tell me about your vision when it comes to these projects.
Yeah, so when we started the company, right,
we had, you know, we started working on our vision mission
values and all our stuff, right?
And our vision mission today is twofold, right?
So PayPal, I've been in this space
for a little over 25 years doing electronic payments.
Ever since I finished college, this is what I've been doing.
And about four years ago, I was ex-in-a-partnership
and had the opportunity to make a transition, right,
and decide on what's the next step, right?
What are we going to do?
And what's the next business?
What's all this look like?
And my wife and I were sitting at the table
and we're just talking through it.
And obviously, the payment space is what we know.
We understand the business.
We know how to make money in this business.
We know how to run businesses in this arena.
And so we knew we were going to stay in this space.
But we're just sitting there talking.
And the biggest thing that I could come up with that day,
that the space needed, was clarity around payments.
There's so much non-clarity around payments, right,
that people don't understand why they pay what they pay.
They don't understand that there are different ways
to take credit cards.
They don't understand that there's different ways
that they can eliminate their fees
or how they can do what they do and just streamline
their business because there's not
a one size fits all in this space.
But there's a lot of people that sell a one size fits all
solution.
And so we wanted to be completely different.
And so the first thing we wrote in our mission was,
we want to bring clarity to payments, right?
We want to bring clarity to business owners.
We want to help business owners with their payments.
And we want to be more of a consultant in the space
rather than just a sales organization.
Knowing that, we'll never grow as big as the guys that
are just selling.
But we were OK with that, right?
We really wanted to have a hands on approach.
We want to know our customers.
We want our customers to know us.
And we want to help them.
We want to make a difference in their business.
And so that's how we started writing our mission.
The second part of our mission came from just a value
that my wife and I hold.
And it's something that we hold dear and near.
We've been blessed in this business.
We've been blessed in life.
And we wanted to create a business with a gift
back program.
And we wanted to create it from the very beginning.
We wanted from the first dollar the business made,
we wanted to be intentional about supporting nonprofits
through payments.
Just something that's not done.
And to be honest, that was a value and a vision
that my wife and I had.
It wasn't, we didn't think it.
We thought the clarity piece would be the bigger piece.
And we thought this would just be a nice tag along.
And that's where we came up with the name Pay Proudly.
We wanted our merchants to pay proudly
and know that every transaction that they accept,
that we were making donations on their behalf.
And we want to support causes that are important
to our business owners.
So that's how we started and what we started doing.
And what we found is our give back program
is a huge part of who we are.
It's a value that a lot of people have.
They're just are afraid to take that step
to actually do what we're doing.
And I think we've given people that drive
and that energy of saying, hey, we can do it too.
And so it's been absolutely rewarding.
We have employees when we're interviewing for new hires
that want to work for us because of our give back program.
Oh wow, yes.
Which is a really cool thing.
But I think it just talks a lot about the company,
the values of our company and who we are.
And so that's our vision.
That's our mission.
And that's what we live by and we preach it every day.
Clarity to our business owners
and charity to our community.
I love that.
Clarity to the business owners and charity to the community.
I like that.
So interesting enough, again, as I sit here and think,
when you give back to the charity,
is it where the individual is located?
Because we can be anywhere and utilize Pay Proudly.
Is that correct?
Absolutely.
So what we do is we regionally find local nonprofits
to our businesses that we support
based on what they like.
And so we have one of our questions
that we ask all new merchants is what's your why?
What's your cause?
What's important to you?
And when we first started this,
we were pick a charity and we'll donate to this charity
based because of your business.
That became way too much.
So now we've had to broaden it and say,
okay, tell us what's important to you.
Is it food for, is it the local food pantry?
Is it the local animal shelter?
Is it the local cancer center?
Is it the local clothing for kids organization
that's going on?
What is it that we can do from our side
that we can give you credit for through social media
and through marketing that says,
hey, because people are doing business
with XYZ corporation, we were able to give
to this Boys and Girls Club
or to this self-help food pantry or whatever it is.
And so we've been really successful with that.
And so we try to combine it all together
to make it a little bit easier for us to manage
and write those checks.
That is amazing.
And you mentioned something where you ask
your business owners or business partners
that you're working with, what's their why?
So I'm now gonna ask you, what's your why?
Yeah, so I think in life, as we all live
and we go through experiences,
and experiences change us and change our paths
and who we are and what we're doing.
And my wife and I have, our youngest daughter
was born with some health issues
and we were told really, really dark pictures
in the beginning and we made decisions
to not follow some of those advices
and create our own path.
And through that, our daughter's doing amazing.
She's 14 years old.
She's had a lot of surgeries, but she's killing,
she's awesome.
And that's the good news, right?
But through all those things that we've done,
we've met a lot of wonderful people
and we've been a part of organizations
that have blessed us and that have prayed for our family
or that have helped our family
in different ways of support.
And I think there's just parts of that
that have changed our hearts, right?
Changed who we are and it's made us want to give back.
We've been, like I said earlier,
we've been successful in life and we've been blessed
and we want to bless other people because of that.
Yeah, I love it.
And I'm happy to hear she's doing exceptionally
well and what a story because at the end of the day,
it's about what's in your heart, right?
And usually you give back.
You give back because of something amazing
that we've made it through, gone through
and realized that there's a bigger picture.
And what you're doing right now is focusing on giving back
as well as a service that is needed all over the place.
I tell you, as I continue to co-host on Vision Pros Live,
I'm meeting more and more entrepreneurs
and it just seems to be the thing to do, right?
But no one has spoken about what it looks like
to have people pay.
It's all about the sales and it's all about teaching people
how to be better leaders, et cetera,
not saying that that's not what you're doing.
You're coming from a different perspective
of where you're making profit,
but how do you get that back and what does it look like?
So when you have business owners that are coming to you,
what does that look like?
What's the start like?
And do they also just contact you on your website?
Yeah, so we have a website, payprobably.com.
Talks about all that we do.
And we have a lot of verticals that we focus in as well.
We focus on dental offices.
We focus on home-based businesses.
We focus on different verticals that we get real specific in,
but then we're real broad too
that we can sell to the masses.
And when people come out and take a look at us,
we have a free proposal tool.
It's AI driven.
We can take statements.
We can throw them through our proposal tool.
And it's gonna come back to merchants
and it's gonna tell them what kind of savings
we can save them, but also what kind of donations
we would be making based on their business
back into nonprofits.
And then we're gonna talk to them
and we're gonna ask them a lot of questions
because we need to know about their business
and what they're doing before we can really tell them
what they should or shouldn't be doing.
And we'll do all of that for nothing, right?
There's no strings attached.
We wanna have conversations.
We wanna talk to business owners and we'll do all of that.
And if they can literally take all that data,
they can go back to their current processor
and most likely save money and never make a change.
And we know that.
We'll give them that ability,
but we want them to give us a chance, right?
And so, and that's what we're gonna ask them for.
And if they choose not to, that's okay.
You know, we'll go talk to the next one,
but it's part of our mission, right, is to bring clarity.
So if we're bringing them clarity,
we're exceeding in our mission.
And so we're dotting those dots.
And that's how we operate our business.
And that's how we're growing.
And I think our space, I'm the first one to say it,
this space has got a bad reputation.
It's kinda got this used car salesman feel to it, right?
Of just not sleazy and slimy.
And we deal with those guys.
And it's those guys that come in, sell, leave,
never talk to you again.
You don't even know their name.
But we don't wanna be that company.
And we're not gonna be that company.
We hold our current customers.
And you said a second ago,
organizations that focus all their efforts on sales.
We focus on sales second behind our current customers.
Every week we have a staff meeting.
In the beginning of the meeting,
we talk about without our current customers
that we have today, we're not in business.
So why would we only focus on future customers
that don't make us any money right now?
So let's focus on what we have.
Let's take good care of them and they'll stay with us.
And then let's go grow second.
And so that's what we do.
And we've been very successful with that.
We've been able to bring a pretty high attrition rate
business down to a really low attrition rate business.
And that's through just answering the phone.
It's amazing what you can do.
You just answer the phone.
What was your most significant learning experience
in this all?
Yeah, I think my most,
when I just broadly look back at the 25 years
I've been in this space
and being in different partnerships
and learning of when to talk, when to listen,
when to do this and just through classes of hard knocks,
of getting knocked down and getting back up again.
And I think the biggest thing that I've learned
in business is to pause, listen, pause,
think before I react.
And it's real easy in our type of business world
and yours too to react really fast.
And we've grown up in a reactionary society.
Today, that's what we do in America.
We react and we react quick.
And I think the biggest,
just the thing that I've learned in business is to pause.
And even at home life, raising kids, being married,
if I can pause for a second and process,
the outcome is a lot better.
Absolutely.
And it makes all the sense in the world
because once you pause, I think that allows a space
for you to also listen intensely.
We're often, like you said,
we're in a world of either right now,
the microwave world of I put it in, give it to me in seconds.
You want it right now.
Yes, yes.
And so I love that that was your learning experience
because one thing that I was reading was
we often try to create our own paths,
but for someone like yourself, Jeff Mayne,
if you've already been through it,
then other entrepreneurs learn from it.
We don't have to go through it if we just-
Yeah.
Great mentors make a big difference in this world.
And there's a lot of people out there
that wanna be mentors to young business owners
and do it with their arms wide open.
And I think that's a big, big thing.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.