Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Referrals can be the oxygen to any business.
Okay. And it doesn't matter what you're doing, whether you're a plumber, whether you're a chiropractor, whether you're a real estate agent, and you can go on and on with the different type of professionals that are in the marketplace. If somebody makes a referral and says, look, I have a client for you, what a great event that is to have that.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Growth Focus Podcast where we bring leaders from all across the globe to share their time, their expertise, and their insights with us when it comes to growing businesses. My name is Gary Lafty, your host and also the CEO and founder of the Growth Focus Partnerships, where we take the authority voices that our clients have in tech and turn them into Pipeline. On this particular episode, we are going to be diving into the myth of if they build it, they will come, and why that it really is a myth and what to do about it. We'll also be talking about how advisory boards can really help bootstrapped and not just VC and PE LED companies grow. And more importantly, we're also going to talk about how if we fix our referral system, it'll also fix our revenue issues. So without further ado, let's bring on this episode's guest. John. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here today. Why don't you start off by introducing yourself, Let us know who you are and what is it that you.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Hey, Gary, It's a great pleasure to be here with you on this show. Thank you for the invitation. As you mentioned, my name is John Leroy. I am located in the beautiful city of Detroit, Michigan, and I have started a business called Relay. It is a referral application. I'm the CEO and founder of this company. Our team has been working for three years to to build the product and get the product to market. So that's my overview and my background kind of where I reside.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to talk a little bit more about Relay and sort of delve into that as we go through the episode. But I just want to clarify something. When you say, I have just started a company, that's been very humble of you, John. You've had very successful exits in your career. So what I'd love to chat about right at the very beginning is for John, take us back a little bit. What pulled you out of retirement and into building Relay and what was that particular itch that you were trying to scratch after having so many great exits?
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question, Gary. I think when you are an entrepreneur, you're wired a certain way and there's something that is different about you. You're always looking to improve things. You're always looking to make things better. You're always looking to solve a problem. You. And that has been my mindset from the beginning. Beyond that, problem solving identity or mindset is also, I think, a mindset of trying to achieve and conquer, to build something and see it be adopted or accepted or winning the deal or ultimately selling a company and making life changing money. So I've started probably four or five, six different companies and had successful exits in all of of them but one which is good, it's a good batting record. But when you're. I'm 62 years old right now, Gary, and I think my last one, I was around 55 when I exited 54. I'm a young man at 54 years old. And I tried to take up golf, okay. And I took it up at the wrong stage in my life. You're not going to learn to hit that golf ball. And God knows I tried. But at 55 years old, playing golf and doing other things, you quickly learned that I missed, I missed being in the game. I missed building something. I missed all the energy and the focus and the dedication that comes to creating and building something really meaningful. And that gave me purpose. That was my identity. And so I wanted to go back to doing that, Creating something, building something. And that's what took me out of retirement. If you will, back into is now an exciting young company and the application that we are bringing into the market called Relay. So it's a product that focuses today, right now, with its core competency, the real estate industry. You never want to put boundaries on yourself, but right now that's our focus with what we have in the marketplace. And it's that excitement, that dedication that took me out of retirement and back in the game.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Well, that is great. I mean, Relay is solving us kind of a real gap in the real real estate industry. But before we get into that, I could almost see and hear the viewers nodding their heads with you alongside you, just as I was when we say yes, as entrepreneurs, we need that passion, we need that drive, we need something that keeps us going to build and solve problems. And I really love the way you executed that in the answer there. So before we get into Relay, over the years that you've had in business, what kind of core lessons could you share with us, John, from your past exits that you think you're going to bring to relay today your current company.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: God, that's a great question Gary. I wish I reflected on that and made a list because I think a list would be built and I could stack rank that the things that would go on that list. But thinking about the past and startups. So I'll tell you everything I've done and it's important to understand this point of view. It's been a bootstrap startup. Okay So I come from a unique point of view right where you're a startup, you're funding it yourself, it's me, myself and I with an idea and then you're trying to move that forward. There's a lot of other new businesses or startups that originate in a different place. So as it relates to my background, the companies I've built, the companies I've started and then exited, geez, it's all self serving but it's been this, you know, the me, myself and I doing this and what I've learned very quickly is to have success as well with the business, to get it adopted and used as well as have success in building the business. You can't do it alone, you need other people to do it with you. And so probably one of the biggest things that I have consistently done with my businesses that probably make the biggest impact but take the least amount of time and you alluded to it at the beginning of our call is this idea of an advisory board. This and I don't know if you wanted to get to it later but to your question, it's the answer to your open ended question that you asked me of. You know, what's the common theme and what's the difference maker and having other people that have been down the path that can help prepare you for what you may encounter down the road or protect you from going off the road is just as important to know maybe what you should steer away from as well as the group encouraging you, what you can go to or how to prepare better for what you're going to confront or have to deal with in the future as your business grows, whether it's being prepared with a line of credit. There's so many different things advisors can do. Whether it's opening up a door to a contact that they have that you didn't have. It goes on and on if you will. So that is the one consistent piece that was and has been and still is a difference maker, is an honorable.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Well I really want to delve a little bit more into this John, because this is a rational Key point, there'll be people listening to this wrongly believing that a virus treasury boards are part and parcel of a VC led company, part of a PE LED company. It's what, one of those things that you have, but they are wrong in the fact that actually you can have a great advisory board as a, as a bootstrap company, but it's a little bit more than your network is a little bit more than the people you know and then think, can you dive a little bit more and share a few, a bit more insights about what you would classify as an advisory board or creating an advisory board as a bootstrap company?
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yes, yes. It's people that you know and respect in the business that have the time and the desire to help another person. So in all of the situations, the people that I invited to volunteer to be on an advisory board were actually that they were volunteers. There were people that have had success, they maybe were golfing a little too much or they're looking to retire or they have retired and they want to help other people that are, they want, they have the ability to help other people and they have found themselves in a situation where they don't have that, that, that ability to add value. Okay. And so being a part of an advisory board and an advisory board to me is three to five people, three to five people that I would reach out to and invite to be on my advisory board. And I don't want to take a lot of their time, but what I would tell these individuals is that I'm going to share everything I have about my company, my financials, my goals, our challenges of the business, or just me personally. And we're going to get together probably two to three times a year as a group and we're going to talk about what's going on. They're going to ask me questions. I need to be prepared. And it helps, Gary, it helps makes, it makes me a better person because I know I've got somebody as an entrepreneur, as a bootstrap that really I don't have to answer to anybody. But now I do. Now I have to prepare for their questions. I have to prepare to present my strategy, my marketing plan, where we're going and have a well thought out conversation. The advisory board does so many things. So it's a group of people that I respect that have had success, that in some way or another have a knowledge of the industry of which I am operating within, whether it's medical, whether it's real estate. Right, what, whatever that industry is that you're operating within. They have experience in that area. They do it because. They do it because want to add value, because they have the ability to add value. They're not doing it because I'm sending them a check or a gift certificate or a bottle of wine. We're not paying them $10,000 a year or a month to be a part of it.
So it's more about helping others, just like you're doing with your podcast.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Well, thank you for that. I think this is that fantastic piece of advice and insight there, John. It's not necessarily like you said, all about paid board of advisors. There are plenty of people out there and I love what you said there about, you know, maybe they're golfing a little bit too much and don't want to do that anymore and they want to get their teeth back into something. But more importantly, as entrepreneurs, we know that as we grow, one of the best things we can do is put our hands back down and help other people grow and come up the mountain as well. And I absolutely love what you were saying there. So just before we move on to relay and things that what's exactly relay does and how it helps and the lessons we can learn from that, I'll have one final question regarding your experience and what's something, John, that you thought you knew from your past companies, but this time around it's different? What were you thinking? Oh, I could just bring that over. But now in this day and age with things going on and especially the platform that you're creating now, you think that's not how I expected it to be?
[00:12:08] Speaker A: That's a great question.
That's a great question. The answer is user adoption. It is extremely difficult to create change that people are going to accept. We have our muscle memory. We know how we operate and to get individuals or it's really not company. So, Gary, with what we're doing, we're dealing with the industry of real estate. So in dealing with real estate, you're dealing with agents or you're dealing with brokers, and you're dealing with people. And the challenge there is I'm not dealing with the company that I can provide a solution for, and that company can make the decision to accept that solution. And then that solution gets moved through the organization because the organization, the senior leadership, decided to integrate some new technology.
So with what we are dealing with today, Gary, it's about how do we get our message out to the, you know, 1.5 million real estate agents that are in the nation or the 240 independent brokers that are running those agencies. How do we get our message to those individuals? And then how do we get them to adapt and become users of our technology and our product? So that's become. Or that, that is now the biggest challenge that we're looking to solve. And we're, we're not bored. We're very busy trying to solve that. That riddle.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And like, it's different what's going from selling B2C in corporate to selling B to B stroke C, like with the real estate industry, because they're individuals as a whole. They don't have that corporate hierarchy or structure, like you said, that you're so used to going through. And now we've got to say, okay, how do we get that message to land? So let's talk a little bit about relay. Relay focuses on something that most industries really take for granted. If anything else, if they don't take it for granted, that is very ad hoc. They're not, they're not really systemizing it, and that is referral systems. And that is the specialty that you are in. Why do you think real estate and frankly, even tech get this referral system process so wrong?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: I think when you talk about referrals, Gary, referrals can be the oxygen to any business, okay? And it doesn't matter what you're doing, whether you're a plumber, whether you're a chiropractor, whether you're a real estate agent, and you can go on and on with the different type of professionals that are in the marketplace. If somebody makes a referral and says, look at, have a client for you, what a great event that is to have that recommendation to have somebody recommend or make a referral. It happens in health care all the time as well. And that was my background before this venture was a lot of startups in the health care space. And in health care, there's also a lot of referrals that occur, whether it's a referral to a specialist, whether it's a referral to get an item that you need for your, for your care. But you're always recommending somewhere, somebody or something. And so we term these referrals. And you need, you need an organized application or you need structure to do it so that you can memorialize the referrals you make. If you need to go back and check, did I do X, Y or Z, it's all memorialized and you need it to be done swiftly so that all the data and the contents provided and also that there's a feedback Mechanism so that you have an update on what's going on with that referral or a feedback loop that provides you whether or not I can service or can service that individual. So I learned that that really was. That referral process occurred in a very archaic way in the real estate industry. It was basically picking up the phone and calling around to try to find somebody that could help you. So if you were moving from, in my situation, Detroit, literally, truth be told, down to Tampa, Florida. When I looked to buy a property down there, my real estate agent had to make a bunch of phone calls. The real estate agent was my daughter. And I saw what my daughter had to do to try to connect me with an agent in Florida that she would vet so that I'd have a good experience when I started to search for a property in the Dunedin marketplace. So I saw that aspect and then I talked to a number of my friends that are also in real estate and learned that there is no trackability. You can make a referral and you never hear back on what's going on with that referral. How did my friend do? Did you take care of my client? So there's no real feedback mechanism that existed. So it was very sloppy, was the time suck. Took a lot of time to find, excuse me, individuals to refer to. There was no records, there was no feedback mechanism.
And I saw that it could definitely be improved with technology, with what other industries use and how they operate, those best practices. And the technology that was brought in to make the process smooth could be ported over to a new industry, the real estate industry. So that's what we've done.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Well, I think it's really interesting there, John, because, you know, it doesn't matter what industry you come from, doesn't matter what niche you are, doesn't matter what specialty you are. As you've mentioned before, especially with, let's say the tech industry, which is our field, and there's always the referral process, but everything seems to be very loose. It's very ad hoc to it. There's no real structure to it. And if you know, you know, if you don't, you know, it's not very proactive. It's a very reactive way of doing things rather than being systemized from doing it. A lot of that comes down to lack of trust sometimes. Like you just said, your daughter didn't know who to talk to in Florida, had to vet people, et cetera, et cetera. How has your platform changed the way real estate agents think about trust, handoff, visibility now that they've got a referral driven system.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot in that question, whether it's trust, whether it's process so that people would use the Relay application to trust that their client, their friend, their neighbor is going to get the service that they would hope they would get. But in reality, that's what the Relay application truly does, Gary.
It will assure that the client is going to get put into the hands of a highly skilled professional that is tenured experience to get that client the service that they need and the outcome that they desire. It's no different in the health care space. When you need a specialist, you're not just going to necessarily, you know, how do you, how do you pick a specialist? If you're going to have open heart surgery, you're going to rely on your primary doctor to make a referral for you or you're going to do a lot of research on your own to hope that you got the right guy or Gail that's going to perform that procedure on whether or not you live or die. So there's, in the healthcare space, there's a lot done with referrals and how you, how you track them and build your network. We did the same thing with real estate. So the real estate platform that we have with Relay, we literally look at data on every broker, every agent, we literally interview every broker over the phone or one on one to vet them. So we have built a network across the nation of individuals and companies, brokers, if you will, that are the best of the best. They're responsive, they're good, they have all the traits that you'd want, an experience that you'd want. So not only did we have to build the technology, but once we built this technology, we realized that we needed to build a network. And that was something that we didn't expect we'd have to do is go out and vet and interview people, excuse me, so that the technology could be handed off to the best of the best people. So our application is not just available for anybody and everybody. It is by invitation only, so that only the best can utilize the applications that we've created so that when there is a client that needs help, that client gets to the best broker, the best agent in the market, so that that client gets the best outcome possible. It's a little unique, but that's what we've done. And at the end of the day, truly in our heart of hearts, we want to help the individual that is looking to relocate or needs a contractor that they're going to have the Best outcome possible and the best experience. And a lot of times we all chase the dollar, we're chasing the experience, we're making sure the experience is the best, and we know the dollar will follow.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. And this is the key, I think this build it and they would come mentality is only good for so long. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it must be the user experience, it must be a trust element to it that they know if they are using your company, irrespective of the tech, like you said, irrespective of the tech that you use. If you haven't got that human element of trust that's already been built in, there's only so much a tech can do. So I think that's a very, very good point to end on. So, before we finish our interview today, I've got one last question for you, John. It's a little bit of a loaded question. Unfortunately, I do tend to ask my guests a bit of a loaded question. If you could give one piece of advice to a founder that's listening or watching here, stuck in what I call that messy middle, you know, the product is done, but their growth is slow, what would you tell them and why?
[00:22:03] Speaker A: My answer is two things. You have to love what you're doing. So my hope is they're not there because they don't love it. My hope is what they're doing, they're doing something that they love. And if that's the case, you need to persevere. You cannot become lazy. All the traits that define successful entrepreneurs, exercising, getting up early, staying focused, you know, building your network, being responsive, professional, ethical, you know, those, those don't go away. You need to continue to embrace those characteristics, but you need to persevere. You need to continue to get up early. You need to continue to push your, your product forward. You need to continue to not get. You cannot get discouraged, because we all know any entrepreneur knows it's not easy. Everybody thinks, you know, your success was because of, you created this, this, this great widget or this great idea.
The success doesn't come from any of those things. The success comes from the person. It comes from their character, and it comes from their perseverance and their belief because you're going to be confronted with so many obstacles and hurdles and challenges, and the only way you get through all those obstacles and those hurdles and those challenges is to persevere.
And that will get you to the finish line.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Well, what a fantastic piece of insight and experience to end on. John. John, if people want to get hold of you potentially ask what you more about what you do. If they could potentially work with you, what's the best way of getting hold of you?
[00:23:42] Speaker A: I'd say send me an email, Gary. They can send an email to my name is John J O H N and then our company at Relay. And so you'll find that Relay will get autocorrected, but it's really spelled R E A L, like real estate A Y. So it's John at R E a l a y.com and we made a play on words. A referral is a handoff and a relay race, you're running really hard, but if you drop that baton to your runner in front of you, you lose the race. Nobody likes to lose the race. So at Relay we want to make sure that we've built an application that obviously makes that referral process smooth and make sure that we win the race. So, Johnlay.com love to hear from anybody. I'd love to know help in any way possible. And thanks, Gary, for giving me this opportunity.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: Well, John, thank you very much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks, Gary.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Not at all. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for yet another episode of the Growth Focus podcast. If you've been listening for a while or watching for a while, you know what I'm going to say. If you have liked something that John has given you and learned from it, please make sure you like it and comment it so people can think, oh, that's really interesting. That's really good. I can use that, too. But more importantly, please make sure that you share. This is how we grow, by learning from others, by standing on the shoulders of giants who have been doing it long before us. So until the next episode, keep working hard, but more importantly, be profitable. And we'll see you on the next episode. Goodbye.
