Discover the marketing tools used by Xero’s small business accounting software.
Chief evangelist Saul Colt talks to us about Xero makes an impact on the lives of its customers with amazingly easy to use accounting software. Saul also mentions the go-to apps inside of Xero and in his travels.
Visit our guest at…
In this show you’ll learn why Xero uses…
And why Saul personally loves…
*this is a machine generated transcription please excuse any typos*
Jimmy: Hello, and welcome everybody. We are back again with How Apps Help Me Grow My Business podcast brought to you by GetApp and if you do not know what GetApp is we are a very awesome business application directory where you can find a whole bunch of different applications for your business. You will likely discover apps that solve problems that you did not think were a problem but all of a sudden you discover these new tools.
So, once you land on GetApp, you will be able find all sorts of different business application. You will be able to leave reviews for some that you have used and on this discovery process you will also be able to compare and contrast the features and hopefully, you will end up choosing an application like our guest today which is Xero.com spelled X-E-R-O.
Xero is online accounting software. So, today with us is Saul Colt which is the Chief Evangelist at Xero. How are you doing Saul?
Saul: I am doing really well. Thank you for having me on your show.
Jimmy: I guess before we get into Xero, I want to get to know a couple of things about you. The first one is, how does one start becoming such a well-known personality in word of mouth marketing? Where did you start and how did you end up being a person who know so much about that?
How does one start becoming such a well-known personality in word of mouth marketing?
Saul: Earlier in my career, I had my own company somewhere until a lot of the people work with Xero. My company was a comic book publishing company. I was publishing a monthly comic book with characters that nobody knew about or probably cared about. For me to actually survived and sell this book and grow a company, I took enormous chances and tried sort of all conventional wisdom as far as marketing because I was sensually competing with Batman and Superman and something and charging more for my books and people can get characters that they have 50 years history and love.
How do I become a word of mouth marketing? I real trial by fire. There was nothing off the table that I would not experiment with and I had very little sort of I had zero of that cover your own ass sort of mentality. I was really more survival. I was like I was in the Hunger Games. I was trying to sell a product that nobody cared about and through that and doing that for a long time crafted my own way of doing things that I have carried through to every other position I have had for the rest of my career.
Jimmy: Okay, so give me a little bit of a timeline when did the first comic book come fresh off the press? That is question one. I also want to know how you came about into getting you to the world of comics?
How did you get into the world of comics?
Saul: It is 2000 or 2001, I am a lot older than I look. I am trying not to let people do the math and figure out how old I am but I am sitting on a walker right now. So, good thing that you did not ask me to move around.
Jimmy: With age is wisdom. Being old is great. And getting older is even better.
Saul: How did I get in the comic books? Growing up, I always wanted to be a film director. Now, the way tools have progressed and industries have changed and we are going to talk a little bit about that at this podcast with GetApp. Things evolved but 20 years ago, 15 years ago if you wanted to make a film, you almost needed a minimum of $50,000 to $60,000 just for equipment and something like that.
Now, you could shoot a pretty interesting film on an iPhone and just put it up in the thing. I wanted to create stories and play in that medium. I did not have the money to make an independent film so I started making comic books as a way to make paper movies and tell the stories I want to tell.
It was also like a medium I really loved. I still do love comic books and I was reading them as a kid. I do not read them as much anymore but I follow the industry and so that.
It was really just a sort of finding the sort of that thing that you really love and trying to make a career out of it. I was pretty fortunate. I did it for a long time and that took all the skills that I developed very earnestly and moved them into bigger and bolder and better opportunities.
Jimmy: That is great. So, with that audio visual background with a very graphic input. How did that experience translate over into your now position as Chief Evangelist of Xero? What do you think is something that you are pulling in from that experience and you are adding it to this position?
How has your experience translated over into your position as Chief Evangelist of Xero?
Saul: I am not sure if it is so much that I am pulling things out of that experience. I am a very self-aware person. Every experience that I have had to thrive my life has really shaped who I am and how I think about things and look at the world. I think it is more of my personality that I bring to this role.
My job is to get everyone in the world to know about Xero and I take that super seriously. I love this company and I want to do the best job I can do because I have actually had experience logging it out and being the underdog and understanding how people think and things like that. I mean that in the most polite way possible.
I just did not think I have been roomed by traditional education and found my own way and because of that it makes me very different and I look at things very differently. I think that is actually an enormous asset for what I do because I really go to great lengths to be different and try to capture people in a fascinating way with some sizzle and entertainment.
Jimmy: So, with this mission of getting the…
Saul: We are going to use like an hour on this podcast just talk about me and no one is going to learn about any apps.
Jimmy: We do not have any time limits. We can go three hours if you want. I don’t know if everybody wants to listen to us talk about comic books and movies for three hours but hey, we will throw in some Xero in there and some app talk in there too.
Saul: I got to get comfortable.
Jimmy: So, with this very, very lofty challenge of getting people, the world to know that Xero exists, over your time, how would you explain to a person the problem that Xero solves because I think there are features on one hand and then there is the actual real life problem that a user is just fumbling around in their daily life with? What is that thing that Xero solves for people?
What is that thing that Xero solves for people?
Saul: First off, I was saying I am not starting from scratch with this. Xero has been in business for seven years and everyone has worked in the company before me. It is an amazing job in getting the word out. We are a very successful company. We are going to be around forever.
When I say I want everyone in the world to know who Xero is, it is like I am not starting from zero to this sort of pun or cliché. The problem Xero really solves for users is it lets small business owners better understand the health of their company. Whether it is a quick glance or deep dive, companies who use Xero will never question things like cash flow or other key metrics to their business’ success.
That is the most important thing about running your business I think. Let us say 98%, I am just making up numbers here so do not take this as absolute fact that 98% of companies that are not successful it is usually just a cash flow problem. It may not be able to be fixed by a platform but at least if they have better understanding of how their cash flow has been managed or just a better understanding even what their cash flow is at any single time in the day, month or year, they can make better decisions based on their business, based on more information.
Jimmy: I am going to ask you for a favor.
Saul: Sure.
Jimmy: Imagine that I have a small, let us say, construction business. It is me and three other guys. How will I use Xero on a day-to-day basis? Let us say I am just a small construction business owner. I do little side jobs. I, for some reason, end up on GetApp and on GetApp I end up of Xero and then I signed up. What is it that I am going to do within Xero that is going to help me?
How can Xero help out a small business, like a small construction business?
Saul: I am actually going to share a success story with you. Someone communicated to me because this is one of my favorite stories and it is actually the first real sort of Xero story I heard when I joined the company. You see, you will always remember your first as the expression goes. It fits to your construction example.
My favorite story of how people’s routines have changed since they started using Xero is. . .One of our customers, a woman who owns a boutique retail shops or a construction company or anything but if you let me stretch a little.
Jimmy: I know. We can definitely use example.
Saul: It will all come back, I promise.
First thing she does when she opens her store is she goes into Xero to reconcile her banking info. Once her computer has booted up, she told me she puts toast on her toaster and because Xero, one of the features of our product it matches bank records. We call it “Automagically.” All of her work for Xero in that single day is done in the same time it takes for her toast to get sort of golden brown.
She puts the toast on toaster. She puts butter on it. She sits down. All her banking information is reconciled. She can actually see in accurate portrayal of how her business is doing for that day.
It would not be that different with the construction company you come in. You know exactly who owes you what. You know your inventory. You know your payroll. You know everything that is going on and make sure your company is healthy. You do that in the first 20 minutes of your day, at the last 20 minutes of your day or whenever. You got a lot of time for your construction administration and you go on and you actually do your work.
The real thing that I have really like about this is we are giving people time back to actually do their jobs. The accounting side of things, the administrative kind of things, you absolutely must do it if you want your company to be successful but nobody opened a retail shop so they could do accounting. They open a retail shop because they love whatever they are selling or somebody becomes like a graphic designer. They have to get paid. They have to get their business going. The lights on and pay their rents and their mortgage but they got into that because they love to draw or they love to create or things like that.
We are actually trying to make people’s lives a little bit easier from the administration side so they can get back to doing the things that like really their passion about because nobody is passionate about accounting. Maybe accountants are but…
Jimmy: I think some accountant might be listening right now and say, “Oh my God! What is he talking about? It is the most enjoyable thing.”
From all of these current customers that you have. I know that some are going to be small businesses in more traditional areas like maybe Mom and Pop Brick and Mortar Store or maybe some online retailers. From your knowledge, what are the kind of the outliers that you come across that they are like, “Really? They are using our product. I would not have never thought about that.”
What is the most fringe user of Xero that you’ve come across?
Saul: I am not naming anybody because it is not fair without getting their permission.
Jimmy: No, just market type of…
Saul: Our ideal customer or the type of customers that are using Xero are not actually easily described because it really runs from anyone serious about running their business. It could be a 1-person company or it could be a 20-person company because we offer payroll. If you have staff, you can use Xero. It is not like a bottleneck or anything like that.
Their sweet spot is really… Companies that are really serious need real accounting to stay on top of things but are far from a trained accountant. When you were asking about outliers, we do have some like ad agencies that are doing a billion dollars a year and have hundreds of employees that are operating on Xero.
We do have some large retail environments that use Xero that are doing some, I will not say complicated inventory, but they are managing inventory. They are managing their banks and things like that. It is really anyone who is serious about their business and needs a tool to actually help them to keep pushing it forward.
We have one-person companies to thousand-person companies. I cannot just say, “Oh it is this one vertical. It is this one thing.” We are very fortunate we have built a platform that is very customizable. So, really a company of any size can make this product whatever they need specifically for them.
Jimmy: Getting all that information. I know that here at GetApp, one of the very important things that people engage with on our site are the information on integration. So, how many third party applications does this app play nice with because a lot of people all ready using a bunch of stuff and they want to know if I begin using this, will I be able to import stuff from x, y and z?
The question is, what other platforms does Xero integrate with and how does that eventually help the user have a better experience and have to jump around from place to place a lot less?
What other platforms does Xero integrate with?
Saul: Xero is built on a Cloud from day one. We are not just kind of software that is actually moved over to the Cloud because we have been built on the Cloud since day one we can obviously take advantage of things like API’s and the people build on top of our platform. We really see ourselves as the platform for small business.
Because of that, and because we have done such a great job in bringing people in and working with us, we have over 350 amazing add-on partners. Like I said a couple of minutes ago, you can pretty much customize anything. You can customize Xero to be whatever you need for.
Some of our add-on partners, this is in no particular order or we are not picking favorites or anything, just like a couple on top of my head, Vend is a point-of-sale inventory software that retailers love. Squarespace, everyone know Squarespace instead of beautiful e-commerce website and because of our API and things we can actually sync and store all of your information inside of Xero and it is all expenses and things like that.
We work with Bodetree. Bodetree is a company that allows you to secure funding for your company based on your financial data. There’s also like Bill.com or Receipt Bank, ADP, the list goes on and on and one.
Jimmy: For example, even let us say a start up that they might have some attraction. It would be a good idea then to start managing their own accounting with Xero because they could also integrate with, what was this application that you named?
Saul: Bodetree.
Jimmy: Bodetree, okay.
Saul: B-O-D-E-T-R-E-E
Jimmy: Oh that is very cool.
Saul: When you say start-up, I believe I am biased obviously but I think everybody should be using Xero or product like Xero right from day one. It is the decisions you make early in your company that really determine whether you are going to be around in 5 or 10 years.
Like I made up that up stat bout 98% of the companies and this and that. I do not have any number but I am making a bold statement and just do not hold me to it but I think if you are on the platform like Xero or if you are on a platform like Xero, the chance of you still being in business 5 years after you start or 10 years after you start probably go up by 100% or 200%.
Jimmy: Yes, I definitely agree. I think that I have worked in a couple of start ups all ready and you know that you see that systematically the earlier they are and the more attraction they have, the more successful they are, the faster they achieve success, the more disastrous their finances are.
So, you definitely see that if they would just use some tools like Xero, things would be completely different. I have seen how just the mismanagement of these finances can cause some really disastrous things like very, very detrimental things.
I think it is something where perhaps people have this old-school view of accounting like sitting on a table with a bunch of checkbooks open. I do not think anybody has a positive imprinting of seeing that happen. I think it has all been negative all the time.
Saul: It can be positive because brining out…
Jimmy: It can be. That is where I was going with this. It can be positive with the right tool.
Saul: Most people are afraid of their accountant or they only call their accountant when they have a burning need. If you are actually using a platform like Xero, and I am going to keep saying “Like Xero” but I think you guys know really mean please try Xero.
But using a platform like Xero, working with your accountant is going to make that relationship a thousand times better because all the work is going to be done from the accountant. The accountant can look at things and can be able to become more an adviser for you than actually somebody you just call during a crunch time because they are going to have a very clear picture of your company.
They are going to be able to say, “You should do this or that. Pull this lever or push that level.” We love accountants and we actually feel like our product makes the relationship between the small business and the accountant that much stronger.
Jimmy: I really like this point that it is kind of making the process of accounting a little bit more enjoyable and it is kind of taking away that idea that it has to be something that is not enjoyable.
During your time there, what has been one of the things that has happened within Xero that you are really proud of? It could be either from anything, from a new feature to an amazing party that you guys threw to celebrate something? Whatever it is? What is one thing that over your time there has happened that you think has been great?
What has been one of the things that has happened within Xero that you are really proud of?
Saul: We have done some really cool things here and I am trying to push a lot of cool things and throw it out the world but we sort of all ready used the first couple minutes of this to talk about me. So, I am going to talk about a different side of this company that I do not have really involvement with.
The thing I am really proud of is the product. Someone like myself, I am going out and talking to the world. When you have a bulletproof product that actually works that people love and it makes people’s lives easier, it makes my job much easier.
I do not have to trick people or fool people. Like I said, we are Cloud based product. Our product gets a little more robust. Every month, we are doing two-week, three-week iterations. We do not sit around and do one big feature dump once a year or something like that. We are constantly improving.
We take customer feedback. We have a really clear roadmap. We know where we want to be in three months, six months, nine months, next year, things like that.
The thing I am really proud of and impressed is the fact that our product works. There is not that many companies that can say that with absolute assurity. It is exciting as a marketer to have a product that you can really get excited about and works.
Jimmy: Before we transition over into the tools that Xero is using internally, the last thing I want to know is, in your opinion, you speak very highly of the product, what do you think it is about this team, what do you think is special about the team that helps build something like this?
What do you think is special about the Xero team?
Saul: I guess, as I mentioned before you dragged out of me my deepest darker secret that I am very old. I have been around. I worked in a few different companies. I worked in small situations and big situations. I have seen a lot of different cultures and the fact that we have this very interesting company culture where all we care about is creating something amazing for small business owners. Our CEO, a gentleman named Rod Drury, I do not like using the word visionary because I think it is overused or something like, so I am going to just say that he has a very clear vision of where he sees this industry is going, where he sees the company going.
He is very clear in communicating that vision to the company. So, nobody does not know what our goal is. We are very sort of independent run company where as everybody… We are not micromanaged. We are not things like that and everything but we are all working towards the same thing.
The same thing is you know the same thing is how do we make small business owner lives better. So, it is less about accounting. Accounting is the tactical thing our platform’s thing but the vision is really like how do we make small business feels better. We are very successful company and we are a big company. We have lots of employees but the goal is to really help the people in the place where we were when we started the company.
We want everyone to be a big company. The thing that I am most passionate about, I told you I had my companies several different times in my life, in my career, and the thing with people sometimes forget is when you are dealing with a small business, you are supporting them. They are not going to take their money and buy a vacation home. They are probably going to send their kids to camp. They are going to pay their mortgage. They are going to do something for themselves.
It is a very different situation when you make it that granular and you say like you are actually helping like real people with real things in real world issues it becomes a very human. When it becomes very human, that is a real motivating thing. I think that we have core values here and a lot of companies have them but one of our values is human and I think we really excel most on that core value because there is something really human about this company and this brand and the people who work here.
As silly as it sounds and it is sort of cliché and some of that but I do think that is one of our main differentiator.
Jimmy: That is great because it is something that I think a lot of companies forget that you are building an amazing product but in the end it is the people that are using these products and it is lives that are being affected really by these products because there is nothing worse than starting to use something that two weeks down the road as you start getting a little deeper you hit this wall where you take, “Oh my God, I made the wrong decision.”
So, it is super important to look at things from that point of view that you are having an effect on people’s lives to what some might not see the direct relationship between and online accounting application and affecting a person’s life but it is there. It is real. It probably happens more than the amount of time their own family affects their life because they are using this probably more than they see grandparents and…
It is good to know that there is this very human element within Xero and that is really who you work for, other people. That is great.
Saul: I almost feel like we should just stop right there. We leave this beautiful touching moment. Let us keep going.
Jimmy: Let us hope we have more touching moments because what comes up now is really the cornerstone of this podcast which is… I am very curious person. I find lots of things curious and intriguing. One of the things that I…
Saul: What is the most intriguing thing you have sort of pondered on in the last couple of days?
Jimmy: I am big into nutrition. I am going to say I follow the Paleo diet. This is three podcast in a row. The first two because the guests are related to this world and it was unintentional.
So, I am reading a book about, some people might be for against the theory, but I am reading the book because I found it very curious which is by Travis Christofferson and it is called Tripping Over the Truth, The Metabolic Cause Behind Cancer.
It goes into this whole thing that… if anybody is interested, they can go see the summary in Amazon but it is very intriguing to kind of I had no idea about it. I have known a couple of people that have gone through radiation and cancer and so on and so forth but it has not been really, really a close relative.
I came across this book through a podcast and I decided to pick it up and it is intriguing to see the whole history, the whole world and how it has been evolving. It is amazing. You just start peeling back these layers of an onion that you did not existed. You know it is there but you do not know it existed.
To me, that is very fascinating. It might not be the most positive subject but to me getting to know my insides is something that I am really into. I’m into this whole quantified self and biohacking stuff and it is something that… To draw some type of comparison, when an application solves a problem for a person you get really close to the needs of that person. To me, there is nothing closer to me than me. I am curious about what is going on inside, measuring and seeing how close I can get to that data per se. That has been one of the things.
So, the podcast, the idea is to take it into a direction of helping the listener also discover what an amazing company like Xero is using internally. So, what are all those other tools? All those some pillars that once we lined them up, it allows you guys to do x, y and z a million times better than if they did not exist?
This first question would be, what are some of those premium applications and by premium I mean staying away from the free stuff that I think everybody uses like Gmail and stuff like that, that Xero is using on a regular basis?
What are some premium applications that Xero is using on a regular basis?
Saul: I do not know if this is free or not. I do not get that granular on this stuff but the things that we probably cannot live without right now, I mentioned before we start the recording that Xero has offices in the US, New Zealand, UK and Australia. It is a whole lot of different time zones because of that there is a lot of discussions on Yammer just so everyone knows what is going on and people lose track of each other.
We use Yammer just so everyone knows what is going on and people lose track of each other.
We would kind of live in Google Docs and Google Drive because when you are working in different time zones, I can do a bunch of work shared with somebody, go to bed at night, come back and more work will be done the next day and I happen to be sleeping or happen to be offline for something, people are not stranded without the files or things like that. I do not have to get up in the middle of the night to share something with them. It is all ready available for them.
We use Salesforce. We use Marketo but the things that I use the most are definitely the Yammer and Google Drive, those help me stay in touch with everybody because we would not be able to do half the things we do without like constant contact, that’s a company but I am using it for as the description and things along those lines.
We use Salesforce and Marketo.
Jimmy: Right, how familiar are you with Yammer because I would be curious for you to explaining to me a little bit of like what it is, why you guys use it and from your point of view, why you would recommend it to someone else?
Saul: I guess the easiest to describe Yammer, it is like an internal closed network for group chat. You can send messages to people, post files, pictures and stuff online. Send things directly, send them to distribution groups and things like that. If I want to communicate something, just to like the entire UK office, I can send it and it will end up in their feeds.
We can either watch the feeds somewhere like a Twitter and see it cascading or at the end of the day, I get a digest of everything that was talked about for that day. I can go in follow-up anything that I am tagged on. Obviously, I can go on and respond right away too but I just want to know what everyone is working on so I can help people out better with my skill set or if someone in my network that might be a great fit.
If everyone is talking publicly about their projects and things they are working out and pinpoints and stuff like that, other people in the company from far away can actually say, “I know a guy,” or “I did this in the last place I worked.” That is so extremely helpful. Even in our own office in San Francisco, there is no way I would actually be able to speak to everybody in the office everyday to know where I can actually be helpful and where I can add value.
So, it is just kind of like this really passive place that you can talk, you can brag, you can congratulate people and you can ask for help. It is really amazing. I get messages if I am tagged on something it goes to my mobile so I can respond right away. You do not have to wait for that daily digest. It is a very efficient way especially when you have people working remotely and just in a big environment to keep in touch and keep updated on stuff especially out of your department.
For my team, we speak regularly. I know what everyone is working on but in my role as the Chief Evangelist, I sort of shadow a bunch of different departments and add value all over the place. I know everything that has been going on in the stuff that I am touching but I can add tons of value to things other people are working on. I do not have the time to just walk around and keep tapping people on the shoulder because it is also a disruption.
If I am doing that all day long, I am getting anything done. They are not getting anything done. It is a really great way to just sort of know what is going on.
Jimmy: If you are using Yammer for, let us say, communication, is there a tool that you are using for a project management type of thing because on your end personally like what we talked?
Saul:I am crazy old school. I use pen and paper.
Jimmy: Even that, explain that to me like what is your process? You get an idea and how do you work it out? What do you do?
Saul: I like to whiteboard everything to get the idea, write down to the thing if I do not have a whiteboard obviously I use pen and paper. So when it actually comes to the tactical stuff, I like to strategize sort of a whiteboard scenario when it comes to tactical stuff. I have used Asana and things like that. I am a bit unorganized so I sort of live in my head.
Maybe I could be much better what I do if I figure out how to use some of these productivity tools. I live by my calendar. I live by reminders on my phone. I live by to-do lists. I am not the most glamorous and elegant and stuff like that. It is all electronic. It is all in my phone. Basically, my phone runs my life. If I need to be anywhere, my phone tells me. It tells me what time I need to be there. How to get there. Who I have to call and meet with and it gives me a lot of context. I live and die with the apps on my phone.
Jimmy: Let us go down that road if you do not mind. What are the apps on Saul Colt’s telephone, the Chief Evangelist of Xero? What are those apps helping you do the best work for Xero?
Saul: I have tried every calendar app and I think some are really great and some are not really great. I really like the Tempo calendar app right now. It not only tells me where I have to be. It tells me who I am meeting. It will pull up all the emails that I have had with that person in a car or a cab or on a bus going to the meeting. I can actually get all the context. It will give me directions. It can get me an uber. It can do all sorts of crazy things for me. That is super helpful.
I really like the Tempo calendar app right now.
I travel a lot so, TripIt is maybe the best most incredible travel app in the world. I use Asana and try to use it to keep in touch things. Actually, I use just the iPhone reminder app a lot. If I need to do something, I will myself reminders in every 15 minutes until I actually return the email or do all sorts of stuff. It is not the most polished system but it works for me.
TripIt is maybe the best most incredible travel app in the world.
Jimmy: I think in the end, that is what ultimately matters. It does the results. It manifests itself because if it is all planning and nothing ever happens and that is a problem.
So, from your experience in Xero, have you ever had the feeling that there is a huge problem that a specific app has solved for you guys? Or has that never entered you ball part?
Saul: I think because we have a really great technical people here and sort of figured out a lot of sort of like webtools work for us along the way. Everything is in place before I joined the company so there is no glaring obvious hole or missing right now. We figured out what works for us. Nothing I wish we had. There is no, “Let us do this or that,” sort of thing.
We have got some crazy smart people here following through trial and error and maybe two to three years ago, this answer would have been different. We are pretty organized operation here.
Jimmy: For you personally, is there any recurring annoyance with a particular app or particular thing that you wish you did because I know you mentioned that there is not really that on the team level but is there something on a personal that either an app that you engaged with everyday that there is this one thing that if it did it would just be a little bit better?
Saul:I wish there was an app to make me way more interesting and more attractive online but other than that I think pretty much every idea has been explored. The trick now when you are creating app and stuff is to make the ordinary ideas better and more useful. I do not think there is anything really unsought of at this point. But we can always make them better.
You what is recurring annoyance since you asked, I am a bit of a Solitary fan on my phone when I have a quiet moment. I wish I could get better cards and then I am just going to throw it out there. I would pay an extra dollar if it was just a little easier.
Jimmy: What do you mean get better cards? Like get better cards to play or get nicer looking cards?
Saul: To play.
Jimmy: You just want to win.
Saul: That is right. That is what it is all about. I ask the way like the most polite way possible.
Jimmy: Because there are no recurring annoyances and you are kind of stating that a lot has been explored, here is a little bit of a challenge, so where do you see Xero going within this coming year?
What is Xero going to do that will take it to that next level or just once step above where it is now?
Saul:One of our goals is by the early part of next year we are going to have payroll available in all 50 states in the US. When I say making things much better, we currently offer payroll and it is a very elegant solution but it is not the final solution that we want to offer to our customers. And like I mentioned we are always iterating our product. We are always making it better.
There are various few things that we have not thought of but now there are still a lot of things we can execute on and there are still things with parts of our product as we get customer feedback and as we sort of pay attention to the industry ourselves. We are never going to stop innovating.
Where are we going to be in a year from now? We are going to be the same company from the humanity stand point. Every year, I think, the product gets a hundred times better and that is really the trick of things with tech products and things that… Customer expectation is so high. You go on Twitter and you see people really bad mouthing brands for a service that they do not even pay for.
There is a real entitlement which is good and bad but you have to take that into consideration when you are designing your product and realize that there are some other really smart people trying to sell these exact same products you are trying to sell so you have to always be ahead of those people and never get complacent and never sort of tap your hands and say, “We have built something great,” and take a vacation or something like that.
We are always figuring out what is the next thing and I’m privy to the road map and things like that and I know… It is super cool and impressive and I can only imagine the next 24 months or the next 12 months after next year and after that and after that.
Ultimately, we want to be the platform for small business and we are really, really close and there is no doubt in my mind that we will not become that because we are determined and determined in the best possible way.
Jimmy: That sounds awesome. Frankly, before we end, I want to give a shout out to two companies that you are an adviser on because as I was looking at your LinkedIn I found these two companies and both of them are things that I really like.
One is in the creative art space and the other one is in, how would I say this, recuperating…
Saul: Sustainable Food Systems.
Jimmy: Yes, say that again.
Saul: Sustainable Food Systems.
Jimmy: Yes, one company is Nuvango and the other is Windowfarms. So, I just want to give a shout out to them and for whoever wants to dig a little deeper, you can go… What are their URLs?
Jimmy: They are just dot com. Nuvango N-U-V-A-N-G-O dot com and it is an amazing art marketplace for you to get fabulous art from amazing artists and put them on all sorts of products whatever be home accessories, tech accessories, things like iPhone cases, get prints, canvasses, all sorts of stuff and there is a lot of people doing sort of what they do but the quality of art and the artists that they have is really what makes them very different and some great company.
Windowfarms is windowfarms.com, it is all one word and like I said sustainable food system. It is a really great company, great people over there. I am very proud of what little I actually do for both companies. I cannot take any credit for their success but just every now and then I come up with a good idea and everyone hugs each other and we go on our way.
Jimmy: I am glad that I am involved with that because I think more creative projects like that need more input from smart people so that they grow and they get to the lofty size of a Xero one day.
Thank you very much Saul. Any last thing you want to say about Xero before I go into a little spiel about GetApp again?
Saul:I invite everyone to please check out Xero. It is X-E-R-O dot com. Xero with an X. We have 30-day free trial and the other thing is, if you know anybody… If you are not a small business owner and Xero does not apply to you but you think that you know somebody or you think this is cool or you like anything we said, please tell your friends. Check out our website and give it a go. It really is a great product and we do actually help companies. That is something I think is cool.
Jimmy: Very cool. So, in my end I kind of echo that and I say go check out Xero X-E-R-O dot com and sign up for a trial. I am pretty sure that even if you are an individual that wants to manage better your own accounting or whether you are a small, medium, large or enterprise company, I am pretty sure that Xero is going to help you solve a lot of headaches. So, go check them out.
On my end, go check out GetApp and before that. If you really like Xero, one of the things that you could do is go to GetApp.com and leave them a review because that is something that really helps Xero out. So whenever you go leave reviews, it is another little bit of data that helps Xero show up higher in our rankings. The higher they show up, the more people that they can make happy.
Go leave a review on Xero and visit GetApp. We are application directory where you can find a whole bunch of need apps and compare them and discover a whole bunch of solutions to your small business needs.
I am Jimmy. Thank you again Saul and we will see you next time.
Saul: Thank you very much for having me on the show.
Jimmy: Thank you. Bye.
The post GetCast 3: Xero and the apps used to build their small business accounting software. appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.
