Matt Vaadi and team discuss the reality of running a business: too many meetings, building partnerships with CPAs, and company culture. They cover the 1-1-11 partnership model and PEO capabilities while joking about paddleboarding and Matt in swim trunks at the office.
So I may or may not be wearing swim trunks right now. We should have some follow-up here, um, prep to be done for that meeting with Ketch. I'm not sure if I'll need anything for that. Basically, that's just a meet and greet to share with their team what our good clients look like, and they're going to share with us what good clients look like for them, and we're going to see how we can help each other. Benefit overview for annual enrollment. This is gonna be one of those meetings that's booked for an hour that should probably only be about 20 minutes and maybe could be done over email. That's what the overwhelming majority of my calendar has turned into lately, is is meetings that should have been emails. So that's why I just spent that time sitting down with Anne, trying to break down our calendar, trying to understand like, okay, hey, what on here do I really need to be at? You know, we've got this thing, I'll try to, you know, three monkeys hanging out with a football where, you know, sometimes we have three people in leadership positions on one call where really one would suffice. And so we try to eliminate the number of people on a call when possible, when there's somebody who needs to be accountable And if anybody else needs the notes, they can check in Fireflies or from the transcript or whatever and try to get out of these meetings for meetings' sake. But it's hard. It's where everybody's been conditioned after COVID. So it's been a real pain for us to break out of these virtual meetings all day, every day. How's it going?
Good.
So you've got a cameraman following you?
Ah, there he is. Yeah, he's up there.
What's that about? Tell us about it.
Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of like one part just documenting kind of where we are in time, another part content creation. So we've just got a lot going on right now and kind of wanted to memorialize some of that. You know, this is the stuff, this is the life, right? Like, uh, it goes from, from one, you know, meeting where a client's beating over the head to trying to get out on the lake to trying to form a strategic partnership and everything in between, right?
We can definitely relate. That's, that's a pretty good description of our life recently.
So we're looking to develop one of three types of relationships with CPAs: a referral partnership, a reseller arrangement, or a white label arrangement. Um, with you guys, I think we'll have to have a different angle of like maybe it's like the four most important—
like a webinar or something.
Yeah, we're gonna do a webinar with them next month, but You know, maybe for October we do one, I'm just spitballing, like the 4 most important reports every entrepreneur should be looking at, financial reports you should be looking at every month or something like that.
Yeah, we just did a webinar yesterday. It was kind of a private one for clients of a financial planner, but it was 5 steps to creating a financial plan.
Oh, you call her a financial planner, she's gonna kick your butt.
She's not here to object.
What's her name? State it for the record.
She talks about something called wealth optimization, and she overuses the word strategy. I love her to death, but—
Oh dude, strategy, man.
Not everything can be strategic.
Listen, we've got a lot of synergy here. Let's circle back when this meeting's over and talk about strategy and, you know, ways that we can really, you know—
Hey, I was very strategic when I put on this hat.
Morning.
Giving you free hugs.
Okay, well, I will say this, I mean, since we're being open here, like, if you guys ever want to get out of the payroll space, we'd gladly get— buy that book of business and keep everybody on staff.
Okay, good to know. Um, I've got a— I have a couple of questions for you. Um, you mentioned PEO. Can you do that in any state?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
I love that he calls us ma'am. I love it so much.
Alex, you have not had the opportunity to be around Southerners much.
I love it so much. Okay, smooch. Thank you so much. Go to them. You see, I missed the wake-up PM. You say ma'am, I will say smooch and kisses. It's not great because you'll be like, no, I'm from the— I don't have personal space.
I know what I'm saying.
I mow my lawn outside in my— anyway, I'm not gonna go there. We don't know each other that well yet.
Awesome. Well, thanks, y'all. Have a wonderful weekend. I appreciate the time. Good to see you as always.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
The game plan was actually to go out and stand up paddleboard right before these meetings this afternoon. I've tried to block like an hour and a half of personal time on Fridays to just go be out in nature somewhere. This was the first week of it, and of course it started raining as soon as I got out there and I got to the lake, to the landing spot. So I've just been wandering around the office in swim trunks all day for no particular reason, which is fine. It's not that I usually dress up a whole lot more than this, but it was, uh, it's a part of it. Entrepreneurs, you should definitely take care of yourself. Go get outside, go get in nature, and don't wait as long as I did to do it. And don't do it on rainy days. Well, if you do do it on rainy days, that's great too, but But if you're wondering why I'm dressed like a high schooler, as Ethan, our videographer, just said, then that is partially why I'm dressed like a high schooler.
It's called the—
All right, so that meeting you just watched was from last week, and it was one with one of our strategic partners, which is a critical part of our business strategy. We call it the 1 1 11 model. It's a critical way that we get our product into the hands of more folks faster, and we're going to be breaking that down even more over the next few weeks. I'm standing out here right now, right at the park across the street from our office, which is a huge benefit for our team. We come out here into this beautiful natural space in Irmo, South Carolina, anytime we want to just get away from our desk, get some fresh air, and this time of year, just sweat for a little while. But coming up, you're not going to want to miss these next few episodes because we're going to start to break down some of those things about how we hire our top talent, what made the Dream Team '23 come to reality, an acquisition deal gone wrong, and more on those strategic partnerships, and a ton more you're gonna wanna see. So make sure you hit that like, that subscribe button, help us out so that we can create more of this great content for you. We're excited to help serve your business, and we appreciate you tuning in. Thanks.
