Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the accelerator with Michael Koneff.
That's me.
I'll be your host.
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Today, we're joined by a true serial entrepreneur.
His name is Jeremy Luceris.
He is an eight -time founder with eight exits.
Now, that's pretty good.
Most all of them successful.
So welcome, Jeremy.
Great to have you.
Great to be on, great to hang out with you today.
yeah, it's, you're the perfect guest for this show, for this podcast, because you
are gonna tell us how it's done.
And I can't tell you, no pressure, how many times, you know, people come on and,
you know, maybe it's gonna work, maybe it's not.
So, you have had a lot of companies work.
Your current company is called Payment Brokers.
Why don't we start there?
Tell us about what that is and then tell us why you think that will work and
whether there's maybe even a major pivot in there sometime soon.
Yeah, so first I want to address the eight exit thing because I think it's important
as much as I hear eight exits that sounds really glamorous.
It's not, you know, these weren't all these weren't always, you know, successful
exits.
Some of them were, you know, painful exits because I didn't have a choice.
So it's funny because it's like every time I talk to me like, wow, how do you do
that?
I was like through pain and suffering a lot like it wasn't always like these
amazing, beautiful exits.
Which came first, a successful one or did you start unsuccessfully?
You know what?
Luckily I had a good successful exit first, so I modeled things after that in
the future.
one?
What kind of company was that?
It was an online furniture retailer called furniturestock .com that was years and
years ago.
And it was successful, but also a horrible failure on my part because the company was
just falling apart because I didn't know how to operate a retail environment.
First, I had living in an apartment with garages full of returned furniture that I
didn't understand how to manage.
And so I ended up with a bunch of inventory and friends of mine on weekends
moving furniture.
You had a lot of good furniture.
I did, you know, after that it was a, every time we moved from that point
forward, I knew that the furniture business well enough to always have really
nice furniture in my house.
hear this expression of victim of your own success.
Was that a case where it was working but you couldn't keep up with it?
Yes and no.
I honestly got into it because someone said I could buy wholesale furniture.
And I thought, well, this is a good strategy.
Like how much is wholesale?
What does that mean?
I didn't even know really the terminology back then of where in the supply chain
this fell.
And when I went to the manufacturing plant, I was like, wait, I can buy leather
furniture, a whole set for $500.
And what I looked at the market at the time,
I just said, well, no one's selling this online.
There were really no online furniture retailers back in 2003.
And so I built, yeah, I built a platform to slowly start selling this.
And I had Burt Force taken, you know, scanning and photos of their book to put
it on a landing page with, you know, PayPal checkout.
I mean, it was very, very rudimentary what I did.
And I started getting orders because I had no overhead and I could sell this.
you know, at 30 points and make a ton of money.
What I didn't really account for was having space because what would end up
happening later is quality issues and I would deliver something on a weekend.
My friend would get in a truck with me, rent a rider truck and put him in the back
of a rider truck and go deliver them ourselves.
And so that started to weigh on me because as the expense of that went up and I got
returns, I'm like, I don't have a warehouse.
I lived in an apartment.
So I would rent a garage from our apartment complex and it started stacking
up and I was like, wait a second, I'm not moving this stuff.
There's a cost to carry.
So that starts really, you learn it through trial and error really.
Back then, I did, it was like a micro sale.
There was a gentleman that was really interested in the industry and he
purchased it and failed horribly along the way.
And I ended up taking a ride with him because there was,
you know, an earn out on that side of it.
So I thought, okay, he's going to invest and do all these certain things.
I didn't know what covenants were back then.
So I think I learned back then, and you had asked a question about why payment
brokers and why now back then I was so.
Profit focused, I was so revenue driven and money hungry.
I was in a survivalist mentality of grow to make money.
and I had absolutely no focus on purpose or value.
It was just, I identified a gap that could make money and I was gonna throw
everything at making money.
I didn't care about quality or value or reliability or performance, it was just
purely profit.
So, as I, well as I grew up and had some of these other exits,
I found myself in these loveless relationships with the entities I had
built.
I had built something that had absolutely no value or meaning or purpose to me and I
didn't want to be involved.
Hence, 20 companies that I started and failed, eight of which were exits.
I mean, I'm sure there were more than 20.
My wife and maybe my business partners would say, I have ideas.
I call them entrepreneurial seizures.
I'm like, oh my God, I have to do this.
And it's a disease.
Yeah.
it's a disease.
Yeah.
No question.
entrepreneur, but the passion wasn't there.
I wasn't passionate about the idea and I didn't have a specific skill set out of
technology at the time.
I was learning how to code and develop and build things.
So it was like no talent, no technology, no passion, pure profit focus.
Those aren't really healthy long -term, at least for me, builds.
As I got more experience, I found myself more trying to align my lifestyle and what
I want to do, what I have passion about, and there's a mission behind, and new
skill sets I have now, which makes it a very low lift, something I enjoy, and all
of the hurdles disappear.
So payment brokers was one of those things.
yeah, how does payment brokers fit that model?
So I was in the payment space.
I'll say I don't really advocate for it because I just think it's somewhat
predatory in the way that the rates and fees are aligned to the processor.
And everybody's focused on interchange.
There was actually a big article that came out yesterday, I wrote a huge article
about this.
Everybody's targeting Visa MasterCard.
That's not the problem.
The problem is above Visa MasterCard.
and that is at the processor level.
Now they deliver value, but I've seen them take advantage of companies, one of which
was me early on, which is why I even got into the business to begin with.
I had an e -commerce company later on, obvious steps.
You build an e -commerce company, now you wanna build other people's e -commerce
companies.
And it was just a value item, like, hey, we can monetize that part of the
transaction, let's do it, let's become a reseller for a processor.
And then when I saw how they...
reduced free market competition and became very sticky in the way that they operated.
And the second they got you in a POS system or in a software or tied into their
e -commerce platform, they would, I jokingly call it, Bip you up.
They'd put a basis point here and three there and one cent there and five cents
there and $6 a month here.
And by the end of the cycle, you're paying five or 6 % to, I hate to say,
a commodity of transferring money from one account to the other.
There are things that they've done.
I love it, man.
I can tap my phone and pay.
They've made these really seamless, very secure, frictionless ways to pay.
That's great.
I love that about payments.
But at what cost?
So when I started advocating for small business, which is what I've done now,
right, after some exits, you want to help people.
So I changed from this.
profit -focused mentality to what can I have purpose and help people with?
And this is probably the first company that's just pure cost reduction.
So I'm using, my commercial guys will kill me.
I'm not using AI.
We call it AI cost reduction.
It's a really buzz -worthy thing.
It's really machine learning.
We use OCR, we read the statements, we basically use optical character
recognition, we read the very detailed.
thousand page statements that have all the detailed transactions, we're able to
categorize and use proprietary data to identify what's negotiable, how much
profit is that processor making, and we use that data and we've hired an amazing
team of people because I'm all about people powered technology, I'm not about
technology on its own.
And so we have people power to then call on behalf of that merchant and give them a
leg up to negotiate using.
data -driven information.
And without having machine learning, you can't do this at a high frequency and
monitor it on an ongoing basis.
So the challenge in the industry is that Visa, MasterCard, American Express change
their rates and fees all the time.
Processors have to be able to update their rates and fees.
They just don't do it in step, right?
Visa raises it five basis points.
The processor raises it 25 basis points.
And I have seen them, I've seen processors charge in excess of three,
hundred basis points above cost.
This isn't really what should be happening to a small business.
And I'll tell you, our research, $30 to $50 billion a year problem, and it's all
on small to medium -sized companies.
Because if you have a big, sophisticated supply chain management team and vendor
relations team, or you're hiring guys like KPMG and ENY, these management companies
to come in and help you, you've probably got a pretty decent.
handle around what you're paying above interchange.
The small guys don't.
They just don't have that level of sophistication.
So I'm bringing it to small to medium business because I believe that's where
that bucket of money is being burdened.
And so that's really payment brokers in it.
We do it as an advocate.
There are so many calls I have.
I'm like, here's a bunch of DIY stuff.
We can't even make money doing that.
Like, go do these things.
Go get a pin pad.
You're taking debit cards.
You'll save half a percent and, you know, 20 cents on a transaction.
If you're a non -profit, I'm like, go play, apply for a non -profit interchange.
It'll save you a ton of money.
We don't make money doing that.
So this was me being able to give back a bit, and we make money doing it.
Don't get me wrong.
Yeah, so, and I mentioned the word pivot and the idea of pivoting.
So, have you ever considered starting a payment processor that does things the
right way?
Yes, but I think that would take away from what we're doing.
I mean, I think today the claim for us is we're not a processor.
We don't represent a processor.
We don't want people to switch.
It is kind of, I mean, look, we're splitting the savings with our customers,
so it's a for -profit company.
But we're 100 % based on what we deliver.
We make zero dollars if we save you zero dollars.
I love that.
But if my take was, hey, I wanna move you over to my service, part of the challenge
is changing, underwriting, and changing your equipment and buying new things and
technology integrations into ERP systems and e -commerce platforms.
I don't want you to switch.
It's so much of a headache to retrain 20 employees on a new POS system when the
devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
I could start a processor and say, hey, we're just gonna give you pure interchange
and.
here's our profit margin and it's public and it's very simple.
But even that, I think we'd be a target of the bigger companies.
And it's a race to the bottom.
So.
take it just a short step backwards.
I'm curious when you made this change into purpose and mission driven businesses and
what was the last business you had that was not like that and was that a
successful business?
So the last exit was December 1st.
I had a graphic design agency.
So the last one was real passion.
I love design.
I just absolutely love art.
I love design.
I have an eye for it.
I'm not classically trained, but having run an agency now, I know that I was made
to do that.
But turning what you love into a business is also not necessarily the best idea.
Yeah, you know, I tried that with sports, a company called Interactive Sports in the
90s.
And I'm happy to report I did not lose my love of sports.
But when I started the business, I was like, you know, what would really be
horrible here is if I ended up not liking this at all.
Now, tonight, I'm going to watch the NCAA basketball.
So it's fair to say that I have not lost my love of sports.
But it's a it's something to really think about, isn't it?
Yeah, it's funny because I think people follow their passion, right?
Somebody has said this to people for years, like follow your passion into it.
I don't disagree with that statement.
If you're solving a real problem and you're passionate about it, what a great
business to be in where people see that you love the challenge of what you're
building.
I would follow that leader blindly.
I would buy from that company first if I knew that.
So what was the design company?
Was it Design I .O.?
It was designeded .co.
dot co design dot co and what did it do?
So we were trying to, I was trying to bring really high quality design to small
business that couldn't afford it.
Cause I was, I mean the first, first part of that company was that it was an agency
I built behind the scenes to support all of my spin out crazy ideas.
That was really what it was before, but it wasn't profitable.
It was just something I had on call like, Hey, I have this new idea.
I need a logo.
I need this.
I need all of these assets.
I need social media content.
I need all of these things.
So I had this internal agency and.
I decided at one point that there's a better model to not do what traditional
agency had done.
I had a huge spend in design in my previous career.
And when I spent it, it was such an archaic journey to get something very
simple done and it cost way too much money.
And you had to have like, you know, minimum spends and all sorts of other
things.
So I believed I could change the model by creating a subscription based design.
And I built software to manage the design process internally and externally for the
customer so they could go in and put in a request and have local US -based, really
high quality, you know, RISD and New York School of Design grad level designers who
the big agencies hired.
I said, look, we will hire them full time when these agencies were only bringing
them in project -based.
So I was offering them a more stable environment because we had a subscription
and that subscription would be fractional ownership or fractional use of that
designer.
And so it scaled up really well and it did extremely well, but a company called Core,
I really, really respect the guy who built this company.
He had acquired my last company, which was called ireview .com, which was an online
reputation management company.
And they had some challenges with design along the way.
And he actually pitched me early on when he bought my last company, hey, I want to
buy your design company.
And I was like, no, it's just getting off the ground.
There's no valuation yet.
Like we didn't even have that significant revenue.
And we had a conversation.
And he's a very, really good leader in terms of human capital growth.
I'm not that guy.
I'm not an operator from that perspective.
Orness Mella.
And he bought two companies for me.
And I would say, what?
what they have in terms of vision and growth for their agency was so much bigger
than the vision I had that it just made sense for them to take it over.
And then I, of course, in turn invested part of that capital back into their
parent company core.
And I think I really believe in what they're doing.
So it was like, this is a great fit.
They like to operate.
I'm not an operator.
I know where I fit in the general scheme of business now.
And because of that,
I have more drive and passion because I like to build stuff.
I'm a builder.
when did you realize you weren't an operator?
What was that moment?
Every day I operate.
I think, I hope your listeners don't say the same thing.
Like just because it sucks doesn't mean you're not built for it.
No, but I think that the point here is I feel the same way actually about not
really being an operator.
I'm not an operator.
I'm much better at a more strategic level.
I'm less good at the hands -on unless it has to do with writing and content and
text.
But I think it's an important thing for people in our audience who are founders to
sort of realize their...
It's if there are things you can't do well, that's actually okay, right?
It's like you're better off doing what you did.
Yeah, Michael, I get asked all the time, should I go learn this and have a better
skill set at operating?
It's like, what chapter in the book do you want to write?
It's up to you.
I mean, I look at the end chapter of my book and I'm like, what does that read
like?
What do I do every day?
What's my lifestyle look like?
Does that include being an operator?
I want to be known for that.
I didn't.
And I recognized sooner than later, luckily for me, that I have, I'm an
amazing ideator.
I have real, real foundation and creativity.
I can get things to revenue quickly and I love bottom -up building.
I love profit -first build.
And if I could just do that, there are operators that value that at 10 and 20x.
Why would I take the execution risk of something I'm not good at doing?
So I could go find great operators and plug them in and I have, like in general,
we have to do that anyway in the beginning of these organizations.
you don't have to do that work yourself.
Exactly.
So why take the execution risk when someone is willing to 10x the EBITDA board
I've already built?
It's like, I would take me 10 years to get there or, you know, through growth, I can
get there faster, great, but I don't have to.
somebody who is not an operator, how do you recognize when somebody will be a good
operator?
I can see it in the people I've worked with.
I can't tell you that I can identify the skill set well because I'm not one, right?
It takes one to know one.
I could say that I've worked with some amazing operators.
Actually, no, I just met a guy in the roofing industry.
He is a natural born operator.
And you know, after meeting...
What did you see that makes you say that?
He loves it.
He lives for the, he likes being in the detail, in the dirt, in the trenches with
the guys in the field.
He'll go on the route.
That's the thing.
There was no pride in ownership beyond him doing the same tasks.
And they've scaled this company so big, so fast, because he's a phenomenal operator.
So I can see it from that perspective, but I also see,
It's not for me.
I think I like to build things.
I have 900 other ideas on the burner of things I want to build that have more
purpose and value to impact the world.
Why would I go operate it?
Jeremy?
Do you mean literally 900?
I mean, to be honest, if I've scrolled through them, I've never counted how many,
but there's definitely a hundred really, really dialed in ideas.
And so I was given a mentor of mine said, stop, you need to have like, you got to
focus a little bit.
You can spin out too many things simultaneously.
My wife said the same thing, like no more new business, like time out, no more new
businesses.
And my business partners have said the same thing, like, Hey, can you just stay
focused?
Stop.
So, so when my outlet has become writing and I'm a terrible writer, so I will just
hack away at my idea.
who teaches writing and has a book called Write Good on Amazon, I have to tell you,
you cannot, you're not allowed to say that because people, if you want me to read
something and tell you are a terrible writer, I'll tell you, but people sort of
talk themselves out of it way too early.
I mean, you're articulate, therefore, like, well, if, for example, if you just
recorded what you said,
and cleaned it up a little bit, you'd have a pretty good piece of stuff.
So I let my mind go and I just hack it out.
Like, I gotta get this idea off my chest.
And so I have this notepad that somebody has said, you need to put this out to the
world, because some of these ideas are absolutely genius and should be done.
But now I'm watching them be done, which is even funnier, because my wife will look
and she goes, wasn't that your idea?
Didn't you just talk about that?
Like, yeah, really?
I can't do all things.
that though a sign of a good idea?
Because what happens is oftentimes a great entrepreneurial idea is obvious after it
exists.
Right?
And until it exists, it's like, you know, why would you do, why would you have a
search engine?
I remember when I heard about, you know, Google or even AltaVista, I was like,
I don't get that.
I just don't see that.
I don't see that working.
Now, in my defense, Google didn't see advertising working, right?
That the people in Google, like most of them, were against Google Ads when they
were, you know, it got developed kind of on the side.
It was just over 90 % of the revenue today, right?
They didn't want to do it.
But, you know, it's interesting.
So,
We have a few moments to speak about the future.
So what, okay, let's think and talk about that sheet of a hundred ideas.
So don't give me the next one, but give me the one after the next one.
Like what's the one that really gets you excited?
Are you looking at the list?
I'm not, I know them by heart.
So I do, I could rattle them off.
I mean, I have so many that are important.
Some of them are just fun, things that I really wanna do or things that I've
identified as gaps in markets that I was like, this is so big and such a vast
opportunity.
I don't see why someone's not doing this.
But then I think what's happened is what I said early on, which is, does this align
with me?
Does it align with my...
end chapter of my book, whatever that might be, is this what I want to be known
for and do?
There's a lot of, I have like some criteria now that needs to be met in order
for me to even entertain these business ideas.
Sure.
want to be known for?
Maybe that's a work in progress and answer in progress, but how close are you to
answering that question?
I think that's a relentless quest for perfection.
I don't think I'll know the answer.
If you would have asked me 10 years ago, it would be very different than today.
So I think now I'm trying, I'm a Libra, so I'm gonna say.
not meaning.
You know, perfection is not an issue.
perfect the meaning of what I should be here to do.
I think more what I've been focused now is just harmony and alignment with these
things I'm building into what makes meaning in my life and brings joy every
day.
So, and more recently, my father passed last year and that was a massive event for
me to look at.
Myself internally, I don't you know, I don't think I've ever He was 90.
So he had an amazingly long life Amazing and I think looking at legacy changed
everything also in general.
It gave me a little bit more Direction in terms of looking at his end of life and
where I see mine I've never done that before so it's very different but I I
think it gave me a Piece of insight that I didn't have before which was like slow
down
enjoy the things around you and try to have some balance in what you're building
and not like, I have been burning 18 hours a day.
I mean, I grew up in a very humble environment and I said it was really about
survival in the beginning and now it's more what can I do to impact things around
me?
And that's having a purpose bigger than myself.
So.
we're kind of the end of the podcast, but would you tell, would you advise somebody?
Because I actually do this.
I mean, this is part of, you know, what I, what I say to founders is, um, you know, I
asked, what do you really care about?
Like what, what matters to you?
You know, those guys, that's sort of my starting point.
And I'm not alone in that.
Lots of people, you know, believe that, but in your case, if you could do this
over, would you start with that?
back for further.
would have never brought me here otherwise.
I think now it's, my purpose now, at least partially, besides those around me, is the
younger version of me that I wish I could have had this conversation with.
So now this is my opportunity where, to be honest, like even getting on this podcast
was supposed to be something I did for my last company.
And here we are, I'm like, you know what, I still wanna get that message out there
if there's things I can do to impact people in a more positive way early on in
the stages of startup and small into a point of like having more thoughtful
growth, not just, you know, burning, which everybody does.
Look, there's a purpose for that.
I know there's a rise in grind mentality.
I just think that maybe it should be a little bit more balanced and I'm trying to
help where I can in that.
And my next venture is purely about housing.
And I think the reason why is because I didn't have housing.
I lived in a car early in my life.
So I think I'm looking at the younger version of myself saying, how could I
impact that guy and where can I make the biggest impact community wise?
you know, what I would say is sort of us looking at things from a storytelling
standpoint is like, that's a great origin story.
Starting a housing company because housing was an issue and you had to sleep in a car
for how long?
I want to say was on and off for a couple years.
My father did an amazing job of making it work and not seem like a big deal.
But I would say it was it was now looking back, it's like people just don't have as
easy of an opportunity to be a homeowner early in the phases of their life.
So I'm trying to impact affordable housing and do so through crowdfunding.
And there's a lot of investment there from my side now as a second growth.
talk about that because for regulatory reasons, but we will, if you come back
when you're ready, we can definitely talk about that.
So thanks for being with us, Jeremy.
This has been a great podcast.
Great to have you on the accelerator.
Thanks, I really appreciate the time.
It was great to hang out with you today.
And I want to thank all of you out there for listening to the accelerator.
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