The guHRoo founder discusses shifting from a bootstrapped services firm to a product company targeting $50 million in revenue, then explains why the company pledges 3% of revenue and 2% of time and product to Transitions Homeless Shelter. He credits his mother's death and his community's support as the reason he gives back.
We got a bunch of big decisions that we're making and a bunch of big things that we're doing. And it's all in an effort to try to help others that are maybe a little bit further behind us. We're going to start to document some of it. So we're at this crazy inflection point with the business. Over the last few months where we went from being a bootstrap services company for the first 8 years. We started slowly building out our own software over that time. And then we decided last year we were going to go all in. We were going to take on some investment. We were going to go whole hog and try to build this thing to a $50 million company. And so that means that we need some guidance and some resources. And so we're actually just walking out right now out of our advisor's office. Pendleton Street Business Advisors. They're tremendous, but they've been helping us navigate a bunch of the crazy things that come with this. Not only are we trying to decide, you know, what's profitable, what's not profitable, what it looks like projections-wise, who to hire, who not to hire, but we also in the process we purchased a building. I've never done that before. I have no clue what I'm doing there. We're making a lot of hires, a lot of over-hires that are, you know, burning cash every month. And so we want to make sure we're staying on with the targets and the projections of where we're going. So We got a bunch of big decisions that we're making and a bunch of big things that we're doing, and it's all in an effort to try to help others that are maybe a little bit further behind us. We're gonna start to document some of it. We're gonna share the story. We're gonna help you guys to see a little bit behind the scenes of what this looks like, 'cause a lot of it's not that glamorous. We just left a conference room that's like getting renovated and it's pretty banged up. And when we go over to the building we bought, you know, you're gonna see it's not all that sexy. And this is entrepreneurship. It's not all that sexy. It's about the daily grind. It's about making tough. Critical decisions on sometimes a moment's notice, and you're going to get a little bit of the behind the scenes on when we make those decisions. I hope that some of this is valuable to you, and I look forward to you coming along for the ride. Well, we're sitting outside of Transitions Homeless Shelter up here, which has been a really important part of our business since we started. It started even before Transitions. We started this company to make an impact in the community, and we started with a pledge that we're going to give away 3% of all revenue, 1% of our time, and 1% of of our product. And, you know, we've been tested with that over the years. As you can imagine, when you start giving away revenue, you know, especially you talk to investors and they're saying, hey, you shouldn't be siphoning cash off the business. You talk to others and they say, hey, look, you can donate more when you make more money later. And you, you know, maybe you make an exit one day and you give more. But my philosophy has always been, you know, I might not live to see tomorrow. I may— I just need to give as much as I can right now. And so we've stuck by that and The situation with Transitions has really evolved over the years. So we volunteered and served lunch here every month for over 7 years as a team. And, you know, if we've missed a few, maybe here and there, but even all through the pandemic, you know, we were back there en masse. They stopped letting people back into the main area and we'd still serve. But it's funny, I started teaching a class in here somewhere along the way, and I really opened up and was telling a lot more of my personal story to the people in the class to just try to find some common ground. And I realized how close I was to really being in a place like this. And, and without the community helping to pick my family up during hard times when I was young, we could have been in a very similar situation, or me specifically. So when I was young, my mother passed away. I kind of bounced around from family member to family member. The community really stepped up and provided a lot of support for my family since they were taking on the additional burden of, of children who weren't theirs to begin with. And so, you know, I really value this. Hey, our responsibility as entrepreneurs in the community is to give back. I think it's everybody's responsibility in the community to give back, but particularly entrepreneurs. And so, you know, opening up and telling a little bit more about my story in here has also really freed me to tell my story a little bit more publicly. So people that grew up in a similar situation to me where I didn't have a lot of money, you know, we were technically pretty poor family, grew up with a lot of substances around, grew up, you know, in a situation where divorced mother, lost my mother when I was young, just kind of went through a really rough patch. And just to know that it took a long time for me to get my act together and to get straight and to really get my life on track. And the biggest thing for me was just taking accountability. I heard an equation somewhere along the line: event plus response equals outcome. So, you know, event happens in your life, like your mother passing away, or you're born into the circumstances you don't want to be born to. How you respond to those dictate the outcome. And so when I heard that, it— that level of accountability started to trigger inside me, and my life has really changed since. And I've been on a much better trajectory. I'm no perfect person by any stretch, but I found that every time I share that story, somebody gets some benefit out of it. And it all started here over at Transitions where I really opened up when I was teaching a class to these folks about having a vision for their life and, and a path out of here and a path out of what got them to where they are, because I've walked a similar journey. And so it was a way to relate initially, but then I realized, you know, every time I tell the story, somebody benefits from it. Somebody reaches out to me and says, hey, I've experienced similar things in my life. And so that's why this place is really special to me. And that's why we still come here every month and we'll never stop coming here every month. We're starting to exceed the number of volunteers they need every month, which is a good problem to have. But, you know, we're going to continue to plow forward and going to continue to give back to our community because it's just the right thing to do. And it's what others have done for me and others have done for you. If you're watching this in some way, shape or form, even if you didn't have similar experiences growing up. We've been at this for over 9 years now, literally hit our 9-year anniversary during filming this. It's been one of the most rewarding times in my professional career, and over the next few episodes, I'm going to share how we develop our strategic partnerships, how we recruit top talent. We're going to go behind the scenes on an acquisition gone Terribly wrong and much, much more. Make sure to subscribe and like this episode if you enjoyed what you've seen and want to see what happens next. Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to growing alongside you.
