Step Into the Mind of a Serial Entrepreneur - How to Succeed and Have Fun in Life with John Mason-Smith (JMS)

Join Summer Poletti as she hosts John Mason-Smith (JMS) on Revenue Remix. JMS is a serial entrepreneur and he shares insights into his diverse entrepreneurial journey, from his early days and discover the lessons learned from his various ventures, including creative projects like the 'Half Suit,' the challenges faced in the payroll industry, and his successful launch of HireWith. Tune in to explore how JMS navigates the entrepreneurial landscape, adapts to market changes, and continually seeks new opportunities for growth.

• Connect with JMS on LinkedIn
• Check out his companies

Related Resources & Links:

• Blog Post: Secret to B2B Revenue Growth: Identifying Client Needs and Serving Them Better Than Anyone Else
• AI-powered Sales Playbook: RiseAI Sales Accelerator

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Remix
01:06 Meet John Mason Smith
01:20 John's Early Career and Fun Jobs
03:43 Journey into Entrepreneurship
04:56 The Birth of Frankenstein PC Repair
06:03 From College to Tampa, Florida
06:51 Challenges and Lessons in Sales
11:07 The Half Suit and Other Ventures
16:51 Starting a Payroll Company
23:25 The Rise of HireWith
27:44 Transition to National Account Sales
28:03 The Glue of Astro Acquisitions
28:54 Challenges in Talent Acquisition
30:17 Preserving Industry Knowledge
31:59 The Caché Experience
33:11 Specialized Skills in Payroll
34:56 Summer's Entrepreneurial Journey
36:32 Fractional Sales Leadership
42:04 Work-Life Balance Debate
48:58 The Importance of Job Satisfaction
51:43 Recruitment Realities
55:22 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

Transcript

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I'm Summer Pelletti, Founder and Fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Rise of Us and your host of Revenue Remix. Today I'm joined by John Mason Smith, a serial entrepreneur and founder of a whole mess of stuff that we're going to get into today. He is sitting in his home office in Richmond, Virginia, and he's going to walk us through his entrepreneurial journey. It's always an inspiring conversation, especially with a serial entrepreneur. Welcome back to Revenue Remix, a podcast from Rise of Us, where we take a fresh spin on driving revenue growth, hosted by Summer Pelletti. A fractional CRO who works with business owners and leaders who feel held back by outdated systems. This podcast explores how adaptable, unified frameworks can transform static processes, equipping teams to meet evolving customer needs and drive resilient, lasting growth. Each episode features insights from Summer and her guests, offering practical strategies to sidestep common pitfalls and build real revenue momentum. It's time to remix the way we think about growth. Enjoy the show. Bye. Welcome, John. Great to be here, Summer. Thanks for having me. No problem. I thought your story would be inspirational to the audience. So, we have a lot to get into today, but I always like to start with something fun. What is one job that you had early in your career, maybe even going as far back to high school or before that, that maybe people wouldn't expect? So I used to be an intern at a minor league baseball park in college. Yeah. You know the Birmingham Barons? Okay, wait, actually, do you remember, uh, the movie Space Jam? Yes. That's the baseball team from the movie Space Jam was the Birmingham Barons. And so my job was I got hired to be their, one of their like sales and marketing interns, which basically means they had me going door to door knocking on restaurants being like, Hey, do you want to buy like an ad at our local baseball park? I will say, uh, I was very happy, despite the fact that I, I do like exercise and movement, I don't love the sun. Fun fact about me, I actually am a, a figure skater, and I, I became a figure skater because I like the cold. So I was a figure skater all the way back in high school, and actually back in, like, since I was, like, ten. And, and so when I got this job, part of it entailed being outside a lot, hanging up signs, working the games all night in Alabama in the summer. Summer and I was very happy to find a little niche. Basically, I was the only one that knew how to use a Photoshop copy of a Photoshop, a pirated copy of Photoshop. So they had like all the different sales guys had me come in and take this pirated copy of Photoshop and like make the banners for the outfield and all the other interns, there's like four of us. And the other three interns got really kind of sour. Cause they were like, how come we're out here hanging up signs and JMS gets to sit inside the air conditioner on a computer and I was like, Oh, it's, it's work, you know, so work smarter, not harder. So it was a great summer though. 10. If you get the chance to wear a mascot outfit for at least a small portion of your life, it's an experience worth doing. I've never done that. The big head and all that. I used to work at Disneyland. That's the rite of passage for anybody who grew up in Orange County, California, by the way. But I didn't have enough dance training. I was not a figure skater. To do the Well, I could have put a head on ya. You could have been a mouse. There was not a lot of grace to being in that costume. I will say that. It was more tolerance of being hit by small children. Cause they, they, like children see you in a mascot outfit and they think you're a stuffy. And I'm now the parent of a three year old and a five year old. And I tell ya, they love treating those stuffies hard. I mean, they get jumped on, they, you know, they throw them around. So like, kids would just come up and just start pummeling you, uh, when you're in a mascot costume. Okay, so then the journey to financial services and something a lot safer is starting to make sense. So let's segue into this journey. And you get to choose, I guess, which of your companies you want to talk about the founder journey for. I'm kind of, Drawn to hire with because that's definitely something that is unique that I don't see a lot and that's how I know you through but you can, you know, you choose your company and just give us a little 411 on what led you to like, oh my god, I should do something. It's funny, you know, when I talk to candidates, which I do a lot, right, you know, sometimes we'll go back to them and we'll say, hey, I need help. Telling your story because the way you told us your story is not compelling and we need to make it compelling and and the reality Is is like I think I have gotten to the point where I have rewritten my story in my mind To the point where it's just a little a little journey So I can go back as far as you want But I mean it really starts like if I go back to college when I was in college I was in school to be a an IT person All right I wanted to be a computer programmer because I heard they make lots of money and this is like early 2000s and like All the millionaires are going to be computer wizards, right? And unfortunately, I was not very good at programming, but I liked messing around with computers. And so I thought, okay, well, the other people who make lots of money are CEOs. So I was like, I'm going to start a business. And so in college, I did computer repair. Printed up a little sign. Remember I told you I was good at Photoshop. So I made a little sign. It said, Frankenstein PC repair. We bring your PC back from the dead. And I stuck this all around campus and then people would, you know, pay me a hundred bucks and come to their dorm and fix their laptop. I'd reinstall windows, whatever. They'd hand me some cash. I'd disappear. And that was my, my job in college. And the reason I ended up doing effectively sales and marketing was because I met this really beautiful woman who was majoring in marketing. And so I changed all my classes to follow her. And so we'd have every class and now she's my co founder and my wife. So we went all through school together. And I just, I was just taking marketing classes. Cause I was like, what, you know, there, there wasn't like a degree in entrepreneurship and it was funny. I want to say when I was in like, like junior or senior year, there was a guy, it was a class on entrepreneurship. I was really excited about this class. And the guy stood up and he said, Hey, uh, if all you care about is money, then become a salesperson. But otherwise, and then I have no idea what the rest of that sentence was because I was like, that's what I'm here for. I want to make money. So I was like, I'm going to be a salesperson. So, you know, I was going to be one of those two things. And right after college, we moved arbitrarily to Tampa, Florida for no particular reason. I mean, there's a story there that I won't go into, but we moved to Tampa and I tried to start up Frankenstein PC repair again. I said, I already have it right now. I'll just. Then it up and there's old people in Florida. It's like the number one city in the world for the search term, computer help, literally, I went on Google analytics and I was like, Oh, people need computer help because all the old people, unfortunately, I realized that we needed health insurance. And by the way, I hate to admit now as someone who deals with employment for a living, how much health insurance impacts so much of my life. And how many placements have literally failed for us at higher width because of health insurance. Oh, that's great. Comp, right? Everything, but the health insurance. Falls apart. Uh, so this was what drove me. I put a pin on health insurance. Anyway, so I, I ended up knocking on doors,, at an office park looking for a sales job. Cause I, I didn't know how to find a sales job. This was like 2006 or what, or 2000, I guess it was 2010. And, you know, I felt like dropping applications off online wasn't really doing anything. So I just went door to door in an office park and I said, Hey, does anybody need a sales rep? And I found this guy. Who had a print and marketing shop. And what he did was he like would sell things with your logo on them. Or he had a bunch of industrial printers. He'd print like binders and folders and like postcards and stuff. And he said,, I'll hire you on like a draw only. So you make no salary and any commission you have to hit your draw. And I said, perfect. Here's a chance to just, you know, I don't have an experience. Why not? So I was on a draw of like I think it was 600 biweekly. What's your opinion to BNI? Yeah. What's your, what's your opinion on that? Before I say anything about it, I think it's great for some businesses and it's never been great for any business that I have worked with or in, I'm not currently a member, if that. A little cultish, right? It has a little cultish vibe. Well, my owner at this company was big into B& I, but he hated going to the meetings. So, he would take his lowly paid sales rep and say, go sit at B& I. So, I sold my first big deal, and I showed up for my commission check, and he pulled me in and he said, Hey, JMS, I'm not going to be able to pay you until Monday. I'm having a cashflow problem. And I said, great, I'm not going to work until you pay me. I'll see you Monday for my check. So I left, came back on Monday and, uh, the repo man was dragging all of his printers out the front front door. And I never saw that check. So. You know, now I'm like, what do I do? Wednesday morning, I show up at B& I cause like, he's not going to be there, right? And I was like, this week I'm for sale. Cause you know, you go around the table, everybody talks about your business. And sitting next to me was a paycheck small business rep. And she's like, let me get a referral fee. So I got hired to sell small business payroll for paychecks and, you know, I did pretty well, but my wife looked at me and said, Oh my God, I hate living in Florida. We're near none of our friends. We're surrounded by people that are outside of our demographic. Lots of old people. We were like 20 years old, no kids in the middle of Spring Hill, Florida, which if you've been to Spring Hill, Florida, you are the minority demographic if you're under the age of 60. And we had no reason to be there, you know, so we packed up and moved to Virginia, which is where I am now to be near her family. And. On that transition, it's funny, when you're in a sales territory, doing a sales role, where you only have one competitor, you get to meet your competitor, and my competitor was ADP, and we found, unfortunately, I don't know how good this speaks to me, but like, we got together every now and again and hung out, because it was like, who else are you going to talk to payroll about? It was funny, because Yeah, we would get together and be like, Oh man, by the way, you're going to get a call from this guy because he just fired us at Paychex. Like, what am I going to do? So when I got, you know, to the point where we decided we were going to relocate and Paychex wasn't hiring, they had a full team in Virginia where I was going. Um, the ADP guy was like, I'll get your job tomorrow. Same exact job, just at ADP in Richmond, Virginia. But then luckily I discovered a little company called Paylocity. You ever heard of those guys? Yeah. They were tiny back then. I think I was employee number 300, which felt like a big company, but by comparison to Paychex, you know, it was a tiny company, and it was like, they were gonna offer me more money to do the exact same job. So I was like, all right, I will do that. So I did that for a solid eight years. I was their only rep in the state. And the best thing about that job was that it was the kind of job where your manager is 10 states away and checks in on you once a quarter. And it's like, just make more money than we pay you. We're busy. That was the threshold at that point. And then after a while, I don't do well sitting still. And the thing about sales is if you build up good referral channels and good, good processes, it gets easy, sometimes too easy. And I got to the point where I didn't have to work that hard to make my number. And I had money and time, which is a deadly recipe for someone. That's an entrepreneur. So I started wasting money and time on silly projects. I did a bunch of these. I had, launched a product called connect me, please dot X, Y, Z. And the idea was that I was collecting cell phone numbers and phone extensions for CEOs all over the state of Virginia. I said, maybe other sales reps are doing the same thing. We can make a website where you go in and share phone extensions with each other. Through this, you know, and you vote whether or not that was the right extension with a little yes or no. And we would just sort, here's the ones that work. And then I'd run ads alongside it. And then I gave up on that because serial entrepreneur doesn't mean serial successful entrepreneur. I had another I don't know if I ever told you about the half suit. So the half suit, basically I was doing well, but my colleagues on my sales team were not. And if you've ever been on a sales team with underperforming colleagues, it's the whole team. That gets punished, right? But I didn't really vibe with that. So they said, look, we want all of the sales team to be on a Zoom call with video on at like 7am on Monday and at like 5pm on Friday. And we're going to check in every day. And I'm sitting here like, dude, I'm 200 percent of quota. I don't want to do this. So in protest, I took an old suit. And I sent it up to my mother, who's a seamstress And I said, Mom, cut out the back of this and put Velcro down the back. And so she cut out the back of it. So every morning I'd wake up and I'd go into my office and you know, the call's like at eight o'clock. So I'd go in the office, I'd slip my hands into the sleeves of this and Velcro up the back of it, do my video call. And then rip it off and go back to bed because I didn't wake up till like 930 usually. And I realized I was like, Oh my God, this is like a thing. It's like a business snucky. Like I could make it comfortable. I could sell it. So I started a Kickstarter. I think the website's still up. If you go to partly proper. com, that's the brand we came up I paid an ad agency to make a commercial for it. I mean, like I went way too hard on this. I got a patent on the Velcro mechanism to close the back cause no one had done it. Despite the fact that this idea was not unique, here's the thing that you'll discover. Your idea is not nearly as important as you think it is when you're acting as an entrepreneur. It's the ability to pick up the phone and call strangers and actually do the work of the, of the starting the business that most people fail at. So like, you know, I, the example I use is my brother, when we were like seven, looked at me one day and said, I have a genius idea. I'm going to put wheels in my shoes and they'll pop in and out and I'll have roller skates whenever I want. I said, that's amazing. And like, you know, five, ten years later, wheelies became like the big thing. Now, did my brother invent wheelies? No. Did like a thousand other children invent wheelies? Absolutely. But only one company. Put them together and put them on the market and sold them, right? So same thing with the half suit and the partly proper. So I, I went out and I started a Kickstarter and I launched, I had a bunch of samples made by different manufacturers out in China. And then,, the day I launched my campaign to get this thing going, h& M had a sale on a whole entire suit. For 99. And that was the top comment on the Reddit thread. And I was like, no, I didn't want that comparison point, but that's the one they went with. And I gave up on it. I moved on, you know, went to my next thing and then COVID happened. And I just, my phone started blowing up with people wanting to order the half suit because everyone was working from home and they didn't want to wake up and put on a suit. You know, the business snuggie. So you can steal that idea, Summer, if you want to go start, start it back up. So when you said half suit, I thought you were talking about what, which is a blouse and yoga shorts and Nikes, you know, that ended up being my COVID era half suit and well, so I did that for a while. Like I started all these different things and then, you know, I think the thing that radicalized me into, into doing like real entrepreneurship, by the way, I have to say all these dumb little projects, I did a bunch more that I'm not going into, they were practice companies. Right. I took a commission check. I set it aside. I said, I'm willing to waste this much money on this crazy idea. And just to see what happens. And through that process, I learned how to register for an FEIN, which I needed to have in order to get a supplier to answer my phone call in China. I found a marketing company that would make me fancy graphics if I wanted to. And I figured out how to get a quote for that and what a brand book was. Right. I figured out like, you know, how to get low cost CRM systems. And like, I learned about Zoho and all that kind of stuff. These are like practice companies. And it didn't feel bad to walk away. Cause we said, all right, we know this can lose money and we're not going to have bad feelings about it. And this was funded because of that deadly combination of time and money from being a sales rep that was doing okay. So things started to change at Paylocity because they became publicly traded and they got bigger and bigger. And at some point they started to have a retention problem. Yeah, salespeople started to fall off and I got frustrated too, like a lot of people. And they did this bonus to try to retain everybody. And it was smart. The idea was this, if you've ever sold for payroll companies, you'll know that the way you get paid is lump sums. If you sell a recurring contract, they look at the value of that contract for 12 months and they give you 10 to 30 percent of that in a big check. So after year one, you never get paid again. And they said, I know what we'll do to keep our most loyal employees. We're going to look at all the recurring revenue we make from every sale you've ever done. And we'll give you a one time bonus check. And that's when I learned that my efforts had culminated in like, it was like six to 7 million a year in recurring revenue. For Paylocity and my W 2 hadn't changed and I'm sitting here going, you're making how much money off of these people? I still answer their calls. I still troubleshoot their problems when they reach out to me because they're my friends. Like, and, and so I started looking around. I started by calling all of the other payroll companies in my region and saying, can I sell for you and just get a residual? All I want is that residual. Right? Just pay me that. I don't even need commission up front. And they said, yeah, yeah, we'd be interested. Maybe. Sure. But one of them looked at me and said, why don't you just start your own payroll company? And like, have you ever had an idea so obvious, but so dumb? Like you just like, like, it seems so impossibly big that I immediately wanted to just blow it off as a dumb idea. And then the longer I sat on it and the more, you know, I asked questions about it, the more I realized, Oh my God, this is really not that hard. I was starting so many businesses in industries I knew nothing about, and I had become an expert, literally an expert on one thing, which was fricking payroll. And I never thought about doing a business in payroll. Like, I don't know why it didn't come together. You broke Buffett's rule. What's Warren Buffett's rule? I don't know it. It's, it's like, he only invests in what he knows. Yeah. We're simple. Like, well, but then how do you know what you don't know? Like, you gotta get out. You gotta learn something. So I ended up starting my own payroll company, and when you run a payroll company, there's, there's three parts to a payroll company. There's a payroll engine, that's like the website people log into, it does the math, that's what most people see and interact with, but then there's like a tax provider that helps you manage the taxes for all these clients, and then there's a bank to move the money around. That's like the core essence. And what I didn't realize when I thought about starting a payroll company is that there's like a whole industry that supports payroll companies. I don't have to make this stuff. I don't have to code anything. I just have to find a vendor and they want me to do it. Here's the thing about starting a business in an established industry. All the people that sell products to that industry are waiting for someone like you to come in and spend money with them. Your success is their success. So they're coaching me on how to start a payroll company the whole time. Right? Like, I don't know, how do I move money around? Oh, you need an ACH vendor. And here's the seven ACH vendors that are in this market. Call them all. I like this one the best because if I don't find that ACH vendor, I'm not buying the other product and they know it, right? So, you know, they helped walk me through that process and I ended up using a vendor to move the money. Now, moving the money is the most important thing because summary, if I tell you to take a million dollars and pay a bunch of my employees with that money, but then I don't have the million dollars. The bank doesn't go to me for the million dollars. They go to Summer for the million dollars. Because the way an ACH works is it's a set of debits and credits. It's money coming out, money going in. And despite the fact that it sounds like it's one transaction, they are actually unrelated in the bank system. So you can send money out and not have the money collected, and it doesn't stop anything. Now the employees have money that is coming from a zero account. So the biggest exposure you have, if you're going to start a payroll company, It's paying employees with money you don't have, which is why most payroll companies have a three day ACH window. You submit payroll on Wednesday for Friday check date, but believe it or not, that window is actually artificially short because it takes like five days to fully settle. So the end result is, you know, three days is enough time to like emergency claw back sometimes. So we went with this company called Cache, Cache, C A C H E T. They were bonded and insured for 50 million worth of fraud. What could go wrong? I'm never going to run 50 million worth of payroll. I started the company in like July, 2019 that I started selling to customers. I mean, I launched it earlier, but it took a long time to get ready to sell. And like three months in, I had like 10 clients. And one of my clients called me and said, Hey, uh, JMS, you took money out of my account, but my employees don't see it. Where is it? And I called Cache and it was just out of service tone. Dee, dee, dee. And that's how I learned that someone had just committed 60 million worth of fraud at Cache. And their bank account was frozen, which meant all the assets I had transferred were frozen, which meant I'm going to be writing checks to these employees off of my personal bank account, which is what I did. And when that happened, I was driving around and listening to, do you ever listen to the planet money? Yeah. Yeah. They, they had an episode and they said, put the word blockchain in front of anything and people throw money at you. I was like, all right, I'm going to Google blockchain. And so in, in a sure evolution, the software I used, the way you move money and produce an ACH file is with the cash management tab. So I Googled blockchain cash management and I got two results, Chase Bank and Signature Bank. I called Chase Bank first because they're the biggest bank, of course, go with them. And Chase said, Oh yeah, we have this blockchain technology. It's amazing. You could hire a developer and get our API codes and raise some funds and start this complicated new thing. I was like, okay, I'll think about it. I called Signature Bank and they said, Oh my God, that's a great idea. Why don't we pay you money to help us figure out how to do it as a consultant? And we'll give you a banking team to go out and sell it. We'll just pay you a monthly fee plus commission on every dollar the bank earns. Absolutely. Are you kidding me? Right? So that became instant payroll and I sold Astra payroll. And that was the beginning of my acquisition life. I sold it, started signature banks, instant payroll. And we were going to payroll companies and saying, Hey, all the people that were in this bankruptcy filing with me trying to get our money back, how would you like that to never happen again? And all you have to do is switch to this bank. And I get a commission on every dollar that comes to the bank because of it. Right. It was a really easy sales pitch. The product was free. I got paid money for that. And it was so lucrative that I, that's why I sold my payroll company. It's like, why am I running a payroll company? And so we did this and then like two years later, two things happened in really quick succession. The first thing was signature bank said, we don't need any more customers. We're growing so fast that we can't keep up with all the customers you're bringing us. So we're just going to keep paying you. And you sit around and do nothing. And once again, I found myself with time and money, and I don't do well with time and money. So I said, I, I know what I'll do. I went out to all these people. So I reached out to a lot of people that had payroll companies and got tied up in the cache thing. And several of them had said, man, I would sell tomorrow if someone offered me a 3x or 4x on my top line revenue. But no one's paying that. Everyone's paying for these smaller payroll companies. You get like one times your annual revenue as a buyout. And I said, well, this is great. What we'll do is we'll just stack together. A bunch of small payroll companies, and on paper, there'll be a huge payroll company, and then someone will pay us 4x. And that became Astra Acquisitions. I was trying to roll up all these people into a big spreadsheet, and then pitch them to a big payroll company to buy en masse. Buy us all. Think of it less like a roll up and more like, uh, like union negotiations. It's like, we're all gonna walk if you don't give us what we want. Right. Um, and the advantage we had was there's actually sales teams at these big payroll companies that literally have quotas for the number of payroll companies are supposed to buy. And so the idea was, Hey, you want your entire year's quota filled? All you got to do is pay us more than you normally would. So I got about halfway through that project. Um, we got up to like seven or 8 million in top line revenue. I have, the goal was 20 and, um, signature bank collapsed. And the checks stopped flowing and I still had a mortgage to pay. You know, I was spending money and I was like, all right, we need to make money. And I are with was my response to the question from people in the rollup. What's going to happen to my staff. If I sell to a big payroll company that just wants my customers and none of my business. And I said, Oh, I'll start another company. And what we'll do is we'll take the staff that's getting let go and we'll just blast it out to all the people. We know that license I solved a sure evolution, whatever platform you're on UKG ready, right? And so when signature bank went belly up and I no longer had the patience to run Astra acquisitions, we said, okay, well, we know people buying payroll companies. We know people selling payroll companies. Let's call all of them and tell them. Give us your employees. You're going to fire. And I know all these people from the cachet lawsuit and my work at Signature Bank, we'll email all of them every week. Here's all the client, all the candidates coming into the market. And that became the bones of what has been my most successful business venture to date, which is HireWith. HireWith at this point, we communicate with some 850 plus payroll service bureaus and PEOs across the country. Every Monday, we have, you know, hundreds of clients under contract now, but we only have like 20 to 30 candidates we can place every week. So. You know, the demand for those people is so out of whack. We're the opposite of a recruiter. Like it's almost like I'm running this drag net over the job market and just catching up all of these really high valuable people. And it comes from this innate problem in my space in the payroll world, where if you were to look for a payroll manager and put a job on LinkedIn, what you would see is a bunch of people applying for that job that's just entered hours at ADP. com, but hadn't actually. Run a payroll and what we do is we are able to say, okay, these are the, like the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1 percent that specifically know the back end of the payroll industry, but not only that, but they also know specifically the platform you're using and we're not convincing them to quit from your buddy's company because if you, if you're an ISOLV licensee, you probably know most of the other ISOLV licensees and if you need someone with ISOLV experience and you don't want to make your buddy mad, You're not going to call into his staff, right? So how do you find those people? And the answer was, we only work with people that get referred to us or come to us organically. Everyone we work with is on the way out the door. There's no part of my company. That's like calling people and asking them to quit. The secret is it's also the easiest thing I could do because calling people and trying to convince them to apply for a job is hard. So it came out of a sense of laziness, which I think. All good entrepreneurship should, right? Like, how can I make money as quickly as possible? And you know, then Astra Acquisitions, you'll see reference to that as well. Astra Acquisitions is really me just opening back up the roll up acquisition again. Because when we're in those conversations, there are people that say, you know what, I don't want to do the roll up, I want to sell this on Amazon. We're also doing direct M& A advisory services, helping people sell. I know, I have a call every month with every person buying payroll companies in the country that I can find. And the point of that is so that they call me when they're about to buy someone and they have me rehome all the staff like, Oh, don't worry about these employees. We don't want JMS at higher with will rehome them. And so they're going to tell me anyway. So if you wanted to sell your apparel company, guess what? I know all the people that are buying. I know which ones are paying the most right now. I know what their angles are and who they're after. I'm building this giant spreadsheet of all the buyers and sellers. So it's like I was giving that information out for free when people called me and asked about it. And we said, why don't we charge for this and call it advisory services? And so that became. Um, another part of my business. And so I will, one other thing I'll mention is you'll see reference on some of my profiles to this like sticky niches thing. So all that is, is I, I took some time maybe a year or so ago and I took this repeating process that I'd been doing and just wrote it down. The four things in the sticky niches process is really exactly the thing I just told you like 10 times in a row, which is, you know, I'm starting with something that I already know, which is payroll You look at something that you're an expert at and you say, okay, what problems in this field are endemic established and expensive? So it's like a problem that everybody has. It's a problem that's been around for a long time. It's established. And it costs someone a lot of money. And then you talk to people in and out of the industry, and it's critical that some of them are out of the industry to find a way to solve it. And all you do is connect those people and get paid to do it. Right. Because at the end of the day, despite me self identifying as an entrepreneurship, I kind of more identify as a salesperson. Right. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do in my future sales career, it really boiled down to very selfishly. I want to make as much money with as little work as possible. I think everybody aspires to that. The reality of sales is the way you make more money in sales is not by working harder. It's by selling a bigger product so that you can do less, fewer transactions, right? And so I, I think most salespeople, they only have two paths they can go. They can either become managers and train salespeople or they can become, you know, leaders effectively. Um, you know, that's, that's an, I say the back, the managers and the leaders are the same thing, but the other path is they can go and sell a bigger product. Right? So all the small business sales reps at Paychex wanted to be mid market sales people at Paychex. And all the mid market sales people at Paychex wanted to become enterprise sales people at some other company. And it goes on and on. And then you want to become national account sales rep. And then you want to be And so, you know, if you look back at what I was doing, the whole thing with Signature Bank and Instant Payroll was now all of a sudden I got to sell an entire bank. Yeah, just bring it, like all of a sudden my product was millions of dollars, which wasn't my money. I didn't have millions of dollars, but it was someone else's. Right. Uh, and like, and the thing with like, uh, Astro Acquisitions, it's so exciting is now I'm selling other people's payroll companies. It's not my company, right? That's what the rollup is. How do I collect all these other things and bring the value by just being that glue, that sticky component between them. I mean, that's literally at its core, all that Astro Acquisitions is. And same thing with hire with, it's the same exact concept. I'm just bringing together this little pile of people that are job hunting. And all of a sudden the sum is worth more than its parts. That was way more than you asked for. Oh yeah, it's a snake eating its tail. I can fill an hour, just you wait. Um, and since you went off script, I'm going to Please. I know I sent you a list of questions, but it's always fun to just riff. It's funny, cause I work in different spaces, heavily in financial services, but a lot of the challenges are, it's just, it's not financial services challenges, it's just business challenges. It doesn't matter what business you're in, it doesn't matter what size you are, it doesn't matter what country you're in, whatever. So there's this like, talent Challenge, talent gap, whatever. Um, and it, it kind of sounds like that's what you're working on is like all the employers complain that they can't find good help and then all of the job hunters complain that nobody calls them and they can't find a job. So, it's just really weird. No matter who you're talking to, they're like, there's no good jobs available and I can't get hired. And then they're like, there's no good candidates out there. Nobody wants to work. And it's, it's just super weird to sit on the outside and hear those 2 completely conflicting conversations. And you know, at the end of the, I think there's, there's two things that I see as the core problems we're solving. I mean, one is just the basic idea that it's hard for these people to find each other because there is not clarity in the job titles, right? I kind of touched on that a minute ago, but like, there's no way that if, if you, Summer, had a ton of experience in UKG Ready. There's no, you can't go to Google and say, show me a map of all the UKG ready bureaus, and then go to their career pages that you just can't find it. And if you search on Indeed or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn for like jobs that include the words UKG ready, you're going to find a thousand clients who use UKG ready. So the other part of what I'm doing is the preservation of industry knowledge, because. If you are Summer Paletti, the UKG expert if you just need a new job, the number one most likely place you are to end up if you're on the service side of things is working for a client that licenses the technology from you, you're going to be working for a customer that you're already servicing and that is not there, you're not going to use it. 80 percent of the knowledge that you have earned because sure, you know what's on the bag and it's it's like my wife. My wife used to be so she's a registered nurse. Fun fact. And she used to be the person doing pre authorizations for anthem. So you'd call anthem and say, I need to get pre authorized for this medical procedure. And if you've ever had that declined or rejected, you know, that there's like a huge fight you have to do with the insurance company to get that thing that your doctor says you need, which is silly that the insurance company has a say in that, but that's America. So for her, now she's on the other side. She's, she's representing my family, trying to get preauthorizations for stuff. And she's like on the phone with the new person at Anthem going, you got to go to this tab and click this button. I swear, I know what I'm doing. I used to be in your desk. So if I was looking to hire like a nurse to like do that, great. She'd be great for that, but she's overqualified, well, overqualified Anthem and people in Anthem shoes have no way to go out and find people like her that have that skillset baked in. It's not a problem I'm here to solve, but the same kind of problem exists in the payroll industry. There's no school for UKG. There's no school for ISolved. So the only way to learn it is in the field. And so. Yeah, that, we, we preserve it and keep it from leaving. That's really the problem I'm attempting to solve anyway. Yeah, well, and nobody wants all their folks to lose their job. We're not going to go into what I know of Caché or they who shall no longer be named. Now I want to know, can you share any of your relationship with Caché? Is there, are you mad at them? So, Cachet was a company under a corporate conglomerate. I worked for its sister company for most of my career. So, yeah, I, and so, yes, being at a company that experiences that type of like, you didn't commit the fraud, but you're still affected by it. And then also being at a company that was sold, you know, so. I was part of the team that sold off the other sister companies after it collapsed, and in a senior leadership position, the primary concern was saving as many jobs as we could. And then, of course, the acquirers are going to do what they need to do to make their books work, which meant slashing costs, and then also being on the other side, like, going to that company, and then later on, they slashed some costs some more. And, you know, I didn't, I didn't work there anymore, so. Circle of employment death, but like the primary concern of the CEO when he was selling off the remaining companies was, I don't want all these people who have worked for me for a decade or more to lose their job. So I totally get it. And then there's just a super specialized skill set that payroll folks have. You can't go to school for entrepreneurship. You can't go to school for sales. You also can't really go to school for payroll or tax or things like that. So it's a super specialized skill that you only get. Through your work experience. Um, so I can see the benefit of having a very specialized, you know, like LinkedIn recruiting, basically, but for this industry, because some of the challenges I have is looking for a payroll person. But like you said, it's like, I'm the HR person who inputs the payroll hours. Well, that, that's not, that doesn't help me fill a payroll role, right? Yeah. Well, and you said something, Summer, that really I wanted to go back on. I really love this, this idea that, when you are selling a company that, you know, I hear this all the time that the owners just really want to make sure all the people are taken care of and people keep their jobs. the analogy I have when that happens is it's like breaking up with someone and saying, don't worry, I lined up a new boyfriend for you, you know, like it's a relationship, like people have to want to be there. I can't tell you how many employees have come to us organically on their own because their owner sold their company and they got hired by the new employer and they freaking hate it. Right? Or worse, they got laid off six months later now that the owner's out of the picture. And now there's no obligation anymore to making someone happy. They signed on the dotted line. It is no longer their company. They heard what they wanted to hear and they're in there. With that said, I wanted to ask you, Summer, you told me, you asked me a minute ago, like what's, what's like the problem I'm trying to solve? What's the problem Summer's trying to solve? Like, what's the thing that you're excited about solving right now? I am solving paying my mortgage. Well, let me know when you solve that one. So I am a serial entrepreneur. I actually stayed with a company for a long time because it was a pretty hands off owner. We can discuss if we feel like it, whether that was a good idea or not. It seemed like a great idea at the time. He was pretty hands off. I was in a leadership role and as, as long as you made your numbers and he got profit out of it, he didn't really nitpick how you got there. A dream manager, in my opinion. And legally. Yeah. So I got to scratch my entrepreneurial niche while also having a guaranteed paycheck, which felt like kind of the best of both worlds. And I made enough money to where it made sense to stay. So I didn't really picture myself in a position like this, but once I was gone from there, I tried a couple different things on for size. I also invested in a company that was way outside of my area of expertise that seemed like it seemed fun. Why not? And I was bad at it because I didn't know anything about it. So then I come back to, well, I'm a really great sales leader and I enjoyed that, but like, There's not a lot of companies in our industry that could afford me. And so I thought, I know that a lot of them have a lot of the same challenges, and so why don't I work part time for a number of them, helping them solve their challenges in a sales leadership role, and that's how they can afford me, I give a lot of value, I get to have fun because. What's more fun than one project is like 10. That's way more fun is to do 10 things. You know, that's how my brain works. Like a fractional CRO type thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I do the same thing, but for lots of different companies. And what's really fun is I do something with one company. Cause I get an idea for how to help them grow. And then. I'm like, Ooh, actually, if I tweak it a little, I could bring this over here and help this other guy with the similar problems. The ideas come fast and furious when you work in a fractional role, which is super fun. So just my goal is to help people grow. Because I find that like, you get to a certain point where you plateau. And really, it's like whatever you did to get there. You can't keep doing that to go further and so that's where I help people is to kind of get unstuck and accelerate their growth and it's really fun. Well, like, and I can't help but think that maybe 1 of the more valuable things you're bringing to that table is an outside perspective because, like, it's funny, one of the most useful things that I did when I, when I started my payroll company, it was asking my wife to quit her job and help run the payroll company with me because she had no knowledge of payroll and she got to ask this really obvious question. Like, why are you doing that? Like, can we just do it different? She says that she still does this to me all the time. I'll like carve out like a plan and then she'll come in and like, this is wrong. And like, this is stupid. I can't help but think that most of what you're doing is coming in like what I'm thinking about is there's a guy who I won't name, but this was a person that was in the MNA space and resigned and a new person came in to take his role. And the new person made a lot of the same exact decisions that this old person had been begging for. Frickin years. Like, we need to change the way we're doing X, Y, and Z. And no one would listen to him. And this new guy comes in and says, I think we need to do X, Y, and Z. And guess what? They loved it. And he was so frustrated. But what he said to me, with a lot of grace I'll add, was he said, sometimes people just need to hear it from someone else. And it was, it was never going to be me. And the trick was they had to pay someone more money to come in and tell them what they already were hearing. So in a sense, I wonder if what you're doing is, is convincing people, Hey, well, now that we're paying summer, I have to listen to her. There's a little of that, like, just likened to, you know, when you have a home inspector come in and they're like, do you know you're missing a little chunk of that baseboard? But you've walked past it 10 times a day for 10 years and you just sort of forgotten about it. There's a lot of that in companies where they don't like nose blindness. You don't smell the stink anymore. Exactly. Yeah. You don't even know there's a stink. Everything smells like flowers. Oh yeah. That's like when we had a dog and I came home after a vacation, I was like, has our house always smelled this doggy? Like I just had no idea. Right. Okay. So enough about me. What kind of growth goals do you have? You know, it kind of sounds like Hire With is your more successful of all of your different whole mess of, of activities you work on, you know, what are you doing to grow Hire With? This year like what's this year look like summer paletti of rise of us Helps her clients transform by building adaptable customer focused sales systems that replace outdated models With these new frameworks their teams can respond quickly to evolving customer needs Reduce friction and work as one cohesive unit. This shift equips them with the tools to drive consistent growth Lowering churn and creating lasting customer relationships. As a result, they achieve sustainable revenue growth that positions them ahead of competitors and prepared for future challenges. Together, you and Summer will create a foundation that not only meets today's demands, but supports long term success. You know, the weird thing about being an entrepreneur in a small business, and I want to say this is exclusive to being a small business, it's me, Maria and one employee for hire with, like, we're small and master acquisitions is just me, right? There's a blurring in your life between the different parts of your life that doesn't happen in a way. When you're working for someone else's company where, you know, I don't think of myself as running four different things. I'm talking to the same people, what they care to talk about changes depending on, you know, and that's what we focus in on. I talk all day long to owners of payroll companies and whether we're going to talk about them selling their company or them buying another one or them hiring folks or firing folks, that's going to be up to them. But it's not like, I think, which company am I representing today? And so when I think about the growth, the very selfish and lazy thing I think about is, okay, I know how much money's in my bank account and I want that number to go up this year, right? Like that's the selfish version. But the other side is, I think this year, like some measuring sticks that I'm looking at is I do want to get this rollup acquisition first one over the finish line. And what I mean by that is the rollup acquisitions, there's going to be more than one of them. We're going to get one over the finish line. That'll be kind of a practice run, and then we'll do it again. And the hope is to do it in perpetuity. Every time we get to a certain amount of revenue. You know, we'll have maybe a pool of buyers that are interested in it, and we'll, we'll do them in little, little ways. So that, that would be my goal, because it's still February, but I have to say every time I blink, it's another month. And also, do you have kids? It's the 15th, and this is a short month, so it's actually March, practically. We keep having snow days. I, like, I can't keep my kids in school, because in Virginia, it's like, it's supposed to snow another, like, 10 inches or something on Wednesday, and the kids are out of school Monday and Tuesday, and so I'm just like, Like, how do I get anything done when these kids are home all the time? And I love them and I don't want to miss this part of their lives. But at the same time, it's like, you know, that balance. Yeah. So I'm curious, what is your take on work life balance? Because I feel like this is a controversial topic that I hear a little bit too much about, right? And it's harder when, when I thought it was difficult when I was a corporate sales leader, it's 10 times more difficult now, it's tough. So work life balance. There is no balance. Work life integration. I am not ever here for semantics, but like, for me, what it looks like, and it's, you know, it's gotta look like, it's gotta look like whatever makes you feel comfortable. So my kids are significantly older. I have one who's an adult, and he's out of the house, and then I have one in high school, and Thank you. Yeah, and then I'll have free Mmm, what a mystery. What are you gonna do with that? You gotta do something with it, right? You can't just, you can't just sit around. I'm gonna work. I'm gonna work and I'm gonna work out. Like that's all I know how to do. I think for me, when my kids were little, it meant I can work when they're sleeping and when they're awake and they want time from me and I don't have a client facing obligation, I would, I would play the game or draw the picture. And then I'm like, okay, they're going to go to sleep at eight and like, I could catch up on my emails at eight, you know, so it was finding time for the little moments. That were important for them and then somehow trying to balance that out with making sure because I had an employer which felt a little different, you know, making sure I did the things for my employer and I always felt like if I did the thing and I did it on time, do you really care if I did it at 8 p. m. or 8 a. m. It shouldn't matter. But for everybody, it, it needs to look something different. I mean, if, if the kids are happy most of the time and my employer or my bank is happy most of the time, then I suppose you're doing okay. You know, it's, it's no magic. No, there, there isn't any magic. And one of the things that I think, um, I think about a lot is like the thing I liked about. When I was just a regular sales rep was that I got to walk into businesses at Paychex and ADP and Paylocity and just be like, Hey, what do you do? How do you make money? And like the answers we would get on this was wild. Like I, I still think about some of the crazy, like weird businesses I ran into. Like the one I always think about is there was a company that all they did was make the labels for Lipton tea. Like the tea packet. Like they just made the label for the tea packet. And Lipton went green in like 2015 and reduced their paper usage by 50 percent. And this 150 employee company with one contract went down to 75 employees. They let off 75 people in this factory because Lipton tea went green. Like how do you, how do you end up doing that? You know, like 150 people and like, you know, that. Classifying your client base, maybe. I don't know. They've sold for a huge chunk of change. So that's one of the things I talk to people about is we look in and we're like, you know, you might do something like this as well. Like, when you're when you're advising on an M and a, because people are going to look at the books, right? It's like, okay, 50 percent of your revenue is this 1 client. Like, that is way 1 person. Good luck. Let's get a lot of other business in there and balance that out. Because if something happens to them, Well, I mean, look, look at Signature Bank, like they were my one big customer effectively. And by the way, Signature Bank, I thought I had the perfect deal. I had a golden parachute. I don't know if, uh, I've never had a golden parachute until Signature Bank. Not to pat myself on the back too much on this one. My father actually inspired me on this. I was trying to figure out how to make this contract. And he was like, why don't you just find someone that's already done this? And I was like, well, nobody's done this. I don't know how to negotiate this. And we, I went on LinkedIn and I found a retired banker who had just basically retired after like 20 years running the East coast of BB& T. And I called him, I was like, Hey, would you be willing to help me negotiate this compensation package? And he said, yeah, as long as it's not on Wednesday, cause that's my golfing day. I'm retired. I'm free whenever. And I said, well, look, I'll pay you whatever I end up paying my attorney to draft the terms. And he said, yeah, whatever. And he went on all these calls negotiating with this bank leadership about my comp plan. And then at the end, he was like, if you're able to produce the numbers you're saying, are you. Able to produce based on your projections. If these are real numbers and they're, this is still underpaying you, I thought it was a ton of money, but he was like, this is under underpaying you,'cause you're bringing all this, you know, billions of dollars to the bank, right? Like you're representing, like how many bb and t branches would you be representing by yourself basically? So as part of that, they wouldn't give me, I wanted equity in the bank, which, first of all, in hindsight, thank God I didn't get equity in the bank'cause it collapsed. But I wanted it and so instead he was like, well, you need a golden parachute. So if they fire you or terminate your contract for any reason, they have to pay you for 12 months guaranteed of the average of whatever your last few payments were. And so I couldn't imagine a scenario. I thought I had no risk. I was like, I'm fine. Like I could literally do anything and I would have a year to sort it out. And then the bank collapsed and then running out of money was not in my list of bingo cards. I didn't even have that on my radar. So it ends up my last check from them. They owed me a lot of money at the end. I got a check for like a dollar Looking at companies from the outside and the weird things they do. Like the, the work life balance thing, and believe it or not, I'm going all the way back to the work life balance thing. Now that I'm at HireWith, I have the interesting, interesting perspective of talking to people on the employer and the employee side. So I'll be on one phone call where someone says, Man, I don't like people that want work life balance because that's just a sign that they don't want to work. And then I'll talk to another person, they're like, Man, I'm quitting my job because I don't have work life balance and I'm working 80 hours a week and I'm exhausted. You know? And it's like, It's been really interesting. I guess it's been interesting that I have found myself in a position where I get to be on both sides of a lot of conversations, like both on like people buying payroll companies and people selling payroll companies. Like I'm no longer just, like when I was a sales rep back in the day, it was just like JMS on the side of Paylocity trying to sell you payroll. And now it's like, imagine if sometimes you were walking in and you were helping someone buy Payroll from Paylocity, and sometimes you're on the side helping them sell it. It's been, it's been bizarre and kind of mind blowing. But that's why I ask you about work life balance, because I, I, I'm curious if you think it's real. I mean, no, it's not. It's a thing we tell our, and this is coming from, you know, a parent. Yeah. Well, parents don't have work life balance. It's a thing we tell ourselves. I feel like it's just like this unachievable thing that you can, like, inner peace, or whatever hippy dippy thing you want to say. Like, it's the business version. It's like world peace. You can have it in mind, and you can work toward it, but like, what does it actually mean? And if we can't figure out what it actually means, can you achieve it? I feel like it's just this, I don't know, it's a thing that means a different thing to everybody, so if it means a different thing to everybody, is it real? Probably not, you know? Yeah. Well, like, generally, like, If you grow up, if your kids grow up and they don't hate you, Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, like, you know, it's odd because like, on the one hand, I think, I think everybody kind of wants the same thing out of a job. Right. And I think people, I think employers can be willingly blind to this. Right. Like, and the three, like the things that I think that everybody wants out of a job. The first one is money. And I know it sounds dumb to say that, but it's mind blowing to me. How many employers are like, Oh, they just wanted to leave and find a higher paying job. Well, no shit Sherlock. Of course they did. Like everybody wants to make enough money to hit their, to make their ends meet. And if they're not doing that, they're going to quit. Right. I'm not saying everybody wants to be a billionaire, which I mean, sure, it'd be nice to be a billionaire, but at some level, if you're not able to make your checkbook balance, you're going to have to quit. Right. But then the other thing is like, just respect from your coworkers. Like, you want to like the thing that has been the number 1 determining factor for whether or not 1 of our placements is going to stick. It's not their skill level, it's not their comp, it's definitely not their comp. It's whether or not they like the people they're around, and whether or not the people that they're around like being around them, you know? Which is why, going back to what you said earlier, Summer, when they promised you, hey, you're gonna have a new job with the new owners, it's like, you know, telling a boy, I got a new girlfriend lined up for you, it's a relationship, and you gotta, you might not like each other. And I will say the third thing that everybody else wants is they want to feel like they're actually doing something that the mission of the company is something that they care about or can be okay with, or if not the company, the mission of the individual task they're tasked with doing matters, because if you're just, like, moving ship, you know, I the On the Titanic, you know, it's like, who cares? But, you know, you can be in a company doing payroll, which is very boring, but then contextualize it in your mind of, Oh my God, this guy wasn't going to pay his bills because his check was messed up. And, and I solved it for him by writing him a paper check and overnighting it to him and you can feel good about it. You know, you might not care about paying the government their taxes, because that's not that exciting and compelling. But you can frame any job in terms of the little victories, or sometimes the big victories. Sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes you're in a button making factory and it's just boring. And then you have to zoom out and say, Oh, half of the profits from these buttons go to save kids in Africa or something. You know what I mean? It has to be meaningful in some way. Well. So work life balance, I feel like half the time, it's really the first two of those three that they're talking about when people are complaining about work life balance. It's, I'm not making enough money, so I'm working really hard and not going home and being miserable there too, so there's nothing in balance. Or, cause you know, I get home and I'm poor, so that's a problem. Yeah. Or the other issue is, the number one reason people quit jobs is cause they can't stand the people they're around, and they can't say that. They can't. The hardest part about what we do with candidates is trying to convince them to tell us the truth about why they're quitting. Like, what do you think the number one reason is people tell us they're quitting their job? Just guess. And know, know by the way that I only talk to people who are getting fired or quitting their job. We don't talk to people who are gainfully employed. So what do you think the number one answer is? Why are you leaving your job? I think their manager sucks. Yeah, but that's not what they tell us. You know what they tell us? They say, I'm looking for a company with growth potential. I feel like I'm stuck and I'm looking for a new opportunity. Well, no, no, no, no. Cause we have a separate question. How much money do you want to make in our intake interview? And look at this. How mind blowing is it when someone says I'm looking for a new job where I have. You know, growth potential or, or, you know, or, uh, you know, I want, I want to be able to move up into something new. And then I say, how much money do you want to make? And they say, well, I'm making 75, 000 now. So I would entertain anything from 60 to 75, 000. And I'm like, do you want growth or do you want a lateral move? And the answer is I just freaking hate my boss and I got to get out of here, you know, or they're going to fire me. Cause we're just at each other's neck. The other second, most common reason people say that they're job hunting is because they got laid off. They said, Oh, my company's doing a layoff. And I mention this because it's rarely true. So a lot of times people will say, Oh, you know, they were just downsizing. And then, I mean, it is true. It happens. But, you know, we'll go on Google and say, you know, did ADP have a layoff? No. Or we'll call the HR department and be like, Hey, did you guys recently downsize an office? And they go No, in fact, we're hiring. So when people get canned for, for personality conflicts and their boss is like, I can't stand you, you're out of here, they'll often come up with the same lie over and over again. You know, I got laid off. So if you're going to tell a lie, come up with a better one. Recruiters don't want to talk to you. If you were laid off is because usually people lie. Why did I not know that? Yeah, well, and the other problem is, you know, I I'm very lucky in the fact that I'm not a recruiter. Because recruiters call the HR department to validate employment and you know what HR says whenever you call about a former employee, they say, yes, they worked here. Yes. Those are those. Those are the dates. I mean, they're not really allowed to say much. Yeah. It's like calling the FBI. I can either confirm or deny that this person and I'm just like, so I have to tell them I, I, I had so many conversations with HR departments where it's like, look, I'm not trying to hire this person. In fact, I don't have an open position to hire this person. I'm trying to decide if I want to market them as a talent marketing firm. My question to you, Mr. or Mrs. HR person, is would you stake your personal reputation, your personal brand, I'm sending out an email on Monday with their name at the top of it, saying this person's a rock star because that's what I do. And on Monday, I don't know if I want to put that person's name in this newsletter. So look, you don't have to tell me anything about whether you liked them, whether they got fired. Just would you personally trust your business? And I'm a, we got three people here, three livelihoods. Would you trust your business by putting this person's name at the top? And they'll say, no, I'd be okay with that. Or they'd say, Probably not and like, great, see you later, you know, well, and we also have the advantage that we can't we don't always make that call really what happens is we call people to do those kind of validations if we are really on the fence about someone like sometimes you talk to folks and their story just makes so much sense that you don't really need to do that digging, but sometimes you you talk to someone and like their story just doesn't track when you do enough interviews and you talk to enough people You can tell when something is weird and you're like, how do I feel better? And I'm lucky in the fact that the payroll industry is so small and the PEO industry is so small that there's a good chance I've met half of their former employers and good chance. And maybe they're clients of mine. All right. So you have a hard out. So I want to wrap this up. It sounds like I can, I'll take it for an hour. Just saying. Hey, if you're somebody who works in and around financial services or specifically payroll, anybody who is looking at retirement is looking to sell. They probably need to talk to you. Anybody who isn't looking at retirement, they're probably looking to grow, which often includes acquisitions. They probably need to talk to you. And if they want employees who not only Know how to do payroll, but know their system, and also can pass the SNF test with an HR person. Sounds like they need to talk to you. So where can they find you if they want to talk to you about any of those things? Oh, absolutely. SNF. com. With or without the dash, it works. There's a big contact me button at the bottom. You can literally drop into my calendar whenever you want for a Zoom call. Just john mason smith. com I will say anyone in the payroll industry that's either buying or selling books of business or hiring or firing within that market are the people I'm trying to see. And, you know, the other people I love talking to, which I haven't figured out how to monetize it, but I just like talking to people. Um, I love talking to salespeople that want to become business owners. Like those are all ways. Fun conversations where it's like, you know, salespeople, I think are the best position career path to start something because you can hire people to do everything else in a company. You cannot hire someone to be passionate about starting the company. And salespeople are good at one thing, which is picking up the phone and talking to strangers to make something happen. They're the catalyst within a, an operation. And so if they want to start something, they're the right person to do it. Half the time. So they're not the only people that can do it, but those are people I love. I love just hearing about it. And that's super clever. When I'm coaching a salesperson, I tell them like, there are two people that get to write their own check, entrepreneurs and salespeople, you're not making enough money, don't call me, pick up the phone and call somebody else. I place a lot of salespeople. And the, the thing that really blows my mind is there are good salespeople who fail and there are bad salespeople who succeed because of the environment they are placed in. The example I always give is, you remember when Tesla's were like brand new and there was like a two year waiting, you'd pay money to get on a wait list to potentially buy a car a year later. Yeah. So you can take the worst car salesman in the world and plop him at a Tesla dealership and he has, you know, his numbers going through the roof. And then that guy goes online and applies for a job at Joe Schmoe's car dealership Emporium. And he's like, I'm the best sales rep that ever existed. I worked at Tesla and I sold a million cars. They show up and they don't know their head from their ass because they've never actually done a sales process. And conversely, you take the best sales rep in the world and you stick them out at a car dealership where all the cars are lemons. Might not work out so hot. Or if nobody shows up on the lot and there's no one doing marketing, like, how are you going to sell to people that aren't there? So I love talking to salespeople that, that are like, okay, I'm good at sales. I'm in a bad spot. I have a great idea. I want to do it. Those are my favorite people to talk to. Cause they're, they're inspiring. Yeah. That's, uh, I like talking to those folks too. Yeah. There's not enough of them. And since we need to wrap it up. My ham handed. Wrap up here. I enjoyed talking to you. This was not my Standard process, but you got a lot of what I wanted to talk about in the pre notes So we covered all of it. So I feel fine. So thank you for joining me on revenue remix If you're listening, remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and our YouTube channel for more insights and interviews. Go check out John online on his website, or you can find him on LinkedIn. As I always tell my clients, when your team's strategies and goals align, growth isn't just possible, it's inevitable. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Summer Paletti rhymes with spaghetti or online at theriseofus. com where you can find information on guesting if you have a great story you'd like to tell. I appreciate the listen and I will see you next week.