Eugene Johnson - CEO at Revi

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom Podcast. We have Eugene Johnson with us today. He's the CEO at Revy, has been CEO at that company 7 years, previously at Geniuses Leadership and Development Company, and CEO at Xero, a couple of companies. It's not his first rodeo, LegalShield as well. Eugene, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself.

Yeah, I, you know, I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. You know, I started my first company when I was 18. Um, I always kind of joke around and say that the first half of my life was pretty unlucky. Uh, in the later half of my life, I got a lot luckier. I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood in New York City and got in a lot of trouble as a kid. A friend of mine dragged me to a leadership conference in Oklahoma City. Uh, I met a couple of people there who ended up becoming mentors, a millionaire, billionaire, and I was 18 years old. And, uh, that, that interaction changed my entire life. You know, one of those mentors said, you know, Eugene, if you can change the way you think, you can change your life. And that was the beginning of my path. And, uh, he basically advised me, hey, you should start a business. Um, but he said, you don't, you don't know anything about business, um, but you do know how to talk to people, so you should start a reseller company. So essentially, that was my first business. I started a reseller business. We sold everything from legal services to identity theft sections to productivity apps. You know, we did that for almost 10 years. Um, I ended up building a team of sales reps and marketers across the country, over 800 sales reps and marketers across the country. Um, sold that book of business to a friend, then traveled for a minute. I went to like Africa and Dubai and kind of hung out, came back and decided, hey, you got a little bit of money, you should, you should be an investor. So invested in mostly like option trading and some businesses and things of that nature. And then a friend of mine said, hey, heard of this thing called blockchain? I was like, no, what is that? And this was in 2013. Uh, so I got heavy into, uh, crypto. Uh, my average Bitcoin price was about $200 a coin. So, you know, I, again, I got a bit lucky. Um, and, you know, that was, you know, fairly successful. I ended up doing a brand business after that, did some public speaking and training, um, you know, across, you know, Fortune 1000 businesses on leadership development, sales enablement. I ended up writing a book that became an Amazon bestseller. and decided I was going to get into tech because of, uh, because of, uh, you know, Bitcoin. It got me interested in tech. So I'm going to start a company. And another, another friend of mine heard I was going to start a company and said, hey, you know, you should join our company. It's a company called Meraki. Uh, that company was about 50, 60 employees at the time. I ran their West Coast division of sales enablement. I basically helped them build their reseller system. You know, that company exploded. We went from 50 employees by the time I left, maybe about 5 years in, you know, we were at about 5,000 employees and sold the company to Cisco for about $1.2 billion. And that's where I decided I was going to shift into this company called Revy, which is what we do now. And essentially it was this idea that we wanted to digitize the physical space, and we thought that the physical space needed to have identity in order to be digitized. And so we thought the best place to do that identity was at the point of sale. Tried to partner with point of sale companies, but they were mostly focused on backend operations. We wanted to give a better consumer experience, so we ended up having to build it ourselves. We ended up building that to, you know, we've got over 10,000 businesses that have our digital products. We've got over, you know, 1,000 locations that have, you know, our physical, uh, you know, products inside of their store. Um, we've got over 5 million consumers on our platform and essentially been, you know, really focused on like providing adding this enhanced experience. So think about our system like a more intelligent version of a Square Clover or Toast. You put the system in your store, we leverage that, you know, for consumer experience, take every transaction, turn that transaction into data, turn that consumer into a profile, and leverage that data in that profile to be able to drive more revenue back into that business. And we've been doing that for, you know, 6 and a half, 7 years. And now we're kind of, you know, transitioning, you know, into— well, I wouldn't call it transitioning, but, you know, adding in, you know, we mostly engage with consumers for the benefit of the business. Now we're engaging with consumers for the benefit of the consumer. And so we're adding a new product that we're launching, you know, in a few weeks, and that essentially will allow for us to provide your predictions to a consumer before they even think about it. So instead of having to pick up your phone and find DoorDash and figure out what you want to order. And, you know, we're going to predict those things before you actually, you know, even want them. And then essentially, if you walk into a store, you know, instead of standing online, you know, 12 people in a line, the prediction will come in knowing that you walked into that store and allow for you to just hit a, you know, one-button buy and continue to move on. So yeah, we're pretty excited about the future.

Interesting. Let's start with that younger you, right? And that pivotal moment in which you met, like, I guess, a mentor. Um, were you, uh, in receiving mode, or in— were you ready for a change in your life back then? Like, um, because I had something similar on my end. I was just tired of not getting anywhere in life, right? Um, do you think like most young kids that are into trouble can be, uh, influenced by a potential mentor? Like, tell us a bit more about that.

Yeah, I don't— I don't know. I, I wasn't necessarily like looking for a mentor. I wasn't in the mentality that said, hey, you know, I can't wait to change my life. It was just being in this event. One of those mentors looked a lot like me, been through what I had been through, and he had become successful. And a part of me just said— I just saw myself in him, and I never really saw myself in anybody successful before. And so this was like— it was almost the environment meeting the message, meeting the person. And I didn't even know I was the person at the right time, but it just happened to be. that, that message impacted me so much that I felt like, man, like, you know, I could do this. And I think that that's a lot of times, most times, especially, you know, coming from the background that I come from, you don't believe that, like, success is available to you until you get a chance to see it. And I think that that allowed for me to kind of like shift the way I started thinking about things.

What was your first glimpse at entrepreneurship, you know, like where you're just not employable back then. I saw LegalShield as well, like LegalShield sort of, um, MLM, but on the clean— yeah, on the cleaner side, I would say, versus other organizations, right? And they taught you probably the fundamentals of sales, which is super important in life. Uh, what was that phase of your life?

Yeah, so, you know, that was the— that, that was the reseller business. It was mostly direct sales is what the focus was. You know, not like, you know, not— it wasn't— everybody wasn't about trying to like build teams and things of that nature. But what I did learn in that process, and I think what it really kind of guided me to, is structure. You know, you don't have a structured learning path. And one of the things mentors used to say all the time, you know, self-education will make you a fortune. Your formal education will give you— earn you a living, but a self-education will make you a fortune. And it gave me structure to do self-education, personal development, reading books that were not just about like entertainment, but were about like growth and, you know, going to conferences, you know, listening to audios, like these types of things got you to shift your philosophy and you started realizing that your philosophy determines a lot about how you take actions in your life. And so that was a big part of, you know, that, that time period was really about molding and adjusting how I looked at the world.

And why did you start traveling the world, right? Like, were you just searching for a new path? How did that help you discover your next big thing?

Yeah, so I— it was mostly because like I was going on— I was going on a trip, uh, you know, we were doing— we went to Africa, and in that trip we were, uh, helping young girls who had been, uh, sold into prostitution. And, you know, I was just looking for— I didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I knew that, like, I had a little bit of money, I had a little bit of time, and it felt like an opportunity for me to, like, take a moment and really, like, get connected to, like, like, almost like, like, God, like, where do I go next? And that was, you know, a pivotal moment for me. It was an opportunity for me to take a step back and not just be self-serving. I think a lot of my years have been all about, like, what could I get for me? And around that time in my life was more about like, what could I give? And that giving allowed for me to kind of like, you know, clear my mind and allow for like new ideas and new thought processes to come in.

And what did that bring you, um, in terms of perspective, like being around these girls, right? Like must have been such a struggle, their, their lives, right? And just surviving and just, uh, outsourcing their dignity, sort of, right? And having like very low agency on themselves and on their bodies. And like, uh, how did that make you feel? How could you relate to that? And how could they get out, like, out of this life of theirs? Like, what realizations did you have back then?

I think it was 2 major things that really hit me during that time. The first one is— was resilience. You know, you know, these girls did not want to be in this situation. They were stolen, you know, from their families, from their, you know, lives. And the resilience that they had to fight to get out, and like, that was like just something— it reminded me a lot of entrepreneurship, to be honest. Like, you know, the level of resilience necessary to actually make success happen. Sometimes it is a It doesn't even seem real. That was the first thing. I think the second thing was more wrapped around this idea and this concept that like how privileged you are, you know, just being born in the right place at the right time. Like, you know, for those who are born in America, it's just like, you know, you're almost like you hit the lotto, right? To be born in a place that allows for this level of freedom, this level of access, this level of ability, you know, to pour your life into it. you know, what most people will call the American dream. And I felt like those 2 things became like really strong perspectives for me. Like, man, you know, you've got to have resilience, but you also got to understand, like, you hit, you hit the lotto. Your opportunities are endless. And if you like really fight towards what you want, like the door could be open to you. So that was a lot about what, you know, what I learned in that moment.

And then you stumble upon crypto. Like, I was made aware of crypto during these years as well. I was just a broke student back then. So I I didn't have nothing to invest in it, but I knew, uh, I mean, not crypto, but Bitcoin precisely, right? Like, uh, Bitcoin, I knew it was going to go up. I had a friend in Hong Kong that organized meetups and would just rave about it all the time. Um, what prompted you to invest in this and not like in real estate or startups, for example?

Yeah, well, one, I wasn't really in tech, so startups wasn't an option. I wish I was because it probably would have been. But the reality was for me, I was a— I'm a big believer that I believed in the initial mission, right? The initial mission of Bitcoin was really to democratize money. And this idea of like pulling money out of the hands of the state and putting it back in the hands of the people, I was already upset about like how heavy we get taxed, how much our money is being, you know, inflated on a consistent basis. And so that story of like decentralization and taking control back. Like, I really kind of bought into that mission more than anything else. Um, and one of the lessons I think I learned with this, with Bitcoin in particular, is I had a belief that was very strong. And don't get me wrong, I made a lot of money. I made a lot of money, but I could have made enough money to never, you know, be on an island somewhere. Um, And I didn't. I think there are things that I didn't go fully in, even though my conviction was the same as what you just said. I was convicted that it would be what it needed to be, but I was too tempered in my investment and it didn't match my conviction. And this is the reason why, like, I'm so convicted when it comes to AI, because I believe that AI is like 1,000 times bigger than what Bitcoin's opportunity was at that moment. And so my thought process is, you know, you know, don't make that mistake again. You know, go all in. And, um, you know, I, I didn't do that at that moment.

And then you went working as a sales rep for, I guess, a friend. They had the gigantic exit. Did that inspire you to launch your own stuff and had the gigantic exit on your own as well?

Yeah. So when I, when I went to work at Meraki, it was more like I told the, I told the guys the day I was you know, going in, I was like, hey guys, I'm not going to be here long. Like, I'm, I'm only here because I want to start a tech company. I know a lot about business. I have zero idea about tech. And this was my learning opportunity. Now, I was only supposed to be there for a year. It was that we were doing so well that it was hard for me to pull myself away because I became like a, you know, it became a foundation of like what I was doing at that moment. But You know, essentially that my, my, my job there was really kind of to— for me personally, was for me to understand the underpinnings of what it took to build a tech company. Uh, it just took me a little bit of time to kind of pull myself out of it because like, yo, as being an entrepreneur, this was my first corporate America job like in my life. I never had a corporate America job. I've been an entrepreneur since, uh, since I can remember. Like the last job I had was like Chuck E. Cheese. So, you know, and I was 16 or something like that. So for me, like, this was like a— you don't realize the golden handcuffs that gets placed on you when they pay you a ton of money to just stay and do something that you could do in your sleep. And entrepreneurship is like just not like that. Like, there's a lot of risk. You taking a lot of things on your own shoulders. And so I ended up staying probably way longer than I probably needed to. Um, you know, cause I had the idea of Revvy maybe about year 2, maybe year 3. Um, and essentially I stayed another 2 years out of loyalty and out of desire to kind of see that, that, that, that business become successful. But, um, but yeah, I think for me it was more of a learning path.

And Revvy, do you think that's a multi-billion dollar home rental?

It better be. So, uh, you know, we put it, we put a good amount of time in. Now here's the one thing I will say is that With business, there's so many ups and downs of success in business. And I think that if you've been an entrepreneur for the last maybe 7 or 10 years, like you have had the hardest 7 to 10 years than any entrepreneur in the last probably 50 to 100. Like you dealt with a once in a lifetime pandemic, a, a, you know, collapsing, you know, banking, you know, it's like so many— you've done a new, entirely new way of doing business with AI. And like, these things are hard to kind of like get over. You can cry about spilled milk, but the reality is like, it is what it is. And so as an entrepreneur today, you know, we spent so much time building an infrastructure for a business that in my opinion, and this is how I look at it for the startup world, if you exist in the middle, in 2 to 3 years, you won't exist at all. And so you have to make a choice. You're either going to become a lifestyle business or you're going to become a big business, but there's no real in-between. And a lot of the reason is very simple. It's just Like the difference between the average, you know, middle, middle-sized business— by middle, I'm talking about $25 million to $100 million, right? Like if you're making that much revenue, the likelihood is that there's only a slight difference between you and whoever your competitors are, you know. And if there's only a slight difference, then the likelihood is the bigger companies will be easy to like replicate. That, that, that structure because, you know, there's no moats in product anymore. And so essentially, like, you know, my vision now is really like, okay, how do I take what's happening with AI? How do I not just apply it to my business, but how do I reshift the way the business operates in general now that this tool is available to you? Like, if you have electricity, you know, as a foundational, you know, product, You don't say, okay, how do I add electricity to my business? You now say like, how do I change the way I think about my business altogether now that electricity is available? And I think that that's where a lot of businesses are kind of making a bit of a mistake. They're trying to like introduce electricity or introduce AI into their existing flow, but they need to step above it and outside of it and ask themselves like, how does AI existing today shift the way our entire business operates? And we've been able to ask those tough questions, which is the reason why we've made such a heavy pivot. And I don't want to call it a pivot because the same vision, same idea, but a different approach to how we want to get to it.

Interesting. Um, how do you guys compare to Owner.com?

Owner.com is a, um, I would say that they, they're competitors. I would say that they, they sit very similar to what a Square or Clover or Toast is. Um, you know, I, you know, we internally built their entire original product. We built their entire product in like 72 days. Uh, so it just, you know, it shows that like product moats don't exist anymore. I think that their vision is, is very different than ours though. Like we're, we're trying to become a, you know, a physical world, uh, a new physical world infrastructure on the way, the way consumers experience the physical world and digitizing that experience. In our opinion, if our business is successful, there's no need to even go to a— why do you need to go to a person with a, at a cash And tell them what you want. Like, why do you even need to pull out your credit card? I get in an Uber every day and I don't pull out my credit card. So like, all of these things make no sense in today's world with the technology that's available. Our goal is to actually change that. And like, so that's a slight, you know, I think their business is more leaned closer to like Toast and Square, where ours is, we're trying to do something, you know, you know, completely different.

Interesting. So how do you get in front of these, uh, multi, uh, restaurant chain owners? Right? Like, what's your main outreach method?

So we have walked away from a lot about, you know, obviously as a sales rep, I've been a sales rep, you know, or a seller for many, many years. Yeah, I've sold over $1 billion personally, you know, me on the phones talking to people. Um, you know, I've sold billions of dollars indirectly through trainings and development. And so I believe heavily in sales. I think that today's world, sales is really— the efficiency of sales is decreasing dramatically. And the reason is because there's so many AI bots that can, you know, call, send emails, all of these things that your traditional sales rep would do. And I'm not saying that those things are better than the traditional sales rep, but what I am saying is those things make it so loud and noisy that the good sales reps have a hard time getting through because people are just tired of getting those calls. So essentially our thought process is like, if you, you know, in a world of AI, speed to distribution matters. And if you can't move fast and no matter how good of a sales rep that you are, you're going to be maxed out, right? Let's say, you know, the max is 10. You're never going to go from 10 to 50, right? Like, that's, that's just not the way sales operates. So you're going to get, you know, you can only grow linearly. So like I add 100 sales reps, then I can grow at the 10 times 100, but I can never like go from like 1,000 sales to 10,000 sales. Like, that just doesn't happen unless you find a different approach to the market where you can like, you know, get masses through a funnel and then kind of drip them through the funnel without actual sales reps. And that's essentially how we are looking at the, you know, building the business moving forward, walking away from the sales rep as a process. You know, companies like Toast who have been like amazingly efficient at sales rep processes posted their first negative efficiency of a CAC, uh, you know, sale-to-CAC ratio. Like that's You know, that's crazy. They've got billions of dollars and they got— everybody knows who they are and they're posting a negative efficiency for the first time in like 20 years of them being in the business. You know, that, you know, is something that we have been seeing, you know, um, you know, uh, you know, consistently in the market. And I think that that's where a lot of businesses— like, this is what I mean when I say you can't just keep approaching the business the same way. You've got electricity now, you've got AI. The world is different. You got to relook at how you should approach the business. And, you know, that's why I see like companies like Owner or others, and I'm not trying to put them down, you know, they are what they are. But, but, you know, when I start seeing, oh, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna raise a lot of money and hire a bunch of sales reps, I'm like, okay, like, you clearly don't understand where the market is going right now. Uh, like, I don't think that that's where— that's not the best use of cash. If I, you know, raise what they raise, I would be looking at the business slightly differently. But, you know, that's why we got different visions.

How do you leverage, um, what's in your book, right? Like you wrote a book, uh, some time ago, uh, The Mental Playbook. Is it like embodied right now in you? Do you still like reread it, remind yourself of how mindset is important?

I haven't really— honest truth is I haven't reread it in a while. Uh, I was thinking about making a second, um, you know, a volume 2. It, it, this is something that I, you know, I had created a YouTube channel maybe 13 years ago or 12 years ago, and this was a big part of my YouTube channel, was like, all right, like shifting the way you think. And we called it like becoming— having a mental asset instead of a mental liability. But essentially the concept is very simple and it's something that like I kind of live by my entire life, which is like how you think matters and how you think will determine where— how, how far you go. Um, and like that's the principle behind the Mental Playbook. All I did was take practical tips of like how do you change like things like a habit? How do you change things like, you know, uh, your, your small thought processes? How do you turn them into an asset instead of a liability? That's what the whole book is about. Um, but I've been thinking about a V2, uh, but I also been thinking about a few other books. I got like maybe 3 or 4 other books in my head that I haven't, haven't quite had time to write yet.

What's next for you? I mean, you're a pastor, also your dad. You do all kinds of things, right? Like, what are your top goals for this year?

Yeah, my number one goal is like to, to launch this new product, you know, take the company in this new direction. You know, we, we're fairly excited about what we have in front of us. It's a very innovative way to approach the market, uh, and what we hope to do is cannibalize our own business. Um, we think that like though if we can make our system successful, then we remove the need for POS altogether. Um, and I think that that's a completely different approach. So we're like heads down on executing on that. Um, next year will probably go out for, you know, fairly large fundraise, you know. If that's successful, you know, try to go for, you know, $100 million or some odd dollars, you know. Uh, and then essentially our next, you know, vision after that is like, how quickly can we grow the company? And then who do we partner with? Or whether it's an acquihire or whatever. Like, yo, I think that the world— like, the world is shifting so fast that our focus will probably be about like growth expansion and then like like, do we, you know, merge with a, you know, some other like larger company to grow even faster? Like, I think that's probably the, the smarter approach, uh, because it's going to take a lot of capital to be able to, to out-execute, you know, you know, those on the frontier.

Yeah, I love it, dude. Where can, uh, people find out more about you?

I mean, they can, you know, you can find me on any social platform at Eugene K. Johnson, you know, uh, That's probably where I'll be at. I'll be fairly loud over the next couple of months for this new product. So, you know, you should be able to catch me there.