[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Paul Byrne. He is the president of Razoyo, a custom software development shop. He's based down in Texas. I'm not holding the fact that he is an adjacent Dallas Cowboys fan against him. But, Paul, how are you buddy?

[00:00:47] Paul: I'm doing good. How are you, Jay?

[00:00:49] Jay: I'm good man.

I'm Good.

You know, if the Dallas Cowboys were a threat to us, I think I would, we'd have a little more of a contentious relationship.

You 

[00:00:57] Paul: know, Jay, I'm like a typical, Dallas site. I guess, I don't actually live in Dallas. I live near Dallas, and, I'm a huge Cowboys fan when they're winning.

[00:01:07] Jay: There you go. That's why I, and we said that, you told me that before and I said, well, I guess that means you haven't been one for a while, so we're good to go. Everybody's happy

up here in Philadelphia.it's all good. all right, well, tell me where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:19] Paul: Yeah, definitely, to a certain extent. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. I lived there until I was about 19 years old, and, it wasn't so much, I guess, the place. Is that, my, family, there were some entrepreneurs in my family, so my grandfather was an entrepreneur. I didn't know him when he was working that much, but I could tell, like he was always kinda, you know, testing me and coaching me to a certain extent, about, you know, that I might become an entrepreneur and would give advice.

I guess, but at the time, I wasn't really becoming, you know, I was not on my journey to become an or near, becoming an entrepreneur. I guess I was on my journey to a certain extent. but my, father had always had kind of like a, and my mom as well. My mom opened up a shop. she was, a very talented seamstress.

And so she and some friends opened up a fabric shop, and they ran that for a few years. And my father, who was. a rocket scientist, but also just kind of a, you know, a technical engineer in general was, would develop products and launch these side businesses. And he was great with the technology side, but not so good with marketing and sales.

And, but he always kind of had this, you know, I guess he revered entrepreneurs, quite a bit. So that always stuck in my mind. And this was, you know, I grew up in the late seventies and early eighties, which is when. That word entrepreneur really kinda surfaced into the common vernacular and people started paying attention.

You know, before that there were small business owners, but then, you know, we started talking about entrepreneurs in it and there was a lot, you know, going on in society in general talking about entrepreneurship. In fact, I think the word entrepreneurship was coined around that time when I was growing up.

So it was definitely kind of, you know, part of the environment.

[00:03:04] Jay: Have you seen that word change? Over the years, what does that, has it mean the same thing now as it did back then? Was it, I mean, I know the context is different, you know, with the ability to start a business from your couch, you know, on a laptop or your phone, but like, has it changed at all what it means?

[00:03:22] Paul: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I think it's always kind of been. I've always vaguely interpreted it to mean, you know, someone who takes risks by opening their own business. And, growing a company and I, you know, I know now there's a lot of kind of connotation in the VC world.

Kind of has a different meaning there. And also there's a kind of a different connotation now that there's you know, all these online businesses, right? And so, you know, it seems like now the internet is always involved, whereas. Some of the entrepreneurs I knew growing up that were friends with my father, you know, they made sales, they would advertise in tech magazines, that people would get, and they'd have like these tiny little, you know, classifieds in the very back of it, selling some sort of circuit board or something.

and, you know, the business was done around the kitchen table and, you know, that's where they packed up their, their, their products. very different today though. Like my daughter has a business that she started really just a few months ago. Her husband's an engineer, but he's a lacrosse player and he designed this device to sort of re gripp lacrosse balls because if they get.

Slick. You know, they're not, they don't play the same well as on game day. So to keep from just kind of constantly buying new balls to practice with, he invented this re gripper tool. And, you know, she's selling on TikTok. In fact, I even did a video on TikTok. It went viral. It got like half a million views or something like that.

and, you know, between my video and other videos, they really kind of created a name for themselves. She learned how to advertise online though, really, you know, she's married, she has two kids. One is just four months old. and. She's able to be really an effective entrepreneur. I mean, the business has grown within just a few months to the point where, you know, it's not really replacement income, but it's a nice little income, for them.

And, you know, being able to do that as a mom of two young kids and, you know, a wife and you know, person who has other things going on as well, like, I would think that would've been very difficult. Back in the seventies and eighties. So I kinda see this change, you know, as having a profound effect on the experience of being an entrepreneur

[00:05:53] Jay: Yeah, that's a great point. I think, I mean, the barrier of entry, you know, I think the answer is always like, when is the easiest time to start a business in history? And it's like.

Today. 

[00:06:03] Paul: now

[00:06:04] Jay: it's all, it's just like, it's never easy, like every day. It's just

[00:06:07] Paul: Gets easier.

[00:06:08] Jay: other barrier of entry being knocked down where people can find a way if they have kids, if they have whatever, to find the time.

And like you said, you spend an hour on a video and it gets a half million views that, you know, may lead to a huge surge in product, you know, purchased. And then you have a whole nother set of things to deal with. So,

very cool. 

[00:06:26] Paul: yeah, and we spent five minutes on that video. Literally one take. It's a one minute TikTok video.

[00:06:31] Jay: it's a one, you know, it's five minute take and you know, you act sales by a hundred percent.

it's a very interesting

space to grow up.you know, especially for kids that have parents and are as entrepreneurs that have done it the hard way, I guess you could say.

but, you know, our parents would probably say we have it way than they did as well. So,

[00:06:46] Paul: In just about every way possible. 

[00:06:48] Jay: In every way?

Yeah. I mean, every way possible for sure. I mean, you know, the uphill and in the snow both ways for

sure. so what was the first business you actually started?

[00:06:55] Paul: So, whew, that's a good question. I'm trying to think if there was anything before Razoyo it kind of evolved so. it wasn't a business that I started, but I was invited to become. when I quit my job back in 2009, I was invited to become a partner in an existing business that I kind of helped transform from a data entry business where my business partner had developed a system where they would receive, you know, things like, 

companies would hold, you would have a table at a soccer game, and you would sign up for some Allstate insurance quote, and they'd have like, you know, boxes and boxes of these forms that were filled out. and their business was to enter the data and put it online. and their production mechanism was, they had, dozens and dozens.

He and his wife, had dozens of these stay at home moms who. Would come by, they'd pick up a batch, of these, you know, forms that needed to be input. They would take it home. and initially they would do it on spreadsheets and then those would come back. There was kind of a QA process and then that would get uploaded and they had several clients, like including like the Federal Reserve of all.

you know, organizations and, it wasn't, but it wasn't, you know, a big business. It wasn't, replacing anybody's income at that point. But when I quit my job, like I needed an income, and so I kinda worked in that business and helped to grow that business. Then that led to us marketing and my partner, my business partner's really the one that started this was he would, send out emails to people who were on the receipts, of course, with the permission of the company and try to sell them additional products.

And those, those were great. You know, we started, you know, we had a very cheap. Source of email, because we would just pay the companies that we worked with based on the sales that we made. And, so at that point, like I actually had to build an online, a website, and that's how I got involved in e-commerce.

So I, you know, technically the word Razoyo, I think we registered it in 2011. But I had been working in e-commerce for, maybe about 18 months at that point. So I would say like I was to choose a point in time. Like that was my first business that I developed was, was Razoyo.

[00:09:24] Jay: where did the name come from?

[00:09:26] Paul: So I have a background. I lived in Italy for quite a while and, it'san English. Transliteration of the Italian word for razor. 'cause I was trying to think of something sharp, cutting edge. Right? And so, the Italian word is RAS, OIO. but it's pronounced the same way our company's pronounced Razoyo.

And that's where that came from.

[00:09:52] Jay: Oh, and by the way, I wanted a short name that I could, that if you searched it.

right. Yep.

[00:09:59] Paul: would be the only thing that came up and it couldn't have any Bs, PS vs Ds or T's in the name,

because if you're giving it over the phone, like those are, people will misinterpret that. 

[00:10:09] Jay: I mean, that's a pretty, well, 

[00:10:10] Paul: out the url, 

[00:10:11] Jay: that's pretty well thought out. I like that. I like, and I bet there's probably not many other Razoyos to this day, I would guess if

I had 

[00:10:18] Paul: Google us and there'll be a couple of other results, but it's a one page Google results outside of, you know, the stuff you find on our website.

[00:10:26] Jay: I love that. so who was your, I mean, and it's kind of current iteration what you guys do, which is a lot of different stuff, but custom software development, a bunch of other stuff. Who would you kind of consider your first customer and how did you guys land those?

[00:10:38] Paul: so definitely the first Razoyo customer was eBay. and I got involved, well, nah, not really. Before that, my first customer was the company that I had just recently left. And we had an agreement with them to market their products online, to set up an online, site website to sell the products.

And, so that was really kind of my first. Customer, but it wasn't really software development. So my first software development, I guess was after eBay. When eBay sunset, a couple of SaaS platforms. one was Magento Go, the other was pro stores. And those people all needed a home. And we had been working with eBay.

So we knew the people on their platform and so with eBay's permission, we contacted them and said, Hey, you know, you can hire us to help you, you know, rebuild your site either on Magento or we can help get you on a SaaS platform, a different SaaS platform. And that's how we got our first customer.

So our first like real build was a company called, DPX Gear. And that was a company that. it was formed by Robert Pelton, who's the author of books about, military contracting. And he had a lot of stuff going on in Iraq and, all that. He was also a journalist, but he sold knives. He sold these really nice knives that were designed for, you know, people to survive hostile environments, is what he called them.

And so, yeah, so that was the first one. It was a knife site. It's still around today. It's, and, It's still, you know, a great business for them as far as I know.

[00:12:19] Jay: Love that. and you know, who is your customer now compared to back then?

[00:12:26] Paul: Yeah. So back then it was mostly, merchants, selling online. And now our customers are companies that have a, they kind of fall into three categories. They have a really messy. software base that they need to, that can't scale anymore. You know, the server's crashing, whatever. It's kind of like a rescue, right?

we also have companies that have like a prototype. So they've got like some partially working system that does some of what they want, but now they're ready to market and they're ready to scale this, and so they have us rebuild it. As, you know, an actual, you know, performant production, application, web application, or SaaS platform, or it's a SaaS company that has a prototype and then they need to go from like this hacked together prototype and they want to actually start building out, you know, the software in a professional way, that's maintainable and expandable and so forth.

So those are kind of like the three customers that we have now.

[00:13:30] Jay: What's the biggest pain point out of all those, like the most on fire? Youoh my God, we need to work with Paul right now. Like, what is the thing that's the most on fire for any of those companies?

[00:13:41] Paul: It is usually the company that has a system that they built, say on top of WordPress by creating custom WordPress extensions. It's no longer tenable. The thing just keeps crashing. It's become unwieldy. You know, the, and they probably had multiple developers over time kind of pile on and glom on, you know, additional features, et cetera.

And, they've got a problem, like their sites going down. It's losing data. Those people are kinda, you know, the one who feel the most pain and it's a big project to redo their site. Or their application and you know, it's, they need a lot of help and they need it now.

[00:14:24] Jay: What's your number one sales channel?

[00:14:27] Paul: Referrals. So our number one, most of our sales come from referrals on the. E-commerce side of things, it's from the platforms that we work on. They either know us or we're partners with them. and so they will send us,clients. And then on the custom development side, it's usually somebody that we've worked with or we know from some other capacity that knows that we, you know, do the software development and, you know, trust us enough to, you know, to have us look into their system.

[00:14:58] Jay: Bigger partnerships for you guys and how much time do you spend specifically trying to cultivate, you know, real kind of joint? Beneficial partnerships instead of the, you know, kind of throw away 10% referral partnerships that seem to be very easy to acquire but don't really provide much value.

You know, how

much time and stock do you put into developing partnerships?

[00:15:20] Paul: that's a really good question. if I would say that's probably about a third of our marketing effort goes toward developing partnerships and it's usually, you know, relationships and to maintain, to build those relationships. You gotta attend their events. you gotta bring them leads as well.

You have to, because we don't have any really paid partnerships, you know, We've got a few one-off deals that we've worked with some companies where it made sense, where we pay them a fraction, you know, a small portion of the revenue from a project. But most of it's, you know, dealing with another company that we could both benefit from working together.

And I would say, like I said, we probably spend like a third of our time developing those partnerships.

[00:16:07] Jay: Make yourself attractive to bigger companies as a potential partner if you're not. A ton of volume, which is what a lot of, you know, comp bigger companies need and want. How do you get your foot in the door? How do you start to show some value? you know, so enough that they pay attention to you so you can cultivate the relationship.

[00:16:26] Paul: Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know that we're that great at doing that yet. but our plan is, to work with, you know, a small group within a company, and then as we develop, as we deliver results for them, kind of expand into the larger company. And that's, yeah. I'll let you know in six months if it's 

[00:16:50] Jay: Yeah, we'll do a follow up, we'll do a follow up partnership update episode. if you had to start the company over tomorrow with everything you've learned, same business, same line of business, what would be step one?

[00:17:02] Paul: I would start, I would really, probably attend a lot more events. Conferences in industry verticals, and I would identify an industry vertical that I could serve really well and focus on that. I think that's probably what I would change.

[00:17:24] Jay: What would you suggest to somebody who's been told to niche down by every. Uh, influencer and business person on earth, and they don't have a ton of experience in any specific vertical, what would your advice be to them to niche down if they don't necessarily have the background in health tech or, you know, any sort of specific vertical?

what's an option for them instead of kind of niching down into a vertical?

[00:17:48] Paul: I could give you an example because that's exactly what happened to us is, uh, BigCommerce, which is one of the e-commerce platforms we worked with, came to us and they had a need where their merchants were needing to automate. Compliance at checkout, so you can only ship a firearm to a licensed dealer.

And so they needed a way for their customers to sort of force a choice of a dealer. And that's the only place you can ship the firearm. And it's really a compliance issue. And so they came to us with that opportunity. We knew not none of us owned a gun, at the time.

[00:18:30] Jay: Access, nobody.

[00:18:32] Paul: I know. We gotta be the only company that didn't.

And,so we just started like talking to people that had those kinds of businesses and reaching out to them and interviewing them and saying, Hey, what do you guys need? How would you build this if you were gonna build it? and you know, eventually we started networking into. Some people in the industry and you know, the more conversations we had, the more research we did, the more knowledge we had and became a viable partner.

And we built a SaaS platform that has now become the default, kind of go-to, for, small, medium online merchants who are on one of those platforms. So it's, for us it was just like that oppor look around. What is this opportunity you have? I guarantee you every single industry, you know, everything you're interested in, there are pain points everywhere.

And if you can figure out how to address those pain points, then, you know, just keep researching it, keep talking to people. You know, I'm naturally an introvert and it took me a lot of time to kind of, you know, feel comfortable going out and talking to people, but eventually it just became second nature.

[00:19:45] Jay: Me too. I'm a huge introvert and I hate going out and talking to people, but,

[00:19:51] Paul: Gotta do it.

[00:19:52] Jay: I, well, I tell people all the time now, 'cause you know, as I get close. Sort to 40 this year. I'm like the things that make me nervous, scared and excited, usually I would run from, but now they're the things I try to make myself run towards because. Those are the things that keep you up at night, but they also keep you excited and they give you that energy that you don't really get from it. And, you know, running a business is one of those things where you gotta be front and center and it's something I always used to shy away from, but,I couldn't agree more.

Like sometimes you just, you gotta rip the bandaid off and you gotta go after the things that are gonna make real difference in the business and that's you being the face of it a lot of times.

[00:20:29] Paul: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I'm turning 60 this year and if I've learned one thing, it's that moment of discomfort. that you feel in those situations doesn't last very long and you just have to get over the hump.

[00:20:43] Jay: And the high on the other side is actually much better and lasting last longer than, you know, the running away from it. Alright, one more question. Non-business related. Nothing to do with business. and you can't say. This is a new part 'cause people have been saying this to me. Reason, I can't say it.

You can't say what you're doing now. So if you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be? I.

[00:21:09] Paul: Wow. And not what I'm doing now. I would probably design and build, embedded devices like small, you know, things like, you know, controllers for, you know, home sprinkler systems or. You know, webcams or something like that, that would have a specific, I just love doing that. it's a bit of a hobby of mine.

and I just, like, I see everything in my house that I wanna automate. I'm like, other people must wanna automate this too. And, you know, and then I kind of start writing software for it. But I have very little time to dedicate it to it right now. But I would probably open that kind of a business.

I would definitely be an entrepreneur. I do not believe. I would work for any other company, with the exception of a few, like maybe I'm curious enough about Tesla or, a few other companies that I might work for. One of them,

[00:22:08] Jay: You might have some

openings at Tesla if you wanna, all the recent stuff going on, you might be able to, find a good job. A very, an easy job there. Maybe CEO. alright, well, Paul, you're awesome. If you wanna find out more about you, what they heard today, anything they wanna reach out about, how do they find you, and then how do they find Razoyo?

[00:22:25] Paul: Yeah, so kind of the same thing. Go to Razoyo.com and just hit us up on our contact page that I will see it if you fill out that form. The other way to get ahold of me directly is just, on LinkedIn. I'm, Byrne PW, you know, slash ByrnePW on LinkedIn. But just look up Paul Byrne on LinkedIn. There aren't very many of us, and if you add, if you type the word Razoyo on the end of there, you'll find me.

[00:22:48] Jay: you got the SEO game on lockdown I think. So we're good. The people will find you and we'll link you in the episode. 

Alright, Paul, enjoy the rest of your week. Brothers. Good talking to you. And catch up soon. All right, thanks Paul.

[00:22:57] Paul: Thank you, Jay. 

[00:22:58] Jay: See you, man. 

[00:22:58] Paul: Take care. 

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