Top Trends for Faster SMB Growth with Stoyan Kenderov: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark 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 The Hustle Daily Show. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down top trends for faster SMB growth. To drop these value bombs, I brought Stoyan Kenderov into EO Fire Studios. Stoyan is a global products and technology leader with 30 years of experience, currently serving as the chief product and technology officer for Plastique, a leading intelligent payments platform.

0:32In today's foundation, we talk about how small business owners must find a tool to help them quickly reduce spending time with the financial flow process of the business and go travel a lot, experience different cultures and make friends and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Stoyon and our sponsors. Success Story hosted by Scott D. Clary is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

1:06A recent episode discussing the billion-dollar health secret with the founder and CEO of Whoop is a must-listen. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever said to yourself, one day I will write a book? If yes, then I have an opportunity for you. Author 100 is a 100-day program where I will personally guide you one-on-one to create, write, publish, and market your book. I will provide daily guidance and mentorship every step of the way. Head over to author100.com to sign up for a free call with me to chat about the details. author100.com. Stoyan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:55Morning, John, and thank you for having me. So one thing that most people think differently about is that as a young entrepreneur or as a young professional, you have to focus your career on the one thing that you're best at. And most people think that's how you're going to get proficient. That's how you're going to grow. If you put in your 10 ,000 hours in this one thing, you're going to be great. I have a different point of view and I have a personal experience to back it. I think it's great to focus and necessary for becoming an expert at something, to be successful at something. But I think most opportunities these days are at the intersection of disciplines.

2:37And as an entrepreneur, you want to be somebody who has empathy, but also a vision for how the different disciplines can help improve the outcomes of your startup or venture. and be a developer, be a marketer, but also try operations, sales, risk, strategy. You'll thank me later. Fire Nation, that's why we asked this question because we get a lot of great and different views on this. Really special when you think about how you can apply some of this advice to your life in your business, getting you out of that kind of inside the box thinking. And that's what we're talking about here today is top trends for faster, small, and medium business growth.

3:20And before we actually dive into these trends, I want to start with your backstory, Stoyan. So talk to us about that. Bring us up to date. I was born in Bulgaria when it was really hard to break out and do anything entrepreneurial under communist regime. And I got my first opportunity to learn how to code when I was 14 and the Apple II came out. And I think I went into this time warp tunnel and emerged probably 20, 30 years later. I was learning everything I could about microprocessors, computer architecture, programming languages. I'm very grateful to my parents for supporting that passion. I went and graduated in Germany and started my first company there during grad school, which was Yahoo before there was Yahoo.

4:14And we sold it successfully. And then I helped build two of the very early internet startups in Germany and Austria, moved to Holland and helped build the same infrastructure in the Netherlands. Came to the US in 2002, right when the dot-com bubble was bursting. And I got a chance to work with some incredible entrepreneurs in companies like Intuit and Quicken and LendingClub and Amdocs. I co-founded two other startups along the way and have been working on payments and financial technology for the last 10 years, helping create better outcomes for consumers and small businesses in the financial space.

4:57Well, as I mentioned in the intro, that you're serving currently as the chief product and technology officer for Plastique, which is a leading intelligent payment platform. So right now, what are your biggest goals for Plastique? Our biggest goal is to help small and medium-sized businesses dramatically improve their cash flow and automate their back office payments processes. And we're trying to save small businesses 50 % of their time so that they can invest that against accelerating their own growth. What we do is we help them eliminate payment friction, speed up cash collection, preserve more cash in hand, they'll need it, improve their accounting flows.

5:42And all the while, we provide an incredible real time view into where the money is, how it's flowing, how much working capital businesses can get. And Johnny, you know, small businesses are the lifeblood of this economy. They're the biggest employer. And they're disadvantaged in so many ways. And we think it's about time that somebody provides cash flow automation, cash flow and accounts payable, accounts receivable automation in a way that a large company can afford with a professional CFO or a professional finance team. So that is what we're setting out to do. So Fire Nation, you were getting some of my French background when I tried to add a little teak at the end of plastique, but apparently it's plastic with a Q, so just FYI.

6:33And one thing that we love here at Fire Nation is getting ahead of the trends. We love being cutting edge. So Stoyan, break it down for us. What are the top trends that you're seeing for faster SMB, that small medium business growth? I'll give you the top four trends that we're seeing, one of which is quite unusual. Number one, we're seeing an accelerated transition to digital for small businesses globally, which sounds mundane, but it's anything but mundane. From traditional products and services delivery to digital products and services delivery takes usually a generation or two for a small business to master.

7:19And COVID accelerated and bumped up that agenda by at least 10 years. It's incredible. Every business is trying to go digital. Number two, we're finally starting to see creative financing options for small businesses. They need this because of the cash flow problems that they constantly struggle with. Banks have been notoriously the only resort for SMBs to get financing. But now with the advancements of deep data availability for new underwriting approaches, we're seeing a lot of creative financing options emerge, which is super essential for the survival of startups. And we're seeing one specific trend in that same vein.

8:10credit cards are now starting to play a bigger role for small businesses as a working capital and float instrument unfortunately 85 percent of b2b purchases worldwide cannot be made on a credit card and that is the problem that plastic solves first we make it possible to use a credit card to pay just about anybody anywhere in the world with a credit card regardless of whether they accept or don't. Number three trend, we see e-commerce expansion by low-tech businesses. I'm a member of a karate organization in Japan, very traditional Japanese karate organization, and for decades they have resisted doing anything but in-person training.

9:00Guess what? With COVID, things changed this organization now delivers online training worldwide and they started learning how to offer associated products and services and i think the organization is going to be better off richer with more members worldwide than they ever thought possible and the fourth the most unusual trend um we're seeing a rebirth of the qr code how many of us have gone to a restaurant nowadays and had to scan a QR code to get the menu. And we're starting to see this proliferate now to the surface of checks. More often, QR codes are now printed for easy and error-free scannability of documents.

9:47We think the QR code is finally going to get its fair share in payments as well. Really hope you're understanding these trends because, again, Fire Nation, if you can get and stay ahead of these, then you're going to see your growth for your business explode, ignite as you're going forward here. So anything else before we move forward, Stojan, that you really want to make sure in the trend side that our listeners get? As a small business owner or investor, you want to make sure that the business retains its strategic vendors, pays them fast, gets paid fast, has access to capital, and you want to make sure that you can quickly reduce the amount of time it takes to shift invoices and bills between companies.

10:35You need to save whatever time you can from these menial financial flows in the back office to be able to invest in growing your business and making your customers happy. And you have to find a tool that allows you to do that. And if you are a platform or a marketplace and you have a two-sided market, you want to enable your participants to do the same. Come talk to us. That is why we launched Plastic Connect, the Plastic Accept SDKs to offer these experiences to third-party companies as well. Fire Nation, we're going to talk about the strategic importance of getting payments right in your business.

11:22We're going to talk about some important things that Stoings learned over the years are going to be very valuable for you and your business and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you're a marketer, then you know what it's like to feel like you're moving in a hundred different directions at any given time, like you're spread too thin. Between creating content, launching campaigns, generating and nurturing leads, and more, you barely have a moment to breathe, let alone do your best marketing. What if there was a better way? This is where HubSpot and Breeze, its new built-in AI, come in.

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12:31We've managed a lot of projects here at EO Fire, and one of the most impressive pieces of software we've seen to help you keep your workflow tight is Notion. We first discovered Notion thanks to one of our sponsors, and it made it so easy to track talking points, due dates, deliverables, and more. Every time we had a question about the sponsorship, all we had to do was check Notion and all the details were laid out for us. It made the entire process simple and straightforward. That's because Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects into one space that's simple and beautifully designed. And now it has the power of AI built right inside of it, which means you don't have to jump between your work and a separate AI power tool to make magic happen.

13:09Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger, doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds. Try Notion for free when you go to notion.com slash John Lee Dumas. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com slash John Lee Dumas to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show, notion.com slash John Lee Dumas. Stoyan, we're back. And listen, a lot of people put payments on the back burner. That's just a fact. It seems counterintuitive though, because revenue is the lifeblood of our business. If there's no money coming in, things just start to slow down and dry up.

13:48So talk to us about the strategic importance of getting payments right in our business. I'll start with the maybe most important outcome an entrepreneur needs to create. You need cash flow. This is your first and number one responsibility as an entrepreneur. You need to make sure that you can pay your vendors, get paid back and pay vendors again. And the faster you can do that, the faster you can grow your business. And we know that 75 % of small businesses die because of cash flow problems. And yes, you can ignore that. You can pretend that it's going to fix itself, that it's okay to be handling paper checks and reconciling them against customer payments that you're expecting.

14:39you can pretend that getting paid a little later is okay. And you may hope to get access to capital from a bank. None of these things is true, though. You have to very carefully plan how your customers are going to pay you as fast as possible. You have to make it possible for them to pay you with a credit card if they don't have cash on hand. And you have to make sure that when you pay vendors, you can stretch your payments as farther as possible to preserve cash on hand for payroll and for other things that can only be paid in cash. And in doing so, you want to deploy all the capital options available to you, your cash, your credit cards, lines, your lines of credit from the bank, any form of vendor funding that you can get.

15:37most entrepreneurs don't even get past step one. And it's very important to create that cash flow view and control for your business. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding the strategic importance of getting this part of your business correct. And one thing that I kind of teased, Doyanne, that I want to double back on right now is what would you tell your younger self? I love that question because hindsight is 20-20 and we don't know what we don't know back in the day. But listen, now you know what you do know. So over the years, you've been holding and you've held several executive level positions across a complete variety of industries, which gives you some really cool perspective.

16:18What would you say is one or maybe two things that you would tell your younger self before you started taking on these big positions that you have? What a great question, John. Listen, it's just like I would tell any young person, go travel a lot. Go to Polynesia, go to Australia, go to New Zealand, go to China, experience all these different cultures, make friends, enrich your perspective about this small world of ours. The same applies to careers. Travel your career. It is super important as you grow as a leader, as a human, to develop empathy for those around you in their career tracks. Go experience what that looks like.

17:05Take another job. Don't focus just on one thing that you like or are good at. Take a bit of time to travel your career, to explore. 10 years is a very long time frame. In 10 years, you are going to find out what you're best at, but you will also have now empathy for those around you. It makes you an amazing entrepreneur, a much better leader. Everybody likes that. Everybody wants to learn and work for leaders like that. Now, what else would you tell yourself if you were just starting off on this journey and you're putting yourself in the position of a lot of our listeners who are solopreneurs, who are entrepreneurs, who are very small business owners, some of them are medium-sized business owners, what's something you really want to make sure they get from your expertise and experience that you've gained over the years?

17:55As an entrepreneur, you will be fighting some of your darkest demons and wars of your life. And you want to leverage every ounce of resources you have at your disposal, be it connections or capital. And when it comes to capital, make sure that you have the right tools to put all of your available cash and credit to good use. Create that flexibility early on. Pick the right tools because you're going to need it sooner than you think. And stay organized, minimize time waste in the back office from all these menial financial and payments processes. We're in the 21st century now. There's a plethora of tools that can help you.

18:33So what I want to do now as we start to wrap up here is have you give Fire Nation the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure our listeners get from everything that we talked about here today. Like if we could go back over everything that we chatted about from the very beginning till now, like what is something you want to double back on just to really emphasize that any call to action that you have for us, ways to connect with you, your business, and then we'll say goodbye. I hope every small business succeeds. And the number one reason why they don't is cash flow. And the problem with cash flow is people don't look around for what other forms of capital they can put to good use in their venture, in their startup.

19:18reach out stojan at plastic.com you can follow me on Twitter I'm on LinkedIn very engaged I want to hear from startups and small businesses that are struggling and trying to figure things out and I want to help you automate your payments blood processes get better outcomes deploy more working capital grow faster fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with You've been hanging out with SK and JLD today, so let's keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Stoyan, which is S-T-O-Y-A-N, in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today.

19:58Best show notes in the biz. Stoyan, thank you so much for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Being a pleasure. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Stoyon. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your own podcast? Well, if so, check out our free podcasting course, where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. Freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

20:38Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. A recent episode discussing the billion-dollar health secret with the founder and CEO of Whoop is a must-listen. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever said to yourself, one day I will write a book? If yes, then I have an opportunity for you. Author 100 is a 100-day program where I will personally guide you one-on-one to create, write, publish, and market your book. I will provide daily guidance and mentorship every step of the way.

21:16Head over to author100.com to sign up for a free call with me to chat about the details. author100.com