Heroes in Business - Bruce Buffer, Its Time the Voice of UFC, CEO Millions co

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Its Time. Bruce Buffer, the Voice of UFC, CEO Millions co is interviewed by David Cogan famous celebrity host of the Eliances Heroes Show.  

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. And it's going to be another incredible day. Why? Because I have the lifetime opportunity to be able to interview some of the most amazing people, share their stories, how they got to where they got to, and most importantly, be able to motivate you where you too can do the same and learn from them. So I'm very excited.

And by the way, too, is thank you for the recent interview that I did with David Rubenstein. He is the chairman of the Carlisle Group. So make sure that you check that out by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com because as you know, it's the only place where entrepreneurs align. All right. So welcome to the show. By the way, he has the shortest, I think the shortest domain name. So you're going to easily, and it's an easy word to remember, probably than anyone that

I've interviewed. So I'm really excited about having him on. You're going to learn about, he's the president and CEO of what company? Helping businesses and helping businesses get organized. So with that, welcome to the show, Garrett Beard, president and CEO of, are you ready for this? The Neat Company. Simple website, neat.com, N-E-A-T.com. I could spell it, you could spell it. So welcome to the show, Garrett. Great to be here, David. All right, so you're the CEO of the Neat Company.

Let's jump right in. How long have you been the CEO and how did you get there? So just over two years. And Neat is actually a 20-year-old company. Many people remember us for our Neat receipt scanners that we sold many, many, many of. We eventually moved into software exclusively. And when I joined the company, we have been expanding significantly the value that we provide to very small businesses, entrepreneurs, consultants, side hustlers, by helping them get financially organized. And we do that by doing what we've always done, letting them upload receipts into our system, other business documents, but also to invoice their customers, collect their electronic payments, and manage expenses very quickly and easily. What a perfect niche, too, for that. And so needed. Because, you know, right, these larger

companies have entire teams that can do all that. Smaller businesses, I mean, resources are as tight as can be. Plus, too, is even trying to find help is nearly impossible now. And yet you're able to keep people organized. What's like one of the most useful tools that are part of Neat that you see most of your consumers using? It's really the all-in-one nature of our product. So a business owner, whether they're just getting started out or they've been managing things in spreadsheets or they're on a solution that they haven't quite figured out. I can remember before coming to the Neat Company, I was an entrepreneur myself. We had a small but mighty team of six. So I was the de facto CFO. I would use a digital

accounting solution. And I was wondering to myself, am I am I done? Like, is this it? Have I done this correctly? And so we focused in our products about building confidence for our business owner customers so that they indeed know that they're done, have that sense of organization, and they get the insights that they need to peek around the corner a bit. You know, can that salon owner add another chair? Can the landscaping company bring on a separate crew? Can that budding entrepreneur hire that first employee?

We want to be able to drive those kinds of insights for our customers. That's fantastic. And I love how, again, everything's online. And now, how do people now then scan to be able to get the receipts and various things you mentioned on your platform? Yeah, well, we still support lots of different scanning devices. The primary way that we see our customers capture is through our fantastic mobile app. So whether you're an Android or an iPhone owner, go grab the neat app out of the app

store, install it. And that is the fastest way you can capture. And our capture is not just about the images. It is everything that is on that receipt, getting down to those individual line items. Because you go to a store, you may be buying things personally and for your business. We need you to be able to separate those quickly and easily.

How do you do that through a scan? Well, we do the scan. We have lots and lots of technology that we've had for our customers for years. This has always been a strength of ours, is parsing that data, understanding the content of those receipts. And then we take through our artificial intelligence, we get our best understanding of what vendors and what products are on there, present that back to our customers. And of course, they will be the ultimate decision maker of, oh, yeah, that actually belongs in that particular category. Oh no, no, we usually do it this way by putting it over in that category.

Excellent. Again, we've got with us Garrett Beard, president and CEO of The Neat Company. You could reach him by just going to neat.com, N-E-A-T.com. So Garrett, how did you become the CEO of the company? Yeah, so I wind up knowing some of the investors in Neat. And I had just sold a business that I had started years before. So a company called Wallatron, I founded.

We didn't wind up going the venture route for that software business. Instead, took strategic funding from a very large company, Western Union, because we were in the bill pay space. And they wound up acquiring us a couple of years later. And I stuck around for a little while, but then realized that really smaller, high growth companies are really where my strengths lie. And so when I got connected with the folks at Neat, heard about what they were doing, particularly taking this fresh look at financial organization, accounting, invoicing, it aligned so well with some of the challenges that I had as an entrepreneur. It was really a match made in heaven. So, Garrett, how important though is it? I mean, you know, even small businesses,

they hire accountant, they just give them the box, right? April 13th to give them one day to do it and say, here you go. So how important is it for when they're using your company? And then is that something then they're able to also to the second part is just provide that information from neat.com to the account? Right, right, exactly. Because the last thing that any accountant wants is that box. And what we empower our customers to do is to digitize the entire box and then help them understand and organize that so that, you know, should the IRS come calling, you have got an entire traceable set of transaction and source document information all tucked neatly within our platform. And when your accountant needs to have that, we can quickly and easily get that to them for tax prep or for, God forbid, an audit.

But oftentimes we'll see that even an accountant who's running their practice on, say, something like QuickBooks, we can organize that data, get it over to the accountant and make their life much easier versus dropping that shoebox of receipts on their desk. So you mentioned about QuickBooks, then what do you have people that using both or do they use one or the other? And then if so, what's the difference between the two? Yeah, we do have people that use both. We find that, like me, I was a QuickBooks user when I was at Walletron, and I was overwhelmed. I was not confident. It was more than I needed, frankly. And so what we find is entrepreneurs who are just getting used to understanding the financial cash flow of their business, the ins and outs of money through their business.

We take a much easier, simpler view. You're not going to find accounting jargon in our product. It is just easier for business owners to understand because we took that point of view in constructing our product. And as I said, if and when their accountant says, well, we operate on QuickBooks here, that's fine too. We've been integrated to QuickBooks for years and moving that data over, we get it. We want to make things simple and easy for the business owner. But if the accountant wants to crunch away and do journal entries and all sorts of adjustments, general ledger entries, whatever, they can do that. And we're all empowered to do it. And you're again watching, seeing me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show.

Make sure you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com because it's the only place where entrepreneurs align. And we have with us Garrett, president and CEO of the Neat Company. You can be reached at neat.com. That's N-E-A-T.com. Garrett, what are you seeing though with some of the, you know, you came, it's nice because you came from the world of being a business owner now to being the CEO of Neat.com. So you know what it's like to be on the other side as the business owner.

What is some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing right now as business owners now since your company deals with so many of them? Sure. The challenges are often simple things that can make entrepreneurs' lives much easier. So for example, splitting business accounts and personal accounts. My wife, for example, she's had a consultancy for a number of years. And how many times do I have to tell her to stop buying groceries out of her business account and other things like that is very entertaining. But other things like just keeping pace with the data that comes in is something that we really have focused on because we saw that problem with entrepreneurs. So many times, people would wait until the end of the month or the quarter and see

this big stack of transactions to categorize. And we see such value from our customers who keep pace, which you can do very easily with something like our mobile app, just keeping that on the go. And just it's the simplest interface to categorize your transactions as you go because that enables you in near real time to have the insights about where where is my business at this point in time what what did what did may really look like i should know that straight away and use that information to understand oh it, it looks like I am in a position to maybe apply for that line of credit. Or, oh, it looks like we need to take a second look at that vendor. What's been going on with the increases there? It's just, we see customers, we look over their

shoulder, and it's so interesting to see when they see the visualizations that are in our product for the first time. There's literally this slow scroll on the screen where you realize they're seeing a view of their business for the first time. So some of the questions we have prior to you coming on is one is, is how long does it take to actually get set up? So they're starting off fresh. How long until they're rocking and rolling? Super easy to get started. In fact, we have a free trial for customers to come in, get set up by just providing some basic contact information, a little bit of information about your business. And then you can take our test drive, send yourself a sample invoice to see how simple and easy it is to personalize that. Make a very professional looking invoice that you can send out to customers.

Set yourself up for electronic payments. That takes another minute so that you can accept credit cards and debit cards for payment as well as bank transactions. cards for payment and as well as bank transactions and then start uploading a few things into you what we call our file cabinet and see how the ease that is so that kind of collection of steps opens up our customers eyes literally in a matter of 15-20 minutes in their first session with me that's again that's phenomenal so you've had a very successful career again now you know business owner now as a ceo of the neatcompany.com um what type of secrets though can you share with now is the time of the year when you these you know graduates they're looking

to get a job they're looking to go into the workforce what kind of secrets though can you share with them of what they can do now to start beyond the education, getting that core experience to build upon their career? Do lots of different things. So if you look back at my career, for example, I was a software developer. I was a project manager. I was a product manager. I was a project manager. I was a product manager. And then a mentor of mine said, one of the most important things you can do if you wanted to be in my shoes someday is to get out there and sell. So I became a salesperson and sold software into the enterprise. That was an

unbelievable learning experience right there. I'm an introverted person, David. Getting out and getting in front of customers, prospective customers, and convincing them that they should own what you have is an unbelievable skill. But dive in, do lots of different things, and do the work that isn't an obvious path forward. Do the hard things, pay your dues. It matters. Excellent. Well, you certainly have dived in now being again, the president and CEO of Neat Company. You can be reached at neat.com. We've had with us Garrett Beard. Make sure you reach out to him. He's helping business owners and success one bite at a time. Make sure you go to neat.com.

That's N-E-A-T dot com. This has been David Kogan with the All's Hero Show. All right. You still got a damn good answer. I'm an introvert, too, so if I can do it, too.