talks good about the people they used to work with. Uh, you know, if you just if you just ask a few questions, you'd be amazed at what people will start talking about. So uh I'm I'm in those meetings and really looking for that alignment. And uh, you know, sometimes I have to uh you know really kind of dig a little deep and just start asking about, well, tell me about this. Uh, you know, you mentioned you had this conflict and dig deeper and try to get to the root of it and to see if it was that person that was the you know possibly the instigator of it. And if if it is, then you know sometimes we'll put a big big uh red check mark on there that you know this is probably not the person for us. So, you know, even if the talent and the the drive and the you know all the other things are there, you know, if we don't think they're a culture fit, I sorry, you know, I can't can't bring it on. So yeah, we've had to make those decisions a few times. Uh it's unfortunate. And there's been a few that have slipped through the cracks too. Uh so you know that's happened. Uh, but the the idea there is to you know try to identify it early and you know, either course correct if you can. Uh you know, sometimes you gotta depart ways. You've got to part ways though, too.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah, they say that the saying, you know, hire slow and fire fast.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, I know it's it's being a leader, sometimes you have to do the the tough decisions as well.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

I want to get to contact your team.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, that's it. Once you have a bad seed, uh like that's it. And I've seen that in cultures where like when I was in corporate, it just took one bad seed, and sometimes yeah, the culture can get toxic. So but if you're building and you've got it's great that what you're doing, building and having staff stay for such a long term. I'm just curious to know, um, after all these years building this software, what have you learned about simplicity that most SaaS founders overcomplicate?

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, so a lot of times SaaS founders are either very technical or semi-technical, and technical people tend to want to overcomplicate things. Um, I am a technical person, so I'm a developer, you know. I I don't really develop anymore, but I come from that mindset, and that is actually one thing that I myself have had to overcome and still have to overcome um today, is that I want to build things that are very robust and very well-rounded, but a lot of times with those attributes comes uh complexity. And the problem is that complexity is hard to move things forward when they're complex. So I have really defaulted to simple, especially these last few years. Let's build it simple. You know, whatever we're building, if we're building out, you know, uh a time off uh system, let's keep let's bring it right down to its first principles, figure out what's the minimal viable, whatever it is, app application that we can build here. Start with that, keep it minimal viable, and then bolt on later the things that need to uh that we require. So I really start with that simple first mindset. You know, I trust me, I want to over over-engineer everything, but I have to reel myself in. And also there's times too when you know, maybe another leader at on the clock is building something too, whether it's uh, you know, maybe a system or a training system, whatever it is. A lot of times we get too complicated. And I'm like, okay, let's just scale that back, let's make it simpler and start with that. And I found 100% of the time when it's simpler, the roll the rollout of whatever it is you're doing is easier. Uh, it goes people understand it better, they uh adapt to it better, and they just join into that whatever it is that you're building way better when it's simple. Because you know, if it's complicated, it's hard to fit in. Yeah, it it simple is just always better.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Are you guys leveraging AI now? Because there's so many different changes. Are you you know taking advantage of the opportunities and helping and letting it enhance, I don't know, your software, or what how do you feel about AI?

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah, AI, uh obviously huge, massive gains that can be taken there. Uh we're leveraging it very significantly in product right now. So we are there's several tools out there that you know, uh Figma, lovable, we we use both of those, and there's a handful of others as well. But they have really taken taken the uh design part of product to a really a whole new level where my product manager Steve and I can just sit there and and and talk to Lovable or talk to Figma, not talk to it, but you know, prompt it. And um, and it's designing our screens, and it it's just amazing. Uh as far in development, too. Yeah, we're we're uh I'm less on that side. Sylvester, uh our uh development manager, is hand you know, taking that. And we are a very AI first company, especially in product and development. Uh, I am uh in marketing, we're we're actually using uh Chad, uses a Lot of AI in marketing automation as well. And definitely starting to work that into all the rest of the company as well. Pretty much everybody uses AI, whether it's just you know Chat GPT or Claude just to you know help with their work, or they're using some of the more built-in tools like lovable or or or Claude, you know, or lovable or um uh Figma. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Are you building like are you building AI agents for marketing as well? Or are you just because that's what's something I'm missing at the pet.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Agents, yeah. That's that's yeah, we're we're definitely getting into that. Uh I'd have to say, you know, a good part of the company is definitely uh moving very, very fast on that. Um haven't really had to reel anybody in yet, not seeing any warning signs, but you know, we are definitely working with agents. Um, you know, we were actually just talking today. We were uh talking about uh cloud co-work, you know, and and how it can really I'm not an expert in that, I haven't actually used it, but they were just talking about how they started using it on this one computer, isolated computer, and how it was just doing all this work for them that would have normally taken hours that was now taking minutes. I don't have the details on that. I literally just two hours heard ago heard about it, but the productivity games are just phenomenal. It's just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

What what what was that claw clawed co-work?

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Claude co-work, yeah, anthropic.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Oh, yeah, yeah. Because yeah, we use it. We haven't gone in depth of the use of it just besides research and the basic stuff, but there's so much you can do with it, especially to enhance what you have currently.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

And yeah. Yeah, I personally am gonna start looking at co-work myself. Um, it's been out for a few months now, I guess. Um, but yeah, it installs right on your local machine, and it can just it there is security risk, so I'm I'm definitely not endorsing that. Anybody just go out and download it. But if you know what you're doing, you put it on an isolated machine, you know, there's a lot of lot of productivity gains. And that's that's my plan.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Nice. Um, and let's talk about energy and you know, building because a lot of founders burn out, especially when they're building in the early days, and I hear they work long hours, and it's just you've got to sacrifice a lot, like you mentioned as well. But what have you learned about sustaining energy without sacrificing your business? And you mentioned you you sacrifice the time with your family, but you know, what have you learned about now doing things without burning out? Or did you even burn out at the start?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah, I didn't really burn out so much in the beginning. Um, I would say there has definitely been a few moments of burnout. I had uh kind of a big burnout moment about a year and a half ago. And what I've really realized is just energy management. It's like you just watch how much energy you're putting out into one thing at a given time or multiple things at once, sometimes is even worse. Um, but for me, it's if I watch as if I monitor how much energy or how much um focus I'm putting on something, mostly in time, right? It's you know, am I focusing on something for too many hours straight? Uh I manage that in a lot of ways. I mean, the simplest way is to just take walks. So like a lot of times, and drink a lot of water, that helps too, because you get up and use the bathroom more. Um, but try to like every hour go for a five or 10 minute walk. And I tend to do that quite often. You know, if it's wintertime like it is now here, sometimes I'll just walk around the building for 10 minutes. And that little that little five or 10 minute break can do an amazing amount for you. Um you know, that's on a micro scale, but on a macro scale, you know, I think it's really just about limiting the amount of time that you you are focusing on something and stopping before you're just burned out for the day, right? So, you know, if if if you're trying to cut off work at five o'clock and you make that desk, you know, make that a destination for yourself, and you get to that five o'clock and you want to work over, just having the discipline to stop, go home, be with the family, be with the kids. Uh, and if you feel energized a little later, maybe get a little bit of work in that night, but then you know, try to have a little bit of downtime, or at least you know, light time. You know, I spend a lot of my quote downtime doing like research, you know, it's not hard work, it's kind of like light work, I call it. So yeah, it's about about how much energy you put out in my own.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Is there anything in your day-to-day that you can't go without? You know, some people have rituals, some people have to do things a certain way. Like, do you have a certain ritual? You know, like for me, for example, uh when I wake up, my ritual is just to have some meditation and prayer time, and then I try to do that before bed too. But I don't, I'm not too strict. And I've interviewed other people that have just have clock blocks, like they block their time out into the calendar from the clock, and then just did they they manage their time so aggressively, but I'm not like that. But do you have certain rituals or things that you do that you can't go with that daily to help you?

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah, there's a few of them. Um uh I'd say definitely uh prayer time makes uh is a big factor for me, uh, as well as time in the word. Uh, but also like you just mentioned, uh meditation, that's a big one for me. Um, you know, I find that even 10 minutes of meditation, just like that 10-minute walk of just trying to clear your mind. I have a kind of a meditation technique that I kind of developed myself, I guess you might say. And that that 10, even if I get 10 minutes in before work, that just gives me more, it's almost like this space in my mind that can be filled throughout the day. It creates this open space that that the day can then populate without overloading myself. So yeah, meditation's a big one, you know. As you said, prayer and being in the word too. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I like that. Do you have any favorite books that have really helped you in business, like that have helped you scale and get to where you are?

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Any any yeah, there's a few of them. I would say um multipliers was a good one. Uh, I read that. Uh the author or I forget the author's name. Um, it was out a few years ago, but it's called Multipliers. Um uh Scaling People. I read that a couple years ago. Uh that was uh she was the COO of Stripe. I forget her name too. I can't believe it. Uh, but it's the story of her coming into Stripe uh back in the early days, uh, you know, Stripe the Payments Company, um, and how she kind of wrangled in, you know, these young entrepreneurs, uh young entrepreneurs, and and and basically it's about it's about scaling people. It kind of reads like a textbook in a lot of ways, but that was a great book. A couple things we got out of that, uh one thing I got out of it is uh what we call our uh operating system. So, oh Claire Hughes, that was her name. Um she has this what she called an operating system, and it's kind of like a SOP for your business. And so you know, we've adopted that, and we've been building this operating system that is kind of like our SOP for our for our business. So it talks about you know our people, our processes, how we do projects. It's it's it's it's been great and instrumental. Um, you know, it we do it every year. So we did it for this year, and it's that's been a really great thing. The other one that I picked up is a working with me doc. She talked about that. And what that is, is I just used a Google slide. I'm not sure what she used, but you list out uh, you know, maybe your personality, what what you like, what you don't like, uh, you know, times that are good to contact you, uh, ways that you prefer to be contacted. And they're really these elementary things that most people that work with you would never know unless you told them. And so I took that the time to build that out uh probably about a year, maybe two years ago now. And I've heard people come up to me and say, you know, I'm really glad that you you you gave me this because I would have never known you didn't like X, you know, and uh that's been a really good one. Yeah. So those two books were great.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

I'm gonna look into that. That scaling people sounds good, especially the SOPs. I mean, I'm trying to build it out for each uh different roles now. Every person should have their own SOP built out. Um, but I'd never thought about combining it and doing one for the overall business. And the fact that you do it every year too, that's good. It's like whenever things change, you update it or something. Is that what you do?

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Oh, it's definitely a living document. So as things change throughout the year, we adjust it. But really, every year, I just kind of take last year's version, you know, copy it, rename it, and then go through it with any changes. You know, I don't always want to change things mid-year. I might set up a or maybe somebody, uh, you know, Amanda, my operations uh manager, might want to uh change something. I'm like, oh, hold off, we'll just do this, you know, in 27. And so we make a note, and then at the end of the year, uh we'll build those changes in. And um, yeah, it's been great and instrumental. And it's you know, we go through it at the beginning of the year and it's gives and it's shared with everybody, so everybody has uh access to it. And yeah, that I'd recommend any business should have that. Yeah, I'm gonna definitely even if you just do one or two pages. I mean, I think ours is you know several pages, but you know, just something, you know, it gives everybody a baseline to go off of.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Yeah. I didn't like yeah, because everyone I do I have individual people do their own checklist and record and training just so that it makes it easier for the next person, or if we expand, that's why the um the reason why I do it individually, but I've never actually considered doing it for the overall business, which is yeah, sounds like it's great. Um what if you could go back in time, what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Oh, what would I do differently? You know, there's probably not a whole lot. Um probably one thing I would do differently though, I would have probably started bringing in people earlier. Um I think, and I'm I'm very happy with where we're at right now, but I think we could be further along if I you know really made that first hire earlier.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Um when did you when how long in into the company did you decide to hire first hire? How long did it take?

SPEAKER_02 32:52

So on the clock actually started I think 22 years ago now. Um, so it's it was a passion project for that first 10 years, you know. It was really just me, you know, doing it. Um but then right around 10 years ago is when uh my brother Mark joined. Uh and that's really when we were like, if we're gonna do this, you know, we need to bring on people. And so Samantha's coming up on 10 years, so it was you know, right around 10 years ago. Um, but the the problem with that is if I had started earlier, I probably wouldn't have got found Samantha. So right, or the universe could have put her right in front of us later. You never know, probably would have. Um, but uh, but yeah, so that might be the one thing is I might have started the team, building the team a little bit earlier.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Wow. And looking forward, do you plan to ever you know get venture capital or what are your big dreams and visions for the future?

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Yeah, so uh as far as investment, you know, they're at you all the time, you know, literally every day, they're calling, but um, it's really not in our plans. It's yeah, just not something that really interests me, you know, taking on that additional money because then you have a controlling force in your company. Uh, you have you know somebody that's holding the money over your head, and it's it's just a situation personally that I'm I'm I don't work with really well. So for us, uh our big goal is we call it our 1 million user goal. So we're looking to service 1 million people in a month. Um, you know, right now we're at about 180 or close to 180,000, I believe, maybe 170,000. Um, so we're about 17% of the way there. Um, but that is the long-term goal. Now that is not time-bound, you know, we're that's really more of an um aspirational goal for us in the future. That could be three years from now, it could be five or ten years from now. Uh, but that that's probably our big motivational goal right there. But the reality is we're just continuing to build our product. Uh one thing that we're doing that really nobody else is doing is we're building into our we currently we are scheduling, time tracking, and payroll. So as I mentioned earlier, we're working building on what we're calling HR Lite. See, these are some of the basic HR functions that any small business would need, you know, employee directory, uh, notes for your employees, emergency contacts, um, ENPS to kind of gauge the the health of your team. Uh, there's plenty of other things too. But what we're looking to do is bring it, bring this as well as the rest of our product to our customers to really level up their their leadership game. So what I mean by that is uh teaching managers to not be managers but to be leaders, um, teaching people that you know, human resources, you know, people aren't resources, right? People are humans. Um, but to treat people like people, it's really what we've learned as a company, um, and in trying to educate our customers on this so that they can then in turn enjoy all the wonderful things that we enjoy. You know, we have an amazingly engaged team. Um, you know, I I mean this with all do you know everything, but people are almost knocking down the doors to get in and do on the clock uh when we're hiring. Um so you know, it's a really great workplace, and I want all of our customers, we have 16,000 customers right now. I want them to be able to enjoy what we're enjoying. So we're building in lots of different subtle ways into the product that mentality. You know, we're not sure what we're gonna call it yet. Uh, it's something we're throwing around words like human, you know, love for humans, uh making Monday as good as Friday, um, you know, people over resources. There's lots of terms we're throwing around. We don't have the words for it yet, but it's really just teaching businesses to be better stewards of their team. That's really what we're trying to do. And nobody else is doing that right now. So we think that's gonna be a big thing for us. Actually, we know it's gonna be a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I like that. Is there any um piece of like advice or anything that I've missed out that you want to bring up?

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Um you know, I think you know, the one thing I would say, one thing you might uh bring up to your listeners, and it doesn't matter if they're a new company, whether they're SaaS or not SaaS, um, but set your values. Um and what I mean by that is you know, your values, you you don't just write them down and invent them. You already have them, right? So a lot of companies don't have their values documented. You know, you have your values, so don't just try to invent them. What I always recommend is if you're the business owner, that you take some time and write down what's of value to you, you know, keep them simple, maybe five, six, seven, eight, nine at most, and then go talk to your team, talk to see what they value, take your time, I say three to six months, and write down your values. And then make sure that you act out and embody your values. Your values are what establishes your culture. And if you do that one simple thing, you'll find that you you will have a uh a culture that is established, you know, by by you, by the business owner and hopefully the founding team. And you don't end up with two and three and four different subcultures in your company, and especially as they grow, that can become extremely toxic. So probably the one thing we didn't talk about is setting the values, which then drives your culture, but you have to embody your values. You can't just put them on walls and put them on your website and call it a day. You actually, as leaders, whoever the leaders are in your company, you have to embody them. So that probably be my last piece.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

I love that. That's very powerful advice to and setting the tone as a leader to follow the you know the the values that you've set out and being the the one that the team aspires to to be like, I guess. And yeah, that's pretty powerful setting those values out. I love that. That's that's a pretty thought-provoking. Yeah. What does success me look like to you? How do you how would you personally define success?

SPEAKER_02 39:50

So, success to me, I know lots of people have different uh different definitions of it, but success for me is going home at the end of the day, knowing that I made a difference. Whether it's with my team at work, or if it's that our that our team made a difference with our customers' lives, just knowing that we made a difference, that we affected the world in a positive way, even if it's just a little bit. You know, we made a positive change in the world. That that to me is success.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

I like that. That's powerful. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you, Dean?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Uh, probably the easiest way is LinkedIn. You could just find my uh Dean Matthews, one T M A T H E W S. I don't think there's too many of us out there, but you can look for on the clock, Dean Matthews. Um, email, I can give that out here. It's Dean at on the clock, so you could always on the clock.com. Um, so I don't think there's too many scrapers finding my email address here. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

So awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Thank you, Linda. It's been great. And I will say, all the listeners out there, if you guys are not subscribed to Inspired by Success Podcast, please subscribe. I've listened to some of them, they're really good.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, guys. Hit that follow button if you're listening on the podcast. And um, if you're watching on the YouTube channel, please do me a favor and hit that subscribe because it helps the channel grow. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.