Ep # 126: From Dinner Idea to 250,000 Users: Turning Unused PTO into Meaningful Benefits ft. Rob Whalen (CEO & Co-founder)

[00:00:06] Adil Saleh: Okay, folks. Greetings, everybody. This is Hyperengage podcast, with your host, Adil with you all. And, I know we have, pretty much limitized these episodes that we're doing this year, especially the last quarter because we're trying to make sure that we get the right, amount of, technologies onto our podcast that are making differences, on a very unique, industry spaces and, you know, serving unique problems. And, we're gonna be talking about one of those. Previously, we had a lot of, compensation management platform, platforms that are dedicated for the people, employees, people teams, and all. But this time around, we are, thinking of, you know, how, you know, you can manage or exchange your, PTOs, at any company at a given company. Given the records that I've been researching, atPTO exchange, that's a product that we're looking at. It's more than 7 hundred million PTOs that go go unused every, you know, every single year. And, you know, that's that's a big problem. [00:01:11] Adil Saleh: And keeping it to the IRS regulations, it is it still is a big problem for employee to exchange it in some way that is going to add value. You know, it's not it's not necessary that they need to put it on monetary value, but it can be, it can be, you know, a travel plan, a growth plan, or, a plan that they're thinking of donating. There are so many things that they can do with your PTO, given the platform like PTO Exchange. So today, we have, the founder, father founder of PTO Exchange, Rob Whalen with us. He's not only just the CEO, he's also the cofounder. [00:01:48] Adil Saleh: So he's a long runner, you know, making sure that he's there for a good 11 years and, you know, making this moment. Thank you very much, Rob, for joining. [00:01:55] Rob Whalen: Adil, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. [00:01:59] Adil Saleh: Love that. So, I mean, Rob, I was reading about about you, your background. Of course, some of these companies are big enough. Like Cisco, they have big infrastructure, on the employee level. Teams are globally divided. And, you know, I know that a lot of their employees, like, 60 to 70% are in the US and, you know, they are, you know, sharing employee benefits and all. How did he come up with this idea 11 years back? Like, what was the root, I would say, root cause of, you know, you're thinking, hey. This is something that we can build. There's a huge gap. [00:02:30] Adil Saleh: And Well, [00:02:32] Rob Whalen: I think I think a lot of to build it. Well, I I think a lot of entrepreneurs Whalen they start a company, they they usually have witnessed or been a part of the problem that they're trying to solve. And that's no different than this, where we were having a dinner with a bunch of entrepreneurs at my house, a steak dinner with red wine just to talk about ideas, and 2 of us had left Cisco Systems. We both got a very large check for the paid time off that we had accrued. And, and it wasn't my light bulb moment, by the way. It it was, it was another gentleman. But we were both talking about what if we could use that while we were there? What if we could self direct it? And the initial idea was, wouldn't it be cool to use those those dollars to pay for a vacation that you maybe couldn't afford or maybe a better vacation. And and at that dinner table was an executive from Expedia as well, who's a friend of mine. [00:03:30] Rob Whalen: And he said, wow, that's a kind of an interesting idea. And and then, you know, dinner dinner. We we we talked about a little bit more. We talked about other ideas. And then after that, I just started to noodle on it. From a standpoint of how big is the opportunity and how big is the problem. And, and, you know, that was a long time ago. And and so we just started to think about it, and I realized that it's a big problem. And then I just thought this would be cool. We ran into some issues, obviously, and understanding why it wasn't being done. And and that really has to do with regulations and IRS and compensation and deferred comp and qual and non qual and so on and so forth. [00:04:21] Rob Whalen: Anyhow, so it so the evolution, you know, we all we started the company in 2013, and we were still all working other jobs. Right? We were we were working this in the nighttime, just kind of fiddling around with this project and, like entrepreneurs do when they when they start building things. They don't necessarily just jump off and start the company. They start the company and start noodling it on the idea, And we noodle on it and and started to build it out and the concept around it. It takes, you know, 4 years, and that we had to become experts in in the laws and the regulations to understand how to do it. And, of course, there's people along the road that you meet and you talk to and you listen to that that help you find your way when you're going down these paths of entrepreneurship or just problem solving in general. And, and yeah. So that's that's how the idea started. We've really launched it. [00:05:22] Rob Whalen: I think it was probably 2018 is when we we launched it or 2017, I think. Late 2017 at HR Tech. [00:05:33] Adil Saleh: So you took, like, those long, like, 4 years, you know, make sure that you were, you know, compliant with the IRS and all the regulations, in the United States. [00:05:43] Rob Whalen: And and companies, you know, not all well, a few companies. Companies take time. Right? It all depends what you're building. And, you know, not every company goes from 0 to a 100 in 3 years. Absolutely. You know what I mean? You hear about them, but the reality is most companies don't do that. Most companies Yeah. Take time to build. You know, you you go through your ebbs and flows as you as you're building your company. [00:06:10] Adil Saleh: Mhmm. Cool. And what about Rob, your founding team, back then in 2013 when you started, like of course, it was, like, other people alongside you that had this idea [00:06:20] Rob Whalen: of So, you know, there's this, you know, founders and and partners are interesting. Right? So there was 4 of us that started the company. And, you know, this was my 4th company I'd started, by the way. And so there was 4 of us that started it. There was 2 of us that were really working hard on it at nighttime. And, you know, as options go and shares go, before the 1st year, we 2 of us bought the other 2 out because they weren't working on it. And so it wound up just being me and my the other cofounder. Again, there's 4 cofounders, but we bought most of their shares back so that we can have a company that was sustainable downstream as we started to raise capital and took it to market. But but Todd and I are the ones that worked on it night and day, night and day, night and day. And then, of course, we, like anything, you know, a rolling stone gathers moss doesn't gather moss, but we gathered a few people along the way and and started working on the project with us. And so it just kinda snowballed little by little. And, interesting. I remember before I remember back I remember back when we were when we were doing it. It's so funny you bring this up because I'm just thinking of all the time. [00:07:41] Rob Whalen: We would have Sundays. We would spend Sundays for 5 hours over at Todd's house on it. Right? So that was the one day a week we'd all get together. And, you know, we didn't have an office. Any anybody has that and work on it. Anyhow Mhmm. Those and we did it every Sunday. [00:08:02] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I mean, the founder of like, the bond between the initial founders, it's it's super important and, you know, how you gel in as as people individually and then in in a professional capacity. And, you're you're bought in equally, to the idea. And, you know, of course, it it seems pretty, pretty okay on the paper, but it's so hard to, you know, go in and execute and get the right people that are equally bought in. And they have, they are trying to advance the higher purpose every single day with you. So it's it's it's not an easy job. So, yeah, I appreciate that you've been open to, you know, share this. And and, of course, you you you had the foresight and, you had it in in a longer term view that, hey. These two folks are not maybe they're not equally bought in. They they can do other things pretty well, and let's let's buy their shares. [00:08:50] Adil Saleh: You know? So, yeah. [00:08:51] Rob Whalen: They they both they both kept a percentage, you know. And, frankly, one of the individuals who's still a really good friend of mine, it was really his idea. It was it was his idea. Oh. That and I give him credit for it. Like, it wasn't I mean, it was his light bulb. But you'll find that when you have to actually go and do something and build something, it takes a lot of energy, a lot of persistence, a lot of no's. The second individual who we bought out, he actually is here. He's our CFO, and he's back with us and has been for a long time now. After we raised capital, he came he came back in with us. But, you know, partnerships are you know, people are people. Right? It's not, it wasn't anything personal with the business, and that's just the way it works. [00:09:46] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Keeping it to And [00:09:48] Rob Whalen: we and we all respect each other. Like, we there was no hard feelings when we did it. A lot of people get emotional, and it shouldn't be. Right. [00:09:58] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I mean, there's there shouldn't be any even if you're doing, some crazy idea, you shouldn't be emotionally tied to it. You know, it can be you can wake up to a day where, you know, you you realize that your idea is not good enough. Let's pivot. Let's do something slightly different. This is not right for the market positioning. It doesn't have big addressable market. And if you're emotionally attached to your idea, your product, or even people, that's not gonna work in business. [00:10:26] Rob Whalen: So 100%. What I mean by what I mean by emotional. Right? Because I think you do have to be have passion. You do have to have a lot of passion, and that's an emotional type of endeavor. But, decisions in business shouldn't be emotional. They should be what's best for the business, and driving it. But you do The best part I see have passion to build. Mhmm. [00:10:48] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I mean, also and help it and feed it every day, every quarter, every month, every year, and and and grow it like a baby. You know? A lot of times, you know, we we get to meet a lot of founders, there. Some of them are early sales. Some of them are, you know, big in the game. But a lot of times they think, hey. We are passionate, but today, we are passionate for different reasons, you know, because it has grown over time, over years. And, you know, we are now thinking like in your case, you know, it's it's it's sometimes easy to be passionate because you get to see, hey. There's, like, almost 200,000 employees using our product. You know? They are exceeding their PTOs. It's it's it's serving the cost, and versus, some technology for like, that is more core, like, b to b, businesses. They're, like, sitting for 6 months in the sales cycle, and somebody, you know, you know, gives, like, sticks too long of a sales cycle in the sales cycle. It it becomes so hard to be passionate when there's no motivation coming, in terms of, like, people interacting with the product that you have built. So now thinking of, you as a company you are today, like, you have around, you know, more than 50,000,000 of transactions made, in total and, close to 200,000 employees using product. What was, the red tape like in the beginning? Like, I know that you have, like, some, mid to large, mid midsize enterprise companies using the platform for the employees or employees interacting. How was, the initial challenge with these getting these big logos? [00:12:24] Rob Whalen: Well, first of all, like like you talked about, you know, pivoting. You know, we we came up with our business model, and it it it was you know, we had this pricing model that we thought was gonna work, and we still believe it'll work. We haven't changed it too much. But but we we weren't getting the customers on board like we thought we would. And so we actually had to change it to a transaction only business model. And so by doing that, we then kinda took all the risk as a software provider and a service provider. And so, frankly, we put all of our fees at risk. And by doing that, the customer then said, okay. Since we're not gonna have to pay unless someone uses it, that makes sense. We'll try it. And that's when we started to get logos on board. And and as we started to get logos on board and and the idea was just to get logos, really, and just try and not worry about how many people or employees. But we wound up, you know, getting a few big ones. Nordstrom is one of them. You know, we have Amtrak and but we also have some smaller ones. [00:13:37] Rob Whalen: Right? We started with some smaller ones that were, like, some nonprofits that were just 50 employees. And and so today, we have a range from 50 employees to, you know, 90,000 employees, or I should say 70,000 employees. But but, you know, you have to keep thinking about how do you reduce friction both of your product and your pricing to get users on the platform. And then once you get users on the platform, you have to continue to say, how can we reduce friction to make those transactions? And one of the things that we found or I found along the way is that, along along the way of doing this transition, we decided that one of the core things that we're gonna put into the company was that we will only charge revenue when we deliver value to the customer, and all of our pricing models have to do that. Okay? So there's not there you know, we have several products now, but none of our products charge where we're not where there's not value being delivered. And by doing that, you can actually directly associate that value when you're talking to your customers and when their employees use the platform. The other thing so that reduces your churn of customers because they're not overpaying for something. [00:15:06] Rob Whalen: They're only paying for the value that they receive. Okay? And that and that also goes in line with designing the product and delivering the product. And so when you have that core, you know, that's what your kind of your core mission is, then you're designing product that only delivers value, that always will deliver value, and how do you deliver it more seamlessly, whatever value you're delivering? And by by kind of aligning our our mission and our core with that kind of thought process, we've been able to, like you said, what do we have? [00:15:53] Rob Whalen: A 114 customers signed? Not on our platform. We have a 100 on platform. And, roughly, we have, you know, 250,000 employees on platform. Again, those there's about 35,000 more that we're onboarding, of those 14 more customers that we've got. But, but that's kinda what we've what we've done, and it it it takes time. It's not it's none of it. This is easy. The sales cycle for benefits, and it's probably a lot of sales cycles. These these are enterprise sales, so they're they're long sales cycles. [00:16:34] Rob Whalen: But once you implement and once you get into the organization, you can kinda have this land and expand, and you can continue to add value inside of the organization. And the way we, you know, the way we integrate to payroll systems is very invasive, and we do it very seamlessly. So it's so from that, we can add we can start adding a lot of value with very little, lift to the end customer, downstream, which is is quite interesting. Mhmm. And I think we roll out Very much. Mhmm. [00:17:08] Adil Saleh: I love the way, that you are thinking of delivering value first and making sure that you're pretty much customer centric, and sales will take care of take care of itself. It's just a byproduct. And so what kind of challenges you face, during the onboarding, of these? Let's say, if not, just talk about enterprise because, it can be altogether different case with every enterprise customer. But, being in the smaller segment, like small to midsize segment, how did you, how you're working towards and investing towards, making the onboarding seamless so the time to value is cut short? And you're you're able to deliver value the faster, and then you were able to do it at scale. Did you do any kind of, strategies, anything that you've done that you would love to share? [00:17:58] Rob Whalen: Again, my partner, Todd, he built an an incredible platform, that the that gave us like, one of the we we we knew that there was gonna be a lot of payroll systems. Right? We knew that everyone had a different PTO policy. So we didn't go in building a product that was, you know, like a box. It it had to be customizable almost to everything. [00:18:20] Rob Whalen: And so one of the things that he built was, you know, a back end integration tool that we could integrate to these payroll systems, passing information back and forth either through an API, which API is its own wonderful thing. Most people don't have them, and or through flat file. And we also knew that we had built automation. There was there's and this is just one piece of the kind to your this is one piece to the answer of your question. And then the other thing, because we're very security, we didn't want humans touching the the data. So we had to build a lot of automation. And payroll people don't like to do you know, they don't have to add another job to their to their list. So we tried to automate as much as we could. And, and that's really through technology. And that was, you know, what Todd was able to do for us. And what I think is interesting is, you know, you see companies out there and you they're called there's one called Finch or Merge, and all they do are they're middleware for software companies to integrate the payroll systems and or HRIS systems. We built a tool that's by far better than both of those, but we don't sell it. We just use it for ourselves. But they've done they've done well. They've there's a there's a need for that kind of a tool. But we built it a long time ago, understanding it. Then we went out in partnership with you know, we we have partnerships with most of the payroll companies, so that we can leverage or get some services to understand where they're going. So as these integrations happen, we can improve them. But frankly, that's that's what we built from the integration standpoint. So it's very straightforward for payroll and HRIS systems to integrate with us. [00:20:17] Rob Whalen: And by the way, we can integrate with, and we do, 3 or 4 systems at a time, and we're automatically sending data back and forth and updating data, at a very high rate. I mean, you could have your time and attendance in, you know, Kronos. You could have the balance of your PTO in Workday and your and your payroll as ADP. That that that that could be it. Right? And so you gotta work with all 3 systems. Now the second the second answer second part to your question second answer to the to the question that you're asking is onboarding. So there's 2 fold. There's the there's the integration where you get the integration, but then there's also the onboarding and the training and the messaging of the application and the platform out to the employee base, letting them know that they have this benefit and letting them know that the the value of it and getting them to come in and see and exchange where you can add value to the employee base. Okay? And then we also do a lot of work during that implementation phase, helping our clients design and develop and, deploy the right policies within our engine within within our policy engine. And it's really an intelligence engine that they set up to customize for themselves so that employees can't do certain things. Like, maybe they don't want them to go below 40 hours or maybe, you know, we wanna make sure that they don't overpay into their 401 k. So, you know, there's a lot of intelligence behind it, and we work with them on setting up a good a good policy for, for their employees so that, it meets all of their needs. [00:22:03] Adil Saleh: Interesting. And I'm thinking about, like of course, then all these questions will be more towards, like, how you're scaling the SMB and mid market, because, automations come into play in this, you know, hybrid touch model. So what kind of account management did you have post sales for for the smaller and midsize, companies? And what how you're leveraging data, investing into data because, of course, it's it's it's AI evolution at its peak, and it's growing really, really rapidly. And every company is trying to, especially in the post sales segment for midsize, trying to do more with less and, you know, implementing technologies and, you know, making people smart with data signals and, you know, having these, these signals to perform, efficiently and giving them right amount of, amount of information so they can proactively engage with the customer. [00:22:52] Adil Saleh: So what kind of system do you have in post sales for SMBs? [00:22:58] Rob Whalen: So every client has a customer success manager that's assigned to them, and then we meet with them on a quarterly basis. And they can pull their own reports, but we meet with them on a quarterly basis to share with them what's going on in the system, the engagement levels, so that if they want to do some what we call radio dial to improve the benefit, to improve engagement, as you go through the year, you can do that. And then, you know, that's all you know, everything's data driven. Right? So so we collect everything. We collect all the engagement. We collect all the the information there, the PTO bank, how much is used, how much is taken, and we just review it with them and and try and make intelligent decisions around that. We're also using the data to let people know about the benefit. Right? So if the policy or this client or this customer is that they can't go below 40. [00:24:02] Rob Whalen: Well, it takes time to accrue 40 hours. Right? So maybe the Q1, from January to March, you don't have PTO that you can spend because you're accruing up to that 40 hours. But after that, right, once you're over it, we'll notify you and say, hey, Adil, you have 8 hours you could spend or put into your 401k. And and, again, building engagement, but mainly building awareness about the benefit. Okay? And that's and that's all benefits. You probably don't know this, but 30% of your compensation is benefits. And roughly, you use only 30% of it, which is kind of interesting. PTOs That's that's on average, you you accrue 3 weeks, but you don't use a week. Okay? And then the old statement is, you know, there's 65% of America can’t afford a $500, you know, expense, emergency expense, but yet they have $3,400 sitting in a PTO bank that they cannot access. That could help them bridge over, those troubled times. And what's been filling that gap today is earned wage access is 1. You know, payday loans is another. [00:25:20] Rob Whalen: Right? So those are the things that have been filling that void. But it's kinda ridiculous because that just puts you in a in a worse financial position. Whereas if the employee could actually access that accrued time that they've already earned, just like earned wage access, but it's not getting into their cash flow, it would be very interesting. You know? It it actually is a better financial tool to to service that need. It's a better financial wellness tool, than the others is what we believe, and we actually see it. Mhmm. [00:25:54] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I love the fact that you're, trying to work within their workflows, and, you're making sure that you're well compliant with, with their technologies or their systems and processes, whether it's small, midsize, or large enterprise. It's important for you to, you know, make sure you assign a dedicated customer success manager, make sure they know their signals, upon different touch points that they get notified, and then they, you know, take proactive action. All of this is like, if this is in your industry, 60, 70% automated, that's a win, even for the, for the midsegment. It's a huge win. And, thinking about, you know, having and having an opportunity to figure out, hey. This is like, how do you, basically, I'm curious. Like, how do you guys, measure expansion opportunities, on one of the accounts? I'm just talking about not not the LPA. Just talking about where your, your price points are more, like, transactional and, you know, with employee, this is a different case. Like, number of employees that you get set triggers, you can you can set signals. Hey. These are number of employees getting free. So, ultimately, it can be an expansion opportunity. But when it comes to, this program, like PTO, specifically, how do you guys are measuring expansion and, of course, trying to make sure that, there's you have an eye out for the for the churn and why people are not interrupting, with the platform. [00:27:16] Adil Saleh: You must have sent, set up some signals inside the platform. Would love for you to even expand a bit. [00:27:24] Rob Whalen: So with the PTO exchange platform, we have what you call plans, and the plans are there's kind of 2 categories, social well-being, and then there's financial well-being. And the social well-being is the ability to take your PTO and put it into a nonprofit. So 1,700,000 nonprofits. So we integrate to the IRS’s database there. And we and you could take 2 hours of your time Adil and give it to a nonprofit. You could also share it with another colleague. Okay. So, you could donate it into a pool. Let's say you used all your PTO up. You know, you or your wife had a had a medical need, cancer, whatever it might be. You used all your PTO, you need more. It's a way for, a company to build community within their own call you know, organization. And, again, it doesn't cost them anything. Right? Because you're just sharing your time. [00:28:19] Rob Whalen: That's a group. And it builds a real good community. So those are the social well-being pieces. And then or the plans. And then you have the financial wellness plans, which are, you know, being able to catch it up for emergency, 401k, being able to put it in your HSA, pay down student loans, put it into the 5 29 plan, things like that. And when you talk about how do we, you know, look at that and expand? Well, we have clients that only do the social well-being stuff. Right. That's that's what they want to use us for. They only have the giving and the sharing turned on. And the goal is to to find value for them to turn the others on. You know? And so, again, that customer success person works with our clients to take the data and let them understand what our other customers are doing and the value that they're they're getting. And so we'll expand the value across, through plans across the organization that way. Okay? And and then we'll also upsell with the LPA. Like, sometimes companies wanna do a loyalty or reward, and the LPA is very customizable to achieve both of those things. So now you're running one platform with with 2 of these thing 2 of these benefits on it. And and so we we work with our clients and literally model both financially, and they can actually get a better internal rate of return using PTO exchange and sometimes how they set it up than they can on others. So there's all there's actually a return on investment by paying your PTO loans down or paying your liability down at a lesser than rate than what it's accrued at. And, in fact, we have one large health care organization. I think they're about 12,000 employees. They use this and they actually get a return, and that return on investment they use to fund other benefits for their employees, which is quite interesting. And so we we again, we have all this data where we're looking at it. We we work with our clients and we show them how they can design a policy or a plan or use our product to address you know, maybe maybe they are trying to save money. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're just trying to extend benefits. Right? So it all depends what the client is trying to achieve both financially and within their, employee organization. [00:30:57] Adil Saleh: Mhmm. Interesting. Interesting. Rob, I would love to also touch a bit on the on the last segment that is more towards, like, go to market. I know that acquiring logos is not easy. Sales cycles are big. It's more like relationship with. It's more like, you know, it's it's a digital footprint that comes into play, do networking and all. So what kind of, GTM motion you have towards the enterprise segment? I'm sure you're driving a lot of sign ups and inquiries, via web and SEO for smaller segments. But, you know, when it comes to enterprise, what is, what is your go to market strategy? [00:31:34] Rob Whalen: So for the it's kind of interesting. We obviously have a a couple of lead generation solutions that we use to drive what we call first meetings, you know, because we still are a new benefit and people don't know about us. And and so it's a lot of it's education. But, you know, one of the things that we've started to do is there's we started to use some AI solutions, which are kind of interesting we're playing with, to drive awareness and in-person meetings. But, you know, and those those are really towards the mid market. And mid market to us might be enterprise, so mid market is 500 to 10000. So just just so you know, over 10,000 employees, those are true enterprise, and we those opportunities that go to market is really through partners that we and that have signed up with us. And so we have partners going in and selling our product. They have the relationship already. They're already selling 1 or 2 benefits already in there. [00:32:37] Rob Whalen: It may be a benefit admin platform like Alight Solutions or business solver that is, you know, the the client is using that platform, and they're able to take us in and sell us. So, you know, our go to market is a little bit twofold. We have a lot of channel partners that sell our product. We also have payroll partners that are selling our product. And then, obviously, we have a direct Salesforce that sells our product too. And most of all the channel has to go through our direct anyway because we know how to sell our product. We know the value. And so, you know, there is some it's new and complex in in some way. So having us involved in how help, really kinda carry that opportunity to to the end is important to us. Today, we're 60% direct, 40% channel, but I believe by mid next year, it'll flip. And so we'll see 60% channel, 40% direct. [00:33:44] Adil Saleh: Mhmm. You know? So we'll That's a huge commitment. [00:33:47] Rob Whalen: Well, I think once we get there, I think you will see, you know, I I I think you're gonna see an inflection in the business. And I think that's what we'll we'll witness, an inflection in the business from that standpoint. And then, you know, it's as you get more and more clients and more and more employees on the platform, it gets easier and easier and easier. And, you know, we're we're focused on health care and retail and a few of the other places, the frontline worker, where our benefit it seems to be a little bit more seamless, the sales cycle. And, I mean, right now, it's kind of interesting. He's you talk about data. So with the 98 clients that we have, we have roughly 3 quarters of a $1,000,000,000 sitting on there. They have roughly 3 quarters of a $1,000,000,000 sitting on their balance sheet. Okay? And roughly 218,000,000,000 of it. [00:34:50] Rob Whalen: Right? Actually, I shouldn't say that. Not 280,000,000, 240,000,000. So about 750,000,000, 240,000,000 is available to utilize, right, with the policies that they have in. So it it mimics what we're seeing in the full industry as well. And, and again, it's always nice to have a hypothesis and then have the data to back it up and and the real world. And so that'll continue to grow. And I think by, you know, end of next year, we'll have probably a 1,000,000,000 and a half dollars on those PTO banks. And you could call it assets under management because, you know, our system is hooked into those tools, and it's quite interesting to see the value be utilized. You know, we we get to see when we get to see in June July when people take vacations and the bank lowers. And it's quite interesting to see, a PTO bank as one, you know, that's worth 750,000,000 go down to 690,000,000. And then over the next month or 2, it accrues back up there, which is kind of interesting. So we we find it very interesting all the utilization tools that we see, because we see when when people's pay rates go up, we see it when they go down. And we don't see it individually. We see it on a on a kind of on a large Saleh, but it you know, it's data is a a crazy thing, and I think it's really I understand. [00:36:18] Adil Saleh: Absolutely. And, you know, this, like, especially, to, your cofounders, more like, building the product and experiences in the product. He would have loved to, you know, see these kind of data points and see how we can even make a better experience, you know, you know, for the customer success feedback loop that you're getting on every QBR every quarter. That's gonna have a great deal, building the right product and doing the right pivot. So any any decision that you're gonna be making, later this year or early Q1 regarding, you know, product enhancement or any any feature that you're really excited for? [00:36:52] Rob Whalen: Well, we launched, we just launched our savings exchange, which is, kind of an emergency savings piece to our product where people can take their PTO and put it into, an emergency savings. And we're gonna be leveraging a lot of the secure 2 o, legislation so that someone taking their PTO, but, you know, paying down their student loan can match it into their 401 k, those types of things. But in general, we're just looking at building out more capabilities around financial wellness as as they get access to this liquid benefit and, and building a better experience around that. So that's that's where we're headed, probably in the next, you know, 4 to 6 months. Mhmm. And we have a lot of uptick on that savings exchange. Right? We there's a lot of interest in it. And because we're tied to the payroll system, we can we can do a lot of interesting things within the PTO exchange as well as just saying, hey. Do you wanna take $10 out of your paycheck and put it into the savings exchange? You can do that. Right. Okay. Great. Fantastic. Be able to make and and then be able to make payments or pay a credit card offer or save it Mhmm. Mhmm. And and drive [00:38:08] Adil Saleh: I mean, making it an ecosystem so people, you know, get, like, end to end solutions within your platform and, you know, they can complete the entire setup. All great. Great. Yep. So now this last 10 minutes, would appreciate if you just tell us a little bit about your operating principle, that team, what kind of culture, PTO Exchange and the company has. I'm sure that you you must have had hard times, during the COVID COVID days of 1a half, 2 years. It was, one of the hardest, for, you know, employee engagement and, you know, culture and, you know, making sure you, you know, instill the right DNA. So how being a senior, I'm I'm gonna learn a lot from you as well. So how you go about, you know, building right culture and right DNA and making sure it articulates from from Mhmm. Top to bottom? [00:38:57] Rob Whalen: I think transparency well, there's a there's a there's a couple of key things. Right? Transparency is 1. Honesty and kind of hard honesty. Right? [00:39:11] Rob Whalen: Like, you don't hide the honesty. It's it's, you know, people sometimes don't like honesty because it's not fun, and and you have to have that in your culture, respect for one another. Right? So we we all respect each other. But, at the end of the day, it's about the business, and so let's not take it personal. It's about building a business. But the other thing is respecting people's time and understanding that, you know, your most valuable thing is your time and that your employee is giving you their time or spending their time there, you know, and you're paying for that. Don't get me wrong. You're paying for that. But but, you know, that's a very valuable thing that they're willing to give you in in exchange for, you know, a paycheck. But we, you know, during the during the COVID times, we had to make some adjustments. Right? We we got out of our lease. We worked from home. We we we would get on Zoom meetings and just kinda be in the same Zoom meeting. [00:40:25] Rob Whalen: It wasn't a meeting. That's kinda was the office, where everyone would would just land, so you would have this ongoing Zoom meeting all day. And, you know, that helped. We had parties on Zoom. You know, we would we would all go out and get a a our favorite drink, and we'd we'd have parties after work to to kinda keep the camaraderie. And then just met outside at the you know, you could be outside in alumni clearly. Here in here in Seattle, we'd be meeting under the shelter or whatever. But I think the the other thing that I found from a, a leadership standpoint is showing up is 95%. And I know everyone believes in the work from home or the I don't not believe that, but I think that that's could be secondary. I'm in the office every day. I love the office. I show up early. I go home late. People like to be around that. Like, the other thing that so if I'm doing it, other people do it, and they kinda mimic the executives. And so if the executives are showing up and inside, they will show up and and be inside. And we've we've also set up the office to where the executives and the customer success and implementation and kind of this triangle and then the engineering. And the engineering can hear the customer success and the implementation going on, what's going on with the customers. And it's really important for engineers to do hear that even though they're coding. Some might have their headset on, but they do hear it, and there's a lot more interaction. And so, you know, for an engineer who's building a product to know that someone's using their code and using it is really thrilling. [00:42:27] Adil Saleh: That's the best feeling. Yeah. That's the best [00:42:29] Rob Whalen: of it. Best feeling. But also to know when there's a problem with it. You know, they they can fix it quickly. And and, like it back to the transparency. Right? In a start up, you're raising money. You're out of money. You're trying to get a customer. You know, your revenues aren't matching your expenses. None of that should be hidden behind a cloak. It's it should be in the open because these employees and startups are risking their time, their most valuable thing. And and they need to know the risk and they need to be comfortable with it. And and if they're not, then then that's fine. But there's not one employee that will tell you that they were surprised when we had to cut salaries or something way back when because it was transparent. And there's, you know, that's just the way I I stated. And and that's kind of that hard honesty, and that's kind of it. So that's the culture. You know? Right? Mhmm. And and then and then it's it's like a family. It it is like a family. You know? It's kinda like it's it's raising a family. You know? Everyone has to be honest and and committed. And business [00:43:50] Adil Saleh: is like a baby. Product is like a baby that you're consistently feeding and making it strong, making it all, making sure it's healthy and all. So I love the analogy that you're using. Perfect. Rob, it was, I cannot say it more. It was such a nice having you around and, you you sharing your deep insights, and I love the way that I love talking to old people because I learn a lot. Because quite quite honestly, primary reason of starting out this podcast, I'm I'm, like, 135 episodes down, but I'll still say this. I learn learn from people, learn from, you know, people that have built different technologies, different teams, and they're trying to instill different cultures, across people and and making the best, work out of people. So that's, that's that's what I've learned from you, you know, you being there long enough. So I wish you good luck with all that you're doing, for the rest of this year and early Q1, and wishing you all the best with all the, things that you're trying to implement product wise and to build a better solution, to advance this cause because I know that this is big of a enough of a problem. A lot of companies, they're not aware, aware of, to be very, very honest. And, so many of employees, they're not aware of, like, the kind of benefits that they can have. So, like you mentioned, your marketing sales in this industry can be driven by education. You know, so it can be bigger than sales and anything else, and everything else will take take care of itself. So one more time, I really appreciate your time, Rob. [00:45:14] Rob Whalen: Thank you, Adil, for helping me on. [00:45:16] Adil Saleh: Perfect.