October 28, 2025 • 33 mins
If you’ve ever tried to pivot a payments company from vendor sprawl to a product-led core, you know the hardest part isn’t the code - it’s the conviction. Greg Myers sits down with Payroc CEO Jim Oberman in the first episode in our three-part series titled Focus. Build. Win. to trace the inflection point that moved the company from relying on third parties to building and owning the core stack merchants now expect. We dig into the strategy behind choosing focus over FOMO, why omni and embedded experiences changed the rules, and how a disciplined product roadmap turned into a growth engine for partners and merchants alike.
Jim opens the playbook on capital allocation and scale: a two-pronged approach that combined careful acquisitions of mature distribution with targeted technology buys to accelerate the roadmap and extend globally. We talk about integrating WorldNet and BlueSnap, rebranding decisively, and the operating principle that all new business must board on the core platform. The result is a clear throughline from M&A to product to outcomes, including core-platform growth near 37% year over year while legacy assets provide the cash to fund tomorrow.
Execution is where it gets real. Jim shares how Payroc built a weekly cross-functional steering committee to avoid politics, return every debate to customer impact, and keep teams from chasing shiny objects. We explore the shift to vertical focus - unattended payments like vending, laundry, car wash, parking, and kiosks - where contactless demand is compounding. Data sits at the center, with a unified lake that reconciles to financials, enabling honest prioritization and faster, clearer decisions.
We close with lessons learned and what’s next: helping founder teams let go without losing their spark, centralizing support even if it’s expensive, and keeping a “never again” list to avoid unwinnable arenas. The next chapter is about sales execution and taking global capabilities to mid-market clients that are ready to expand.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Focus Build Win, a special three-part
series that dives into howPayRock turned a focused core
product strategy into a growthengine.
Across three conversations,we'll explore how the company is
leveraging acquisitions,building products that scale,
and aligning sales, recruiting,and partner teams to win.
SPEAKER_01 (00:22):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, Greg Myers.
This episode is part of ourthree-part series titled Focus
Build Win and is being broughtto you by Payrock.
Today I'm honored to have as ourspecial guest, Jim Oberman, the
CEO of Payrock.
Jim is going to be sharing thecompany story and why PayRock
bet on a focused, homegrown coretechnology and product stack,
(00:44):
how he reallocated capital andreshaped the organization, and
what results and trade-offsfollowed.
So, Jim, I'm really lookingforward to the conversation and
thank you so much for being hereand being on the show today.
SPEAKER_02 (00:55):
Yeah, thanks, Greg.
It's uh it's my pleasure and ourhonor to be able to do this with
you.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
So, Jim, I'd like to start by setting the stage.
Payrock wasn't always known as aproduct company, but you made a
very deliberate choice to changethat.
So, to kick things off, what wasthe single inflection point that
convinced you Payrock had tobecome a more product-driven
company rather than continuingto rely on third-party vendors?
SPEAKER_03 (01:20):
Yeah, the number one thing that really initiated our
enthusiasm to do what we've beendoing the last eight or nine
years is we saw what washappening in the market.
And very simply put, businesseswere developing a preference to
have the payment experience withtheir customers be quick and
(01:43):
easy, be what our market, ourindustry calls omni, which means
a customer could pay anywhere,any place, anytime, in the
store, at the curb, online, atthe counter, at the table.
And as we saw this preference ofbusinesses, even what whether it
be mom and pop on Main Street orvery sophisticated large
(02:07):
enterprise merchants, they'reall generally looking for one
thing to make sure that theexperience for their customer to
be able to pay for whateverthey're selling is quick and
easy.
And so what began to happen isthe large processors in the
United States and in the world,obviously, for decades, were
(02:28):
fantastic at delivering productsand capabilities into the hands
of sales partners and ISOsagents, banks, direct
salespeople that were more thanadequate for businesses.
But then back in, you know, inthe in the 90s, this all began
to change slowly.
(02:48):
2000 came along, 2010, that youknow, this was a decade long,
and as the internet isexpanding, the use of it,
digital interaction andcommunication, social media, the
explosion.
So the number one thing thatprecipitated is businesses
preferred their paymentexperience, generally, all of
(03:10):
the things being equal, beembedded in a software, in their
other software experience theywere given their customer.
The pivot to product was webegan to focus partnering with
those third parties where paritywas consistent with what was
being delivered, but we began tobuild product capabilities
(03:34):
ourselves, proprietary, so wecould deliver an experience to
the business owner that theywere expecting.
And not only to work, becauseyou know, especially the United
States market we serve the most,and then of course we're in
Puerto Rico, as people havemaybe learned about PayRock.
There's a lot of small andmedium-sized businesses in the
(03:55):
market that even in that realm,they don't necessarily want
their payment experienceembedded in some software, but
they certainly want a modern,modern set of flexibility going
in there.
So we began to focus our dollarsdoing acquisitions and pouring
money into technology andproduct that was going to drive
(04:16):
the experience that the merchantbusiness was having with their
customer.
And in the case of cardpayments, the cardholder.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
Okay.
Well, I'm sure that decisiondidn't come lightly.
I mean, you're shifting acompany's direction at that
scale really takes convictionand clarity, especially when it
comes to capital allocation.
So I'm sure there's many leadersthat are hesitant to redirect
capital away from known revenuestreams, and I'm sure you had to
do that.
But what gave you the convictionto reallocate dollars into
(04:46):
building out those core productsyou're talking about?
And how did you frame that betinternally with the team
internally and the board?
SPEAKER_03 (04:54):
Great question.
We did two things.
Number one, payments is abusiness of scale.
And if you're going to becompetitive, you have to have
scale.
So we did a two-pronged approachwith allocating our capital.
First thing we did is weinitially in 16 partnered with a
major financial institution tobring in some equity capital.
And then in 2019, werecapitalized with Parthenon,
(05:19):
excellent private equity firm,really knows payments.
We wanted to make sure we founda capital partner that was
committed to providing uscapital alongside us to do
acquisitions to build scale andvery strategic, very carefully
done, and also then take thatcash flow and plow it back into
(05:42):
technology and product as we'rebringing on this scaled
platform.
And so the allocation of ourcapital was really two-pronged.
Part of it was going towardsdoing acquisitions.
And this ties back to your firstquestion.
The acquisitions were carefullydone to where we were acquiring
(06:04):
distribution that was beginningto struggle in the market to
compete.
And this was more traditional indistribution, being ISOs,
agents, financial institutions,referral partners.
These are channels, Greg, thatfor decades were serving well
with the products that they weregiven, small, medium-sized, and
(06:27):
even larger businesses verywell.
But they were these companiesthat were becoming very mature
and were generating a lot ofcash flow were finding it
difficult to compete.
You know, if their totaladdressable market was this big,
it's shrinking, shrinking,shrinking every year.
And also, these were companiesthat were maturing that the
(06:49):
founders were thinking, hmm,maybe I could take some chips
off the table partially and putmyself in a better position to
compete for the future and bepart of something stronger,
bigger, better, more marketrelevant.
So we began to carefully plotalong, and our acquisitions are
(07:10):
all documented.
You know, there we've been verytransparent about everything
we've done and how careful we'vebeen.
So we were finding distributionthat was going to fit with the
product and tech we werebuilding and going to make them
better.
And then we also did someacquisitions of technology and
product that would accelerateour roadmap, Greg.
(07:33):
So not only were we buildingproduct and tech organically and
allocating this cash flow wewere buying into that, we were
also looking very carefully fortechnology acquisitions.
For example, I can't rememberwhat year it was, I think it was
22.
We acquired a wonderfulinternational payment gateway
(07:53):
called WorldNet that today isthe hub of our core
international gateway.
So that's a good example of apayment gateway.
And you know, there's tons ofthem out there, Greg, but we
didn't just acquire a gateway,we acquired a set of technology
and experience that we began towrap everything around kind of
(08:14):
the hub of that technologyplatform.
SPEAKER_01 (08:17):
Okay.
Well, any kind of transformationlike this brings trade-offs.
So what revenue or relationshipsdid you knowingly put at risk?
And sort of in hindsight, how doyou weigh those costs against
the results?
SPEAKER_03 (08:32):
Yeah, no, great question.
Anytime you do, golly, I thinkwe've done 35 acquisitions since
2016.
Time sure goes by fast.
And they accelerated.
And the trade-offs we foundourselves getting into, every
one of these companies we boughtdid something really, really,
(08:54):
really well that got them there,but wasn't going to work going
forward.
That's one of the reasons theywanted to join us.
They were realizing that whichthey built wasn't competitive
enough, and the amount ofcapital they would have needed
to run a loan was too much.
So we found ourselves, and westill have them today, with
(09:15):
pockets of, you know, littlepieces of portfolios or product
sets that we still havemerchants and customers that are
relying on it, that we continueto maintain because it's good
stuff, it's relevant, it's notgoing to serve our future well,
but it's serving us well today.
So the toughest part about thisjourney is deciding when do you
(09:41):
sunset some of these, I'm goingto call them older or
well-established, but technologyand product sets that are good
for the moment and were good,but they're not what businesses
are looking for going forward.
So we're continually doing thatbalancing act.
And when you're doing that, itimpacts your relationship with
(10:03):
the partners you have, becausethe partners you have that are
giving you business, right, theyhave some of that old business
in their portfolio.
And it's a juggling act.
So, and look, everybody's doingit.
Whether in Payrock's grown to bea very large player, we're in
that upper tier of the marketnow.
But um, whether it's companiesmuch larger than us, you know,
(10:27):
we call them the big supertankers and we love them,
they're struggling with the samething I just described.
And our peers that we competeagainst in our niche,
everybody's struggling with thatsame set of uh dynamics of
transitioning from old, proventechnology and product sets to
(10:50):
the new forward-looking thingsthat disruptors are doing so, so
well in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_01 (10:56):
Once the why was clear, the real challenge, I
would imagine, became execution.
I mean, it always is, right?
So making that pivot from widevendor model to a focused core
stack isn't just about thestrategy, right?
It requires rewiring theorganization, redefining how
decisions get made.
So let's talk a little bit abouthow you rewired the
(11:17):
organization, sort of theinternal stuff.
So, what structure or culturalchanges were the most critical
in making this shift?
SPEAKER_03 (11:25):
The first thing we did, and this is probably the
most important job I have, ishow to maintain a culture where
we're we have an entrepreneurspirit.
All these companies we puttogether started out, you know,
as a one, two, three-personshop, right?
And grew.
And so, how do you embrace theentrepreneur spirit yet have you
(11:48):
operate with an institutionaldiscipline that would make the
biggest of banks and processorsproud?
So it was marrying how we didit.
We said we're not gonna lose theability to first listen to our
customer.
You know, God gave us two earsfor a reason and one mouth.
(12:09):
It's that because we shouldlisten twice more than we talk.
That's really been helpful forus.
And what we did is we made surewe created a centralized
steering committee that everycross-functional area of
dependency, because in payments,things are not kind of, you
can't compartmentalize things.
(12:30):
You got boarding, risk, you gotterminal certifications, you got
to deal with the car networks,you got accounting, finance,
funding, reconciliation,billing, reporting, all of that.
So what we made sure is everyC-suite executive had a seat at
the table, and we we stilloperate this way today.
(12:52):
We have a steering committeethat meets every single week.
We know what our core focus is,and anything that is it's it's
real simple.
And whether you're a megamulti-billion billion dollar
company or you're a smaller,say, one or two, three billion
dollar company, you got to dothe same thing.
(13:13):
What are you trying to do withyour clients?
And PayRock, our clients are oursales partners, our sales
channels.
The merchants, the other thingphilosophically we did and
culturally we did, is themerchants are not our customers.
That might sound a little bitsideways to a lot of people, but
guess what?
(13:33):
The merchants are our customers'customer.
Our customer is a sales partner,their customer is a merchant,
we've got to take care of them.
So we had a very customer salespartner-centric focus.
You'll see one of our taglinesis PayRock is the platform built
for sales partners.
And so what we wanted to do ismake sure it was easy for our
(13:57):
sales partners to go into themarket and compete.
The other thing we had to do,Greg, to bring this together and
bring sanity, we had to begin toreinvent the focus of our sales
partners to be much morevertically oriented.
Again, for decades, traditionalchannels were able to go out to
(14:20):
the great unwashed masses ofNorth America, let's say, and
call on a restaurant, call on ahobby shop, call on a hair
salon, call on a barber.
You know, you go down the list,it didn't so much matter what
business they were in.
So we we found that to be thecase, that and we're doing that
(14:42):
today.
As our traditional salespartners reinvent themselves
with our products, you'll seewe're much more focused in the
verticals that we're attacking.
Doesn't mean we walk away fromother at-bats when they come our
way, but it's what we're huntingfor.
SPEAKER_01 (14:58):
Sure, sure.
Yeah, I remember when I startedin payments 20 years ago, it
was, you know, the the analogywas a sales guy had a trunk full
of terminals and he stopped atone end of the shopping mall and
walked down and he visited everysingle one and he could sell
them all the same product, butit doesn't work that way
anymore, right?
With the the software and thespecialized solutions and things
(15:20):
like that.
So I just think it's kind offunny that you mentioned that
because it is a a big shift.
Were there any other thingsculturally or like internally,
the way you operated the companythat that sort of changed, or or
was it pretty much the way youjust outlined it?
SPEAKER_03 (15:34):
It's the way I outlined it.
And it was the other thing wehad to do when you begin to
patch companies together, we hadone premise for everything we
did.
We wanted to make sure thechannel that the company we
acquired that their new businesswas going to be able to be
written on our own coreplatform.
(15:56):
That was really important.
So we stuck to that discipline.
The other thing we stuck to was90% of the time of the
acquisitions we did, thefounding teams, we wanted them
to become stakeholders inpayrock.
So it's a bit, again, payrocksare unique.
(16:16):
You know, we all like to braghow our companies are unique and
different, but we truly are,even though we're backed by
probably the best private equityfirm in the market for payments,
and there's there's others thatare great.
The founders and management teamof PayRock own a substantial
amount of equity in the companybecause everybody, although they
(16:39):
took some chips off the tablewhen they became part of
PayRock, they rolled over partof their equity in their company
into the bigger company.
And the majority of those peoplestill work for us today.
There are some, given eightyears has passed, that have
retired and knowingly wanted toretire, you know, when we bought
(17:01):
their company.
So I would say these are thethings we really focused on.
And then I'll start with thistoo, Greg.
You can't manage what you can'tmeasure, and you can't manage
what you don't understand.
And it starts with data and endswith data.
People that know me real wellwill say Jim is a data freak,
(17:22):
he's a data scientist.
And but I am for a reasonbecause everything we do, the
first thing we committed to, weinvested millions of dollars in
court data technology, datamanagement technology, to where
all our data is in one place.
You know, people will sharethat, but we do it.
(17:43):
We live it, we breathe it.
We want to make sure that allthe raw data we put in our data
lake is reconciling to ourfinancial statements and the way
we present ourselves to theworld.
So I'll tell you what, havingthe data and being able to study
that data and analyze it to makebetter decisions is very, very
(18:05):
important.
And I would recommend anycompany in payments or any
anything, know your data andcommit investment dollars to
making sure it's in one place,it's reliable.
So that was, I would say, Greg,if you look at the number one
thing that's helped us the mostthrough this journey is making
(18:25):
sure we had our arms around allthe multitude of data that flies
around in payments.
It's crazy how big it is.
SPEAKER_01 (18:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think that's a good segueto the next question.
So when it comes to makingdecisions, which those could be
about, you know, what productsto build, who to buy, who to
partner with, how do you makesure that you as a company don't
get bogged down into thepolitics?
SPEAKER_03 (18:49):
First, again, it goes back, we we've centralized
where that decision-makingauthority is.
And when political type ofconversations begin to occur and
tensions there, and there'sconflict, and sometimes the
conflict's healthy, sometimesconflict's not healthy, Greg.
And when it either way it'shappening, we have a real simple
(19:12):
thing we do.
We say, okay, to everybody takea deep breath, and let's talk
about how this impacts thecustomers we have and the ones
that we're prospecting.
And sometimes what we find,Greg, is that we got ourselves
into a flaw of chasing that nextshiny object.
(19:32):
And we've got to say, eventhough that thing that's shining
over there looks attractive,that wasn't what we agreed we
were gonna do.
And sometimes it's just thetough love of saying to somebody
in the organization, no, we'renot gonna chase that particular
part of the market.
And again, we want toconcentrate, and this is gets
(19:53):
into the more vertical approach,we want to concentrate on the
areas of the market where we canwin.
I'll give you an example wherewe've we've invested, we started
investing eight years ago,getting really, really good at
what is called unattended.
I'll oversimplify it's vendingmachines, kiosks, laundry, car
(20:13):
washes, amusement parks, parkinggarages.
We're a big believer and bullishthat the unattended experience
where you're buying somethingand you're tapping your card on
a device is going to continue toexplode and grow.
So there's an example, Greg, ofwhere we focused on a specialty
(20:34):
capability and we've tripleddown on the investment we're
making there.
That's just one example of youknow, probably nine others I
could give you.
SPEAKER_01 (20:43):
Right, right.
Well, this kind of change isnever easy.
So, how do you balance keepingthe sales channels informed of
what you're doing withoutoverwhelming them?
And sort of what did that looklike in practice?
SPEAKER_03 (20:55):
Yeah, the way it looks in practice is what we do
is we twice a month, we havewhat is called a product pulse.
And we're everybody in theorganization, whether it's
sales, finance, risk,accounting, operations, they all
know what we're focused ondoing.
(21:16):
And the reason we're working onsomething in the Tecker product
roadmap is so that we can meet aclient need.
The conflict comes in is whenyou get you always going to have
these emergencies that pop upthat you didn't plan on.
You know, give you an example.
The other day there was a filemissing.
And when a file's missing, Greg,it means there are merchants not
(21:39):
getting funded.
So the talent that's supposed tobe working on you know XYZ for a
customer gets distracted for aday or two, maybe.
And so when you get backtogether twice a month and
there's a bit of a delay, theyknow why there's a delay.
And I think it comes down to onesimple word, communication.
(21:59):
We still could get a lot bettercommunicating, but we try to
over-communicate and notestimate when something's gonna
get done just because it's theconvenient thing to say.
I think that's why the customersthat Payrock has, they know
we're not gonna BS them aboutour timelines.
You know, we're gonna give themreasonable timelines.
(22:20):
I've found, we have found, thatif you're if you communicate
well and you're clear and youdeliver when you're supposed to
deliver, customers will usuallyhang in there with you.
You know, and and there'sexceptions.
Sometimes you get you get a goodcustomer and they're bought by
somebody, right?
You have no choice, but you'regonna lose them.
As we've gotten bigger, we'realso growing up and learning
(22:43):
that the market is constantlynever changed, always going,
going, going, and changing.
You know, the um acquisition wedid recently of Blue Snap gave
us global capabilities, gave usability to go up market.
And it's a set of capabilitiesthat we're taking to our
mid-size clients well, too, thatwant to go into other markets.
(23:05):
So it's another example ofthings we targeted and focused
on.
unknown (23:10):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (23:11):
Well, all this sounds great.
You've got the strategy, you'vetalked about the structure, the
governance, all that's in place,but the real test really comes
in the results.
So I'd love to dig into whatproved the strategy worked and
what's the hardest lessons thatthere were along the way.
So if you had to point to maybeone or two, three proof points
or metrics that really told you,hey, this really worked, what
(23:34):
would that be?
SPEAKER_03 (23:35):
Well, the the first thing is everybody likes to
quote growth rates.
When you look at our coreplatform and you look at the
year-over-year Kager growth rateof that which we're boarding new
on our own platform, we'regrowing at close to a 37%
year-over-year rate.
That's fantastic.
We love it.
(23:55):
And what we invested in to dothat is working most of the
time, not all the time.
And what ends up dragging thatwith a company like us that
we've purposely invested forscale, we knew we were buying
some good cash-flowing assetsthat were going to generate the
cash flow to make theseinvestments, but the
(24:16):
year-over-year growth rates ofthose static portfolios, you
know, it's like this, right?
And that drags that overallgrowth rate.
So PayRock's got to be patient.
We've purposely invested forscale.
We're taking that cash flow,we're plowing it back into the
(24:36):
future, and to bring somebalance to our overall blended
growth rates, we're going tohave to be patient.
And that's probably the youknow, the toughest thing to
manage through.
You'd like to show you knowthose 30-something percent
growth rates on a blend, butthat's just not possible when
you've done what we've done asquick as we've done it.
(24:58):
And then the people equation.
You know, we're 2016 when Ijoined PayRock, we had 17
employees.
Today we have over 1,400globally.
President of our company and ateam, for example, they're in
Ireland this week.
We invested heavily in talent inIreland.
There's a lot of greattechnology talent in Ireland,
(25:18):
and both in the Belfast andDublin area that has served us
very, very well.
So it's investments like thatwhere we were looking for
strategies to use to assembletechnology and product talent
quicker than we might otherwisebe able to do it in the United
States, and at a more reasonablecost as well.
SPEAKER_01 (25:40):
Well, let's talk about some lessons learned.
So, what was the hardest lessonyou learned in this?
And secondly, how did you dothis and continue to protect the
payrock brand?
Because I know that's soimportant.
SPEAKER_03 (25:51):
The biggest lesson we learned, even though we were
careful about who we bought,every company we bought had a
founder that was amazing at whatthey did.
Otherwise, we wouldn't havebought them.
The lesson we learned, it'sreally hard for those in those
teams of individuals to let goof what made them great.
Even though they did what theydid because they know they gotta
(26:15):
look forward.
So the lesson learned is a humanone, you know, and the fact that
you just gotta take a deepbreath and you gotta be patient
and you gotta let the impact ofthat change, Greg, to the way
they operate settle in.
You can't the lesson is don'tcome in like with a bulldozer.
(26:37):
You gotta be very careful andselective in how you're pivoting
to the new modern set of tools.
SPEAKER_01 (26:46):
Okay, so just about how do how do you, you know,
with all this change, protectthe payrock brand?
SPEAKER_03 (26:53):
Well, what we've done is virtually every
acquisition we've done, we'verebranded, other than what we're
doing in um Puerto Rico, becausethere's a brand down there,
Dynamics.
So, for example, it's DynamicsPayments, powered by Payrock.
Puerto Rico is an island.
We're in the U.S.
Virgin Islands too, and thatbrand is really well established
(27:16):
there.
So, what we did to protect thebrand is to make sure we didn't
allow the multitude of otherbrands we acquired to linger on.
That's where you know we had tobe a little bit more abrupt and
changing to the payrock brand.
And then the way you operate,the other thing we did to
protect the brand, you're stillgonna answer the telephone,
(27:37):
right?
So we again, like I said, wecentralized our data, we
centralized where all the callswere coming into as well.
And one set of data, one set oftools, one team.
That was really importantbecause otherwise, if you're
despaired all over the place,and I'll tell you what, Greg, to
centralize data and centralizesupport, it's very expensive to
(28:01):
do.
SPEAKER_02 (28:01):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (28:02):
Absolutely.
You need a lot of money.
You got to deploy a lot ofcapital into that initiative.
SPEAKER_01 (28:07):
Okay.
So every CEO that goes through atransformation like this has
kind of what I'm using airquotes, a never-again list.
So just curious what's sort ofon your never again list?
SPEAKER_03 (28:19):
I will never again, and I'll probably end up doing
this three weeks from now,allow, and I don't mean shiny
object in a negative way, I'llnever again let some of the
opportunities that come our waythat aren't in the core of what
we agreed we wanted to be and dodistract me and us.
(28:42):
What I learned, and even thoughI was coming into this in 2016,
and I had been an executive at abig public company, payments
company, the journey, the lasteight years, I allowed pockets
of time where myself and ourteam would get distracted
chasing something that when youget, you know, six months later,
(29:03):
you're like, oh my God, why'd wedo that?
We knew we shouldn't have donetried to do that.
And a lot of times, I'll neveragain try to jump into an area
of the market that there's acompetitor that really has a
superior set of capabilitiesthat takes too much money to
replicate.
So the never again is don'tchase dreams you can't win at.
(29:29):
You know, make sure you'rechasing in vertical spots in the
market where you know you havethe capabilities today to win,
or you're gonna have them prettysoon.
That's our never again.
SPEAKER_01 (29:39):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So to wrap up, let's let's lookforward.
So if a if another payment CEOcame to you and and said they
wanted to kind of go down thispath that you have, what would
be the first three things onyour 90 day playbook that you'd
tell them?
SPEAKER_03 (29:55):
Well, the first thing I'd tell them is evaluate
the team you have.
Have now, because don't assumethat the team you're going to go
out there to try to recruit andhire is going to get it.
Make sure if you're going toembark upon something bigger and
better and stronger, make sureyou have the team now.
And if you don't have the team,take a deep breath and assemble
(30:19):
it.
Because you just can't go out,even though you hire the best
talent that has had success, ittakes time to bring this talent
in and groom them to be focusedon what you've agreed you're
trying to accomplish.
So my best set of advice isthat.
My second thing would be thedata.
And my third thing is make sureyou have a balance sheet and a
(30:42):
capital partner that's going tobe patient and understand
there's going to be wins andthere's going to be losses.
And it's a blend, it's anactuarial blend.
That's the way this business isworking.
But make sure you have thecapital, and then after you
estimate how much capital youneed, probably multiply that
(31:03):
times one and a half times.
Because you're never right onyour first, you know, what does
the carpenter say?
I'm going to measure it threetimes and cut once.
Right.
I say for evaluating how muchcapital you need, measure three
times and then go back and do itagain, and then do it again.
So do the three times over threetimes, say nine times, and then
(31:24):
embark upon what you're going todo.
Because it usually takes moremoney and more time to do what
you think you're going to beable to do.
And look at Greg, I've beendoing this for decades.
I still miss the mark on that.
Maybe when I grow up, we'll getit right, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (31:41):
I think I think you're doing a great job.
I think that's that's greatadvice for folks out there.
So, last question (31:45):
what's next for payrock?
How do you continue to build onthis momentum?
SPEAKER_03 (31:50):
We're in a really good place where we're focused
on sales execution now.
You know, there's been a lot ofpurposely investing for scale,
purposely investing in newproducts and technology.
We're now in a placefoundationally where the pivot
for payrock now is salesexecution.
We have enough scale.
We're big enough, we're strongenough, we have the cash flow.
(32:14):
I have seen the last three tonine months a strengthening in
the performance of our portfolioin terms of economic cycles.
It certainly helps when interestrates are lower.
There are external factors thatimpact us.
And then executing on thisglobal strategy.
I mean, the world's gotten a lotsmaller in the digital age here,
(32:35):
and it's getting smaller andsmaller.
And good, solid North Americanbusinesses are looking to expand
into other markets.
So that will be a tremendousamount of our attention, is
really leveraging these globalcapabilities we now have to
bring to our existing clientsand our new ones.
SPEAKER_01 (32:54):
Okay.
Well, I think that's a great wayto wrap up the show today.
So, Jim, I know your time isvery valuable.
So I really appreciate you beinghere today.
SPEAKER_03 (33:01):
Yeah, thanks, Greg.
I do appreciate you guys andeverything you're doing too.
SPEAKER_01 (33:06):
Absolutely.
And finally, to all youlisteners out there, I thank you
for your time as well.
And until the next story.
SPEAKER_00 (33:12):
Thanks for tuning in to Focus Build Win, a special
series exploring how Payrock'sfocus on core products drives
alignment, growth, and lastingpartner success.
To explore more resources andinsights, visit
www.payrock.comslash agentopportunity.
Welcome to Focus Build Win, a special three-part
series that dives into howPayRock turned a focused core
product strategy into a growthengine.
Across three conversations,we'll explore how the company is
leveraging acquisitions,building products that scale,
and aligning sales, recruiting,and partner teams to win.
SPEAKER_01 (00:22):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, Greg Myers.
This episode is part of ourthree-part series titled Focus
Build Win and is being broughtto you by Payrock.
Today I'm honored to have as ourspecial guest, Jim Oberman, the
CEO of Payrock.
Jim is going to be sharing thecompany story and why PayRock
bet on a focused, homegrown coretechnology and product stack,
(00:44):
how he reallocated capital andreshaped the organization, and
what results and trade-offsfollowed.
So, Jim, I'm really lookingforward to the conversation and
thank you so much for being hereand being on the show today.
SPEAKER_02 (00:55):
Yeah, thanks, Greg.
It's uh it's my pleasure and ourhonor to be able to do this with
you.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
So, Jim, I'd like to start by setting the stage.
Payrock wasn't always known as aproduct company, but you made a
very deliberate choice to changethat.
So, to kick things off, what wasthe single inflection point that
convinced you Payrock had tobecome a more product-driven
company rather than continuingto rely on third-party vendors?
SPEAKER_03 (01:20):
Yeah, the number one thing that really initiated our
enthusiasm to do what we've beendoing the last eight or nine
years is we saw what washappening in the market.
And very simply put, businesseswere developing a preference to
have the payment experience withtheir customers be quick and
(01:43):
easy, be what our market, ourindustry calls omni, which means
a customer could pay anywhere,any place, anytime, in the
store, at the curb, online, atthe counter, at the table.
And as we saw this preference ofbusinesses, even what whether it
be mom and pop on Main Street orvery sophisticated large
(02:07):
enterprise merchants, they'reall generally looking for one
thing to make sure that theexperience for their customer to
be able to pay for whateverthey're selling is quick and
easy.
And so what began to happen isthe large processors in the
United States and in the world,obviously, for decades, were
(02:28):
fantastic at delivering productsand capabilities into the hands
of sales partners and ISOsagents, banks, direct
salespeople that were more thanadequate for businesses.
But then back in, you know, inthe in the 90s, this all began
to change slowly.
(02:48):
2000 came along, 2010, that youknow, this was a decade long,
and as the internet isexpanding, the use of it,
digital interaction andcommunication, social media, the
explosion.
So the number one thing thatprecipitated is businesses
preferred their paymentexperience, generally, all of
(03:10):
the things being equal, beembedded in a software, in their
other software experience theywere given their customer.
The pivot to product was webegan to focus partnering with
those third parties where paritywas consistent with what was
being delivered, but we began tobuild product capabilities
(03:34):
ourselves, proprietary, so wecould deliver an experience to
the business owner that theywere expecting.
And not only to work, becauseyou know, especially the United
States market we serve the most,and then of course we're in
Puerto Rico, as people havemaybe learned about PayRock.
There's a lot of small andmedium-sized businesses in the
(03:55):
market that even in that realm,they don't necessarily want
their payment experienceembedded in some software, but
they certainly want a modern,modern set of flexibility going
in there.
So we began to focus our dollarsdoing acquisitions and pouring
money into technology andproduct that was going to drive
(04:16):
the experience that the merchantbusiness was having with their
customer.
And in the case of cardpayments, the cardholder.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
Okay.
Well, I'm sure that decisiondidn't come lightly.
I mean, you're shifting acompany's direction at that
scale really takes convictionand clarity, especially when it
comes to capital allocation.
So I'm sure there's many leadersthat are hesitant to redirect
capital away from known revenuestreams, and I'm sure you had to
do that.
But what gave you the convictionto reallocate dollars into
(04:46):
building out those core productsyou're talking about?
And how did you frame that betinternally with the team
internally and the board?
SPEAKER_03 (04:54):
Great question.
We did two things.
Number one, payments is abusiness of scale.
And if you're going to becompetitive, you have to have
scale.
So we did a two-pronged approachwith allocating our capital.
First thing we did is weinitially in 16 partnered with a
major financial institution tobring in some equity capital.
And then in 2019, werecapitalized with Parthenon,
(05:19):
excellent private equity firm,really knows payments.
We wanted to make sure we founda capital partner that was
committed to providing uscapital alongside us to do
acquisitions to build scale andvery strategic, very carefully
done, and also then take thatcash flow and plow it back into
(05:42):
technology and product as we'rebringing on this scaled
platform.
And so the allocation of ourcapital was really two-pronged.
Part of it was going towardsdoing acquisitions.
And this ties back to your firstquestion.
The acquisitions were carefullydone to where we were acquiring
(06:04):
distribution that was beginningto struggle in the market to
compete.
And this was more traditional indistribution, being ISOs,
agents, financial institutions,referral partners.
These are channels, Greg, thatfor decades were serving well
with the products that they weregiven, small, medium-sized, and
(06:27):
even larger businesses verywell.
But they were these companiesthat were becoming very mature
and were generating a lot ofcash flow were finding it
difficult to compete.
You know, if their totaladdressable market was this big,
it's shrinking, shrinking,shrinking every year.
And also, these were companiesthat were maturing that the
(06:49):
founders were thinking, hmm,maybe I could take some chips
off the table partially and putmyself in a better position to
compete for the future and bepart of something stronger,
bigger, better, more marketrelevant.
So we began to carefully plotalong, and our acquisitions are
(07:10):
all documented.
You know, there we've been verytransparent about everything
we've done and how careful we'vebeen.
So we were finding distributionthat was going to fit with the
product and tech we werebuilding and going to make them
better.
And then we also did someacquisitions of technology and
product that would accelerateour roadmap, Greg.
(07:33):
So not only were we buildingproduct and tech organically and
allocating this cash flow wewere buying into that, we were
also looking very carefully fortechnology acquisitions.
For example, I can't rememberwhat year it was, I think it was
22.
We acquired a wonderfulinternational payment gateway
(07:53):
called WorldNet that today isthe hub of our core
international gateway.
So that's a good example of apayment gateway.
And you know, there's tons ofthem out there, Greg, but we
didn't just acquire a gateway,we acquired a set of technology
and experience that we began towrap everything around kind of
(08:14):
the hub of that technologyplatform.
SPEAKER_01 (08:17):
Okay.
Well, any kind of transformationlike this brings trade-offs.
So what revenue or relationshipsdid you knowingly put at risk?
And sort of in hindsight, how doyou weigh those costs against
the results?
SPEAKER_03 (08:32):
Yeah, no, great question.
Anytime you do, golly, I thinkwe've done 35 acquisitions since
2016.
Time sure goes by fast.
And they accelerated.
And the trade-offs we foundourselves getting into, every
one of these companies we boughtdid something really, really,
(08:54):
really well that got them there,but wasn't going to work going
forward.
That's one of the reasons theywanted to join us.
They were realizing that whichthey built wasn't competitive
enough, and the amount ofcapital they would have needed
to run a loan was too much.
So we found ourselves, and westill have them today, with
(09:15):
pockets of, you know, littlepieces of portfolios or product
sets that we still havemerchants and customers that are
relying on it, that we continueto maintain because it's good
stuff, it's relevant, it's notgoing to serve our future well,
but it's serving us well today.
So the toughest part about thisjourney is deciding when do you
(09:41):
sunset some of these, I'm goingto call them older or
well-established, but technologyand product sets that are good
for the moment and were good,but they're not what businesses
are looking for going forward.
So we're continually doing thatbalancing act.
And when you're doing that, itimpacts your relationship with
(10:03):
the partners you have, becausethe partners you have that are
giving you business, right, theyhave some of that old business
in their portfolio.
And it's a juggling act.
So, and look, everybody's doingit.
Whether in Payrock's grown to bea very large player, we're in
that upper tier of the marketnow.
But um, whether it's companiesmuch larger than us, you know,
(10:27):
we call them the big supertankers and we love them,
they're struggling with the samething I just described.
And our peers that we competeagainst in our niche,
everybody's struggling with thatsame set of uh dynamics of
transitioning from old, proventechnology and product sets to
(10:50):
the new forward-looking thingsthat disruptors are doing so, so
well in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_01 (10:56):
Once the why was clear, the real challenge, I
would imagine, became execution.
I mean, it always is, right?
So making that pivot from widevendor model to a focused core
stack isn't just about thestrategy, right?
It requires rewiring theorganization, redefining how
decisions get made.
So let's talk a little bit abouthow you rewired the
(11:17):
organization, sort of theinternal stuff.
So, what structure or culturalchanges were the most critical
in making this shift?
SPEAKER_03 (11:25):
The first thing we did, and this is probably the
most important job I have, ishow to maintain a culture where
we're we have an entrepreneurspirit.
All these companies we puttogether started out, you know,
as a one, two, three-personshop, right?
And grew.
And so, how do you embrace theentrepreneur spirit yet have you
(11:48):
operate with an institutionaldiscipline that would make the
biggest of banks and processorsproud?
So it was marrying how we didit.
We said we're not gonna lose theability to first listen to our
customer.
You know, God gave us two earsfor a reason and one mouth.
(12:09):
It's that because we shouldlisten twice more than we talk.
That's really been helpful forus.
And what we did is we made surewe created a centralized
steering committee that everycross-functional area of
dependency, because in payments,things are not kind of, you
can't compartmentalize things.
(12:30):
You got boarding, risk, you gotterminal certifications, you got
to deal with the car networks,you got accounting, finance,
funding, reconciliation,billing, reporting, all of that.
So what we made sure is everyC-suite executive had a seat at
the table, and we we stilloperate this way today.
(12:52):
We have a steering committeethat meets every single week.
We know what our core focus is,and anything that is it's it's
real simple.
And whether you're a megamulti-billion billion dollar
company or you're a smaller,say, one or two, three billion
dollar company, you got to dothe same thing.
(13:13):
What are you trying to do withyour clients?
And PayRock, our clients are oursales partners, our sales
channels.
The merchants, the other thingphilosophically we did and
culturally we did, is themerchants are not our customers.
That might sound a little bitsideways to a lot of people, but
guess what?
(13:33):
The merchants are our customers'customer.
Our customer is a sales partner,their customer is a merchant,
we've got to take care of them.
So we had a very customer salespartner-centric focus.
You'll see one of our taglinesis PayRock is the platform built
for sales partners.
And so what we wanted to do ismake sure it was easy for our
(13:57):
sales partners to go into themarket and compete.
The other thing we had to do,Greg, to bring this together and
bring sanity, we had to begin toreinvent the focus of our sales
partners to be much morevertically oriented.
Again, for decades, traditionalchannels were able to go out to
(14:20):
the great unwashed masses ofNorth America, let's say, and
call on a restaurant, call on ahobby shop, call on a hair
salon, call on a barber.
You know, you go down the list,it didn't so much matter what
business they were in.
So we we found that to be thecase, that and we're doing that
(14:42):
today.
As our traditional salespartners reinvent themselves
with our products, you'll seewe're much more focused in the
verticals that we're attacking.
Doesn't mean we walk away fromother at-bats when they come our
way, but it's what we're huntingfor.
SPEAKER_01 (14:58):
Sure, sure.
Yeah, I remember when I startedin payments 20 years ago, it
was, you know, the the analogywas a sales guy had a trunk full
of terminals and he stopped atone end of the shopping mall and
walked down and he visited everysingle one and he could sell
them all the same product, butit doesn't work that way
anymore, right?
With the the software and thespecialized solutions and things
(15:20):
like that.
So I just think it's kind offunny that you mentioned that
because it is a a big shift.
Were there any other thingsculturally or like internally,
the way you operated the companythat that sort of changed, or or
was it pretty much the way youjust outlined it?
SPEAKER_03 (15:34):
It's the way I outlined it.
And it was the other thing wehad to do when you begin to
patch companies together, we hadone premise for everything we
did.
We wanted to make sure thechannel that the company we
acquired that their new businesswas going to be able to be
written on our own coreplatform.
(15:56):
That was really important.
So we stuck to that discipline.
The other thing we stuck to was90% of the time of the
acquisitions we did, thefounding teams, we wanted them
to become stakeholders inpayrock.
So it's a bit, again, payrocksare unique.
(16:16):
You know, we all like to braghow our companies are unique and
different, but we truly are,even though we're backed by
probably the best private equityfirm in the market for payments,
and there's there's others thatare great.
The founders and management teamof PayRock own a substantial
amount of equity in the companybecause everybody, although they
(16:39):
took some chips off the tablewhen they became part of
PayRock, they rolled over partof their equity in their company
into the bigger company.
And the majority of those peoplestill work for us today.
There are some, given eightyears has passed, that have
retired and knowingly wanted toretire, you know, when we bought
(17:01):
their company.
So I would say these are thethings we really focused on.
And then I'll start with thistoo, Greg.
You can't manage what you can'tmeasure, and you can't manage
what you don't understand.
And it starts with data and endswith data.
People that know me real wellwill say Jim is a data freak,
(17:22):
he's a data scientist.
And but I am for a reasonbecause everything we do, the
first thing we committed to, weinvested millions of dollars in
court data technology, datamanagement technology, to where
all our data is in one place.
You know, people will sharethat, but we do it.
(17:43):
We live it, we breathe it.
We want to make sure that allthe raw data we put in our data
lake is reconciling to ourfinancial statements and the way
we present ourselves to theworld.
So I'll tell you what, havingthe data and being able to study
that data and analyze it to makebetter decisions is very, very
(18:05):
important.
And I would recommend anycompany in payments or any
anything, know your data andcommit investment dollars to
making sure it's in one place,it's reliable.
So that was, I would say, Greg,if you look at the number one
thing that's helped us the mostthrough this journey is making
(18:25):
sure we had our arms around allthe multitude of data that flies
around in payments.
It's crazy how big it is.
SPEAKER_01 (18:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think that's a good segueto the next question.
So when it comes to makingdecisions, which those could be
about, you know, what productsto build, who to buy, who to
partner with, how do you makesure that you as a company don't
get bogged down into thepolitics?
SPEAKER_03 (18:49):
First, again, it goes back, we we've centralized
where that decision-makingauthority is.
And when political type ofconversations begin to occur and
tensions there, and there'sconflict, and sometimes the
conflict's healthy, sometimesconflict's not healthy, Greg.
And when it either way it'shappening, we have a real simple
(19:12):
thing we do.
We say, okay, to everybody takea deep breath, and let's talk
about how this impacts thecustomers we have and the ones
that we're prospecting.
And sometimes what we find,Greg, is that we got ourselves
into a flaw of chasing that nextshiny object.
(19:32):
And we've got to say, eventhough that thing that's shining
over there looks attractive,that wasn't what we agreed we
were gonna do.
And sometimes it's just thetough love of saying to somebody
in the organization, no, we'renot gonna chase that particular
part of the market.
And again, we want toconcentrate, and this is gets
(19:53):
into the more vertical approach,we want to concentrate on the
areas of the market where we canwin.
I'll give you an example wherewe've we've invested, we started
investing eight years ago,getting really, really good at
what is called unattended.
I'll oversimplify it's vendingmachines, kiosks, laundry, car
(20:13):
washes, amusement parks, parkinggarages.
We're a big believer and bullishthat the unattended experience
where you're buying somethingand you're tapping your card on
a device is going to continue toexplode and grow.
So there's an example, Greg, ofwhere we focused on a specialty
(20:34):
capability and we've tripleddown on the investment we're
making there.
That's just one example of youknow, probably nine others I
could give you.
SPEAKER_01 (20:43):
Right, right.
Well, this kind of change isnever easy.
So, how do you balance keepingthe sales channels informed of
what you're doing withoutoverwhelming them?
And sort of what did that looklike in practice?
SPEAKER_03 (20:55):
Yeah, the way it looks in practice is what we do
is we twice a month, we havewhat is called a product pulse.
And we're everybody in theorganization, whether it's
sales, finance, risk,accounting, operations, they all
know what we're focused ondoing.
(21:16):
And the reason we're working onsomething in the Tecker product
roadmap is so that we can meet aclient need.
The conflict comes in is whenyou get you always going to have
these emergencies that pop upthat you didn't plan on.
You know, give you an example.
The other day there was a filemissing.
And when a file's missing, Greg,it means there are merchants not
(21:39):
getting funded.
So the talent that's supposed tobe working on you know XYZ for a
customer gets distracted for aday or two, maybe.
And so when you get backtogether twice a month and
there's a bit of a delay, theyknow why there's a delay.
And I think it comes down to onesimple word, communication.
(21:59):
We still could get a lot bettercommunicating, but we try to
over-communicate and notestimate when something's gonna
get done just because it's theconvenient thing to say.
I think that's why the customersthat Payrock has, they know
we're not gonna BS them aboutour timelines.
You know, we're gonna give themreasonable timelines.
(22:20):
I've found, we have found, thatif you're if you communicate
well and you're clear and youdeliver when you're supposed to
deliver, customers will usuallyhang in there with you.
You know, and and there'sexceptions.
Sometimes you get you get a goodcustomer and they're bought by
somebody, right?
You have no choice, but you'regonna lose them.
As we've gotten bigger, we'realso growing up and learning
(22:43):
that the market is constantlynever changed, always going,
going, going, and changing.
You know, the um acquisition wedid recently of Blue Snap gave
us global capabilities, gave usability to go up market.
And it's a set of capabilitiesthat we're taking to our
mid-size clients well, too, thatwant to go into other markets.
(23:05):
So it's another example ofthings we targeted and focused
on.
unknown (23:10):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (23:11):
Well, all this sounds great.
You've got the strategy, you'vetalked about the structure, the
governance, all that's in place,but the real test really comes
in the results.
So I'd love to dig into whatproved the strategy worked and
what's the hardest lessons thatthere were along the way.
So if you had to point to maybeone or two, three proof points
or metrics that really told you,hey, this really worked, what
(23:34):
would that be?
SPEAKER_03 (23:35):
Well, the the first thing is everybody likes to
quote growth rates.
When you look at our coreplatform and you look at the
year-over-year Kager growth rateof that which we're boarding new
on our own platform, we'regrowing at close to a 37%
year-over-year rate.
That's fantastic.
We love it.
(23:55):
And what we invested in to dothat is working most of the
time, not all the time.
And what ends up dragging thatwith a company like us that
we've purposely invested forscale, we knew we were buying
some good cash-flowing assetsthat were going to generate the
cash flow to make theseinvestments, but the
(24:16):
year-over-year growth rates ofthose static portfolios, you
know, it's like this, right?
And that drags that overallgrowth rate.
So PayRock's got to be patient.
We've purposely invested forscale.
We're taking that cash flow,we're plowing it back into the
(24:36):
future, and to bring somebalance to our overall blended
growth rates, we're going tohave to be patient.
And that's probably the youknow, the toughest thing to
manage through.
You'd like to show you knowthose 30-something percent
growth rates on a blend, butthat's just not possible when
you've done what we've done asquick as we've done it.
(24:58):
And then the people equation.
You know, we're 2016 when Ijoined PayRock, we had 17
employees.
Today we have over 1,400globally.
President of our company and ateam, for example, they're in
Ireland this week.
We invested heavily in talent inIreland.
There's a lot of greattechnology talent in Ireland,
(25:18):
and both in the Belfast andDublin area that has served us
very, very well.
So it's investments like thatwhere we were looking for
strategies to use to assembletechnology and product talent
quicker than we might otherwisebe able to do it in the United
States, and at a more reasonablecost as well.
SPEAKER_01 (25:40):
Well, let's talk about some lessons learned.
So, what was the hardest lessonyou learned in this?
And secondly, how did you dothis and continue to protect the
payrock brand?
Because I know that's soimportant.
SPEAKER_03 (25:51):
The biggest lesson we learned, even though we were
careful about who we bought,every company we bought had a
founder that was amazing at whatthey did.
Otherwise, we wouldn't havebought them.
The lesson we learned, it'sreally hard for those in those
teams of individuals to let goof what made them great.
Even though they did what theydid because they know they gotta
(26:15):
look forward.
So the lesson learned is a humanone, you know, and the fact that
you just gotta take a deepbreath and you gotta be patient
and you gotta let the impact ofthat change, Greg, to the way
they operate settle in.
You can't the lesson is don'tcome in like with a bulldozer.
(26:37):
You gotta be very careful andselective in how you're pivoting
to the new modern set of tools.
SPEAKER_01 (26:46):
Okay, so just about how do how do you, you know,
with all this change, protectthe payrock brand?
SPEAKER_03 (26:53):
Well, what we've done is virtually every
acquisition we've done, we'verebranded, other than what we're
doing in um Puerto Rico, becausethere's a brand down there,
Dynamics.
So, for example, it's DynamicsPayments, powered by Payrock.
Puerto Rico is an island.
We're in the U.S.
Virgin Islands too, and thatbrand is really well established
(27:16):
there.
So, what we did to protect thebrand is to make sure we didn't
allow the multitude of otherbrands we acquired to linger on.
That's where you know we had tobe a little bit more abrupt and
changing to the payrock brand.
And then the way you operate,the other thing we did to
protect the brand, you're stillgonna answer the telephone,
(27:37):
right?
So we again, like I said, wecentralized our data, we
centralized where all the callswere coming into as well.
And one set of data, one set oftools, one team.
That was really importantbecause otherwise, if you're
despaired all over the place,and I'll tell you what, Greg, to
centralize data and centralizesupport, it's very expensive to
(28:01):
do.
SPEAKER_02 (28:01):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (28:02):
Absolutely.
You need a lot of money.
You got to deploy a lot ofcapital into that initiative.
SPEAKER_01 (28:07):
Okay.
So every CEO that goes through atransformation like this has
kind of what I'm using airquotes, a never-again list.
So just curious what's sort ofon your never again list?
SPEAKER_03 (28:19):
I will never again, and I'll probably end up doing
this three weeks from now,allow, and I don't mean shiny
object in a negative way, I'llnever again let some of the
opportunities that come our waythat aren't in the core of what
we agreed we wanted to be and dodistract me and us.
(28:42):
What I learned, and even thoughI was coming into this in 2016,
and I had been an executive at abig public company, payments
company, the journey, the lasteight years, I allowed pockets
of time where myself and ourteam would get distracted
chasing something that when youget, you know, six months later,
(29:03):
you're like, oh my God, why'd wedo that?
We knew we shouldn't have donetried to do that.
And a lot of times, I'll neveragain try to jump into an area
of the market that there's acompetitor that really has a
superior set of capabilitiesthat takes too much money to
replicate.
So the never again is don'tchase dreams you can't win at.
(29:29):
You know, make sure you'rechasing in vertical spots in the
market where you know you havethe capabilities today to win,
or you're gonna have them prettysoon.
That's our never again.
SPEAKER_01 (29:39):
Gotcha, gotcha.
So to wrap up, let's let's lookforward.
So if a if another payment CEOcame to you and and said they
wanted to kind of go down thispath that you have, what would
be the first three things onyour 90 day playbook that you'd
tell them?
SPEAKER_03 (29:55):
Well, the first thing I'd tell them is evaluate
the team you have.
Have now, because don't assumethat the team you're going to go
out there to try to recruit andhire is going to get it.
Make sure if you're going toembark upon something bigger and
better and stronger, make sureyou have the team now.
And if you don't have the team,take a deep breath and assemble
(30:19):
it.
Because you just can't go out,even though you hire the best
talent that has had success, ittakes time to bring this talent
in and groom them to be focusedon what you've agreed you're
trying to accomplish.
So my best set of advice isthat.
My second thing would be thedata.
And my third thing is make sureyou have a balance sheet and a
(30:42):
capital partner that's going tobe patient and understand
there's going to be wins andthere's going to be losses.
And it's a blend, it's anactuarial blend.
That's the way this business isworking.
But make sure you have thecapital, and then after you
estimate how much capital youneed, probably multiply that
(31:03):
times one and a half times.
Because you're never right onyour first, you know, what does
the carpenter say?
I'm going to measure it threetimes and cut once.
Right.
I say for evaluating how muchcapital you need, measure three
times and then go back and do itagain, and then do it again.
So do the three times over threetimes, say nine times, and then
(31:24):
embark upon what you're going todo.
Because it usually takes moremoney and more time to do what
you think you're going to beable to do.
And look at Greg, I've beendoing this for decades.
I still miss the mark on that.
Maybe when I grow up, we'll getit right, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (31:41):
I think I think you're doing a great job.
I think that's that's greatadvice for folks out there.
So, last question (31:45):
what's next for payrock?
How do you continue to build onthis momentum?
SPEAKER_03 (31:50):
We're in a really good place where we're focused
on sales execution now.
You know, there's been a lot ofpurposely investing for scale,
purposely investing in newproducts and technology.
We're now in a placefoundationally where the pivot
for payrock now is salesexecution.
We have enough scale.
We're big enough, we're strongenough, we have the cash flow.
(32:14):
I have seen the last three tonine months a strengthening in
the performance of our portfolioin terms of economic cycles.
It certainly helps when interestrates are lower.
There are external factors thatimpact us.
And then executing on thisglobal strategy.
I mean, the world's gotten a lotsmaller in the digital age here,
(32:35):
and it's getting smaller andsmaller.
And good, solid North Americanbusinesses are looking to expand
into other markets.
So that will be a tremendousamount of our attention, is
really leveraging these globalcapabilities we now have to
bring to our existing clientsand our new ones.
SPEAKER_01 (32:54):
Okay.
Well, I think that's a great wayto wrap up the show today.
So, Jim, I know your time isvery valuable.
So I really appreciate you beinghere today.
SPEAKER_03 (33:01):
Yeah, thanks, Greg.
I do appreciate you guys andeverything you're doing too.
SPEAKER_01 (33:06):
Absolutely.
And finally, to all youlisteners out there, I thank you
for your time as well.
And until the next story.
SPEAKER_00 (33:12):
Thanks for tuning in to Focus Build Win, a special
series exploring how Payrock'sfocus on core products drives
alignment, growth, and lastingpartner success.
To explore more resources andinsights, visit
www.payrock.comslash agentopportunity.
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