IAM1401 – CEO Builds a Payment Processing Platform for Sales Partners

Shane Hurley is the CEO of RedFynn Technologies. In 2005, he discovered the payment processing business and has been in the fintech space for over 17 years. Outside of RedFynn, Shane is passionate about investing in a wide range of assets, including his favorite, international real estate. He also enjoys mentoring up-and-comers.

• CEO Story: He started hustling with flipping properties, then flipping used cars. While in the car industry, he stumbled into the payment processing business which was scalable.
• Business Service: Offers payment processing on the website. Platform to help independent sales partners.
• Secret Sauce: System and the platform. The team that delivers and has a good culture.
• CEO Hack: Finding really good mentors and being part of business mastermind groups.
• CEO Nugget: Trying hard to scale up the business like a massive enterprise is not for everyone.
• CEO Defined: Sets the vision for the company. Purpose, values, and mission equals vision. Build the team and not run out of money.

Website: www.redfynn.com

LinkedIn: shanephurley

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00:25 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from success, successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. Shane Hurley of Redfin Technology. Shane, super excited to have you on the show.

01:02 – Shane Hurley

Excited to be here. Thanks for the invite.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, excited to have you on and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Shane so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Shane is the CEO of Redfin Technologies. In 2005, he discovered the payment processing business and has been in the fintech space for over 17 years. Outside of Redfin, Shane is passionate about investing in a wide range of assets, including his favorite international real estate. He also enjoys mentoring up and coming. So, Shane, excited to have you on the show. Get a little bit of mentoring from you. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:36 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, sure. Let's do it. I'll do my best to provide some value.

01:40 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. I'm sure you will. So to kind of kick everything off before we get into providing that value and all the awesome things, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:51 – Shane Hurley
Yeah, for sure. So I think probably like a lot of your guests, I mean, I feel like there's a DNA element to entrepreneurship, and so you probably talked to a lot of people that feel that. I know I felt that early on and I was pretty confused. So my first experience with entrepreneurship was when I was 17. I didn't have any credit, but, like, the real estate market was at a time when I didn't want to date myself too much, so I'll leave dates aside. But I convinced my mom to use her credit to buy a flip a house that we could flip. And we did that relatively successfully. And then from there, I took, you know, it was a little bit of money, but it was enough to start something else.

And I actually started, like, a really, probably the world's smallest used car dealership. And so I was flipping cars for about a year or so in this little tiny business, and I didn't really know what I was doing. But, you know, you just kind of had that, like, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial hustle, I guess, if you will. During the time that I had my little tiny car business, I stumbled into the payments industry, and that was, it was something that I could scale. So it was really fascinating at the time. It was very young. This was, like, back in 2005, like you said. And then, you know, I've stayed in that industry ever since. I do some other things, but, I mean, I'm still very active in that. And Redfin is still my baby and my main focus. So that's the short version.

03:07 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you, you know, sharing, you know, so much about that. I love that you said the DNA, because, you know, there's always a conversation about our entrepreneurs are born or made, and I feel like a lot of times they're not necessarily born or made, but you have certain tendencies or DNA that can kind of push you towards it. And it sounds like you had that in you.

03:26 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, for sure. You know, it's. I was in a room one time. I'll share, like, a quick story about that. They, there's like, all these personality tests, right? And I was in this. I was in sort of like a mastermind event if you will. And it was, it was other CEOs, but they brought employees with them as well. So there was probably, like, I don't know, we'll say, like 100 people, and maybe 20 of them were the owner's founders, and then their other 80 were, like, employees, and they did these personalities tests, and it was crazy. What happened was, this is like, to speak.

What happened was, like, when it was all done, you had the two groups, and it was, it wasn't 100%, but it was probably, like 95% of the smaller group that, like, kind of that group that, like, from a personality standpoint, will, will jump and then look down when they're jumping off a bridge like jump first type. Almost everybody in that group was, was the founder. So I think it's, that it's. Entrepreneurs have a very high tolerance for risk, I think. And that's. And that was what was interesting from that experience. So, anyways, yeah, I think you can learn, but. But there's definitely a DNA element to it, in my opinion, so.

[00:04:27.75] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing that because I think, you know what, kind of the apple commercial, I don't know if you heard the square pegs in the round holes, kind of was reverberating my mind. And that's one of the, where sometimes you just go about things differently. And sometimes, even if you're so confident about, I think, in yourself, but also in maybe what you're doing, you don't almost feel like it's as risky as sometimes it might seem from the outside looking in.

04:54 – Shane Hurley

Oh, for sure, yeah, you're in it and you're like, what do you mean? I think that entrepreneur feels almost, they feel like it's more of a risk to not be doing that, but it's a good dynamic because as an entrepreneur, you want, and need good people around you who aren't like that. So I think it's a good dynamic. It's nice.

05:13 – Gresham Harkless

Anyway, you can't have everybody on the team jumping out of an airplane, so to speak. You got to make sure somebody's got to actually be flying and making sure everything's in order.

05:21 – Shane Hurley

No doubt about that.

05:24 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear what you started in 2005. Could you tell us a little bit more about Redfin technologies and what you're doing to serve your clients there?

05:33 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, at face value, Redfin is we're a fintech company that offers payment processing and point of sale. Like, if you go on our website, you'll see, like, that's. That's basically what we do. We're in a big competitive industry. But, like, really, really what we do at Redfin is we're sort of like, well, I'll back up a little bit. Like, when I started out in this business, I was an independent sales rep for a company like Redfin. And so I kind of did everything through the school of hard knocks. I mean, I was starting out, like, literally going door-to-door selling. And so as I was building up the business, like, at each milestone and as the business grows, like, there's all these different challenges. And so what we've done at Redfin is we're really like a platform to help independents. Like, all of our business comes, for the most part, through independent sales partners. So we've sort of built our platform around helping them address the challenges that I've kind of learned that they're going to run into from doing exactly, like, what they're trying to do.

So really, like, we're a fintech company at face value, but really, what we are more than that, like, on a deeper level, is a platform to help our independent sales partners scale and grow their businesses. And a lot of it just comes down to, like, removing obstacles and doing anything we can to help them focus on growth. You know, all of them, for the most part, are trying to grow. Right. And so as you're scaling your business, I mean, any business owner will test this. There's a lot of challenges that come up, and so, you know, so that, that's really what we do. That's kind of our, I don't know, that's our, that's our business model, really. When you pull back all the layers of the onion if that makes sense.

07:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you always hear about, I think I read it a lot in, like, good to great, where it talks a lot about, you know, whether it's talking more from an employee standpoint. But I imagine as you have, like, for lack of a better term, partners and people that you're helping to empower, sometimes the best thing that we could do is allow them to shine. And by doing that, we allow all those obstacles to get out of the way, and give them the tools, and the information so that they can shine and succeed first.

07:24 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, for sure. Like, for me, I was, I was a good salesman, but I was a really bad business owner when I started. You know, I mean, so, like, when I was trying to implement accounting systems, I was like, I just want to go make some money. You know, that was kind of my mindset. And so, and I, and a lot of our, a lot of entrepreneurs have that in them. It's like, God, accounting is painful to talk about. So if you can kind of lift those things that are painful off of partners, they have a lot more success. So that's what's worked for us, and that's what works for them. So it's kind of a good relationship in that sense.

07:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You get that opportunity to create that win-win environment.

07:58 – Shane Hurley

So that, exactly.

08:00 – Gresham Harkless

And I think on an even deeper level, to kind of spend more time in their zone of genius. As you mentioned, a lot of times, the people who are the best salespeople in organizations sometimes hate every aspect that has to do with paperwork and all the money, for sure, and sometimes that could hold them back. So it's so important to kind of marry the two together.

08:21 – Shane Hurley

100%. Yeah. Yeah. You already know. I can tell. That's exactly it. Exactly it.

08:28 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but essentially, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique. Is it being able to kind of take those things away?

08:39 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, I would say. Yeah, I would say it is. Coupled with. I would say our secret sauce is the platform. Coupled with. A lot of people say this, but, I mean, it's really our team. I've spent a lot of time really building the team that we have. And so one of my favorite success stories is the story of Southwest. When they were first started, they had a mantra, which was like, love your people, and I love your customers. And so, for me, what I've learned over the years is it really is so much about a business. I think, in order for business to be successful, it's so contingent on having a good culture, because, I mean, you can have the biggest aspirations on the planet, but if you don't have a team that can deliver, those aspirations are just that. Right. They're not really just goals. They're just aspirations. And so, for me, it's. It is the platform, but it's the team that we've created. They're all just. I mean, we have really amazing people, and we really, like, work hard at managing that culture.

So it's like everybody says they have the best service, but, like, really delivering good and amazing service is much more difficult and it's more expensive. We're finding, like, in our space, a lot of companies are kind of going the opposite direction where, like, they're outsourcing call centers, and they're doing things from a cost standpoint. And so we're kind of like the contrarian where, you know, we can be a little bit smaller and we can compete because the service is so good, and, you know, and it's like you had a bad experience somewhere else. You come over. You come over to Redfin, like, you'll really feel the difference. So, like, we like to just kind of treat everybody like family, whether it's a partner or a merchant, whoever. So, yeah, to answer your question, I would say it's our service, which is driven by our culture, and it's the platform that we have to help our partners scale.

10:19 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be, like, an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:31 – Shane Hurley

This is, this is like one of the hard, this is a hard question because I think you learn so much. You're like, you're constantly learning. Right. But I think for me, I don't know if this falls into your hack category, but I'm going to. I'll use it anyway because, like, for me, something that's given me probably the biggest, I guess, just lift in terms of growing myself, which has allowed me to kind of grow the business, is just finding really good mentors and like, kind of like a sidebar to that is, is being part of business mastermind groups. I've gotten. I can't even tell you, like, how much knowledge from being around good mentors who are exponentially further along the journey than I am. And it's just amazing, like sitting in a seat, like, what can happen when you're sitting in a room with other people that have done what you're trying to do and you've got some sort of an issue that seems really big to you. You kind of share it openly, takes a little bit of vulnerability, but it's amazing, like, how you'll get an answer back. And it seems so simple when you receive and you've been sitting there trying to figure this solution out to some problem you've had for like a couple of months.

So for me, it's like, there's a ton of them out there and I'm happy to recommend some, but I think it really just comes down to finding good mentors that are, like, farther along the journey. Whatever you're trying to do, find somebody that's kind of like a couple of steps ahead of you and then, and then, you know, and then, and then kind of partner up with that mentor. There's a lot of business groups, or in my case, like, I've had, I wasn't able to, like, find a business mastermind group. It was exactly what I was looking for, so I just created one. And, and you can do that as well. And you can, you can find people with interesting backgrounds. And so I've gotten a lot from that as well. So I would say, yeah, of all the things I've done, that's probably given me the most lift in terms of just growing myself personally, which is then allowed me to grow the business.

12:11 – Gresham Harkless

Perfect. Perfect. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be something related to the mastermind group or something related to your business, but something you might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine or potentially a client, too.

12:27 – Shane Hurley

Yeah. So see if I can, I don't know. I don't know if you've got this one before, but this is, this is actually, and it's funny you say that, actually, because this is sort of tied to different mastermind groups that I've been a part of. And one of the things that I've, that I've experienced in being parts of these mastermind groups where you've got businesses sort of at different levels is that it seems like almost all entrepreneurs have a mindset that, like, I need to scale. I need to scale. I need to scale my business always, and they'll kill themselves doing that for years. And, you know, one of the things that I've learned in, in, like, networking with so many different entrepreneurs is that I think, I think each entrepreneur has to really, like, decide what kind of business you want to have because I don't, I don't personally, I don't believe that, like, trying to scale a business into some massive enterprise is for everyone.

And so, like, the decision is this, in my mind, is that to be really honest with yourself about, do you want to have a lifestyle business? It can still be a decently sized business. Or do you want to scale an enterprise? Because you can kill yourself trying to scale an enterprise. And I think you have to kind of go back to, like, what are you building the business for? Like, are you building the business so you can, you know, live in Mexico part-time and surf and ski? Or, like, are you building the business to, you know, to just be in the business 24/7 so I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of entrepreneurs, like, just struggling to scale for years. To find out, like, years later that, you know, what they really wanted when they were honest with themselves was a lifestyle business. What am I even doing? So anyway, I've seen some interesting breakthroughs with that. So I always try to share that with people because it's amazing what will happen. Like, I have a lifestyle business now. Like, what am I doing? I should be surfing more. I should be skiing more, whatever.

14:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that you shared that, and kind of segues me to my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different types of, quote-unquote CEO's on the show, whether they're lifestyle CEO's or our scaling CEO's or whatever it might be. So what does being a CEO mean to you, Shane?

14:18 – Shane Hurley

Yeah, that's always, you know, that's always an interesting question. To me, being a CEO means, I think your job as a CEO is to set the vision for the company, which I define by purpose, values, and mission. Equal vision. I didn't make that up, but I've learned that. And to me, that makes the most, because there are lots of definitions of vision, and then really just to build the team to achieve that vision and not run out of money.

14:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, that's it.

14:48 – Shane Hurley

That's it.

14:49 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, Shane, truly appreciate that definition and of course, that perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and your team and of course, find out about all the awesome things you're working on, your mastermind and everything related to that.

15:09 – Shane Hurley

Sure. You know, I don't have a lot of additional, I mean, if you're, if you're interested in reaching out, I mean, I love, I love connecting with other entrepreneurs. I love connecting with, I mean, we work, we're a business that works with businesses. So, I mean, if you're, if you're a business, you probably have payment processing services or a point of sale system of some sort. If you want to work with a company with Sol, we'd love to help you out. Our website, redfin.com, reached out to us. We'd love to talk to you. And, you know, I'd also encourage people that are, you know, going, maybe circling back on the mastermind group thing. I'm more than happy to provide extra context there because it's been such an impact on, you know, my life. It's not as hard as people think it is. And so, you know, feel free to reach out that way as well. Happy to provide some value on that front, if I can.

15:50 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And to make it easier, we'll have the links and information in the, in show notes and, and for the merchant processing point of sale services. Are there any limits as far as the geography of where you can work?

16:00 – Shane Hurley

Just anything, anywhere in the United States. We're all good.

16:02 – Gresham Harkless

Okay, perfect. Perfect. I just want to make sure to hammer that home so we'll have the information, no problem, in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. But thank you so much for the time you took today, and the impact that you're having in so many different ways. Thank you for mentoring us as well too. So I hope you have a phenomenal rest of that.

16:18 – Shane Hurley

Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure being with you. I appreciate it.

16:21 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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