The Neat Company - Reinventing Bookkeeping

Running the Bases today with Garrett Baird, from The Neat Company. The Neat Company is reinventing bookkeeping for small business owners. Leveraging their legacy in document scanning and storage, they are making the mundane (but necessary!) steps to manage your company's books and prepare to file taxes simple - nice and Neat.

Our Guest today is the former President and CEO at The Neat Company in Philadelphia.  He graduated from Cornell and dove into the Web Development and Product Management arenas.  Eventually starting his own firm Walletron - after several years he exited and moved to lead the charge at The Neat Company. 

We explore Garrett’s early jaunts in entrepreneurialism and what it takes to pivot an existing company into a new endeavor in a competitive niche.

By 2025, finance and accounting firms will lose 60% of their outsourcing contracts. Outsourced bookkeeping is on the decline because it takes control out of the hands of entrepreneurs. Instead, they should try automated bookkeeping to get a front-row view of their business’s financial health - in comes Neat! 

To learn more about Garrett and The Neat Company visit: www.neat.com

The Neat Mobile App is now available for download from the Apple Store. 

The Neat financial management platform can be tried for free for 14 days

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Transcript

Randy: 0:01

I'm Randy Rohde and I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs and small business owners. Plus, I love baseball. Every show I sit down with a small business owner and we discuss their running the bases of Entrepre show. We throw the ball around on strategy, management, execution, and innovation. Plus a little fun baseball. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Settle in, grab your cracker jacks, and you know what they say. Play ball, and it's a great day for a ball game. And this is Randy Rohde on running the bases with small businesses, and our guest today is the President and CEO at the NEAT Company. Based in Philadelphia. He graduated from Cornell University and dove straight into web development and product management arenas. Eventually starting his own firm Tron, interesting name, and after several years he exited there and is currently leading the charge at the Neat Company and we're gonna learn all about that. Welcome to the show, Garrett Baird. Garrett, glad to have you. Great to be with you, Randy. Yeah, very fun. Hey, our research team always does a fabulous job and, uh, prepares the show for us, and they always dig up the most interesting tidbits of information on our guests. And this one, I, I was, when I saw this the other day, I'm like, Wow, that's very cool. And I have to ask you about this. This is dating back to. A New York Times article that she found, uh, and I think the title of it is from Fraternity President to Captain of Summer . And, and the gist of it is, so I'll tell to the listeners here, is that you essentially kind of. Were the, the head or leader or I don't know what title you'd wanna give yourself, um, but for a number of different, of summers, you essentially managed houses for kind of co-sharing on the Jersey Shore for like eight to 17 people, evidently. And, uh, there's so many questions I have just around that, what you probably do just to show on that subject. But I, How did you get into that? Tell us about. Oh

Garrett: 2:24

man. So, uh, that cracker jack research there, by the way, to your team. So, thoughts, I, I can see my, my wife's space getting red downstairs where she is right now. Cause uh, that was literally the time when, uh, when we were first getting together. So for years, yeah, I was, you know, just putting together a fun the summer. House for a group of kind of, you know, rowdy 20 somethings who wanted to go, uh, go get some sunburn on the weekend after, you know, working, working hard during the week. And you always needed somebody who was kind of, kind of put it together, make sure everybody paid, figured out what the policies were gonna be about guests, which was always a weird, controversial thing. Yeah. Uh, and I, I was always happy to do. It was good fun, but, uh, eventually, you know, life takes over and, uh, you know, uh, I met somebody very special. Uh, we've been married now for, for 12 years, Uh, three kids later. Those, uh, uh, I, I do miss those days though sometimes, but, uh, the summer happens Fun. Beach fund takes on a very different form now, Randy.

Randy: 3:40

Yes it does. Believe me, I, that I know as well with kids. So the Jersey Shore, I don't know if I've ever spent any time actually on the Jersey shore, but I'm just imagining, you know, it's beach and uh, and your experience is interesting. So, When I was in college, I lived in a house with, you know, we always had people coming and going, um, during the summers in college like that. But you, what you're describing, you're were like kind of, I'll call them young professionals. I mean, these are people who actually had some money and who had jobs and they're like, Hey, we wanna live out on the Jersey shore for the summer. And just had some, I'm guessing, Probably have some very fun summer stories. Uh, probably some you, you, you can't share, but, uh, precisely. Yeah., Garrett: yes. But, uh, I remember the, you know, that kind of Memorial Day weekend getting down there to get everything organized and, uh, you know, I. Couple of, uh, couple of the people in the shore house making that big trip to Costco and figuring out, uh, what we were gonna stock the house with and get ready for a great summer was, uh, it was just bring, brings back somebody. Fun. How did you bring the people together? I mean, so this was, had to be like, some probably you knew, but I'm guessing as well there were just some that you just met or something. Friends,

Garrett: 5:04

acquaintances, and, you know, sometimes when we. Yeah, we'd get these, these homes with, you know, four and five, uh, bedrooms and you, you'd sleep kind of maybe two or three people to a bedroom depending on who was gonna be around whatever weekend. These were just fr friends, and then we of course, had to recruit people at times to come in and make sure that we could make, make the, the financials meet and make it affordable for everybody. But you had to do that in the wintertime. Yeah. Before you committed to a full summer in, you know, a particular house. So this was, this was like months of planning in the making to make it all work, but always so, so worth it. So many like amazing memories with Oh, with good friends, you know, all of whom we still stay in touch. So you were the guy though. You know, so many have just gone on to their own lives and families that you just, you do kind of, uh, grow up out of this org, this

Randy: 6:04

Eventually, eventually we do grow up. Yes. So, but you were like the business head of this, I guess. I, I don't know if you. Had a title or not, but you know, when you start talking about, you know, we had to make the financials work. I mean, you're talking like a real business guy here around this,

Garrett: 6:23

this is the, it was, I mean, between rules and spreadsheets, uh, to, you know, collecting the, the money, making sure every, every, uh, buddy was, was, uh, on par. Uh, if. Things got outta control. Who, who's it gonna fall back on to get things in order? That, that was me.

Randy: 6:43

Good. Good experience for you. Yeah. So as you move from, was a great experience as you move from that business management, , I guess, to your current role as CEO of a, of a very large company. Quite a transition. So tell us a little bit about, uh, the neat company, what it is that you guys do, uh, product services that you offer, how you support small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Garrett: 7:08

Yeah, so the, the neat companies, especially a 20 year old business, uh, I've, uh, I've been with the organization for just about two and a half years, and I, I came to the, I, I've known the business for a long time, been based in Philadelphia like I am. And many people will remember the neat company for, uh, for our scanners. Uh, so the NEAT Receipt Scanner was very popular with, uh, Road Warriors and, uh, small business owners in their home to do quick scanning of receipts, invoices, uh, any other kinds of documents. and the company eventually coupled that with a fantastic cloud backup service. One of the first of its kind, uh, that had a monthly subscription to it. So, you know, we started building relationships with our customers that were, you know, more than just a one time purchase. It was, uh, an ongoing relationship with their customer and the value of being all your data will be there accessible from any kind of device, but still with the amazing. Full data parsing that. We've always been really good at that. That's always one of the surprising things. Um, after somebody scans in say a receipt or a, a customer contract, uh, or you know, their organizational documents, uh, if they're formed in, you know, an LLC or something like that, they see the PDF that gets produced and they're like, Wait a minute, I can like highlight the text on this. and I can search the entire contents of this. So we have always been amazingly strong, uh, at parsing documents, uh, and helping our customers organize them. And we knew, you know, fast forwarding to three years ago, Uh, that we always wanted to expand, uh, on that capability and continue to serve small business owners, uh, in new and even more valuable ways. Uh, and so that's when we looked at things like, Oh, alright, you know, we're, we're pretty heavy into. Uh, capturing receipts. Uh, so maybe so, you know, just basic expense management and reporting, kind of like the expense five of the world at the time, or, uh, concur, but then decided to take it a step even further and take a fresh, simplified approach to basic accounting. For very small business owners and, you know, while the, you know, QuickBooks, FreshBooks, waves of the world are out there, we found that most people in our niche are either operating their, you know, financial metrics out of a spreadsheet, oftentimes a template that they've just downloaded from the internet and kind of created their own system out of, or they're literally running their business out of their online banking. In an account that has, you know, mingled personal transactions and their business transactions and they're just kind of kinda winging it. Cuz as, as you can probably appreciate, Randy, nobody started their business to become an accounting and bookkeeping expert unless you started an accounting or

Randy: 10:21

bookkeeping company. Yeah, it was, Unless that's your love, but yeah. That is. Uh, so we have

Garrett: 10:28

now moved into, uh, this space to make, uh, you know, overall financial organization so easy for our customers. Whether you are literally a side hustler, just kind of getting, uh, uh, supplementing your income on top of your day job, uh, or all the way up to, you know, you're. Uh, you know, multi person business, um, whether that's, um, whether that's as a, as a creative, uh, so you're, you know, serving clients or, uh, you are out doing, uh, doing great work, uh, in the world, cutting lawn, cutting hair, whatever it is. Uh, our system gives, you know, we really wanted to focus on. Neat as not just a company name, but the experience itself, getting financially organized and doing it easily without having to know, or for even to matter. What's a journal entry, right? What's the general ledger? What is, um, how do I depreciate an asset? For most of our customers who are just concerned about their cash flow, what are my, you know, ins and outs? Can I go and, you know, take on a new client? Can I hire an employee? Those things don't matter. And so we, we, we have made it super simple. To manage the cash into your business, the cash outta your business, and your reporting obligations to the government. And then in between, we wanna make it super easy for you to see the health of your business

Randy: 12:03

right along the way. Right? That's it. Oh. I will say that as one of those people, like I didn't start a business so that I could run accounting because I hate for years I have hated, and I would stack up literally like the year's worth of. Uh, journal entries because I hate, And then I would like, Oh, I would hate the time. I have to spend like three days just focused. That's all I did was journal entry. And finally I just like, I'm done with this. And we brought in, or essentially I should say we outsourced all of that bookkeeping and, um, all of that because. Exactly. I'm, I don't wanna be an accountant and that's not, and I hate doing it. I'd much rather focus on clients and, uh, and our services that we do. And I've gotta imagine that most small business owners are in the same position. I mean, there's so many other things that we're always end up dealing with, uh, that accounting is just one of the, the last aspects of it. But I will tell you. Even for me, as much as I deplored it, I always had this reluctance still about it, kind of these objections, and I'm gonna throw out some of them to you and maybe you can address them to assuage the, uh, reticence of some of our listeners who are thinking like, ah, do I, do I wanna, you know, I did this probably for two years, like, do I wanna outsource this or not? One of those was like, So outsource bookkeeping services are too expensive. So

Garrett: 13:40

going back to something that you said, you know, while people, you know are allowed to be doing their accounting, We've found from our, you know, just serving our customers, they are very interested, however, in what it can tell them right. About their business. And so we wanna bridge that gap as easily as we can. And Sure. Does it cost money to, uh, get this going? Yes. But we try to keep our fees very. There are some digital accounting solutions where you'll pay, you know, hundreds of dollars a month and they'll get, you know, the, uh, here, everything's done. And we've, we've had many of our customers say, Well, no, I don't want it all done. I'm, you know, happy to do the categorization and the customer billing. In fact, I've. You know, that's, if you can make that easy for me by making the workflow simple, uh, making sure that I can do the same thing on the, uh, on the web as I can in your mobile app, I'm happy to do all, all that work myself because I'm interested in, in what it can tell me. So when it, when it comes to the, the value. We keep our costs very low. You know, you look at, you can go right to neat.com and see that our solution, for example, we've, you know, kept that very simple as well. One single price, 24 bucks a month for an annual subscription. And we've, we've actually introduced something very interesting that this show would be one of. First, uh, introductions, uh, of this, which is for years the payment fees that have been associated with electronic invoices. And so we, you know, we enable our customers to right, build their customers. And we've seen, you know, many, uh, of our customers our. Selling and billing for their time, whether they're, you know, creatives, uh, or they independent consultants, web designers, web developers. But anyway, they have in common is they're billing for their time and when they send an electronic invoice to their customers, so many, uh, still are kind of doing that attached Word document and waiting for the paper check to arrive, uh, in the mail. And we digitize that entire process. Others do. And for years, the bank transactions. So, you know, customers, how are clients have a choice, All right? Do you want to allow your customers to pay you with a credit card or debit card, or do you want to do a bank transaction? And they've always had fees associated with them. You know, the card fees are are standard. So you know, Visa, MasterCard kind of never let you get away with. Uh, you know, paying anything below the, the industry standard there. But the bank transactions have always been interesting to me, cuz, uh, my background has been in, in billing and payments for years in the software business. Mostly, mostly in the enterprise, but when we look at bank transactions, the going rate of 1% has always been, you know, the, just the industry standard in digital accounting. We, we wanna turn that on. Its. So we, we are introducing and have just introduced no fee, uh, ACH transactions, bank transactions into the market. So literally, if you are somebody who's a creative and perhaps you're, you know, billing a handful of customers, a thousand,$2,000 a month, those can add up. Yeah. Uh, pretty quickly. And it gets to the point where, Our subscription can actually pay for itself if you've been using, if you've been using a solution, another solution to collect those payments electronically. Uh, so we're delighted with that and that makes the expense equation very favorable to our clients, uh, which we're happy, Happy. Very happy

Randy: 17:17

about. Well, and so as you kind of mapped out like your pricing structure, like 25 bucks a month, basically, and this is what I did. It was like, so if I was spending, if I'm gonna spend $300 a month or a a, a year, So I went back and I'm like, Well, what is my time? How much, how much time have I been spending? And it was an easy, easy calculation. Like, Oh my gosh, my time is well worth more than, uh, what I would be paying from a, an outsourced expense. So I, I cleared that hurdle. The other hurdle that it took me a minute to get over though, was I just always have. Paranoia about security, right? So the security risk of my own financial information and then as well for my clients as well and their data. How did you guys address that? What do you guys do?

Garrett: 18:09

Yeah, so with need, you know, given our history in scanning and storing sensitive data, this has always been top of mind for us. So we have always implemented into our technology stack. The, uh, all of the, uh, latest. Security, uh, technology, you'll often see the phrase, and we use it too because it's, uh, it's, it's the right way to think about it. Bank level security that we provide to our customers. And we've been doing that for, you know, 20 years. So we are, this is not new to us, uh, implementing all of these security best practices, uh, that our customers have come to expect. And yeah, when, when you see. Things like, Hey, connecting, connect up your bank account and stream in your transactions. Many of our customers do a double take on that for sure. So we want to, you know, always be reassuring them that we don't store your bank credentials on our side. This data is, uh, highly encrypted and, uh, it's, it's not, you know, not, not at risk. That being said, Some still hesitate to that. So we, we've actually introduced something into our product that just lets you do a full demo test drive of test transactions in there so you can see what the experience is like without having to make that connection. And it becomes obvious, uh, then for many of our customers, Oh, that's, What happens with the data. Got it. Mm-hmm. and, uh, that will often clear

Randy: 19:40

the hurdle for them. Nice. I'm gonna ask you, do you guys have, and I'm almost embarrassed because I didn't look at this myself before we started talking. Do you have an online integration, meaning a website backend integration? So for people that are doing eCommerce or. Selling things so that essentially it's a, uh, a transaction front end, uh, process.

Garrett: 20:06

We've been primarily focused on service based businesses. Okay. But for those that are selling goods, if you've got a PayPal account, for example, uh, that is, you know, kind of your main source of where. Sales are being made. Uh, yes, you can absolutely connect that in as well. So we've got kind of a select number of, uh, integrations that we have that have out of the box. But you'll see, you know, many of, most of our customers are kind of in that freelancer independent consultant. So entrepreneur. Yeah. Uh, Own. And so they're very interested in being able to quickly and easily build their customers for their time, get the handful of expenses that they have organized, feel prepared for taxes, and also get those insights like, am I in a position where I can take on that next big project? Can I hire somebody else into my. So those are the kinds of insights that we're able to provide

Randy: 21:04

to those customers. Yeah, that's nice. I, we'll have to, uh, explore, uh, some of your, uh, solutions because we build a lot of different websites for various clients that have some form of eCommerce at times, and they're typically are integrating things like WooCommerce or BigCommerce and then utilizing either PayPal or Stripe as a process. And, uh, so we'll see. We'll look at that on our end. It's like, wow, this could be a, a nice offering potentially for some of our clients as well. I'm gonna let you celebrate something here as uh, as well. So you just recently, cuz I got the press release actually, which was great, that NEAT launches mobile. That puts total financial management into the hands of small business owners. So this was just literally a few days ago actually, that you announced the launch of this. You wanna talk about that? Yeah, something

Garrett: 22:01

we're absolutely delighted about. So we have been investing heavily in our mobile experience. So me traditionally has been, um, You know, it's a web based experience. We've always had a a mobile app that was kind of a companion to your need experience, but we wanted to get to a position where we felt a customer who was finding us, finding us in the app store could sign up, subscribe, and have their entire need experience in the app. And so that's, uh, that's the point that we're at now. We, we couldn't be more excited about it. Again, whether you, your preference is operating from your mobile app. So I love, you know, you want to be able to invoice your customers on the go, send them a reminder, see your latest, uh, bank transactions. Even, even, this is always an amazing one to me, Randy, somebody will go into the need. and they've connected, you know, their bank account, their kind of their core checking for their business, their credit card, and maybe, you know, one of these kind of PayPal accounts. They see them together for the first time and realize, Oh my goodness, I don't have to like log into Bank of America and Wells Fargo and American Express, and PayPal. To figure out what's, um, , what's what about right, about my expenses. Um, and so we have consolidated all of that into one single app experience and so that's what we were super

Randy: 23:25

excited to announce. Wow. Well, congratulations on that. Now, I do have to ask, because I'm an Android user, when is the Android version coming? So we,

Garrett: 23:34

we have an Android version of the app. It's just, uh, we are catching up on the whole sign up and subscription process Okay. With the Google

Randy: 23:43

Play Store. All right. In the coming weeks. All right. So I'll look, look forward to it then. All right. So it's available on the Apple store. And is it just the, it's called the NEAT Mobile app. Is that what they should search for? If there

Garrett: 23:56

are, yes. You could search for Search for Neat in the. Uh, in the app store, you will find us, uh, very quickly and, uh, definitely encourage you to take,

Randy: 24:06

take a test drive right through the app itself. Yeah. And I understand you got a 14 day free trial on it, so that's always fun. I like free, so I'm all, I'm all in it free. Yeah. Uh, very good. Alright, so Garrett, we've talked about the seventh inning stretch. Here it comes. Are you ready? And it's

Garrett: 24:24

time for the seventh inning Stretch.

Randy: 24:29

All right, Gary, so this is the point in the show. I gotta ask you a little bit about, uh, I don't know, some baseball trivia stuff, just for the fun. Um, are you a baseball fan by chance? Living out in Philly? I am a baseball fan.

Garrett: 24:44

All right.

Randy: 24:44

Uh, but I, I would say

Garrett: 24:46

I've, for whatever reason, the city of Philadelphia in the last many years, transforming into a larger

Randy: 24:53

football fan. Oh, sure. Baseball. Yeah.

Garrett: 24:56

You know, however, You know that kid who grew up collecting baseball cards, sticker books, all of that. So if you've got any, you know who, who, you know, who led the league in, uh, triples in 1986. I, you know, I can tell you Willie Wilson was your guy from the Kansas City Royals, but

Randy: 25:15

that's nice. Nice. That's, that's some could hold history right there. That's a good, that's some good data. I'm not gonna reach it back that far. Sorry, brother, by the way. I Did you happen to catch, uh, Phil's Cub series that just happened over the last weekend. I did not,

Garrett: 25:32

unfortunately. Yeah, we've, uh, we, we've been, you know, excited about the Phil's prospects since, uh, Gerardi departure, but, uh,

Randy: 25:40

no, I missed it. Yeah, well, I, it was the Cubs swept the Phillies there in Philadelphia the first time. I don't know, 20 some odd years and, which is crazy cuz the Cubs are challenged this year we will say at best. So anyway, so we're gonna talk about, kinda a little bit about the business in baseball to kinda tie into your niche a little bit and really about the business of managing. Season tickets. All right. Season people buy season tickets. I don't know if you've ever had season tickets. I used to be a season ticket holder. Sometimes I'm like, What the heck do I do with all of these tickets? I, there's no way I can go to all of these games. My wife wouldn't put up with it. And so we used to give 'em away to like employees, like, Here's staff. Go have fun. Give 'em to clients. I still would end up having a bunch of tickets left. So there's a whole business around this. Before we get into this, before it, your main question though, I've got a few run up kind of little tidbits for you. So season ticket holder, who do you think is uh uh, the top price IST stadium for season ticket? Probably not that difficult to figure this one out, but just,

Garrett: 26:55

uh, I probably, I would guess Fenway Park just because of lower capacity and, you know, very big, big payroll team. Lots of

Randy: 27:07

revenue. That's very logical. I, I will have to applaud you for that, maybe on a seat basis. Yeah, it's, it's actually the Yankee. Up to $17,000 for one season ticket. That's their, one of their, ah, their top premium ticket. But yeah,

Garrett: 27:24

it's very comfy looking seats you see behind home plate,

Randy: 27:27

I would imagine. But very similar, right? You've got a high, uh, payroll team, so they gotta generate some money for that. Uh, here's another little run up. So MLB ranks their kind of in demand for tickets, um, throughout, uh, the, the seasons and, and such. So thus far through the 2022 season, top 10 in demand MLB teams in their. Tickets, You can imagine, you know, probably wouldn't be too difficult to rattle off the number one. I was a little surprised by my fan favorites. The Cubs, uh, were number seven on this list. Philly number nine on the list. That actually did kinda surprise me. Nothing against Philadelphia, but , number one, have any idea. This wouldn't surprised me. This was not one of like, you would think the Yankees or the Red Sox number. In demand. In demand in demand. Season ticket. I'm

Garrett: 28:25

gonna, I'm gonna guess the last place. Washington Nationals. Randy: That would be something. Uh, the Atlanta Braves. Now, nothing against the brands. I mean, they're popular. Beautiful stadium. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful stadium, you know, World Series winners. In my mind, when you always hear, you know, the top 10, who has the most, I'm always thinking Yankees are the Red Sox. It's always gotta be right. One of those. You can't almost lose with guessing one of those people. But yeah. And the most. On demand or in demand home opener for this season was Red Ack versus the Yankees on April 7th to open it up. So, you know, Crazy. So here's your, so we talked about season tickets, so, and there's a whole. You know, kind of business out there in regards to season tickets. So, and this is where my research team says, Well, you guided from like summer shares, right? So you're summer housing sharing, uh, business to season ticket sharing. Okay. You got the make, making a stretch on a connection there, but we're trying, trying to get that. Oh, no. Then, all right, so here's your question. What percent of season ticket holders share or sell their tickets on third party platform? I mean, it's gotta be a huge number. Uh, just, I mean, 95%, I mean, it's gotta be huge.

Randy: 29:54

It, it is big. It's bigger. Um, it is big, less than what I thought. And I think this will surprise me. I mean, 80%

Garrett: 30:02

gains is, is a lot to commit to. Yeah. Unless you're a rabbit.

Randy: 30:07

Fan of the

Garrett: 30:08

team. Okay, maybe there

Randy: 30:10

70, 70%, uh, can you imagine 70, 70%? So saying then that 30% of the people don't share or,

Garrett: 30:21

or sell or they've got their go to. Friends that they split it up with. Right. That's what I was just thinking. Who, Who needs a third party platform?

Randy: 30:29

Right? Yeah. So crazy. But that's a good number, but, wow. All right. Well see. That wasn't so bad, Garrett. We, we rattled off some fun baseball facts and all that kinda stuff, so You did well my friend. You did well,. Garrett: I don't know about that. All right, let's get back into it. Play. All right. So Garrett, so you mentioned, I wanna talk a little bit more about just your management experience, your president, your CEO of this great company right now. You came in as you shared, really, right at the beginning of the pandemic, right? Like in May of twenties, I think when you That's right. Came into the company. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I don't even, I can't even imagine. Entering a new large company in that kind of a climate, uh, extremely difficult time to start any job, I think, um, let alone be the new leader, ceo. What did that look like for you and how did you begin to tackle, I guess, the, the challenges of the business environment at that?

Garrett: 31:34

I mean, literally one of the first things that we had to do was figure out how to migrate from a, what was a very office centric culture to a remote culture. Sure. And I, you know, Starting it was the easy part. We closed the office . Um, but then go going from there to realize that, oh my goodness, we need an entirely new set of policies, um, and procedures for our team. We need to understand the implications of not seeing our, our colleagues. I mean, it's, it's fascinating. Randy. We, we've got, you know, our second half. Uh, kickoff meeting with the team in person for the first time next, literally next week. And there are many members of our team that I've not met in person Wow. Yet that I'm just eager to, to do so. Uh, and you know, here, here we are two, two and a half years later. And so what we found, we, I think we were very fortunate that one, our business was not heavily impacted. Covid. And two, our team really embraced the, uh, remote, remote first working environment and adapted very quickly to the point where we saw, you know, productivity, you know, even rise. Uh, cause you know, you think about eliminated commutes, uh, and other, uh, aspects, uh, like that of, uh, How workers are doing their jobs and yeah, it's, it's been very. Good for the neat company, uh, overall. Now granted there's, you know, there are a few things for, you know, for me, the walking around the office and being able to just kind of do a quick check in with people kind of goes away. And of course if you schedule a meeting with somebody, you're like, Oh, what does he want to talk about? And I don't want or like to do. Uh, and, and so that's, you know, something that I certainly miss, uh, being able to do. But we were very fortunate that, uh, our team adapted and, and it really, I really chalk it up to our leaders. Um, and I'm sure as you, you know, talk about a lot on, on the show, having a great team, uh, around you is just absolutely everything, uh, in a business like the need company. And we've been fortunate to have a really strong crop of, of leaders. That are here. And you know, when I came into the business it was, um, you know, we were, we were on the, the brink of this, you know, introducing this new holistic version of our product that was doing so much more. And it really required amazing leadership from our team to navigate both that and a pandemic at the same.

Randy: 34:25

The, I, I can't even imagine the struggles with that. You just mentioned something, One of the things in previous lives I worked and was a leader in a, in a, in a large company and I loved it just to kind of walk around and go touch base with the team and just like walk in to their, Hey, how's it going? You know, just that touch base, informal kind of create, um, uh, some of that connection. You know, when the office is closed, you know, it's very difficult to do that, you know, and it, there is a little bit more of a, uh, formality if I, if you end up having to just pick up the phone and call, you know, if I got the call from, well, Mr. Perry just called me. Oh my gosh, what's he want? You know, like they're just, instead of the, Hey, what's going on? Good to see you today. How, how's your day going? Right. That, that, you know, much more informal. Yeah.

Garrett: 35:17

Right. Cuz today's version of that is Oh, the, the Slack message. Yes. From Garrett or the Requested, you know, the calendar appointment for a zoom call.

Randy: 35:28

Yeah.. Yeah. All of a sudden that, that doesn't quite have the same easy, carefree feel to it is just gonna do a drop by. I

Garrett: 35:36

just want to know how your need experience is going. No big deal. Yeah, exactly. and it's hard to through all that, right? You're like all here to make things amazing together. That's, uh, yeah, that's what I want to talk about.

Randy: 35:48

So how, how does that, so you, you made that transition kind of working at home, as you say. I love how you say, well, we just closed the office. How does that. Today, because I know in so much, and you read so much in the headlines and talking about, uh, remote work and, uh, how people value and what they prefer and all of this kind of stuff. How, what does it look like at NEAT Today? Um, and I should say, how, how many employees do you have at Neat. As a whole, we're, it's, we're right around 40, uh, 40, 40 employees. So what does that look like today in the sense of, I don't wanna say necessarily percentage, but um, you know, you have a number of people still working remotely, or is everybody back in the building? What's, uh, how, how's that make up? Yeah, so

Garrett: 36:33

we, we really embraced, uh, a remote first environment. So we, uh, we wound up not reopening our office to daily work. You know, we, we. We got gathered a ton of feedback from our team members, from our, the, the leaders that, uh, work, uh, work with us. And the response was overwhelming that people really did, uh, want to continue to be remote and embrace the, the new levels of productivity that they. Felt strongly were a result of that. So what we decided to do, and we're just just in the process of implementing this cuz our office lease is expiring that literally in a matter of days. We did, however, pick up a shared space so that we can gather together. Either as small teams or for kind of a, you know, quarterly get together where we have the space. But we've got tremendous flexibility with the arrangement that we put together to, uh, have small teams come together, have our full team come together, but primarily remain, uh, remote and continue. To accrue the benefits that we've seen out of that. Now that's, you know, I think there's something particular about obviously being a software company to be able to do that. Uh, cuz certainly if we were, you know, working on, you know, intense projects, you know, to drawing blueprints, things that really require you. In person interaction that, you know, a, a Zoom or a Google meet or a a, you know, a mural board couldn't really bring together. We may have made a different decision, but yeah, we, um, we're very excited about the, the situation that we have and look to continue. Well, it

Randy: 38:23

certainly gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility. I think clearly, just as you even outlined. Your office space. So I'm assuming you've let go of the, probably the larger space and have acquired something that gives you a lot more flexibility as you outlined. That's it. And it, it

Garrett: 38:38

let us open the talent pool as well. Yes. So that's, you know, we were very oriented to Southeast Pennsylvania and so Jersey, Delaware. Yeah. But you know, we've, we've brought on team members from Illinois, Atlanta. Right. Um, You know, contractors in, uh, even, even in Brazil, there's some super talented people Right. Um, that are on our, on our same exact time zone. Right. Uh, and are super talented coders, uh, that we, we identified again during the, during

Randy: 39:10

the pandemic. Yeah. So it really does. I, That's the other asra. I was like, Hey, so all of this issue. Staffing shortages and such. You instead of being in a much more regionalized area, it allowed you to really expand. Um, and we're similar. All of my staff is all remote, so we used to have a much larger office pandemic hit a few months later we did the exact same thing. We downsized our office and now it's just me in the office basically. And then everybody else is remote and dials in and we, That's kind of fun, I guess. So. Good for you. So what do you see around the corner for need? So you just released this great new. You got other stuff, other tricks up your sleeve there, Mr. President? Well, we do. So we've

Garrett: 39:55

released the new app. Uh, we've announced this, you know, I, I think very exciting differentiator in, uh, in payment fees, uh, that the, I think it will, um, Uh, you know, really position us, uh, well in the industry, particularly for those that are, you know, billing, billing primarily for their time. Uh, so consultants, freelancers, uh, side hustlers, et et cetera. And, uh, we, we plan to just continue to reach into those marketplaces and tell our story and let them know that, you know, whether you are. You know, just getting your business going and you're trying to figure out what, what does it mean to be financially organized? Uh, or you've kind of built a, a, a system of your own that

Randy: 40:42

might be working

Garrett: 40:43

for you, but you know, maybe you've, maybe an, an error caught you by surprise. Uh, that it's, it's amazing when we hear our customers talk about, We resolved errors for them and that more than paid for the subscription itself. But we we're just gonna continue to, uh, bring our message into the marketplace, serve more and more outstanding, uh, small business owners, uh, and continue to, um, build upon the, the awesome experience that is, uh, the neat platform, right.

Randy: 41:17

Nice. I loved as well. I'm gonna go back, You mentioned how you referred to your, uh, team members, Needers . I loved, I love that. That was great. So I wanna remind our folks so many of our listeners are small business owners, entrepreneurs. Uh, they can find the neat company and their product services@neat.com. And we'll have these links as well down in the show notes. Uh, also don't forget the new app that's out. Go to the apple. App store, look for neat and sign up there. 14 day free trial with that. Very fun. Okay, Garrett, so here we are, we're at the bottom of the ninth and this is where I have fun. I get to ask, uh, what advice do you have for rookies in the game? So you're this, uh, old grizzled, uh, veteran managing business and finances since the Jersey Shore days. What, what kind of advice do you have for businesses who are just starting out in the game or maybe who are already have their business and are just looking for some, some words of wisdom, some guidance. Yes. Number one always

Garrett: 42:28

is, uh, health, a healthy obsession with your customers, uh, and how they interact with you and what their needs and interests are. I've found whether I'm working with a very large enterprise or a very, even a smallest of business owners, Things, challenges happen and it's how you respond to those challenges that make all the difference. You can, uh, you know, make mistakes, uh, have errors that things, things happen, but it's, uh, how you respond. Uh, that shows that your customer, your, your true grit and that they, uh, appreciate and that's what builds a long lasting relationships. Uh, and. Tell them, tell them what's, what's happening. Uh, they appreciate absolute openness, uh, candor, honesty, et cetera. And then, you know, back to that concept of team, team members, teammates, needers in our case. Surrounding yourself, would the the best people that you can find, uh, makes all the difference, uh, in business? In, in my experience, and I've been fortunate to have so many great people that have been colleagues and partners and customers, uh, over time has been very, Very fulfilling for me and, uh, hopefully for them too.

Randy: 43:46

Yeah. Yeah. Well, obviously it's working. It's great advice and uh, it's a formula that's been working for you and your experiences and with Neat over the last, uh, number of years. So that is, uh, Terrific. I loved your first point on that, I think, which was, you know, I hate challenges happening. It's all about how you respond to that and that continues to solidify the relationship with your clients. And I think that is so, so true. Um, and almost regardless of industry, uh, that. Relationship with the client is so critical and, uh, continuing to maintain that. So good lessons. Well, thank you Garrett, for being on the show. Been a lot of fun, learning about neat and things that you guys do, and it helps support small businesses and entrepreneurs. So you taught me something about property management as well, so

Garrett: 44:37

fantastic. All right. Yeah, yeah, very. Some somewhat disheveled version of property management looking back, but we made it work. A lot of

Randy: 44:46

people had a lot of fun. All right, Well, good for you. Well, thanks again for being on the show. And folks, that's the ball game. Thanks for joining us today. And if you like your show, please tell your friends, subscribe and review, and we'll see you around the ballpark. Running the bases with small businesses is brought to you by, 38 Digital Market, a digital marketing agency committed to client growth with lead generation, higher conversions, and increased sales. Connect with us today at 38 digital market.com.