From Rocket Science to Ecommerce Mastery: Rey Pasinli’s Unbelievable Success Journey

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Everyone.

Joseph Varghese here. Rulesforsuccess.com and access this video with Ray. We're going to get talked about who Ray is very soon. RulesForSuccess.com A summary of his conversation. Much more transcripts, some highlights soon. I'm super excited to connect with Ray Pazinli, who I've gotten to connect with quite a bit the past year. We got connected through a friend of ours.

Tim.

Ray is a, has an interesting background. He's an ex rocket scientist turned e commerce engineer. He's one of the country's leading experts in evolving social commerce trends and technologies, having collaborated with over 10,000 Internet merchants in his 15 years of Internet experience and beyond. So whenever people are watching this, because beyond is the founder of total-apps.com very, very unique background and someone I have a lot of respect for, especially because he's also an engineer like I am and a reinvented engineer, embracing his strengths. We're going to talk about leadership, we're going to talk about how he engages his team, power of engagement. We'll talk about that concept, his four rules for success, maybe even some rituals that he embraces, habits, he embraces each day to be as extraordinary, as successful as he is. And I'm just blown away by who he is, especially because he's at a stage of life where he's looking to give and add value. So pay attention to this podcast. Check out the summary, the mind map@rulesforsuccess.com because Ray has a tremendous amount to offer in this conversation and beyond. Ray, how are you today, my friend?

I'm exceptional. Every day. Every day I'm exceptional. You know, we'll get into it a little bit, but I've had, you know, multiple, multiple near death experiences and, and you know when you're looking at death's door, that's a bad day. So when you're not, it's not a bad day. So I, I haven't had a bad day in Decades. So every day is exceptional.

So you've had a lot, a bunch of near death experience early in your life and you don't take any day for granted and you do just unique things. We'll talk about some of that. There's water sports, things about that soon. So how did you get in this journey? How did you become an engineer? Rocket scientist? Like what, what does it look like, brother?

Well, my dad was an engineer. I originally thought I was going to go to school for business, but I fell in. I'm a numbers guy, I'm always thinking about numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. And ended up taking a part time job for an air conditioning company and got into the engineering and I really loved it. So I ended up getting an undergrad in mechanical engineering, minor in mathematics, emphasis in robotics and automated controls. And I thought I was going to get a job working for Disney building roller coasters. And I instead got recruited by an aerospace company and I got a top secret clearance and I'm working on military hardware and worked at these aerospace companies and got to work on F22 Raptor. And one of the, that I worked on was actually the, the International Space Station. So I helped put things in orbit and you could look up at this guy like oh, I was involved in that. So I got a huge sense of fulfillment and accomplishment of being able to see my work. But I hated working as a cubicle monkey, I hated being an engineer, I hated middling middle management. And I just could not envision the next 40 years of my career living in a cubicle hell, dying from paper cuts. And so I went back to school. This was the late 90s, during the, during the dot bomb era, you know, pets.com, grocer.com, amazon hadn't even been created yet. Dial up was the hot thing. I mean you know, 56k modem. So this is really a long time ago, but back in that day, in those days, it was the earliest days of the Internet and I had really kind of an aha moment epiphany in that the emergence of the Internet was going to be like the gold rush in the 1800s and you know, there's gold in them there hills. And so the mantra back then was build it and they will come. And you know, a lot of these companies got billion dollar valuations and all went out of business. And the reason why they failed was they did not understand consumer behavior and they did not adapt the business model. Practices and solutions geared towards providing a really good consumer experience at the shopping at, at the shopping cart level. And so kind of a long story short, I had a buddy of mine says, hey, help me. I got a business. I need you to help me start building websites, you know, And I ended up getting my MBA during that Don bomb era. And as we're working on these websites, I'm like trying to help these guys get merchant accounts. And you know, they go apply at a bank and the bank's like, well, we need two years of tax returns and you know, P and L and balance sheet. We're like, this guy's a startup, he's selling shoes online. Like, what are you doing? So it was another aha moment in that the tech and the banking, they don't speak the same language. And so this is right about the start that PayPal was getting set up and people get set up with PayPal and then they get shut off by PayPal. You know, people could charge back for anything. So there was a lot of friction and so kind of a weird path, but I ended up hanging up my engineered and my pocket protector and launched into E commerce payments engineering. And I've been doing it now for about 25 years. And you know, I've had the, it's been an amazing, incredible journey. I've worked with, at last count, I was looking at my database. I'm actually up a little over 70,000 clients over the career. And so, you know, and we're dealing with a lot of emerging stuff and technologies and there's lots of problems that still need to be solved.

So you got an early on and I remember those days early. I also came out like in that came out into the tech world around that time, went to a lot of dot com parties and as you mentioned before, a lot of those organizations didn't have all their eyes dotted. T's dashed. These weren't doing things as efficiently. And of course a lot of those companies went bankrupt. But. And then of course the E commerce revolution, specifically you mentioned Amazon and other organizations. Very interesting journey. Like, we'll go dive deeper into that soon. And I know, sure. I'm very passionate about immersion processing for other reasons too as well.

So go ahead. I'm sorry.

Well, I'd love to hear your trajectory. So what, what happened along that journey that had you just be disrupted? And you mentioned you got into a bunch of motorcycle accidents before our meeting here, we talked about that, all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah, I'd love to hear about that because I, I, me personally, when I was in college, I got into a car accident. The car got on Fire complete totaled. And that had me shift from being a chemie to get into technology. It was wake up call was. It was instant, like over the course of the next few months made a huge shift. It was one of the best things ever happened to me. Was exactly, exactly. Monumental gift. And several events happened over the years after that. My mom had a heart transplant. I was heart condition. People can find out that this online. It's all accessible and they're all gifts. So what were some of the gifts that you were given around that time for yourself that had you kind of wake up, make shifts and you know, of course you got out of that world of designing things for outer space. Talk to us.

You know, a lot of when you start off, you don't know what you don't know, right? And you get a little bit of success and it's really easy to have ego, pride, hubris. And so in the, for the first 10 years of on my entrepreneurship, I made just mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake. And one of, one of the things that I've learned is that mistakes are actually really good things. Because, you know, when I pay the price of a mistake, if I'm going to pay the price for anything, I need to get something in return. And so the return is the lesson. If you don't learn the mistake, you're not getting anything for paying the price. More importantly, you're more likely to repeat the mistake. I'll give you a simple example. You get into, you're, you're starting to date, you're, you're looking for a spouse, and you get into a bad relationship. And that bad relationship has characteristics that are toxic and unhealthy and whatever, you can learn from that and go, okay, I don't want those characteristics in my next relationship. So, you know, simple lessons like that can be painful because you have to make. You're going to. The only way to learn is through trial and error. And when you do trial and error, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And when you make mistakes, it's two steps forward, one step back. Two step forward, one step back. So for the first 10 years of my career, I bumbled around and I'd learned and I made lots of mistakes. But for me, you know, way back in the day, you know, I started off as a little referral partner. Hey, buddy, I call this bank up. Do you guys, I have clients. Would you be willing to take them? And then, and then from that, I kind of transitioned to becoming more of what's called an agent the agent's the guy who puts the package together, prices ing, helps with customer support, and then ships it upstream over time. Then I kind of grew and became what's called a registered ISO. You know, I'm certified by Visa, MasterCard and licensed and insured and bonded and all that stuff. And, and about 2010 I became what's called a Payfac payment facilitator. So if you're familiar with The Stripe Square, Braintree, PayPal, those are all payment facilitators or Payfac. And so, and so most of the people at that time that were coming online, the stripes and the brain trees, they would simply connect onto the existing bank systems and they wouldn't really build anything. And the end result was kind of a clunky functionality. And so I actually built my own PayPal engine. It's about 1.6 million lines of code and from scratch and made a lot of mistakes, had to rip out a lot of code. But I had a vision, you know, and so I got into the payment facilitator space, did very well with that, and now I'm kind of on the tail end of my career. I don't want to spend, you know, eight hour, eight hours a day grinding. I don't want to do 22 trade shows a year like I used to. And so I have been fortunate in that I found three young guys who I'm mentoring and I'm basically handing them the keys to my business so they can take it over and run with it for the next 25 years. And, and so it's really fulfilling going on that journey, but you know, you're going to make mistakes.

Is that journey more recent? As far as the people I know you also have a larger staff too, of 100 and some people you've hired over the years.

Oh, no, no, no, no. So at my peak, I had about a headcount of 50. And so I'm literally making plans every day towards being more and more retired and less and less gainfully employed. So I'm actually down to one employee now. And so I've gone from, you know, huge amounts of volume and stuff like that to doing what's fun, doing what I enjoy, doing the things that bring me, happiness, peace, serenity, instead of chasing the almighty dollar. And you know, that was one of the biggest mistakes I made in my early career. I'd work 60, 80, 100 hour work weeks trying to climb up the financial ladder and make more and more money, and I wasn't happy. Yeah. And what's the Point of having lots of money if you're not happy. So work, life, balance became an important aspect that I gradually came to, to, to want and desire and so.

And Ray, you're also married 20 years now and your wife also an integral role in your business as well. Huge.

Yeah, we were business partners. Imagine working with your sp, you know, eight hours a day, five, six days a week, flying to trade shows and just, you know, we were in the trenches together for, for a good 10, 12 years of that time period. And you know, she was in, she was a corporate headhunter and a recruiter, one of the top in the United States and very, very successful. And then 2008 mortgage meltdown hit. You know, nobody's hiring, nobody's going to pay, you know, $50,000 to a headhunter to find a CFO or something. So you know, she was making, working harder and harder, making less and less money and really kind of unhappy. And I said, ah, why don't you come over here, do this thing with me, we'll see how it works out. You know, you're not making any money doing that. Come on over and boy, that was a, that was a eye opener to have somebody come into the business and say, gosh, you know, you don't have any, you don't have an employee manual, you don't have all of your insurance ducks and insurance plan programs. What about a retirement plan? How are your accounting systems like? I'm a go, go, go sales guy and to have somebody with attention to detail expose my weaknesses, that was a little bit uncomfortable.

And married also, which is, which is great. Partnership.

Yeah. Good and bad. You're a knucklehead. You got to follow and do what I say. Oh my God. So yeah, there was some challenges with regards of who wears the pants and the family at times.

But, and I follow your, I follow all that I'm a prostitute background, but I'm not as process engineered as people think I am. My wife actually is very detail oriented. She's a position top of her game into what she does. So I get that. And it's, it's, it's actually helpful. It's been helpful in our partnership kind of.

Yeah.

Exploring different things and how can we beat baby better. And I believe. Right. This is, my belief is that you're. As someone who's great at sales or the world of engineering, working in a cubicle and things from NASA, all of that was useful. But your core as a sales visionary, you're probably more of an entrepreneur mindset, someone who's Actively looking for adventure, building things to get excited. A lot of my clients and success circles follow that as well. Also a lot of them are entrepreneur mindsets. And what I'm guessing is that your wife came on board, she helped you become a better business owner because she had business recognized operators.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you know, sales are wonderful, but if you've got a, if you, if you're trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it, you're not going to be very successful. And so, you know, I'll give you an example. We had like, I don't know, we have something like 35 Adobe Pro memberships on reoccurring. It was like, you know, $2,000 a month. We didn't need 34 licenses, but somebody had set them up at some point and because, you know, I'm going 300 miles an hour just scanning through the bills and okay, yeah, that's that Adobe thing again, I didn't even realize it, you know, so is that granular attention to detail that really made a huge difference in terms of our profitability and us as an organization to grow financially without having to grow with headcount and overh.

Amazing. We'll talk about that. With regard to strengths, so I'm a big believer. We talked about this before. Staying in your lane, staying in your zone.

Genius.

There's absolutely so many methodologies now, tests online that we can take to figure out what are my strengths and how can I apply those strengths into the organization I'm involved with. What are some of the ways you engage your staff, people you've hired in the past? I know you've kind of downsized a bit because you're more business owner now. How have you gone forward to put people in their proper lane who you brought on board your team?

So, you know, going back to my, when I, when I got my freshly minted MBA degree and hung it up on my wall, you know, I thought, aha, I'm a business owner, I know business, I'm going to start my business. I didn't know anything about management, I didn't know anything about how to work with a team. And so I fumbled and bumbled and, and I'll give you an example. I'd hire somebody, nice personality, you know, had some technical skills, could use a computer, whatever, and they'd start their job and within 15 minutes they would come into my office and say, hey, I have this problem. How do I fix this? Oh, give it to me. I know how to fix that. It's three minutes. I can Fix it for you, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now it's done. Same employee comes the very next day. I have the same problem. Guess what? I've now taken over my employee's job. And so one of the most important things a business owner needs to do is train. So more importantly, I also highly recommend having some sort of professional mentorship. This can be peers, this can be something like a vistage. This can be something maybe like a mastermind, but reach out to people that are businessmen, that are farther in the path than you, that you can sound board and bounce ideas off of. And so in my particular case, I ended up joining an organization called vistage. That really challenged my assumptions about how to build a professional highly high performance workforce. And so when somebody would come into my office and say, hey, I have a problem, I would immediately stop what I was doing, look away from the computer, focus on that employee, and then I would use my ninja black belt skills that I learned, which I'll share in just a minute. So number one about hiring is people lie on resumes. Yeah. You know, the skill set, experience, income, whatever, throw, throw that out the window.

Especially with AI, now they can lie.

So, so the, the number one most critical factor that's going to determine the success of an employee is how good does that employee fit in the role of a job that you're having to fill. So let me give you an example. If I have somebody who is precision, meticulous, can handle repetitive tasks simply and easily, likes stability, doesn't like volatility, can't do the, you know, very precise document paperwork repeatedly. The last thing I want to do is put them on a high pressure, outbound sales call type job.

Right.

Because after about a day they're gonna melt down, quit and leave. Take the opposite. You got a high powered sales guy, doesn't take no for an answer. He's gonna kick down any door, he's gonna go out there and harpoon the whale and you put him into one of those repetitive tasks, they're just, they're gonna, they're gonna be half assed, they're gonna be like, oh, I hate my job. I, this job sucks, I don't want it. So, so first you have to, you have to determine the role that you're going to fill. Next you have to think about is what are the personality traits that would be good for that role. And then third is figuring out is the hire that you're going to pull the trigger on a good fit for that job. So here's what we do when we Were when we were hiring like crazy, I put a job board on Indeed.com. i would get 100 resumes within four or five days. We would scan through the, through the. A hundred resumes. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. We'd narrow it down to five. We do a quick informal intake phone call. Hey, how you doing? What's going on? What do you like? What do you want to do? How do you know what kind of things have you done in your past? Just to kind of get a vibe for the people, right? Out of the five, we narrow it down to three. And then out of the three, we would send them one, a technical test which you can do on Indeed. Can they save files and do all this kind of normal PC stuff? And number two, we would use what's called disk D I S C. And so the disc, there are four personality profiles and those, and those four personality profiles are going to fit certain jobs, right? An accountant needs to be precision and problem solving. Somebody in customer service has to be a lovey dovey, nurturing, you know, can take a lot of heat without getting, you know, stressed out. You know, your, your sales guy is going to be a D dominant, Go out there and kill the sales bunny, you know, or you're going to have your, you know, people who do the administrative, that stuff that is consistent same every single day. You know, those are the people that can kind of sort of an office space hit the red button every single day, day in and day out and they're happy going home knowing that they did a good job. And so from the three, we would quickly identify the people who had the right personality for the job and the job requirement. And I'll give you an example. We hired a guy. Guy had five years of experience. He's worked in the payment space. He worked for a top 25 company in the US and he was just really unhappy with his manager. And so we interviewed the guy. Wow, we're going to set you up as an account manager. This is fantastic. And then I had somebody show up and say, hey, we do disc testing. Have you ever thought about using disc testing? Wow, I'm an mba. I don't need your test. He says, no, no, I'll let you test somebody for free. Okay. All right, give it to this guy. He's brand new. So he takes the personality test. It's about 30, 40 minute questionnaire. Do you like dogs? What do you do if your shoe is untied? I mean it's just really kind of unusual questions, but it's very Very, very accurate. And, and so the, the test people who, you know, these tests, they run about 75 bucks per, per employee. Worth every penny.

Yes.

For 225 bucks, I can find out the exact person I want to hire for the perfect fit for the job that I have open. So he comes back to me and says, you got to let this guy go. I said, what are you talking about? He's got 10 years experience, he's a great guy. Degree, he's personality, he's got charm. He's know based on his personality, he can't multitask.

What?

What are you talking about? He can't multitask? You know, I'm, I'm so blinded because of my own pride and ego that somebody is telling me valuable information. And sure enough, the guy didn't last five months. Right. Because he did not have the right personality for the role that he was doing.

Yeah.

So we immediately implemented DISC as part of our intake process. And the end result is stratospheric. I'll give you an example. One of the most important factors in your company success is going to be employee engagement. An employee who's engaged does 100% output. He does. Exactly. Or he or she is going to show up at 8 o', clock, they're going to go home at 5 o', clock, but they're going to do a good job and they're going to be conscientious. Somebody who is disengaged does 50% output. They show up a little bit late, they go a little bit long on lunch, they take off early on Fridays. You know, they're doing Facebook during work hours or at the water cooler. They're putting out 50% of somebody who's engaged. Yep. But here's the unicorn. Every once in a while we've all seen a hyper engaged employee. This is the person that goes to any lengths to make sure the customer is happy, works maybe on a weekend, or shows up earlier or cleans up the office and does something that you would expect only an owner would do. That hyper engaged employee is going to produce 150% output. So the difference between a disengaged and an engaged employee is 3x.

Yep.

And the irony is 70, 75% of employees in the United States today are disengaged. Absolutely. It doesn't matter if it's a CEO or it's the, you know, fast food cashier, that engagement is going to determine your success. And there's a secret to get that engagement and it's called ownership. Yeah. And so When I had employees coming into my office saying, hey, I have a problem, I don't solve the problem for them, I ask, what do you think we should do?

Yep.

And so by posing that question every single time, they have to come up with the solution. And if they come up with the solution and it's their idea, they're going to work over overtime to make sure the idea is a success because they don't want to be seen as creating bad ideas that are a failure inherently. People don't want to be seen as a loser. So you can leverage the psychology and just simply ask that question. Gosh, that's a, that's a really complicated problem. I want to hear what you have to think. What do you think we should do?

And it teaches them how to be more resourceful too, as well.

And that's thinking as an owner. Yes. And that is the ownership. And then the ownership morphs into engagement, and the engagement morphs into a 300% increase in out productivity across the entire organization. Absolutely.

And I think you mentioned to a disengaged employee, even if they're 50% productive and so forth, can be very, can actually be very costly because they're also bringing that into the culture.

It's, it's, it's toxic.

Yeah.

It permeates. Oh, if, you know, Timmy doesn't. I don't see Timmy working late on Friday. I'm going to take off on Friday, too. And so you've now created a culture where mediocrity is acceptable.

Right.

Fire those people immediately.

Immediately.

You're not losing anything. You're hurting your business. And that was one of the other big mistakes I made. I hung on to employees for way too long when I should have let them go months or years earlier. Rip the band aid, get rid of them. You know, bite the bullet. You will. I always looked at it towards the later part of my career that I wasn't firing somebody, I was upgrading.

Yeah.

You know, and I'll give you, and I'll give you an example. You know, we've gone through multiple people on the accounting side, and the accounting that we do is very, very complex for a variety of reasons. And so, you know, we started with an. Initially a bookkeeper. Then we got somebody who, who had a, you know, bachelor's in accounting, but really didn't know how to organize and do things correctly. And, you know, we'd fire them and we'd hire somebody else and they do a okay job. But, you know, every step of the way, we were looking for better and Better talent, you know, sort of like when you've had that bad relationship. Well, I don't want somebody who's abusive or cheats or, you know, can't, you know, is insecure or whatever. You start to, you can always improve if you take your time to find the right person for the right job. And so today our accounting is the best it's ever been in 25 years. But it's taken many, many iterations of hiring and upgrading and replacing to get the exceptional level of performance. I will not stand or settle for mediocrity, exceptional or nothing else.

This is part of your company culture now. Right. And I'm sure your wife helped kind of craft part of that on her journey when she was involved.

Actually, that was, that was primarily on me because I'm, I'm much more of the people person.

Are you, would you consider yourself a business owner now? So there's operator, owner. The operator, as Michael Gerber says it is kind of the technician having a bit of a seizure. Are you at a stage now where you, you're focusing and doing the things you enjoy doing? And I suspect that is a case given that you've got pastimes, you have systems in place.

Yeah.

Would you say that?

So the existing business is pretty much on autopilot. And so I've got one staff, I've got an outsource accounting team that handles all of that. I spend, I spent a couple hours a day on it. You know, I got clients that call me up, hey, I got a technical question or somebody will show up and say, hey, I got a big client that needs a special custom setup. Okay, I enjoy it, I love it, I'm really, really good at it. So I'm going to continue to do this while it's doing it. But I've, but I've kind of also become involved in three, three and a half other major technical pieces, companies that are coming to market. I'm very excited about what these guys are doing. Very dis. And so I've become an informal advisor, board member, partner, shareholder in four other companies. So not only do I run my own business, but I'm also leading the charge and being that resource that mentor the guide to help these startups avoid the learning curve and the mistakes that come from inexperienced and you know, helping to avoid that two step forward, one step process that I went through for 10 years.

Yes.

And so I'm, you know, really excited about now, this stage of my career where I have the opportunity to, to be of service and help other people. And share the, the immense experience that I've gained through trial and tribulations and errors and catastrophes and everything else I've had to overcome over the last 25 years.

There's a lot of fulfillment and I can experience that. I can hear that in you. Mentoring other organizations, being involved in other ways and having things on autopilot. I'm curious, what are some things that keep you engaged yourself? We talk about employees being engaged, of course, the word engagement. You know, a lot of meetings to that. Engaged being actually doing the work. But for you, what keeps you engaged in continually showing up? I know you enjoy surfing, am I right?

Oh, I'm a, I have a. I have a very bad surfing addiction. It's just everything in my life revolves around surfing. Where I live, what I drive, who I marry, what. I went to entrepreneurship so I could surf more. That's, you know, part of the whole journey. So, yeah, I've got a. I've got a very, very, very broad, fulfilling life. And it's filled with lots of different things, not just business. Like I said, I found out a long time ago that making money doesn't make, make, doesn't guarantee happiness. So I do all the other things that give me a really rich, fulfilling, satisfying, exciting life. Every day I wake up is like Christmas. I get to open up a brand new present. So, yeah, but key to answer your question, setting goals. Yeah, and, and, and I'm not just talking about financial goals, right? I mean I have very clear financial goals, but I have goals and metrics and being a numbers guy, everything that I do is tracked, recorded, how am I doing? Progress. So let me give you an example. About 10 years ago, you know, it was getting to be New Year's Eve and everybody's putting up their little Facebook. My New Year's resolution, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to run a marathon, whatever. And so I was thinking about it. I'm like, well, the thing that I'm really passionate about is surfing. And so I'm. My New Year's resolution is to ride, catch, surf 500 waves a year. The first year I did, I hit about 800.

And so you surpassed that number.

I blew past it. Blew past it. So the next year I set my goal at a thousand. And so I daily trying to go surf and I count my waves and I do a little surf report from the beach on Facebook and I add it to my total. And. And so this is now part of my lifestyle. And so I, you know, I would say out of the past 10 years, I think I've hit it seven times. Six or seven times hit that 1,000 plus waves a year. I've had torn rotator cuff, I had a head concussion, I had a walking pneumonia for six weeks at the end of the year and you can't surf. I'd be like, damn it, I only hit 880 this year. You know, but it's a goal. And because that is, and, and you have to think of goals in terms of long term, intermediate and short term. The short term goals help you to get to the intermediate and the intermediate goals help you to get to the long term. Right. So now my new thing is as I'm counting my workouts, surfing counts as a workout. And so you know where my goal for this year is? 200 workouts. So basically almost every other day I'm working out. And where are we? Middle of middle of June? I'm at 97 workouts for the year. Right. So it's, it's quantifiable, tangible goals that allow me to wake up today and go be like, okay, what are my goals? What am I going to try and hit?

Yep.

You know, and it can be as simple as, as I want to get three sales calls a day, I want to submit one merchant account a day. I want to, I want to onboard $1 million in processing per month or 5 million or whatever. Like, I have quantifiable, tangible metrics that are, they're, they're challenging, but they're also achievable.

Kirsty, do you, how do you, do you track these things and do you also have levels of accountability? Mended vistas before? We have several success circles where there's aspects of accountability, what we do. But how do you.

Absolutely.

How do you, how do you track these things and how do you make it fun?

Great question. So my management style was really hands off. You know, there's some people who are micromanagers that, you know, certain businesses you might need that. But I'm, if you give them the engagement and the ownership, you shouldn't have to micromanage. But one of the things that I implemented probably the last seven years, six years of my career, one on one with staff. And so in certain staff I would have weekly one on ones, like maybe a department manager or something like that. What's going on? What are you doing for hires? How are your department? What are your quotas? You know, and so the one on ones really aren't just hey, how you doing? And how's the kids? I would have an appointment in my outlook and would it be the discussions, the topics, the metrics, the goals, all the things that we have been working on together as a manager and an employee. So let me give you an example. I have a sales guy and I might do a weekly check in, I might do a monthly check in, right? Okay. How many, how many new prospects did you bring in last week? How many of those did you close? How many are you going to do this month? How many new referral partners are you bringing in? What trade shows should we sign you up and ship you out to? Right. So that one on one is allowing me to build in accountability. And what's happening is, is that, you know, you can have a boss at the top and they say we're going to go in that direction. But if you don't have one on one guidance with the individual departments and the managers and the staff below them, you got the oars and the go rowing in all the different directions. So in order to implement your top level vision and goals, it has to be transition to each level of the employee chain below you. And the way you do that is one on one. So if I'm having a one on one with the customer service department manager, that one on one is going to have that individual with their own set of goals. Hey, we need to have call time, hold times down to less than two minutes. We want 98% success rate, we want response times. This is a problem that we keep seeing that we want to get fixed or whatever. They are going to then communicate that level to the people that are their subordinates. Yeah, right. So the vision gets melded into the whole corporate culture.

So how do you. So I get the value about like having these one on one huddles, really clarifying specifics and those numbers, sales. How about yourself? So you've got these outstanding goals, right? Jumping ocean, riding these waves and of course in different other areas of life too as well. Also you mentioned business and having, let's see, one new processing client or adding another seven figures of processing each month. How do you keep track of those KPIs okrs? Do you use spreadsheets? Do you have meetings with your staff? And your wife wasn't bored before she was part of that before what?

So what's your. It's a, it's a variety of things. So for example, I meet with my, my accountant, my controller, for lack of a better description, she gives me a weekly cash flow report and then we decide, okay, which bills are we paying what invoices, debts are being serviced, whatever. Right. And then once a month she provides me a review that is a year to date and a comparison to the previous month. Right. So it allows me to on a regular basis be looking at the numbers and the performance of the business. And just like, you know, if you think about it, when they launched the Saturn 5 rocket to hit the moon, they didn't just light the thing off and it automatically ended up landing on the moon, they had to do lots of course corrections.

Yes.

Along the way to make sure that they hit the target. Right. And so when we look at the business and the metrics, we're looking at things from a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis. Right. The last week of every year I spend, I take the whole week off and I look at the business from where we started, where we ended up and where do we need to go and I put in all my goals, KPIs metrics that I want to hit for the following year.

That's amazing. So last week we see, we take off specifically for that reevaluation process for the year.

Yes.

Outstanding. That's a gem in itself the way you share that. I, I mean everything you're saying is on point. Right. Like just the nature of two steps forward, one step back. You're always making progress forward, having huddles with your team. I'm, I'm, I'm. One of my first job out of college was a G. Was my second job at college was with a G capital. And the whole idea of six Sigma, but most especially the Kaizen principle, the idea making 1% progress each day. Yeah. That's why I love talking to engineers because it's whole, you know, black belt.

Sigma, the whole nine yards, right?

Yes, yes, exactly.

Tqm.

Yep, yep. And then, and the idea of like measurable progress. Right. And that was measured expands or grows exponentially if you're measuring a Pearson's law. And I, I love how you're applying that your life. Right. Like at this stage, I mean it's.

Not just business, it's everything.

Yes, everything.

And so my life today is really, really rich and really full. And what I mean by that is the business, the financial, all of that has hit all of the goals and the metrics that I wanted to, it's not about, it's no longer about money for me. Right. So every morning I wake up, read the news, check my spot, spot my emails, whatever. I go through my, all my little mobile apps for about 20 minutes and then you know, pray meditate I either go to the gym or I surf, right? So I take about an hour to two hours every morning to take care of myself physically and emotionally and spiritually, right? Usually come, come online about 9, 30 or 10. Emails, phone calls, appointments till about 2 o', clock, 3 o' clock and then the afternoon it's like, okay, I got to do some chores around the house, I got to walk the dogs, you know, you know, spend some time with my wife because it's really easy for, for the business to suck all of my time and energy. So I invest in my personal life and I invest in my business, but I also invest in my relationship, you know, and so maybe we'll go do an afternoon surf session or, you know, go to Home Depot and get that thing fixed that we've been wanting to do. So that way by the time the weekend comes, I don't really have anything to do. It's not. And so that is then time for me to spend with my family, trying to spend time with my friends. You know, we'll go camping on a weekend or we'll go do a bonfire at the beach or something like that. Or maybe, you know, this weekend I've got tickets for Doobie Brothers on, on Saturday and then Sunday I'm going to drive up to North LA and visit my dear friend Albert, who just had her as his third baby and we haven't seen it yet. So, you know, those are the, those are the, those are the cement.

So there's a lot between the accomplishments. Those are, those are the big rocks. The big rocks scheduled and a lot of us, family time, morning rituals, telling your wife, ensuring that she's had like she's connected with and you pay quality time with her. Those are the big rocks. And then everything else gets put in place as well. Also when you start your work day.

You know, and all of this comes from, you know, we're going to run out of time here because I know you got to pick up the little one. But the best advice that I can share is what my rules of success, right? Number one, every deal that I do needs to be a win, win, win, win. Now in my business I have multiple parties, but let's say you're a realtor and you've got the opposing realtor, you've got the buyer, you've got the seller, you got the mortgage people, you've got the title people. There's a lot of people involved in that transaction. So nobody should get screwed, nobody should get gouged and nobody should get engorged. Meaning that everybody gets a fair deal. Right. If it's not a fair deal, somebody's gonna get pissed and that will separate the partnership. Number two, time is money. Value your time. And what I mean by that is I value my time as $1,000 an hour. If I'm out working on a project, I should at least earn $1,000 an hour for my time. And you know, sometimes I get a small little merchant, hey, you know what I've got? I've made enough money I can afford to invest my time to help that person. But when I'm trying to build my business. Set a dollar amount for your hourly and work on projects and events and things that will generate that kind of income for you. I could go down to the beach and collect cans and turn them in for a nickel apiece.

Right.

It's not a good use of my time.

Yeah.

Right. So know what you're worth knowing and command what you're worth. Number three, do the right thing at the right time, all the time. This is about honesty and integrity.

Yeah.

If you tell white lies, cut corners, you will never achieve long term success. I've seen a lot of guys go for the quick buck, but the quick buck is just a short thing. Right. I'm in it for the long haul. I'm looking at 10, 20 year windows of opportunity. I've had clients that have been with me for 15 years, 18 years. You know, the time that I invested in that, in that client and continue to provide that support has paid a million dollars.

Yeah.

Over the years, especially the referrals, I.

Got to know that.

Exactly.

Relationship key in. Absolutely.

So do the right thing at the right time, all the time. And the last one is don't stop having fun. Because if you're, if you're not having fun, business is sort of like sex. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it. Right. I'm just. That's the best analogy I can have with you. Right.

So.

Yeah, so. So having fun means that you're going to get the maximum benefit out of it. If you're just chasing the dollar, you're going to be miserable. I was miserable in my life. I lost friendships, I wasn't surfing, I wasn't healthy. And every day I just woke up and the only thing I had to look forward to was doing sales calls. That's miserable. Who cares? Nobody will. Nobody will remember you on your deathbed on how many sales calls you made a day. Exactly. Exactly. So that's my secret. Success.

You laid out a Lot of points that we embrace in our community success circles. The nature of having huddles, connecting, having fun. Our tagline is dear. To play, dare to play bigger or play is really a key part of that. And we just embrace the idea that every day is a game. Today's game is called whatever day. Today it's Tuesday, tomorrow's Wednesday. When we see it all as play and we go out there and find ways to play even more and have fun, it makes it all sustainable. Otherwise it's a lot of work. Right. And tracking numbers and doing these things on a daily basis can be very boring and daunting. But when you can integrate a lot of play into it and see it as a game, it's more sustainable and in your world, very fulfilling. There's a lot of fulfillment where you are and what you're doing and that's extraordinary. One of the last questions I'll ask you is if you could go back in time and offer some advice to the 18 year old version of yourself or perhaps offer advice to somebody about to go into College as 18, maybe someone who's about to embrace a path toward career and focus. What's something you would tell that person or tell yourself?

One of the hardest lessons that I had to learn and I got humbled repeatedly because I made this mistake over and over and over again. Don't be a jack of all trades. Be an expert and be exceptional at one thing. Be the best plumber, be the best architect, be the best chiropractor, whatever you are going to professionally do. Absolutely. Dominate and be the best, highest knowledgeable expert in that field. And if you become that person, you will have an abundance of business. But if you try and be a little bit of this and a little bit of that, you are not focused. Yeah. And which means if you're not focused, you're going to miss the ball. Yes. And so I made that mistake in trying to get into all sorts of side businesses and opportunities and things that were not directly related to payment processing. And it cost me millions of dollars. Millions of dollars.

Yep.

And so do one thing and be the very best at it. You can be extraordinary.

Absolutely extraordinary. Ray, last question. So how do people connect with you, engage with you? What's the best way? Email, Website, I think email.

I mean I have a click to schedule, I respond typically within an hour, but it's just ray r e yotal-appsapps.com and love to chat, love to talk. Anybody I can help with? I'm a resource free, available anytime except when I'm surfing.

Surfing. I love how a relationship oriented you are, how accessible you are, how amazing you are. I have a lot of extra extraordinary feedback advice given here. I'm sure a lot of our members will tap into it especially the nature of like strengths and like hiring people on board with like strengths knowing also what your zone of genius is. And and I love those metaphor of, you know, scuba diving and also writing. Riding, riding the wave, getting into flow. Right. And we're getting flow means get your rhythm, get your rhythm and find your rhythm. It applies to not just surfing or scuba diving or swimming. Applies to life as well also when you can get in your lane, stay in your lane and find people to stay in their lane too as well. Bring people. Bring the right people on board.

Yeah.

And really great. I'll put a link also into this podcast for people to do disc analysis. Something we recommend to that enneagram. There's so many different tests out there, but certainly knowing your strengths is invaluable. Is price is something I wish I knew about many years ago too when I first became an entrepreneur. Ray, this has been absolutely fantastic for our audience out there. Access this podcast interview, the summary, the transcript, even a mind map. We'll have to kind of summarizing these points and raise contact@rulesforsuccess.com it's been an absolute pleasure connecting with you today and I look forward to future discussions as well. Also Ray is at Once again rey total-apps.com rulesforsuccess.com to access this mind map and this has been fantastic.

Thank you. Wonderful.

That's it for today's episode of rulesforsuccess.com podcast. But the journey to success is far from over. Join us next week for another inspiring conversation with a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. Until then, remember to be bold, be courageous and go after your dreams.