Making Finance Better for Entrepreneurs with Shopify Finance's Vikram Anreddy

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Truth, Lies, and Work. Today, we'll be breaking down how to make finance better for entrepreneurs with Shopify Finances, Vikram and Ready. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Vikram into EO Fire Studios. He is the head of product and financial services at Shopify, where he helps entrepreneurs effectively manage their money. His team builds banking solutions like Shopify Capital, Balance Credit, and Bill Pay for merchants and the billing platform that powers the monetization of all Shopify products.

0:38In today's Foundation, we will talk about how this can help you as a business owner, as an entrepreneur in your world, in your life. So a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Vikram and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:16Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Vikram, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. John, first of all, thank you for having me here. And hello, hello, everyone. One thing that is important for success that most people disagree with, I'd have to say being unafraid to fail is I think an underrated driver of success especially when you're building something new right I'm a product guy and especially when we build something zero to one I feel like not being afraid to fail just like frees you up to take that bold bet go against the grain and learn and be iterative and get to the answer as quickly as you can and so yeah don't be afraid to fail, to succeed.

2:31Do not be afraid to fail, Fire Nation. Failure is not final. It makes you stronger. It makes you learn things from that mistake. And then you can proceed forward with a pivot, with an adjustment and win, win, win. Because we're talking today, Fire Nation, with Vikram about making finance better for you, for entrepreneurs. And this is with Shopify's finances, Vikram and Reddy. And people that are listening right now, Vikram, this is Fire Nation. These are listeners of Entrepreneurs on Fire. I mean, they are familiar with Shopify because we've been partners for years and years and they hear that beautiful cha-ching sound on many of my episodes because they're sponsoring the shows.

3:09So I would love to do a deep dive into specifically Shopify finance. Go for it. John, as you know, everything that we do at Shopify, we are on this relentless pursuit of breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship, right? And in some ways, that is why I am at Shopify. And that's what I get excited about. And that's what we are doing with Shopify Finance. Let me step back before I go into Shopify Finance. Let me step back on why we built this. Money, as all your entrepreneur listeners know, money is the lifeblood of a commerce business. And managing it well, managing your cash flows well is really important to run your business and grow your business.

3:49But today, unfortunately, a lot of our merchants and a lot of our entrepreneurs are stuck with traditional banks and the very complex, lengthy processes to manage that money. 25 % of U.S. SMBs don't have a business bank account. They manage it all at the personal accounts. 75 % of SMB loan applications are rejected. And there's so much friction in the process. You need to submit tons of paperwork, wait weeks and months to get a loan, give personal guarantees. There's impact to personal credit history and so much, so much friction in the system right now to help merchants manage their money. So that is why we build Shopify Finance.

4:30Shopify Finance brings together a host of powerful tools, like from business banking to loans, credit cards, bill pay, tax management. all of these important tools that our merchants need, all of them into one single place. And this is within the Shopify admin and the Shopify mobile app where merchants already run their business, right? We've built Shopify Finance with two simple goals. Goal number one is to really help merchants and entrepreneurs stretch those cash flows and have access to that cash when they need to invest and grow their business. And goal number two is to kind of save time and reduce the headaches in managing their money by streamlining, simplifying, and automating a lot of workflows like bill pay and tax management and so on.

5:19Because this, again, gives time back to entrepreneurs. We want entrepreneurs to focus on what only they can do best, right? Build the best product and services for their customers and tell their story so that they can get more customers. Fire Nation, I really hope that you're listening and understanding to the goals of Shopify that Vikram was talking about. It's for you to help build where you are now into a more thriving, successful business. We've been using Shopify personally here at Entrepreneurs on Fire for over 10 years. And you know those products that we sell on Shopify, the Freedom Journal, the Mastery Journal, the Podcast Journal.

5:55If I had more products to sell, I would be selling them on Shopify. And you, Vikram, have been talking about some of the components that make up Shopify Finance? I mean, you mentioned biz banking, loans, tax management. Do a deep dive into a couple more that would really be interesting for our listeners, Fire Nation. There are a few things. One, Shopify Finance gives you, in some ways, a dashboard or a central hub where you can manage all your financial needs, right? One is you get real-time insights into your money, payout, sales, and so on. You can access all your accounts. You can access all your transactions and tools from one single place.

6:29So that's number one. And in terms of what are the components, the first thing that I want to talk about is Shopify Capital. It's a loan product, right? In some ways, you can get funding for your business. And we deliver tailored funding offers for each merchant on Shopify. Merchants can apply for this funding within a few minutes and get access to those funds in a couple of days. We automatically approve more than 80 % to 90 % of applications in minutes. okay and this is a really powerful loans product we've given out more than five billion dollars in funding about 300 000 individual financings and it's really something that our merchants love because one of the interesting features is merchants pay back these loans as they sell right on days that you sell a ton you pay a little higher and days that you sell nothing you don't pay anything so it's really a flexible way to access funding and repay that funding The second product that I want to talk about is Shopify Credit.

7:33Shopify Credit is a credit card that we've built really for our e-commerce merchants, right? Like there are lots of SMB credit cards out there. A lot of them merchants can't get access to, but they are built for SMBs in general or small businesses in general. But what we've done is we give rewards of up to 3 % on the things that e-commerce merchants spend on. like marketing on ads on Facebook or Google and so on, right? On things like B2B wholesale or fulfillment and shipping and things that merchants spend on. The third product that I want to talk about is Shopify balance. This is a business banking solution.

8:13Merchants that are selling on Shopify can get paid very quickly on their sales, like as quickly as next business day or even same business day at times, when they use the Shopify balance account, all of their money will earn high APY automatically. You don't have to move the money into any other account. So on, it's automatic. You will earn high APY rewards on all of your money. And the third thing is, with Shopify balance is, when you spend your money using a debit card or a prepaid card, you actually get cash back. Again, something very unique that no other business banking product would give you in the market, And we also have tools like BillPay and Shopify Tax, which helps you simplify your compliance with sales tax rules in various jurisdictions.

9:02So we have this whole suite of tools, again, really built to do two things. One is to help you stretch your cash flows, make your money go further. And second is to save you time and effort and energy in managing your money. Fire Nation, I really hope you understand that this is an opportunity that Shopify is giving you to do some amazing things. I mean, think about that flexible capital. I mean, you don't make any money. You don't have to pay back anything. You make a lot of money. Okay. Let's peel some things off. Let's pay that down. I mean, the Shopify credit, that is such a cool idea. Vickr went through all the pros of that.

9:39I mean, these are the things, Fire Nation, that you can arm yourself with as tools to the tool chest to keep growing your business every single day. And let me tell you, we have so much more value around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful. Thankfully, HubSpot can help. HubSpot just announced dozens of major product updates that'll make impossible growth feel impossibly easy, like Breeze, a suite of new AI-powered tools that deliver personalized insights to level up your work, plus AI agents designed to automate your work for you.

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11:00Are you looking to learn the proven success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

11:35Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly, see thousands of real success stories, and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football great and entrepreneur Tim Tebow today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Tim Tebow and Clay Clark at the next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. All right, we're back. And let's just say that we're successful, Vikram, because, you know, I mean, Shopify gives us all these tools to be so we're working hard, we're listening to entrepreneurs on fire.

12:16So we're getting great content from brilliant, successful, and inspiring entrepreneurs every single day. And now we're making money. But guess what? One thing a lot of us need help with is managing that money. So how does Shopify finance actually help merchants when it comes to managing our money? I'll give you a bunch of examples of how this is, right? Like at the end of the day, entrepreneurs have so many things that they have to manage every day, right? And they have to think about vendors they have to pay, they have to think about sales and telling the right story on their marketing campaigns, building that next product.

12:51There's so many things that entrepreneurs have to do. And one of our goals is to kind of reduce the burden of their burden in terms of managing money. Right. And let me give you a few examples on how we do this. First, with Shopify balance, as I talked about, right? One, when you use Shopify balance for business banking needs, you will get paid very quickly. We will do a bunch of automations. Let me give you an example here. when you collect sales tax, okay, because merchants have to collect sales tax and remit sales tax to the government. And what we do is with Shopify balance, with just a single click, you can set aside that sales tax money in a separate account.

13:37Okay, so that that money is there when you want to remit that to the government. So that is one example where you don't have to worry about and keep track of all your sales tax needs. The second example is bill pay, right? As entrepreneurs grow, as their businesses grow, they deal with a ton of vendors and they have to manage their bills. And as they grow, they also start to get some net terms. Hey, I can pay this bill in 30 days and so on, right? And what we do with bill pay is with bill pay, you can actually manage all of, you can send all of those invoices into a bill pay tool. The bill pay tool will help you streamline basically and make these ensure that these bills are paid on time and the other interesting thing is we'll also help you figure out the right payment method you can choose to pay with a credit card even when a merchant does not right for example again and there's many other ways like let's talk about credit as an example right a lot of e-commerce merchants deal with these vagaries of cash flows there are months where there are cash flow is great months there cash flow is not great.

14:43So on our credit card product, we built this tool where merchants can pay back that credit card at the end of the month, if they want to, if they have the cash. But if they don't, they can pay that credit card bill over time, over 10 months. Again, they can pay that back as a percentage of their daily sales. Again, it's an autopilot. So what we've done through all of this is we've kind of simplified some workflows, streamlined and really automated workflows and built in a ton of flexibility, which means that merchants don't have to spend, are not tied in. They have lots of options and a lot of these options are executed automatically.

15:20So Vikram, as I shared earlier, we've been partners with Shopify for a long time. I mean, they've been sponsors of the podcast. We've worked in many capacities with Shopify. We love Shopify. We use Shopify and you have had many prior financial offerings. So I would love to just kind of break down for my listeners who have maybe heard of those prior financial offerings before. What makes Shopify finance new? Number one is the dashboard that I talked about. It's a central hub built straight into the Shopify admin where you can manage all your financial accounts and transactions and so on. So that's number one.

15:59Number two, we are evolving the Shopify capital product. uh today uh what you have what we've already had in the market is a simple product which you can apply a loan for get that loan and pay back as a percentage of sales and the way the pricing worked on those loans was you there's a fixed fee and merchants love the predictability of it regardless of how quickly you pay back based on how your sales evolve or how slowly you pay back the price was fixed which is great right a lot of our merchants love it uh and it gives you a lot of predictability. But what we are doing is also evolving this product and the pricing structure to help merchants with new use cases.

16:38We are introducing what we call monthly cost loans. What this does is if you need a loan just for a month, you can take this loan and just pay the cost for just one month. And if there are merchants who are growing really fast and really confident how their business is doing, they should take the monthly cost loan option because they will end up paying faster and they will save on the cost as a result. So again, we are building new flexibility and new structures to help our merchants have flexible access, flexible and fast access to funding with capital. So that's the second one. The third one is credit.

17:10Again, I mentioned, I glimpsed on this. Previously, our credit card was in the market, but what we've added is this extra flexibility so that you can pay that, you can choose to pay that credit card bill over 10 months from your daily sales instead of having to pay it on the dot at the end of the month. And the final thing that is new is Shopify balance is growing up. is growing up to serve bigger and more complex merchants. By the way, this is the story that we see on Shopify all the time, right? Merchants start on Shopify very early in their entrepreneurial journey and their businesses grow.

17:43And a lot of times they push our products to grow with them. And that is what Shopify Balance is doing. Shopify Balance is now available to our plus merchants. These are some of the growing and fast growing and complex and bigger merchants. And they get some exclusive benefits with Shopify Balance, like a very high APY, 4.43 % APY rewards on all their money, up to$1 million in daily transfer limits, guaranteed next day payouts, and so on and so forth. So these are some very new and exciting things that are coming to merchants, especially in the US right now. Vikram, we all know and love, by the way, that Shopify is committed to unified commerce.

18:21So how does Shopify Finance specifically take this commitment to even the next level? We are in this relentless pursuit of breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship and commerce. And we've done that when Toby built Shopify and the initial days when we built Shopify payments to make it easier to accept credit cards and accept various forms of payment. right we've done that over time with our Shopify tax product we've done that over time with the Shopify capital but I think at the end of the day what we are trying to do with Shopify finance is give merchants all the powerful tools that they need to stretch those cash flows have access to the cash that they need to run their business because when we do that I think we free up their capacity to build the next product build the find the next set of customers so that they can grow their business, right?

19:13And also, we also make it easier for new entrepreneurs and new humans to take a shot at entrepreneurship and reach for that financial independence and build new commerce businesses. And when that happens, buyers and consumers have more choice and more products in the market. And again, we make commerce better for everyone as a result, right? And that is the mission of Shopify. So Vikram, if we are a Shopify merchant or are fired up to become one now, How do we learn more? What are our next steps? What is your call to action for Fire Nation? I think you should do two things. Number one, you can go to Shopify.com slash finance to learn more about all of these offerings.

19:55And more importantly, go log into your Shopify admin and see what Shopify Finance has an offer for you. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with VA and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And visit eofire.com and just type Vikram, V-I-K-R-A-M in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with links to everything we discussed. One more time, Vikram, what is that URL? Shopify.com slash finance. Vikram, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side.

20:30Thank you so much for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Vikram for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and your fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams.

21:02Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com, UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flippity-flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

21:40Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.