[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Aubrey Amatelli. Did I get it right?

[00:00:36] Aubrey: Yes,

[00:00:36] Jay: Perfect. Founder and CEO of PayRio, the first payment provider exclusively focused on alternative medicine.

Such a tight tagline. I love it very much. Aubrey. Hello. How are you?

[00:00:48] Aubrey: Great. How are you?

[00:00:50] Jay: I'm good. I'm good. so tell me what that means in layman's terms. what is the first payment provider exclusively focused on alternative? Like what do you guys do, you know, non markety speak.

[00:01:05] Aubrey: we do payment processing for cannabis psilocybin, CBD, all of the alternative medicines. I like to call 'em that. They are medicines in my mind. But, you know, our primary customer, our dispensaries across the country, so they use our payment systems, but we have a ton, a really. Big growing e-commerce division as well that does the CBD and THCA and all of the alternative cannabinoids. Yeah,

[00:01:34] Jay: well, where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:39] Aubrey: I think it did. I grew up in the Silicon Valley, so Jose, California, the home of, you know, Google and Facebook and so I grew up there. I've always had the startup startups in my blood. but also being part of California cannabis is. Huge in California. It's, I think, where some of the best cannabis has grown in the world, in the Emerald Triangle up north. And so I, you know, have been involved in cannabis since 2012 in California, which is a long time. But I had a traditional career at JP Morgan, which essentially was the company that purchased a startup I was working at in the Silicon Valley. So I'm getting back into the startup world by launching pay and then kind of mirroring, you know. Marrying my can, my love for cannabis and alternative medicines together.

[00:02:28] Jay: Did your buttoned up JP Morgan friends go, what? What are you doing? What are you, was it a leap from, you know, traditional finance stuff to kind of a little more of a, you know, I hate the word taboo, I'm gonna say it, but just, you know, like, whatever, like a different, something that's not entirely mainstream.

how did that transition kind of in your professional life go?

[00:02:52] Aubrey: That's a great question because it took me months to like come out with Pay Rio. Like we, you're talking about first customer. It was like I had the website, the business I was working and even had. A few customers before I was ready to launch on LinkedIn because I was so, you know, JP Morgan is. They follow the federal guidelines, right? And so cannabis is federally illegal. That's how they feel. Even though they actually are a big supporter of cannabis in Canada, which is very interesting. But we could never really talk about cannabis. I didn't discuss consuming cannabis with my JP Morgan crew of for over a decade.

And then the moment I. Came out on LinkedIn, I had like a flurry of messages from my colleagues, like, oh my gosh, I, you know, eat gummies, or I make cookies, or, oh, this is so cool. So it was very eye-opening for me that we kind of kept in our JP Morgan, bubble. But the moment I came out, I was so scared that I would be, ostracized or, judged.

But it was actually the opposite. I was welcomed by,

[00:03:55] Jay: I love that

[00:03:56] Aubrey: yeah.

[00:03:57] Jay: you love when you take the risk and it wasn't as bad as you thought. It's always a, it's always a good feeling. so where did the love come from? I mean, there's probably obvious answers, but just in generally speaking, like, where,how did you get passionate about this industry?

[00:04:14] Aubrey: Well, so I, it's been, I've been around cannabis, you know, my whole like high school life. I actually wasn't a big consumer though back in high school or college because I was a big time soccer player. I played soccer in college, so I was very straight edge and just wanted to play D one and, you know, very competitive, win all my games, et cetera.

So it wasn't until. After college, after my MBA where I met my kiddo's father, believe it or not, and he was a, just a home grow, like a California grower before it was legal actually. So very interesting outta Santa Cruz and I just, I. You know, I learned to just love what the plant does, and I saw the industry go from kind of being illegal in California to being medical, to being recreational and just how the, you know, the home growers, like the organic home growers, how they would be able to make a lot of money to a little money.

So I've seen the industry change since 2012 and when I was launching my. The payment company. I wanted to focus in on high risk industries like CBD and cannabis that don't have many payment options, and figure out a way to help them and be part of the growth of the industry. I.

[00:05:28] Jay: Well, I mean, it is an interesting question, like why, like what? It's been probably a dumb question for somebody who's in finance, but like why are they risky if it's legal? And there's like, you know, dispensaries and everything, like, you know, you're just, you're driving down the street and you see 'em and there's billboards and everything.

Why would it be risky from a payment processing perspective, for companies to, to be involved in that?

[00:05:54] Aubrey: So it's because of the federal. Regulation. So it's federally illegal, so each state is able to put it on the ballot and make it legal for medical or recreational or both. But because the federal government deems it as you know, a schedule one substance or you know, federally legal, then. Basically our governing body payment company's governing body are Visa and MasterCard.

So those are who we look to for the rules and regs. And Visa and MasterCard. Look to the federal government. So until it's federally legal, visa and MasterCard will not, don't want anything to do with cannabis from a, you know, traditional. Credit and debit card processing solution. We have to use very unique ways like the ATM rails that don't run on Visa and MasterCard or different wallet technologies.

So all of our payment solutions are out of the box. very interesting solutions that creative ways to achieve, a giving consumers the opportunity to use a card rather than cash at a dispensary.

[00:06:58] Jay: What would be some sort of law that would greatly impact you negatively? Business wise, you know, kind of some blanket thing that maybe you're, maybe doesn't keep you up at night, but that you're, you know, concerned about. And the other side, like what's something that would open things up for you guys specifically?

Maybe not Visa, MasterCard, because like that would maybe be just main direct competition that you don't wanna deal with, but like, what are both sides? Like what's something that you're kind of afraid of in the industry, but something that would help you guys? Law and it all is like, based on legality, I guess, at this point, or based on your question, the answers to the question.

what would be your answer to both of those?

[00:07:34] Aubrey: That does keep me up at night, right? Because when I started Pay Rio, a hundred percent of my business was focusing on dispensaries and helping dispensaries accept credit and debit cards. When cannabis is federally legal. That entire part of my business will go away because their point of sale systems are going to have the payment as part of the checkout process.

So when you go to dispensary, the bud tender rings up the goods just like at a grocery store, right? And then when they finish up, ring up the goods, the amount populates on the terminal at the grocery store, and then the customer just taps their card and goes, that is not an option right now at dispensaries. So that's called like an integrated payment solution. When it's federally legal, all of the point of sale systems are just gonna integrate payments, and they're not going to need me with this separate terminal that the staff have to plug the amount into.

So. So as a year goes by and our revenue's all tied up in dispensaries, which is amazing, hypergrowth, I realize that I need to prepare for the future of that happening, which we don't know when it, it's going to happen.

I would say two to three years away, maybe more, maybe less. You never know. It's always 

[00:08:50] Jay: definitely not. It's definitely not in these next three years. Don't think

[00:08:53] Aubrey: Probably not. Right?

[00:08:55] Jay: I.

[00:08:55] Aubrey: And so, so I've actually have two parts of my business now, and that's really where we expanded to CB. D. And legal substances that are alternative medicines, like they're not cannabis, but CBD also comes from the hemp plant. And so we have a large growing e-commerce business. So, businesses that sell CBD or even psilocybin spores or cannabis seeds or even little clones that you can buy and, you know, grow at in your backyard. Those businesses are, believe it or not, federally legal. And so we can process payments in those businesses and not ever worry about losing that part of our business. So it's been a big goal of ours over the last, year and a half, two years to. You know, bifurcate our business and now we are about 50 50 of each.

Still growing rapidly on both sides, but we have this safety net that helps me sleep at night because without that, it was a little difficult. I know, and I always talk to dispensaries. I know that eventually they might not need us, but for now they do. And

they, they needed us, so yeah.

[00:10:03] Jay: Just a, an industry question. What is the THCA and all the delta? Like what the hell is all that stuff? Does it work? Like, is do you get high off? I just don't. I see it, you know, you see at the shops and the CB, D, and it's the places that aren't legal have that stuff. What the hell is that stuff?

[00:10:19] Aubrey: So it's a loophole. You're gonna, you're gonna laugh.

THC is above point. So, cannabis plant is above 0.3%, THC. the cannabis plant gets you high, you get a buzz. THCA essentially is a hemp plant where they take the crystals off of the cannabis plant and they sprinkle them on a hemp plant. So in itself, it's below 0.3% THC, which is federally legal, but the moment fire touches those crystals, it turns into cannabis. so it's a

[00:10:57] Jay: The industry where the

[00:10:58] Aubrey: dispensaries are facing tons of regulations and taxes. But if you just. Take the cannabis plant, you know, do you do some science? I don't know exactly what, but essentially extract the crystals and put it on a he hemp plant and light that on fire. Then it becomes THC. So you can sell that online and you could ship it to almost every state right now. so that's what, you know, THCA is. and Delta, the deltas are more, you know, created.

They're more synthetic, but the THC is. An actual plant that's just, I might be getting, so anyone listening in the industry like email me if I'm getting that wrong. But essentially that's

[00:11:36] Jay: I'm gonna take it as a fact, so I'm gonna tell everyone that's what I always wondered what the hell that was. So, all right. So I have like, so many different questions from different areas because it's just such an interesting combination of like a very buttoned up, stiff like problem.

And then like in an industry that's very, I mean, if you wanna go the other way, like shirt's off, right? I mean it's just like a different kind of vibe than finance. But, let's talk about your first customer. Like, so you talked a little bit about you jumped outta JP Morgan and you started to, you know, kind of figure out what it was you wanted to do, you know, building this thing on the side.

how did you do that and how did you do that? You kinda mentioned you were in the closet, you know, when it comes to letting anybody know what was going on, walk me through like being a nine to fiver and then going like, I have this idea for this thing that can kind of take some of the pieces from my previous life, which is, oh by the way, what I like preach all day every day is like take the pieces from what you have done experience wise and apply those to something in your own business where you can kind of be the specialist, which is just a very cool thing that you did.

Talk to me a little bit detail on that, and then like, how did you get your first customer as a, you know, when the first iteration of the business?

[00:12:44] Aubrey: Totally. And it was interesting. So I was transitioning out of, actually after JP Morgan, I went to a startup for a year and that was, I was the chief revenue officer of a publicly traded FinTech. And that was an incredible experience for me, learning that my skills at JP Morgan.

Translated over the startup world, so fabulously, right?

I was able to bring all these ideas that I'd been living and breathing for over a decade into a startup and really make a difference. And that's where I got the itch. Like I was ready to start my own company

at that interim company as a CRO. I was, The only female in the entire C-suite and board.

And so part of me was really, I wanted to, I could do it and I wanted to show other women that they could do it as well. So

[00:13:30] Jay: that's why I started Pay Rio. But as I was transitioning out, I actually hired a cold caller from the Philippines and she just. Messaged me on LinkedIn and I had the website and the concept.

[00:13:43] Aubrey: I had the relationships in place and now I needed to get the customer. So I purchased a super long customer list and had her cold calling every single day, all day, and then setting appointments for me, and that's when I be, so then I would take the appointment, give them a call, and. Initially it was actually in the CBD world, so it was calling CBD companies and an overwhelming realm response was, we have payment processing for CBD Square, does it? We need payment processing for our cannabis dispensary. So fast forward, I found a cannabis payment processing partner and was able to take one of the, you know, cold calls at that time, I actually had the cold caller and I had a couple 10 99 employees that were working for free commission only. They were super passionate about cannabis as well, and we were able to get a small dispensary in Oklahoma. And they had two locations and we got on with the customer. They're still a customer of ours today,

which is really amazing. And just with cold calling efforts, hundreds of calls, and it was the three of us we would meet in the morning at 9:00 AM we get a game plan. We cold call all day, and then we meet at four and talk about our success.

And we did that for. Three months straight. Took us a couple months to get a customer, but once that one cus first customer came, then it was, you know, 

great 

[00:15:07] Jay: You doing the cold calling too?

[00:15:08] Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. We're building a business from, you know, no one knew

[00:15:15] Jay: now, I mean, God bless you, man. I mean, I, geez, I just, I sweat thinking about it. I think I had like a whole, like I read, fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blo, who's like one of my favorite books. And it's like, you know, just pounds it into you. That cold calling still works and it's still the way to go and.

I did it for like a day. Now when I say a day, I maybe called five people, and I like, I hated every, I couldn't even, I think I stay up at night now thinking about those five calls that I'm, I didn't even get anybody. I just, it was like voicemail. I still hated it so much. So good for you. and you bought a list, which is like a very smart thing I think to do that gets frowned upon a lot, especially because of just the data.

Consumption and data, like, you know, gated warehouses we live in where it's like they want you to buy, you know, contact information from ZoomInfo for $80,000 a year, not a list of like the exact companies you need. And people kind of shoot on that, to be honest. They're like, that's not the way to go and it doesn't work and blah.

So I am very, glad to hear that. Like it's a good, it's a good thing to have a very targeted list of like potential clients and like you can. Slice that phrase however you want. But if it's a good list of like real places that you want to make, do business with final list sometimes is like the way to go.

I mean, your alternative would've been to like make the list yourself, which would've just extended the process out another couple months. So, 

[00:16:35] Aubrey: and we're actually pretty scrappy. Some of the states list, all of the owners of the dispensaries, their email and their phone number. So the Oklahoma one was actually, because we found in the state website a list of all the dispensary owners. And in Oklahoma there's thousands. They just gave away like dispensary licenses, like candy.

So we had,we got to start with a couple thousand person list as well in Oklahoma. Along with the CBD one we bought, but

we were scrappy. I mean, we were, I'm, the self-funded pario is 100% self-funded and, we didn't have any money. It was all my personal money going out the door at the, you know, the beginning.

But that's the way it had to be. And it worked out.

[00:17:18] Jay: great. Love it. so, you know, how do you think of. Personal brand versus Pay Rio brand? Like how much are you out there, you know, being Aubrey versus like, you know, and your thought leadership stuff on finance and alternative, you know, payments for alternative medicine, how much of that is driven through the Rio brand, the Pay Rio brand, or yourself, like you got, do you put a bunch of time and thought into like you want to be, you know, your own kind of thing?

Or is it all channeled through the brand right now?

[00:17:49] Aubrey: So it's actually when I started the company. That's exact. I thought about that from the beginning. Payment companies are old and no one wants to talk to them. And you know, it just, it's hard when you see a payment company, you never feel like you can talk to the owner or, you know, they, it, they just seem archaic back in the day, 

And so I launched Pay Rio. I wanted to be the face. Of the company and essentially be open and talk to all of my customers or people interested. And so pay is an extension of me. Like if you look at the website, it's fun, it's bright. it's hopefully you feel like you could, it's approachable. Our company, Instagram, I run it to this day personally, it's like part of you get a little bit of my life, a lot of bit of business, and so I.

From a brand perspective, I wanted customers to feel comfortable talking to us and know that they could reach out to any of us at any time, which is completely different than most of the payment companies out there. So yeah, that's actually one of the foundational piece pieces of our business. It's, you're getting to know an extension of me and.

And all of my employees are as well. They're all, people through my network. I have my best friends from high school working. My best friend from college is running the sales team. My very first employee, he was my neighbor growing up. I used to babysit him. So like my entire company is an extension of me as well and my network and just, it's like a big, you know, happy family.

[00:19:16] Jay: Wow.

who is your customer now? Versus when you started, is it the same exact, I mean, I know we, we heard a little bit of the pivot from ccb, CBD, but just the people that you're going after and the people you're talking to at those places, is it the same person or what have you kind of changed or learned over time from when you got that first customer to how you're getting the customers today?

[00:19:38] Aubrey: So our first customer was a mom and pop, you know, a couple transactions a day, and now we're talking to large multi-state operators

that have c plus locations that are publicly traded. So we've grown. A lot since 2022. And a lot of that is brand recognition. So, our brand is now recognized in the industry.

We're involved in all of the biggest industry events, sponsoring or attending. And then a big piece of our business right now, the OR growth, is organic through customer referrals. We do such a great job with our customers. We have fair pricing and we have 24 7 service. So our team. Always picks up the phone.

And a lot of, like the, a very large company just reached out to us saying that they were referred by a couple other, you know, dispensaries. And that just like, that's warms my heart. That's what makes me the happiest is that, you know, it, the word out there is that we do a great job and to work with us. So it's, so now it goes from mom and pop.

We don't who is, we've never heard of you to, Hey, we're a 60 location dispensary. We wanna work with you.

[00:20:46] Jay: I love that. And what's the difference in the pitch for you guys, between a multi-state 60 versus a mom and pop shop? Like what is the value you bring? Is it the same value you bring to both or is there some, you know, some differences?

[00:20:59] Aubrey: So we treat every customer equally, and that's also hard to find, like we aren't from a pricing standpoint, we're fair across the board. there's long, there's longer negotiations in terms of discount potential pricing on hardware, for example.

[00:21:16] Jay: I don't. A lot of the small customers, smaller mom and pop shops, they, aren't helped in the same way as the large ones with by other companies or their back.

[00:21:25] Aubrey: You know, their back is being turned to them and they really don't have many solutions out there. So we treat every customer equally and we'll fight for the small mom and pops. That's because I was one of them, you know, in 2022, no one knew who I was. It was hard to get the help. And so we, we see all the customers equally.

[00:21:43] Jay: But when you're selling to 'em, are there different pain points for a dispensary owner that has 60 locations versus a mom and pop shop, or are they kind of the same problem?

[00:21:53] Aubrey: The 60 locations, pain points are how do we launch this to all 60 

locations and train all of our staff? And so yes, in that situation, our onboarding process is much more robust. We have individual meetings with each location or large training meetings with the entire organization. So, you know, those mom and pops, we can send them a terminal, they connect it to wifi, you know, we walk 'em through the first transaction and they're done. The large operators, we, it's a longer onboarding process and a bit of a handholding because there is a reconciliation piece and a finance piece behind the scenes that's really important to get right for larger operators especially.

[00:22:35] Jay: Beautiful. I have one more question, non-business related. Just, you know, Aubrey being Aubrey, if you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:22:49] Aubrey: I would have a farm in Calistoga, California, and it would have only petite animals, like small animals, like mini pigs, mini cows, mini goats. I already bought the URL

[00:23:02] Jay: Is there a thing? Is that, does this exist already? This seems like the greatest idea ever.

[00:23:06] Aubrey: I am I sharing my idea to everyone,

[00:23:09] Jay: you know, luckily for you, nobody watches this show. But if, I mean, that's incredible. That's a great, I a mini farm like that has Is that not a thing already? I'm gonna have to look.

[00:23:18] Aubrey: I've looked it up. I haven't seen, like there's one town in

the US that has everything mini, so I assume they have a mini farm.

But 

[00:23:26] Jay: Wait. There's a US town that everything's mini.

[00:23:28] Aubrey: yeah,

I 

[00:23:29] Jay: You must be into many things if you know that is a thing. I don't 

[00:23:32] Aubrey: I Google. I wanted to see if someone else had a mini farm and

no one did, 

[00:23:36] Jay: and you came across a mini town.

Where's the mini town?

[00:23:40] Aubrey: I don't know. I forget,

[00:23:41] Jay: I'm gonna have to look at it. This is too incredible. I love this. That's the, by far, that's the best answer I've ever heard.

And I've had 200 plus answers, and that is by far, hands down the best answer. A mini, like petite. All right. So I.

[00:23:57] Aubrey: So I woke up in the middle of the night, like a month ago, and I like woke up and I was like, I could call it Petite Farm. Let me look on GoDaddy to see if petite farm.com is available. And it is. So I bought it like in the at like 3:00 AM. So petite farm.com is owned by yours truly, and

one 

[00:24:15] Jay: coming to a farm near you. What a, a great answer. I, we went to my, there's these, this is gonna be a little bit of a tangent, but they're, they have a duck farm or they have a farm near us where you can like, take eggs and they're like almost ready and you put 'em in the incubator and the kids get to like watch 'em hatch and get to play with them.

Like, and then you take 'em back to the farm. We went back to that farm to drop 'em off and it was like a, just like a crisp, like whatever, fall day. And I'm like, I need a farm. Like I, I grew up on a farm in Virginia and I'm like, I kind of moved up here to the suburbs and like I go to this farm like, so anyway, 

[00:24:48] Aubrey: Yeah. 

[00:24:48] Jay: we'll have neighboring farms.

You know, you'll have your mini farm. I'll have a regular farm. and you know, we'll be farmer friends. This was great. I really did enjoy this. Aubrey, Where can people find more about you if they wanna reach out directly, and where can they find more about pay if they wanna work with you guys?

[00:25:03] Aubrey: Yeah, so both pay rio.com or.co. if you go to meet the team, you can actually book a meeting directly with me. right there on, on my calendar link Is there, our Instagram is. Pay Rio hq. So that's another way to connect with me and just get to know myself, the company and the team. But those two ways were constantly on them.

LinkedIn's huge for cannabis, believe it or not. LinkedIn's the on only social media platform where you can hashtag cannabis right now. So that's a huge, there's a huge cannabis community on LinkedIn because all other platforms ban the hashtag.

LinkedIn is also a very big, platform that you can reach me at.

[00:25:40] Jay: Beautiful. Well, I hope people check you out. you were just a treat. I have three daughters and I hope that they are as cool and entrepreneurial as you one day. so keep up the awesome work and, the best of luck, and let's stay in touch. All right. Thanks Aubrey. Have a good day.

[00:25:56] Aubrey: Okay, bye.

[00:25:57] Jay: See you. 

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