Join us as we chat with Matt Pierce, CEO of Immediate, about financial wellness, early-stage pivots, how to talk to investors, what its like to work at a startup and how his team is trying to change the way people think about money.
Join us as we chat with Matt Pierce, CEO of Immediate, about financial wellness, early-stage pivots, how to talk to investors, what its like to work at a startup and how his team is trying to change the way people think about money.
Luis: Welcome to the Sendlio podcast. My name is Luis.
Brandon: And I'm Brandon.
Luis: And today we have Matt Pearce, who is the CEO and founder of Immediate. How you doing?
Matt: Doing good guys. Thanks for taking time with me. I really appreciate it.
Luis: Thank you for being with us. So let's just give a little bit of a background. Uh, tell us about Immediate. I know you guys are doing amazing things.
Matt: Yeah, so the company is coming up on its third year in existence. Um really cool. We actually started this, my partners and I originally, two years earlier, had started to build a home health and home care scheduling system, kind of as a side hustle. Right? And we all had full time jobs and we started working on this home help, home care scheduling, and I decided that I, personally, was ready to take the plunge and go full time. And I was talking to somebody earlier today and we mentioned, like, wading into the shallow as opposed to diving into the deep end, and the guy goes, so long as we don't dive into the shallow end. So, like, we didn't dive into either end. We kind of waded in, took our time and and I said, I think it's time to go full time on this. So, um, so I kind of, we decided in order to do that, we wanted to level up revenue and so I went and got a big group, it would have been about a quarter million dollar a year contract and they had about 2000 employees and I went and pitched on the scheduling and caregiver transparency platform and the lady goes, well, it felt a little bit like in a movie where you would do something and they go, oh, that's cute. Like, oh that's the, that's the feeling I got, she was like, this is nice. Um, you've been telling my real problem is and I go, yeah, absolutely. Let's hear the real problem. She goes, my real problem is not about people not showing up on time or not being able to schedule them appropriate. My real problem is if I go back upstream, its turnover, I have 60% turnover every year. So if I got 2000 people that’s 1200 people a year that are just going to turn through and I got to bring in new people and train them, get them up to speed. The reason they're not showing up on time, or the reason they're over billing me, or all the things that you're trying to solve for as an end user, right? Like, I had aging family where I was kind of experiencing the negative aspects of home care, she said, like where your issue is, I believe could be solved if I just had people that would to stay and put in work, right? And so she goes, help me solve this. And I go, well, how do you solve that? She goes, it's easy, it's money. And I go, okay as a technology guy, how do I help you solve that? Because I'm not just gonna give you money. So she said, she goes, well, I think if you can help me incentivize people with pay at the end of a shift. Oh, interesting. Right? And so that kind of evolved into this conversation where I went back and talked to a mentor of mine, turned into being one of my co-founders here, and I told him about this conversation. I was actually pitching him to invest in the other business. And he goes, tell me about your nose. And I said, I had a really interesting one earlier this week, and I told him about that story I just told you. And he goes, I want to do that. And I go, you want to just give money away freely to random companies who want to reduce turnover. And he goes, no, I want to dig out a business around how you can pay people at the end of the shift. And I go, let me do some research. He goes, go do research for a month. Come back and present me what you find. And what I found was really interesting is we start flipping over these rocks is 78%, this is pre covid, right, 78% of our population was living paycheck to paycheck. And when people find themselves in a bind and a pinch waiting for their next paycheck which is typically two weeks from now, right? Like every other friday. When I'm waiting for that next paycheck I only have a couple of options of places to turn if I get in a pinch, right. I get a flat tire or run out of gas, uh, I can go to my friends and family, and maybe you know bum 20 bucks. But if it's bigger it's like 125,you know, my dad may go, well I gave you $100 6 months ago, and you still haven’t paid me back, so I'm not in the game of just giving money away so go find something else. Right? So if I got good enough credit maybe I'll go put on my credit card and go I'll just pay off the balance next month. Or maybe I'll let the balance bill and I'm willing to pay the 18-27% APR. Or the other option is I gotta check book and I'm gonna write a check that's gonna bounce and it's going to cost me $35 in fees. But at least I can get my gas in my tank or food on my table or whatever it is right, you do that enough, you're gonna land in jail. So the other options and to me the most predatory is title and payday loan and it's where a lot of people turn right. We actually just did a survey in Q4 and 25% of people who had an unexpected expense in the last 12 months. 25% of them turned to high interest title or payday loans. And so those are like average APR for a title on his 300%. Average APR for a payday loan is 391%, in states like Texas, it's 662% APR it’s crazy. So, that’s a really long way of explaining what we do, but what we do is we actually built an engine that connects to existing time tracking and payroll systems for a company, where we could go sit down if you, you guys are the head of HR for 1000 employee company, we sit down with you: one, we try to open your eyes to the fact that your people are struggling financially, whether you believe it or not, They're not coming to you and telling you that they need $125 and their parents won’t loan them money so they’re writing bad checks, or that they're they're caught up in pay day loans and they don't tell you that because it's embarrassing in a lot of cases, right? And they don't want to come and tell you that. But they go and they make these decisions and then they wrap that baggage around their shoulders and they bring it to work and it's hurting their performance at work. And so we can show them that we can go in and now give them a responsible alternative to those predatory lenders, those predatory options, that you can offer as a business. No cost to the company and it’s a nominal transaction fee. every time something goes in there and makes a transition. I need 100 bucks. I go into the Immediate pay app, I request $100 we send it to their bank account or onto a debit card. They can get it literally within... legally have to stay within minutes, and in march, the average transaction time was 12 seconds. You get money on the card in 12 seconds and now I can go, you know, pay my bills or put gas in my car, fix my flat tire or whatever I need to do. And so we really position this almost as, like, a financial insurance, right? It's like a voluntary financial wellness net, and we're just there to help people if they need it. If they don't ever use it... we got a lot of people, we actually were looking at data this morning. Um, people will log into the app about three times more than they actually use it. Their logging in to see how much money they've earned since their last payday.
Brandon: Oh, just as a reference.
Luis: Just as a tracker, that’s interesting.
Matt: That’s interesting, isn’t it? And literally that's, like, fresh, hot off the press, uh, news that that was shared with me this morning. Three times they'll log in for every one time to actually make a transaction. They just want to know what's there. I may have something coming up this weekend just in case they have money there. Okay, cool, there's money available. I now have a safety net versus if something comes up orI need money in a pinch, I don't have to go turn to those other places.
Brandon: So do employers just get it? Like, I mean, it seems really like a no brainer right for if you've got a business and you've got employees and like, I feel like it goes like this, like you just walk into the office and you go, this is what we do. And they go, of course we need that.
Matt: It's, um, some of them are, I can tell you um We've had sales sales processes that lasted literally less than five minutes, because the ones that just get right off the bat. Or when…
Brandon: They’re waiting for it.
Matt: Yeah, they're… I had one guy that was like, excuse me. He's like, why in 2020 have I never heard of this before?
Luis: Right, that makes sense.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, this is like relatively new technology and we're, you know, we're on the cutting edge. And, so this same guy said, um, I get a ton of pay advanced requests from my company. They're not a huge company, they're like a couple 100 employees, right? I get a ton of people use, the chief operating officer is like, people come in, shut the door and they go, do you have a minute? And they sit down and then they tell me a story. And the story could be true, the story could be false, the story could be embellished. The story could be 30 seconds or 30 minutes, but at some point they're going to go, and I really could just use $150. And if you do that, if you give me this money then you can take out of my next paycheck, next three paychecks or whatever it is, right? And he goes, I got to tell you man, it's subjective for me, like I've got to look at this person in the eye and decide is this man or woman being honest. And if I give them this, are they gonna go tell everybody else in the company, and now I'm gonna have a line waiting on the door that I'm giving out free money, right? And so he goes, if I can never have to have one of those conversations again, I will sign this contract right now. And I can't say never, right? Like, there may be people to go my a/c blew, and it's 100 degrees, and I live in the Atlanta area, and you know, I need two grand. We can’t help with that, right? Because we, we've got to do what they've earned but not yet received. Um, in most cases it's not that much money. Um, but I can tell you we can dramatically reduce that, and you can say, we don't have a program like this anymore. So he goes, how much does it cost me? It's nothing. And he goes how much does it cost them? And I said it's nominal, like ATM fee, costs them $3 when they make a transaction. And he goes, um, can you send me the contract and I go, I'll do you better. We were at, like, a conference and I pulled the TV… on the TV I put our docs to sign on there at the trade show.
Luis: That's killer.
Matt: Five minutes. Yeah. So there's that. And then we've got one. We're working right now that we've literally had nine meetings and we have three more scheduled, and it's a big deal and we've got to get like 40 people to say yes. And um it's obviously a bigger deal is a great opportunity for us. But it's like a process, right? And so and everything in between. Right. We obviously love the small ones. Um, or I should say the short sales processes. I always tell people and the sales role like, you know the first thing you want is a quick yes. The second thing you want is a quick no, right. And then, if you can move towards one of those, great. And so we've got the sales team to try to focus on the path of least resistance. Let's find companies that get it and they can move fast and then we can roll this out so we can start impacting lives. Um, but then the overarching theme is we've always got to have some big ones that are needle movers to help us to take that next level up, the same way that with the original business, we were trying to level up from a bunch of mom and pop 30-40 employing companies. Let's go to the 2000 employee company. Well, now we're going, well, we're hitting, you know, we're winning 10 - 20 deals every month that are 500 - 5000. All right, let's, inside of that, once a quarter, let's layer in a 50,000 employee company or 150,000 employee company. And that's how you kind of start to grow exponentially and level up. Um, and so that's really what we've been focusing on as a growth organization is how are we really consistent where we're keeping our team busy and onboarding, and training, and supporting a user community, but then knowing that once a quarter we're going to get a really big deal. Um, and so that's something that we've really tried to put a lot of focus on.
Luis: Let me ask you. So I want to go back to something you said, you know, because I find when… we've spoken before and you know, when I was reading about Immediate, like I got it immediately and I was immediately able to connect it to personal experiences in my life. I used to work in the restaurant industry, you know, and it's a tough industry, you know, basically slave wages, right? You know, you're getting terrible an hour, you're subject to tips and you know, you know how that is every so often you don't do so well. And I can't tell you how many times my financial future was subject to a freakin cell phone bill, or a stupid little something or other that's just gonna tag on charges and tag on fees and just kind of multiply. So, do you find that most of, because I know you said that you can't get like a $2,000 loan, right? But you can get these small short term loans or you know, pay day, excuse me, advances, you know, to kind of like tide you over are those really the majority of things that are holding people back from being financially sound?
Matt: I think so, right? Like there's, you're right, there's always gonna be big things that happen that could derail anybody, right? Um, just like really candidly, my family had a car situation like six weeks ago that just like, I literally told my wife, well there goes our vacation, right.And it was, it was a small little fender bender. Um and then literally on the drive home after getting the car fixed, paying our deductible, which is like $500, on the drive home, she hit a nail and blew out the side wall and we had to get a brand new tire. And so it's like, and which was another like 300 bucks. I was like, our vacations aren't as cheap as $800, I wish they were but with her. But I was like, well there goes vacation and it was literally, like, $800 of unexpected expenses. Now I can say this, I'm working at a startup right? I haven't made as little money as I'm making right now since I was in my mid twenties. And so it was tough. It was like a... it was a big bump. Now for our business, all of our employees have access to Immediate, so I could have gone in and pulled some. Luckily we've been fortunate enough that we've been able to set aside some, like an emergency fund and it's not a whole lot more than $800, now definitely um is a lot less than $800 cause we just blew all of it. So we got to start building that emergency fund back up. This is part of it, right. Here's the deal. 46% of the population doesn't even have $400 in savings. So if I were one of the 46% of the people in the US that didn't have that, even that $500 deductible may have crushed me financially. That is, there's always the potential for that to happen. But to answer your question, what we see in most of our users, last month, our average transaction size was $118.
Luis: That's like a cell phone bill.
Matt: There's actually a great story about a guy who, um... this is really, this is really cool. So this guy goes in, he was a new employee of the company. So usually we have him wait until their second pay period before they can actually start using the system, make sure they get the first pay period or get paid and then they start using the second. So, in the second he sends in a support ticket goes into the app and there's a question mark in there and he clicks and he says I need an activation code. Here's my name, info, etcetera. We sent it to him. In the email that he gets. There's a three minute training video that teaches him how to download the app, activate his account, add his wallet, and make a transaction. Now upset for this story is he already downloaded the app. He already knew that he needed an activation code. Right? So we're playing a little bit, like we're, you know, we're putting from the green here, but we send this email to him. I think the number was, like, within four minutes from the time that he plugs in his activation code and gets started. He makes his first transaction. Four minutes. That's simple. Right? And so then what happens is as part of our follow up process because he had submitted a ticket, our support team follows back up with him like the next day and this is a Tuesday. It's just like a Tuesday evening. So on a Wednesday we sent him a support ticket. Hey you know this is your first transaction. How did everything go? Any questions, any concerns, anything we could have done better? And the guy says no, this was awesome. Awesome experience. Here's what happened. I had a cell phone bill due today Wednesday of $114. I went into your app and I requested $117. I knew it was going to cost me three bucks. I got $114 on Tuesday. I paid the bill on time because if I would have waited until payday on Friday, there was a 10% late fee. So instead of it being $114. $114 plus $11.40. So $125.40 was like, I would rather pay the $3 fee than pay the $11.40 late fee plus have the potential for it to hit my credit. And we're like, that's it. That's the reason that this exists, is to help solve some of those, like, just the day and little day in day out little things. We actually talked about it yesterday in our sales meeting. Um, one of our guys said I had somebody, a prospect that asked me, I know that a lot of my people already have found themselves caught up in these title or payday loans. How does your problem not exacerbate the issue? And I said first off, any prospect who used the word exacerbate is really impressive. We want them to be our customer. Um, we want them on the reference because I like that word. Um, but I was like, here's the deal. We don't exacerbate the issue. We actually give them a more clear path out. So if I've got a $500 payday loan that I'm paying 17.5% every two weeks on every day that goes by, I'm getting hit with another 1-1.2% right. Today's Tuesday. I could wait until next Friday for payday and I'm gonna have to wait 10 more days. 10 days times 1.2%, I'm gonna tack on 12% more so I can pay $100, but in that time that $100 actually cost me $112. So here's the deal, I can go in today and I go there's $100. I can go in and pull out $100 and $3 from Immediate Pay that I've earned at the end of my shift today. I get $100 and I paid down that $100, and I saved 10 days worth of interest. Or better yet, you know, if you extrapolate that out over a whole year, I can shave off a ton of interest. And so my suggestion to them when you're talking to a prospect, who’s asked that question is, the answer is we actually help solve that issue right now. The bigger picture is we are a holistic financial wellness solution. We've got a lot of other things in there that we can offer. So we actually, through a third party, we actually have gone out, scoured the internet, scoured the southeast for companies that we can partner with, and we actually partnered with a company that does short term installment loans, so they can do debt consolidation. So if this person owes $3000 bucks to these different sources, we through the Immediate Pay app, they can actually go in and we connect them with this third party company that we can drop all this into one loan that costs 18% APR, as opposed to paying 300% for your title loan and 400% for your payday loan. So that's a pretty cool option, right? Like that's something we can do to help. But literally, in the meantime it's just about helping people out with these little blips. I always talk about the traditional peaks and valleys of a pay cycle right? Like on friday, when I get paid, I'm gonna go pay my mortgage or pay my rent, I'm gonna pay some of my bills and make sure that my lights and my waters on, I'm gonna pay for Netflix, so we'll have something to do this weekend. It's this low cost, right? Um, I'll probably put some groceries in the fridge and in the pantry. And then if I've got a little extra budget me and my wife and I go out for dinner. That's kind of what happens. And here's what happened with my cash flow is that cash flow immediately goes down to this and now I've got this much to get me this next two weeks, this next 13 or 14 days. And so it just starts to, it starts to dwindle and what I always say is like when you're getting down towards the bottom, like when you, when you talk about that, you know I was working in the restaurant space and you know it may have been Tuesday and payday is Friday but you're like man, I just need a little bit of extra money, I'm gonna see if I can pull a double tonight because maybe they'll let me cash out so I can get some money. So I've got a little bit of extra, This is just this is the same thing like at the end of your shift you just go well I've earned today I learned $150 bucks, I have 50% accesses, I got $75 I can go in and pull out. Here's the cool thing. What we do is we've actually built this in a way that our pricing model and our business model and gives people the incentive of, if you make three transactions in a single pay period, we give you a 4th one for free. Because we believe that if you need money that badly that you're going to have to make 4th transaction: one, for us as a business because we're actually funding their account. The cost of capital in the back end is smaller for us because we're getting reimbursed more quickly because it's closer to pay day, right? So we can afford to give them a little break. But also it's kind of like let's just be good people. Yeah, what happens is most of them, that free one is like $30. It's just that tiny little bit to get them across the finish line. So the users as part of our community who do make that fourth transaction, that free one, it's usually like a small amount just to get me through to the next payday.
Brandon: So I know you have a, you have a big background in sales. Yeah. So, um, and you guys just, uh, you know, completed a round of fundraising, what's, what's the difference when you're going and pitching this to employers like to get clients versus when you're going and pitching to investors, right? It’s the same idea, but you're going to approach it from a different angle. Yeah,
Matt: Yeah. It's um, it is a very different sales process, right? Like, um, like with a potential potential customer, it's very, we're very tactical, right? And it's very much so, for us as an organization, we… and kind of my background, the way I've coached a lot of our team and we now have a VP of growth who's going in and kind of has a similar mindset, is we do what we call solution selling, because it's identifying pain points and then providing a solution, right? And so the questions, a lot of cases, the discovery, the questions are, are you guys having issues with people coming in and requesting pay advances? You know, there may be a question around like uh, how is your team, your employees, how are they, how is their financial well being? And do you believe you can offer more to them? But it really is about trying to identify specific pains and then solving those with, well, here's a solution that's going to help you. Right?. Like going back to the very first story was, help me solve my turnover. Well, we have a great solution. We've got a lot of data that shows that we can reduce turnover by a couple of percentage points a year. It doesn't sound like a lot, but let’s say it's a 5000 employee company and we can reduce their turnover by 1%. We're talking about 50 people less a year that they've got a train and get in there. There are studies that show for somebody making less than $40, I'm sorry, making less than $30 an hour, the average cost is between $3,000 and $5,000 to replace that person from the time of downturn and productivity, the recruiting training to get him out of here. So there's this downturn of about $5,000 with the productivity for business. If we can take a 5000 employee company reduced turnover by one a year, for the ease of math, let's just say that that number is 4000, 50 times 4000 we can save a company to their bottom line, $200,000 a year. That's a pretty compelling story when we sit there and talk to a potential customer, right? Because they're thinking about it from a business perspective. It's a little harder to tangibly say. But hey, look, we're also going to improve the financial well being of your people. We’re going to remove some of this financial stress and baggage that they're lugging around so they will perform better and create better outcomes for your business. That's a little harder to put your finger on.
Brandon: It’s the gravy.
Matt: Yeah, right? Like that should be something we're like, well, you care about your team, let's do something that's good for them, right? When you're selling to them it's a different strategy versus, when we're talking to investors and we're fundraising. It really is about painting the vision of where we're going. And so for us as a business, um, and I'm not giving away trade secrets here, because it's right there on our website, our mission as an organization is to positively impact the financial well being of a million americans over the next three years. So by the end of 2024, we expect to have a million people actively using our platform on a bi weekly or a per pay period basis. If we do that, we feel like stamp of approval. We've achieved our mission. Now, the rest of my team doesn't know this, but then the mission is going, uh, but, but because we're always going to continue to want to grow, right? So when I sit down and talk to an investor, it's really about... I'm different than a lot of people, a lot of people because I also do some angel investing and I have a lot of people to come and pitch me and they go, oh my gosh, we can make you this much money or we're gonna go get 5% of the market and we're gonna become a billion dollar company. I go, great. Like, how are you going to get there? Right? And I really believe that if you can build a mission and you have a north star for a business and you get buying, your all rolling in the right direction, you're gonna get there a lot faster than if I came in here and go, hey, we're gonna build a billion dollar business. My team will go, great. That sounds like fun. Like let's go do it. But they're not all like, this guy may be wanting to build a billion dollar business because he thinks, well I got stock options and I'm going to make a bunch of money. This guy over here maybe building it because he goes, I just like my paycheck and I just like, and I like to get out of the house, I was kind of tired of quarantine. These guys, you know, these guys are taking good safety protocols and letting me come in so I'm gonna go work there because of that. There's a lot of different reasons. But when I can get on a team call on a monthly basis and I can sit down in front of our entire team. We have 32 people on our team today, and I can sit down and I can say our north star is to positively impact the financial well being of a million Americans over the next three years. Is what you're doing today, helping this company move closer to that or move further away from it? I really think that that's what happens is to build a team that's all excited and wants to stay focused on a common mission, a common goal. So when I sit down and talk to an investor, I paint that same picture, right? Look, this is what we're gonna do. And a lot of them. And I had one, I had one investor meeting that I called off early because I'm talking about the mission I guess. Yeah, well what does that look like revenue wise? And I go, well, I'll get to that. Yeah, but like I hear what you're saying with your three bucks. But I think, you know, look, if these payday loan places are called charging $90 for $250 you could probably get away like $10 to $15. I go, probably, but I'm a good human being And I just don't think this is gonna work. And I stopped the meeting. I don't want money like that. I don't want investors like that, right? Like we want people that are gonna buy into our mission. And so that's my, that's my number one. And I'll tell you the people that are on our board and some of our lead investors when we sit down and talk about it and we talk about our mission they buy in, they lean in. They want to be a part of that.
Luis: Of course, it's an emotional thing that you're investing in them, right? I mean, there's a connection there. I mean, that's, that's really bringing it out of them
Matt: And look, we're a for profit business. We want to be successful and we want to have… we want to build a profitable business, and at some point there will likely be an exit, but if we do all the right things along the way, and I think that the value that we're creating is exponential. And then I think about like that, and this is me personally, this will never show up in anyone's bank account, this will never show up on, this, will never show up in a magazine or on an article online. Um, there's no tangible way to see this, but I believe it is, I think that we can create generational change and the way that people approach and manage their finances. Here's what I mean, I was raised in a middle class family where my stepfather was a big Dave Ramsey fan. We drove like 10 year old Toyota Camrys my entire life and they were always paid for cash and we would drive them into the wheels, fall off. I actually, I know exactly where my first car is because the people we sold it to, I would drive by their house. I haven't been to my hometown and probably, like, a year. I could go up there and I guarantee you I could drive by the house and these people are probably still driving it and it probably has, like, 500,000 miles out at this point, the Camry, I had a ‘92 Toyota Camry and it was maroon and it had white walls on it. It was, it was really great. It was a great car and I took good care of it and I took good care of it because I had been raised in a way to say we're about to write a check for whatever the number was, $8000. We're gonna buy you an $8000 car and we want you to take care of it and you're going to drive this thing until the wheels fall off. And what I did is I drove it until I got far enough in college. I end up getting a scholarship and my parents rewarded me for a scholarship. Hey, you're saving us money on tuition, and so we're going to actually sell that car and we're gonna roll it into a newer Toyota Camry. Right? I've rocked some Toyota cameras man.
Luis: Same here, brother. They're great cars, man. They’re workhorses.
Matt: Yeah. And so here's the deal. I was raised that way. I was raised to not spend money. I didn't have, I was raised to not go put a note on a car. The only, the only debt that my family had was a mortgage. And I found out after my stepdad that passed away that he did a 15 year mortgage and he paid it off, he paid over and above, he paid off a 15 year mortgage and like 12.5 years. So when my step dad passed away, there was no debt. That, to me, was like wow man, that's incredible. That's the way I was raised, I saw that and that's what I looked up to. Most Americans don't get that right. Like when I drive, I take the long way to our office on friday mornings, I do this to remind me of why I do what I do. I take the long way and I drive down this road where there are about five or six payday loan places and I drop my kids off, I do carpool, drop my kids off and, and then I drive down this road and I see people standing outside because it doesn't open until 8, and I see people standing outside waiting to cash checks or to get access to some money because they need it for some reason. Yeah. And I want to just roll down the windows and yell like there's a better way. I don't, but I want to. Um, so here's the deal. I picture in like my mind's eye, somewhere in the future, I picture somebody who saw their parents on friday mornings, go stand in line, start at 7:30 stand in line so they can be the first one in there at eight o'clock so they can get $500 in a payday loan. And then I picture six months from now. We partner with their company and their company rolls out this new voluntary financial wellness benefit called Immediate Pay and they go, wait a second. I can access my own money instead of having to pay these predators. I want to do that. And their children notice the change. And when I was, you know, they get older, they say when I was in third grade, used to go, like, every friday you would go to the payday loan place and then you stopped. What happened? And their parents go, wow, I got this benefit, it's called earned wage access and I started being able to use my own money that I earned, but was caught up in this pay cycle and then I didn't have to use those anymore. And you, I never want to see you ever go to one of those payday loan places, one of those title title loan places. I picture that and again, I don't think there's any tangibility to it. I don't think I'll ever be able to quantify that that has happened. But I believe that when we talk about improving their financial well being of a million americans, that's not just the person that's going in there and making a transaction. That can create this generational change to where people no longer want to go to the title or payday loan place, or they see that their parents used to write bad checks and the sheriff used to come and knock on the door every now and again to ask him about the checks that they wrote at the grocery store. And hey, you've got to make sure that you're, and this is happening way too much. And they noticed that that doesn't happen any longer. Right. Like I think that those are things that we can start to make some changes to where when we fast forward 10 or 20 years, that some of those things have been eradicated. So that's a big part of what I want to do.
Luis: That would be incredible because you know, I think one of the biggest things in this country that we're missing is financial education, right? Like kids do not know anything about finances and I know I've learned… in spanish, you say a piñazo. So you learned through the punches, right? You know, you make real stupid mistakes with money and you know, and you take out loans or you try to do these things and really, you know, they're not teaching children in this country to be responsible with money. So I can see exactly what you're saying, how, you know, if you're enabling the parents to really be more responsible with what they're doing because they're not caught up in this perpetual cycle of poverty and fees and stuff like that, it's going to change their perspective. I really believe in what you guys are doing, like, ever since we've spoken to you before, I found I immediately connected with it. So let me ask you, is there is there anyone, like, is there, can you give us another like, particular story of maybe like, like, I don't know, what would you call it, a success story or maybe just some sort of something that you could give us of an experience that somebody's had with immediate, you know, that definitely
Brandon: Social impact.
Luis: Yeah, something that that really, really like, opened up your eyes.
Matt: Yeah, there's a lot of them. Um, and we have some of those high five moments around the office where something will come in like a support ticket that isn’t a support ticket. It's more like they're just heaping praise on us and those are some of the most gratifying moments when something comes in and we'll share them on slack to some of the team like unidentified of course, but well screenshot what they sent in and we'll send it out to some people. The one that I think is the most impactful that I've heard. There were a lot of circumstances along the way that led to this particular situation. But the long and short of it is we got a support ticket one night and and this lady said uh hey, it's a long story. I missed a court appearance for a parking ticket because I'm a single mom. I got two kids. And I just got off the phone, it's whatever like 5:30 afternoon, I just got off the phone with the sheriff's department and there's a bench warrant that's out for my arrest. And she told me that they're going to come pick me up tomorrow unless I can pay the ticket and a fine. So they'll cancel the bench warrant or not, there's a fine for not showing up in court And it was like $200. Which is a whole separate issue that we've got people getting arrested. Single moms getting arrested for.
Brandon: Yeah, they're like, there's no debtor's prison thing? Isn’t that supposed to be a thing?
Matt: There should be something in between there, right? And so, but be that as it may, she called in and she said, here's the deal. I have access to Immediate Pay. I've used it before and I go in there and look and I see that I've got like $250 available. I'm good. We're like great we can transfer the money. She's like I only have a bank account listed and every time I'm about to send it it says I'm going to get it by tomorrow at six PM. That could be too late because here's what happens is if I get arrested tomorrow, I'm a single mom. My kids are going to child services. I need this money now. And so our customer support person walked them through the process of adding, and it's fairly straightforward, but just to make sure he walked them through the process of adding a bank issued debit card into her immediate pay wallet while they were on the phone together, she transfers $200. And then she sat there, he said, because I could hear clicking it, clicking refresh and within minutes her screen updates with, whatever the number was, $205 in her account that's available on her debit card. And he said she started boo hooing.
Luis: Oh I bet
Matt: She said I could jump through this. I don't know if she's on a landline, I don't know if you can jump through this cell phone and give you a hug. And so she ended up calling the place in the sheriff's department and paying the fine and paying the ticket. And it kept her family together. We again go back to the very beginning, we started this to help reduce turnover. Now we're keeping families together. Yeah, those are the kind of things that you don't expect. You don't think about, and it's cool the way that a business and a life can take a shape of its own right. Like you think of when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook and you know it's like hot or not that turned into Facebook and it was so… and when I see people's faces when were bundled up in boston and we're walking across the bridge and I see a face like oh you know that's uh Brandon, you know like that that's why I started facebook and then it just kind of evolves and now you've got people that are you know on Facebook marketplace, you can buy and sell stuff. I gotta, there's a check sitting on my fridge at home of someone who bought some stuff off of our from my wife and they left a check on the front, on the front doorstep and so like that's what it has evolved into Facebook for us, it's cool that we see what it's already evolved into and what I think it can evolve into. And I as a CEO get a really cool seat in this company, where I get to kind of sit here and look down uh different departments and see things that are working and not working and in the way that we're building like a culture and a team and that we're getting people, like I mentioned earlier, like all rolling in the right direction, but then I get to take a step back and I get to look up and I get to think and ponder about where we're going and the vision for how we can impact even more and do even more. And one of the big things that I'm, I challenge myself with and I challenge our team with right now is that right now we have about 1 in 5 to 1 in 4, 20-25% of employees will use our solution each pay period. So we talked earlier like if you two were running HR for 1000 employee company, we're probably gonna see 200 to 250 that are using Immediate Pay each pay period, there's gonna be 30 to 40% enrollment, but not everybody's gonna use it every single time. So I think about that and I go, that's awesome. Right? That's great that we're impacting those lives. I actually, I tell the team every month when I get a list that goes, hey, this month there were 25,000 transactions and I go, awesome, that's 25,000 times somebody didn't turn to a title or payday loan or write a bad check or run up credit card debt. The other thing I think of and I see that and I go, okay, that means 20% usage. There's 80% of people out there as part of these organizations and we can still impact in some way, and how can we improve their lives and what are their financial needs like? Hey awesome. You're in a spot where you don't have any lumpiness. The lumpiness of the way you're paid doesn't create cash flow issues for you because you've been able to save, save some money for me, tire issue, car crash, all those things. I had enough money, $800 to cover these in my emergency fund to cover those expenses. Right? But what are ways that I could find value in this? Would there be a way that I could go in and automate savings out of my paycheck that comes out today, Tuesday I can pull $100 out today and automate it into a savings account into my kids 529 where I don't have to wait until next friday and I get 10 more days of time in the market
Luis: Right
Brandon: Automatically buy Bitcoin.
Matt: I can automatically, I'm not joking with you. There's a string on one of our slack channels about cryptocurrency. Some of the other, some of the places we're looking. There's certain places in certain countries where people are taking their paychecks in cryptocurrency because they feel like it's safer than their company than their country's currency. Well hey…
Luis: Argentina.
Matt: So what if we could help enable that? Right? Or what if we could help bring it to your point? What if we could help somebody who's here who has family in Argentina or has family in Mexico or wherever it may be that may want to take some of their money here. I need to earned a wage access for $100, but then I want to automatically transfer it into cryptocurrency and transfer it back to my family so they can make ends meet because I'm helping support them. There's just so much cool stuff that we can do when you really start getting and working in alignment with somebody with, again, with that North Star, right? If we're gonna help improve the financial well being of a million people, what are different ways we can do that.
Brandon: So I guess if there's people out there who are working for an employer that doesn't have Immediate, right? Because you guys go through employers, and I don't think there's a way for people to sign up outside of their employers. Or is there?
Matt: So you're right? Yeah.
Brandon: So if somebody is working for somebody, their employer doesn't have Immediate what's something they can do to try to either encourage their employer or to push that into the direction for their company so that they can access this.
Matt: So so we actually have on our website or our website is joinimmediate.com/employee, there's actually an email template that we created for people like that. So either one: you can plug in anonymously, it's like, you know, here's the here's our head of HR and their email address, we won't tell them where it came from, we’ll just say, one of your employees reached out and said this was a service that they thought they would find value in, right? You do it that way, or there's an email on there that you can just copy and paste in your own email and send a note. If you feel comfortable to send a note to your head of HR, your head of finance, and go and essentially says, you know, Immediate Pay is a voluntary financial wellness solution that is going to help alleviate some of the financial stress in our lives. And we'd like to offer by the way, it doesn't cost you anything. Right? So there's a nice short little email that they can use in their email. Outside of that, if they want to take it a step further and learn a little bit more, they can just submit on the contact us form on that same page and it comes in and somebody from our sales team will pick up the phone and call them, answer any questions they have, arm them with the right things that they need to go in and sit down and talk to somebody at their company about offering immediate
Luis: Cool.
Brandon: joinimmediate.com/employee. Okay cool. So we like to sort of wrap up with a fun question, I don't know if you've seen any other episodes but so it's nothing too bad.
Luis: Don't worry.
Brandon: We’ve done worse.
Brandon: So yeah so just what's what's one food that you just never understood why everyone else likes?
Matt: Oh. Well that's tough for me because I eat pretty much everything. There's… I wouldn't say there's a lot that I don't understand, I'll say one that I've never I've tried multiple times, I've never I've never been able to hit it off with um what do they call it? Unagi, I think it's a sea urchin you guys ever had sea urchin?
Luis: No.
Brandon: I’m not a big suchi person.
Matt: There's a little sushi joint right near our house and I work for a financial wellness company. So I eat a lot of happy hours, like we're like in our thirties and I'm like, I feel like we're in our sixties or seventies because we're eating dinner at like five o'clock some nights, you know.
Luis: The early bird special.
Matt: This place has like, it's awesome. They're happy hour menu, they've got like $3 sushi rolls and I think it's like $2 sashimi, and then they got like $2 beers and like $4 glasses of wines. My wife gets a glass of wine, I get a beer and then we just like go to work, and we'll get out of there if it's just the two of us, our kids kind of throw the whole thing off, because they’re like, I want hibachi, you know, that's not on the happy hour, it's not on the happy hour, and but if it's just the two of us, like if we can sneak off, we'll get out of there with like full bellies, full hearts, loving some sushi for like $35, and I'm like, this is awesome. So that being said, I try like I'll try pretty much every kind of sushi and my wife doesn't like eel, I like eel, so I'll get my own eel roll sometime and do that, but I've got some friends that that are asian and they're like you got to do the Unagi, and I'm like okay, I'll try whatever, and I get the sea urchin, and it literally, it to me it made me feel like I got knocked under a oncoming wave in the ocean and it just all went in my nose, like it literally was salty and I just, and I'll give myself credit. I tried it twice and not the same night. Um, but I tried it again and I was like, maybe I just got like a bad unagi, I'll try it again, not good. So why would be my one. But I don't think that that's, I think probably a lot of people probably have the same reaction you guys are like, why would you eat sea urchin? The other one, then, and this is part of my upbringing, my mom used to make a pot roast every Wednesday night. And, like, every Wednesday night, like 52 times a year, sometimes, like on holiday should be like, you know what we need? Pot roast. So I got burned out on pot roast and so I can tell you, I can count on probably three fingers how many times I've eaten a pot roast since I moved out of that house when I was 18.
Luis: That’s fine. That's like me and Gefilte fish, like my parents, like that's the most disgusting food I've ever come into contact with ever in my life, I don't get it, and then they put this jelly on top of it, and then my, my parents and my grandparents keep forcing me to try to eat this thing and I'm like, I don't, you know, this is not…
Brandon: I always liked the Gefilte fish. I got burned out on Mcdonald's.
Luis: No, I think, like jewish food is based on suffering because that's what it is.
Brandon: You should eat more Mcdonald's.
Matt: Brandon, What's what's your, what's your fish in your fish? What's your, is it Mcdonald's, is that the one that you're?
Brandon: Oh, that I don't like? I mean my, my big things that people always get to me about are eggplant and mushrooms. I'm not a big fan of eggplant or mushrooms. You know, mushrooms, I guess I just had too many of those in my twenties and I just can't stomach them anymore.
Luis: It’s like me and Jager.
Matt: If we're going down that path, I'm a little bit like that with Fireball.
Luis: Oh, I can't stand that stuff, man.
Matt: No, man. No, the results have not been good. Um, so I, I don't do Fireball, but a lot of people who like that, I'm not a fan.
Luis: No it's not, it's like, it's like cinnamon candy whiskey garbage.
Brandon: I mean, I'll drink some. I'm not, I'm not above it.
Luis: L isten after, after three shots. It's just, you know, ugh, I mean, obviously your goal oriented when you're drinking that, right? There's one goal for drinking that.
Matt: a good, good, good weapon uh for me,
Brandon: All right, Matt, well, I guess we'll call it there. So, I mean, thanks so much for joining us today, and...
Luis: This is great.
Brandon: joinimmediate.com. And yeah, anything else that you wanna you wanna leave us with?
Matt: No, man, I just appreciate you guys taking some time to learn more about us and share our story and really enjoyed it.
Brandon: Man, it's a pleasure. Alright, everyone, thank you for tuning into the scenario podcast. That's it for the episode today. Find Matt and Immediate at joinimmediate.com and find all the rest of our episodes at sendlio.com.