[00:00:00] Fi Johnston
They're massive green flags to me that their customers are staying for a long time. Their team are staying for a long time, and their focus moving into the future isn't about expanding or scaling or getting bigger. It's actually about deciding which features suit most of their customers so that they continue to be a simple, useful and valuable tool for small business owners.
Intro
If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor.
Of marginalized people. We need to understand the secrets to making money in small business. The more we talk about money and the secrets that usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money, secrets of successful small business owners. Let's go.[00:01:00]
Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wie people of the Koan Nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present, and notes that sovereignty has never been seated.
This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Fi
So hello to everybody listening, I'm Fi, the host of this podcast where we uncover some of the secrets of being successful in business. And today I'm really excited to introduce you to Grant McCall, who is the founder and the head of Product at Rounded, which is an easy accounting and invoicing software for freelancers and sole traders. Now Grant is an experienced digital product designer with a strong blend of creative and technical capabilities. He has broad [00:02:00] experience across software design and development, photography, filmmaking, and advertising. Wow, what an amazing mix of skills. He's delivered projects for both Australia's largest financial corporates and many small businesses and software startups.
He's passionate about creative technology and software, front end web development, and bringing design focused products to market. Welcome to the Money Seekers Podcast Grant. It's great to have you. Thanks, Shane. Lovely to be here. Tell me a little bit more about this really interesting skill mix that you have, and I'm glad that you are now being, uh, a force for good in small business instead of Australia's largest financial corporates.
Grant
My background is, uh, pretty, pretty varied, but I've had a lot of different experience across quite a few different industries coming back about 20 years now. So, um, I got started when I was in high school, really when I started as a, as a sole trader back in high school. Wow. On the, on the computer. I was just initially. I always had a while for [00:03:00] anything digital, anything creative that way. So like this is back in late nineties, early two thousands. Mm-hmm. You know, on a very old, uh, slow computer. Probably had up processing power of a calculator. I remember those computers. Yeah. Yeah. I seeing that, I started doing just building websites, you know, typical teenager in a garage. Mm-hmm. Got a computer and just became fascinated with building things online in the early two thousands, which was. A very different time to, you know, building things now. And sort of from there that sort of led me into many other different things. I had a real passion for like 3D and 3D animation. Mm.
Which led to filmmaking. And I initially moved down, um, from sort of Melbourne, new South Wales down to Melbourne to study filmmaking and then making, went into photography and I did quite a bit of visual effects work, and then did some advertising work, which took me overseas. So I ended up. Doing quite a few different things in that sort of creating filmmaking, photography, writing space. Mm-hmm. Sort of throughout that sort [00:04:00] of the, I guess the, the base of all what I was doing was still in sort of web design and software design. It was something that I kept doing the entire time there and then sort of progressed that to become sort of more of a specialist. You are UX design up and that, so. Kind of what led me to start doing, you know, sort of bigger projects for Yeah, yeah. A number of banks and being as, as a freelancer. And then from there, um, it was about 2015. At that point I was, because I've been a freelancer this whole time, and one of the biggest challenges I had was just dealing with the finance, the money, the accounting side of being a freelance. When I sell trader. Um, there weren't many great solutions at that point. I mean mm-hmm. Word and Excel has been around forever, so that's kind of, you know, what you default to, but it'd be in software. Um, I thought that surely there is something out there that has been designed specifically for my use case on Australian Excel trader and yeah, 20 14, 20 15, it just [00:05:00] wasn't the case. There were some of the big incumbents, like zero and MIB or around and QuickBooks, you know, I gave those a shot. Like what? Quickly become apparent. But so these pieces of software, they're good pieces of software, but they're just designed for much large businesses. Agree. And especially those, you know, apps that have dedicated, you know, finance and accounting teams and mm-hmm.
People who are using that likely have, you know, a background in accounting. So approaching that software as a creative framework. It was pretty daunting. And so I was usually trying to find in a little piece of the functionality that were relevant to me as a freelancer, a much larger package. And I struggled through that for probably 12 months, 18 months. And then I actually realized that I was probably doing better with the spreadsheets because Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, just one day just kind of clicked to me, you know, I've got the, I've got the background and the, and the skills to actually build something myself here to. [00:06:00] Pretty much solved my own problem. Well, I wanted, wanted to build a piece of, uh, accounting software that was tailored specifically for Australian so trades. Mm. It's worth mentioning too, at that time there, there was software available for freelancers, but it was largely for the North American market. Right. Uh, as an account, you'd know the North American market and the tax requirements there just are not compatible with
Fi
very different Yeah.
Grant
What's, you know, what's required here in Australia. Yeah, it did. There was a, seemed like a gaping hole in the market, an opportunity there. So, uh, I got to work on sort of building something that was specifically made for Australian self traders.
Fi
Mm, I love it. I mean, I'm an accountant, so I'm allowed to bag out my industry.
Yeah. Look, I think so much accounting and bookkeeping software is built for accountants and not for small business owners, and I think that. A lot of the crew at Xero probably think they've built Xero for business owners, but let's be honest, it is really suited to an accountant who [00:07:00] has a lot of skills and background using bookkeeping software.
What I love about your approach there is that you've said, Hey, using this software is actually making it harder to manage my money and get my invoices out and do all the things that should just be easy. And so instead of just sort of waiting around for this software to magically appear, you decided to bring all of these amazing skills together to start building what has now become rounded.
Correct?
Grant
Yeah. And yes, I've got a technical background and that, that, that absolutely help. One of the things on, you know, that was. Very clear from the get go was it was so much of this charm with a terminology, oh my god, seeing from the same songbook as me here. So many words mean the same thing in accounting.
Fi
Yes.
Grant
Yeah. Or they're just very confusing, right? That it's just very. They have very technical finance names, you know, like Mm. Yes. So actually going through, and I had to educate myself quite a [00:08:00] lot from an accountant perspective of what things mean. It's so right. How do we translate that over to so traders and. And when I say sole traders, you know, sole traders is a very broad term. Mm-hmm. So trying to, you know, find terminology that would resonate and it's very digestible via a very broad sort of spectrum of users. Right. Because we do have, and not like sole traders that typically what we call freelancers more and that sort of creative space, writers, photographer, designers, developers, that kind of thing.
But you know, within round it, so trade is like, that spectrum is very, very broad. We have. A number of our customers come from very, very diverse fields, from, you know, agriculture, medical law, very broad. So we had to try and find the terminology that speak to all of those people and would be easily digestible and understandable.
That was one of the major challenges outside of the, outside of the technical side. Right. It's actually. User experience and [00:09:00] making sure people get it, you know, they get it straight away. If they don't, if they don't get it straight away, then you haven't really solved a problem. So that's been one of the bigger, the bigger challenges there.
Fi
That is a huge bug bear for me too. Grant as an accountant who's trying to educate small business owners about money and finance mm-hmm. Is that there's all of these terms that don't mean anything outside of the accounting world. Like a liability or even the term balance sheet is just very strange. Yeah. The word sales, revenue, and turnover and income, all the same thing. Why are there four different names for it? God knows. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I love that you've thought about how are sole traders from agriculture to videographers, to filmmakers, to yeah, whatever. How are they actually gonna relate to these words that they need to understand really quickly?
Grant
Yeah. And look, and a lot of this is, you know, like. So like user experience, copywriting, and, you know, copy. And again, from some [00:10:00] bit of a background and avatar, like copywriting does so much of the heavy lifting within your software, right? The, you know, the technical side behind it is all very important, but that actual interface between the user and what they're doing is largely, you know, it's, you're achieved in the copy, right?
And so. What we try and focus on when I think about sole traders and their accounting needs, and you'll obviously have a much deep understanding of this, but when it comes to the business side, it's largely money in and money out. Yes. Right. What we try and do is focus everything around that concept and make that part of our software the most easy to use and easy to understand.
And if we're. Done that fairly well. And so, you know, that largely solves the problem. Focus on the simplicity. That's what's beautiful about, you know, salt traders, is that it's a simple, it's a simple structure. Yes. Right? People can get started very quickly and it's all should be simple and it can be simple. So we just try and focus on that. Money in and money [00:11:00] out, and how do we facilitate that in the most easy way with software obsessed, obsessed with that idea of simplicity.
Fi
And also shout out to the UX copywriters and all copywriters who make business better because I don't think a lot of business owners, especially those who don't come from a marketing background. I don't think they realize the power and the value of an incredible copywriter to help someone have a better experience with your technology, your product, your service, et cetera. And it's very clear to me already, grant that you are obsessed with user experience. Um, I can hear it in all of your words. You spoke a little bit about the sole trader community and what you are seeing in Australia. What can you tell me about sole traders? Like how many are there and like what are you seeing across your users at Rounded
Grant
you know, getting into rounded and how we, you know, what we're seeing in the sort of, especially in the last 10 years, it's, uh, it's quite interesting, but like.
More broadly sole traders is, I think it's the [00:12:00] largest growing segment of business in Australia at the moment. I think there's around just shy of a million, might be 900,000 sort of registered sole traders in the country at the moment. And I think in the last sort of 12 months to 24 months, that's growing at about two and a half percent each year.
Which is, you know, it's, it, it's very encouraging I think, because there's definitely been sort of some traction in other parts of, you know, sort of. The other business structures where I've sort of small business that's with, you know, four, four plus employees of it. I think there's been a bit of contraction there, but the sole trader, that sole trader demographic is actually quite growing, which is, I think it's exciting.
Um, nd I love to see, you know, numbers like that because it means that people are. They're seeking out a, you know, a form of independence, which means that they are, you know, looking to sort of take things in their own hands. They're, you know, how, how can they improve their own financial outlook and becoming a sole trade, probably one of the best and easiest [00:13:00] ways you can do that. But it's, you know, sort of real in the last 10 to 15 years, just the sort of the, so the exposure mm-hmm. In all the digital platforms. Really, and not just digital platforms because I don't want sort of exclude all those other, all those other industries, but you know, there is technology that's happening across all industries.
So it's really facilitating people that are going out on their own. So, you know, how do I find customers, you know, what tools do I use? All those things are now becoming facilitated by online communities. Software across the board is getting better. There's so much opportunity there now. Perhaps wasn't there, you know, 15, 20 years ago, right?
Mm-hmm. So, you know, you can go online, register an a, b, and get within the community that you are interested in, and you can start finding opportunities almost instant. Mm-hmm. I think we've also become quite, uh, spoiled as consumers like, hmm. I started my career as an accountant in 2000. Sounds like we're from a similar vintage.
Fi
Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm, I mean, if you grew up in Northern New South Wales, I grew up in Burleigh [00:14:00] at the Gold Coast, so probably, ah, bit close. I'll correct that. Actually. It's mid North coast, um, mid North Coast. Okay. Bit further. But I, I think back to when I first started in my professional career after uni and you know, all software was like, not just accounting. But I think that now we've become so used to this idea that we can access something like Spotify or Rounded or Netflix on tap. And it's actually making us more demanding as consumers as well, because we're used to it being in every part of our lives. So now we're demanding it from our bookkeeping and our banking and all of these different areas.
Grant
Correct. Yeah. What are you seeing in that front in terms of like what features people are looking for and how we're developing as a group of sole traders in terms of our use of this? Yeah, that's, that's one of the challenging parts, right, is you know, sole traders. Like the structure itself is fairly static, but everything that's sort of.[00:15:00]
Around that it's anything but mm-hmm. In the last 10 years, you like, you know, we're seeing things that have happened, you know, like some on the regular, on the regularity side of things, say open banking and whatnot, where we've gotta constantly adjust to like Yes. You know, people's sort of find their, their own financial infrastructure and how that is changing now.
Like people, you know, like people with bank accounts, but they're also using your. PayPal a lot, buy now, pay later. Mm. All of this infrastructure that's been built around, you know, with consumers, right? But a lot, there's a huge crossover between consumers and sole traders. So that's changed a lot and we, we have to keep up with that every year.
I bet. A lot changing there, but I mean, the, the on demand thing is you, you're so right there. People have these expectations now that it's focused. Well, what do you mean I can't have it now? You know why? Why is it not available now? Everything is available now. Mm. And so our business by nature is, has been always been available 24 service software as a service.
Right. But. [00:16:00] Again, seeing all those other services that are popping up in someone's ecosystem, we, you send increasing demand to be sort of integrating with all these other services that everyone else is using. Right? 10, 15 years ago that wasn't the case, but now it's, it's almost expected. Like integrations with everything else in that ecosystem that they using. So like that's changed a lot. Mm, yeah. The tech stack of a small business owner has grown quite rapidly. Yeah. And I see that with how much people are spending on subscriptions generally. In small business, it's so much bigger than people acknowledge because they've got the, the tech stack that does their CRM and their email marketing and their bookkeeping and their mm-hmm. Their processing payments with Stripe. And that comes with costs. Everything needs to be integrated. So yeah, although it's on demand and it is like easily accessible, it also, I think a lot of small businesses are using a lot of software, um, and probably a lot of it isn't actually delivering that kind of value [00:17:00] that they really need to be asking for.
Fi
I, I tend to agree as well, and I actually think we know available. Maybe be plateauing a little bit as well, I think. And then people are starting there on subscription fatigue and, and whatnot where mm-hmm. Everyone, it's like trying out new services and it's, this actually making things easier for me. Or is it just, you know, another piece of software that's actually just creating more stress? cause I'm, then I need to tend Yeah. To whatever that is. Right. And it's like maybe I've got a dedicated this software for, you know, email marketing. I've got a separate CRM, like can we, hearing it from our customers as well around consolidation perhaps, you know, starting to enter maybe after the last couple of years. So entering a consolidation phase. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, a of these different services, the special is sort of other businesses mature as well and they've perhaps kind of nailed their initial core offering. Um, where, and you know, you start seeing other businesses starting to [00:18:00] offer other, you know, other services and it's allowing people to consolidate various things into, into one piece of software.
Grant
I, I'm starting to see that now. We're starting to hear that from our customers. It's like, well. We want get software to do this, we want get software to do that because I want to remove X, Y, Z from my tech stack because it's becoming cumbersome. It's becoming expensive and yeah, that, so I think that's gonna be interesting to see over the next couple of years to, to see how that pans out. But I think consolidation of services is going to be, uh, pretty big the next couple of years.
Fi
Mm. I love that. So that's a really good segue into asking about. I mean, I'm hearing from you that you're obsessed with user experience. You've got all this sort of web and design and marketing and creative experience.
You've been a sole trader for a really long time. So when you decided to create rounded, I wanna know, how did you stop yourself [00:19:00] from over-engineering it and just making it exactly what sole traders need? And I'd love to know a little bit about how you actually did it. Like how do you go from the idea to now?
Grant
We have software that people can use. If you ask any, if you ask any designer, developer, they've always over-engineered it. Yes. No matter what you, you always release too late with too many features. Uh, but any founder that's on the, on the technical side of things, you know, they, oh look, we probably could have released without that because it turns out no one used this particular feature.
But, uh, sort of go back to how they actually did it. It's very, very difficult in software, like in a tech business to do anything on your own. You can now go quite far on your own, but if, you know, if you're trying to scale a business, you need a team. And so how they actually sort of came about, like I, uh, at the time I was living in Serbia.
Mm. Um, my wife was Serbian and we were living over [00:20:00] there. Um, and I was going along to. A number of sort of different meet offs just with designers, photographers and, and whatnot. Um, and I was just asking about for another developer. I've got quite good front end skills and I can sort of hack together stuff in the back end to make things work.
But to actually, you know, we're dealing with accounting here and big finances, so the backend of the, the tech stack, it needs to be absolutely tight. Right. So, and I've worked in, you know, enough sort of banking projects to know what's required there. Mm-hmm. So I was really, after a really talented and backend engineer, um, and I found, uh, found Igor over in, over at Belgrade. And so it took my prototype. Pretty much set it on fire and started. And started starting from scratch. And I'm glad he did. But there was enough there in the concept to show him what needed to be done. And so like IBO and I probably spent six or 12 months getting the, the first, I guess, version one ready. That initial phase [00:21:00] is, it's a mixture of sort of. Doubts, anxiety, excitement, fatigue, because you just gotta throw everything you have at it. We, I want to do it. So I'm like, all right, we're gonna throw everything we've got at it. Um, and so it's just six to 12 months of frantic design and development. And at a certain point you've gotta say, well, this is, is this enough?
And it's like, well. Enough. Uh, I, I'll be honest, at the time I didn't even have, you know, I didn't have a checklist of this is what we absolutely need. Like it wasn't version one was not shut out. It was just like, I'm building this. I'm like, could I use this? Could I use this? Right? Yeah. Sort of building it as you go and you are the user case.
Exactly. And it's like, could I use this? Does this solve my problem? Can I view my activity statement next quarter using the software? And that was kind of like the, the, mm-hmm. I got to a point like, yeah, I can, it's still pretty rough, but. I can. Right. And I still think it's [00:22:00] simpler than anything else out there.
So that was it. And then we got it online, and then, you know, we brought in, you know, just through connections I've had, so Nick was on board at the time, and then he brought in Ollie as well, and we got all great in expanding our team with customer support. Marketing, but you know that that first six to 12 months was just so, it, it's all sort of blood, sweat, and tears to get it done.
Fi
So that was your sort of sweat equity phase. Yeah. You didn't have funding from outside, so it's you and Eagle.
Grant
We had A little bit. A little bit, yeah. Uh, a little bit of seed funding that came in through Nick. Um, that allowed Igor myself to sort of work for six to 12 months. Awesome. And so at the time I was living in Serbia, then I came back to Sydney and I was, uh, in a few startup spaces, Fishburners in Sydney at the time, which was a really, uh, I still pretty sure it's still around Fishburn, but at that, yeah, pretty sure it is literally Muslim community.
It's, you know, just. In that sort of first 12 months after we launched, I [00:23:00] spent a lot of time working with people in that community, going to all the picture nights and getting up there, telling people about it, and then got a little bit of money thrown around on some Facebook ads and whatnot, but it really got off the ground by by word of mouth, that first sort of 12th away months of actually getting our first customer.
So a lot of it looks. Word of mouth, bit of money on Facebook ads and whatnot. But yeah, it's just because at the time, the product, it was the only product that actually catered to that audience. So yeah. And it's a big audience. If there's 900,000 or so now sole traders. Yeah, that's a very decent sized audience.
Fi
Even for a country, it's small as Australia. Yeah. So you've got a big audience. They're kind of in a way easy to find because sole traders tend to kind of hang out in business spaces online and and in the world. So you could get to them. Yes. And you had a good product that people wanted, which makes it much easier to get customers.
Grant
Yeah. Look, he's book gonna get fired and Ronald Rubish. And doesn't actually [00:24:00] solve a problem. Yes. Product of rough ads at the time. Uh, when I look back in our version history, you know, compare what we've got our software now to, to back then, it's, um, but
Fi
do you think your initial users kind of liked that it was a bit scrappy and that they were part of this early part of this really cool thing?
Grant
Yeah, look, I, I think so. Um, I mean it wasn't, it wasn't terrible by any means, but it was like comparing just now and then, but. I remember our first customer who was, uh, coming on board as a, as a paid customer. We were like, he was like, okay, I wanna use this. I wanna pay for it. And I was like, yep. Just about done with getting our stripe integration done.
Fi
Right. Yeah. We dunno how to take payment from you yet, but we're nearly there.
Grant
Yeah. Yeah. It was a, about a half an hour back and forth from, we actually get a, when we got the first customer on board, he's still with us today actually, which is pretty cool.
Fi
Wow. Amazing.
Grant
Yeah. Our first customer from, you know, over 10 years ago is still, still paying customer today.
Fi
Wow. It's just pretty cool. Fantastic.
Rounded Ad
Not knowing when [00:25:00] money is gonna come in and out of your bank account creates so much anxiety for sole traders, and the antidote is clarity. That's where Rounded comes in. It's a beautifully simple tool made just for sole traders, and it shows you exactly what you've earned spent and what's overdue. All from the one clean and easy to use dashboard. You can send professional invoices in minutes, see what needs chasing, and know how much money to set aside for your tax. I've seen firsthand the relief that this kind of visibility can bring to sole traders and my friends at Rounded want you to experience it too.
Click the link in the show notes to try rounded for free for 30 days.
Fi
And so you've gone through the sort of sweat equity phase. Mm-hmm. The building it yourself, getting a little bit of seed money to keep going. You've spread through word of mouth. You've had, your first customer is still your customer. I mean, that should be on the homepage of your website, by the way, with a photo of said, allegedly.
Yeah. Yeah. And [00:26:00] I can see that now you've really developed the software. But the core idea is still the same, but the business probably looks quite different. Yeah. You've got 10 team members across multiple continents and countries. So tell me what it's like as a founder and you now have co-founders sitting alongside you too.
Tell me what the kind of day to day is like at rounded with this remote international team all contributing to the success of Round It.
Grant
Yeah, it's very question. It's um. When I think about it, it's uh, being a very distributed team has its challenges, but we've been doing it to day one. Right. You know, we've all been quite distributed from day one, but things have changed so dramatically since, you know, the first year or two, you know, our team is still quite small.
But yeah, we've got developers in the Philippines and in Serbia, and our customer support team is in Philippines. We've got marketing in in France. Team members in Northern Queensland, you [00:27:00] know, all myself are in Melbourne. We're quite all over the place, but that's, it's always kind of normal for us. But, you know, the, the day to day we, we embrace that and it's like, you know, we, everyone works when they can work and, you know, and, and want to work.
So we don't like, sort of have any. Dedicated sort of overlap time where everyone needs to be online or anything like that. You know, we, we make use of all the obvious tools, slack and, you know, various project management tools like that. So. Day to day for me, like in the morning, generally myself and Ollie who are online with our customer team, but the sort of development team doesn't come online till later in the day.
Right. So Joe Indoor and mind don't come on until, you know, probably like almost six, 7:00 PM or so, like yeah. Australian time. So we just, we just roll with it. Like we make sure that. All tasks are sort of well defined in our project management. You know, slack, everything is sort of very much, very sort of asynchronous that way we don't try and overlap that if it's not [00:28:00] necessary. You know, still a small team, but you know, we're all been working together for quite a number of years now. Mm-hmm. We're still with our challenges, but you know, we've got a pretty. A pretty good way of working. It's pretty successful. Everyone's, they're happy working in the way that, you know, that, that work.
Fi
Mm-hmm. Love it. So tell me, 10 years into your tech startup that's now a software company, tell me what you've learned about business and money or making and managing money as a tech company. Like what kind of learnings have you have you got from the last 10 years?
Grant
I mean, there's, there's a lot right? A lot when, when I think about what we do now and like what I know now compared to, you know, when got started, like I was incredibly naive and when we got started, right? Like incredibly, we all are when we start incredibly. Um, but look, things that I've learned along the way is you have to remain, gotta stay customer focused. You have to stay customer focused. And it's one of the things I [00:29:00] think that we've done quite well and it's probably. At the core of, you know, our success.
So we're, we're a software business that's been around for 10 years. A lot of software business that are started. A lot of businesses just don't sort of make it past the first couple of years for vary reasons, but I think one of the reasons why we are still gear and, and burn well mm, with we remained true to, you know, what we initially tried to achieve.
And what we initially tried to achieve and what we've done, and they're probably, you know, quite different. But that core is still the same, right? We've added a lot of functionality for, you know, just a changing nature of, you know, the landscape. But the core of what we do is still to make the best invoicing and accounting software for so trade in Australia.
Right? Nothing about that. It's changed. I think that's one of the main reasons why. We, if we stray from it, I'm not sure if we'd still still be here. Mm. But the other thing too is everything takes a lot longer than you.
Fi
Yes. It's one of the [00:30:00] annoying things about business, isn't it? Yeah. But whatever you think it's gonna take, you gonna take double and more.
Grant
Right? And this, especially as your business grow. Especially in a software business, you'll accumulate. So I mean, I guess what we, for tech debt or it's a snowball, right? The would be like initially your time, you very easy to move and pivot and change and do this. But as a, you know, in the software business as your business, Ries, actual software, the number of line of coding instance, it becomes harder to pivot quickly.
Or we don't need to pivot. Very quick on on not many things, but it's like, okay, so we wanna add this feature, but how does that impact something that we built six or four years ago? Right? So it's, uh, you really, you know, you know there are generations within the software, right? And you need to take those things into account. So I'm seeing a mind map. Sorts that's kind of mapping all these different Yeah. Features and, and what affects what I [00:31:00] hope that lives somewhere and not just in your head. Yeah. Well we've, we're definitely got a lot of shame, uh, with, yeah, with SI mean, one of it is in our head, but it is also very much diagram as well. Mm. Everything just takes along than you think. And it's one of the challenges as well, like person, it's like, oh, I really wanna get this done, but it's like, it will get done. It's just going to take time. Right. And that's kind of one of the, one of the challenges that I have. As a, you know, the product guy, it's say, you want this feature, you think it's gonna be great, it's gonna be great for your customers, and you know, and you want it tomorrow.
Fi
But it's just the reality is as well, understanding technical side behind it is so it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna take, gonna take much longer than, but the other thing too is the, I think I mentioned before, it's the team, right? You need, uh, you need people that you can rely on, um, because. Uh, you have so many challenges of business, like from the business side, the emotional side.
Grant
Uh, yeah, there's, [00:32:00] there are so many aspects to, to building a business and you need people in your team that can rely on that, you know, can take care of all the different elements going to run your business. Yeah. I can't stress enough how important having the right people around. To, uh, to get that, to get that done.
Fi
Yeah. I just love that you brought up that there are business problems and emotional problems that come with having a business because Yeah. Um, maybe this is stereotypical, but I don't find as many men talking about that as women. Right. I'd love to hear a bit more about that. Do you have any examples of kind of, yeah.
What's been stressful or emotional or what kind of things have happened in that 10 years?
Grant
You know, when you, when you're a business owner, there's a, it's funny, I'm, I'm sure it's true a lot. Why people with traditional employment as well, like it becomes a part of what you do. I think there are a few people who are able to title separate, well, you know, work and you know the personal side of work as well.
Yes. Part of your identity and what you do. And a lot of people are proud of what they do and so. [00:33:00] For me, that's very, very much true. Like, you know, I love what I do. I love building software. I love working with my team. I love all, you know, everything that we build for our customers. And I love hearing that what we do makes our, our customer lives easier.
And so when things aren't going particularly well on, you know, whatever reason, you know, on the development side of things, or we having challenges in marketing where they're just, you know, strategy, probably the challenges to solve. It's like it's hard to ignore at a, at a personal level, right? So if. Sometimes things like that, they kid you up at night. If you can't solve a problem or you know, one of your team members struggling with a particular thing, it's hard to not take that on board, uh, sometimes and then it can be stressful. But again, that comes back down if you've got the right team around you.
You know that it'll pass. Mm-hmm. You've got a track record of solving these problems. Right. One of the things that I've always been able together, okay. Take a step back and say, look, we've got a great team here. We can solve these [00:34:00] challenges right now. Not quite sure how, but we've always solved one way or another.
This doesn't look like, you know, I don't think it'll be any different. Right? Like, mm. Yeah. Like, I mean, working, you know, it's stressful, you know, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in a software business, right? There's a lot of infrastructure. Yeah. There's a lot of things that keep an application running 24 7.
There's a massive supply chain that sometimes things happen completely outside of your control, but, uh, that can have real effects on, on, on your business, right? Yeah. It's like any, any job. There's some. There's stress involved. Um, and so as a business RNA, you need to gotta find ways to, to deal with that in, you know, in the right way.
Fi
Mm. Everyone's got different ways of dealing with it. What have you found that works, grant?
What have you found as your kind of stress relievers or your kind of cortisol reduces in those times of stress or panic or frustration?
Grant
I always feel better when I, when I talk about Yes. [00:35:00] Right. I think that you can ignore it. And that might, you know, have the short term benefit. Right. But it's only, it's only gonna escalate. But I find that, you know, if I talk about the problem for having technical problems, you know, speak to the team and say, you know, like. You talk through it. And so I always feel better when I talk about something, you know?
And if you've got people, again, the team aspect, if you've got people that that are around you that will listen and have unique insights and yes experiences, it's rare that someone doesn't have something that can help, may not solve it, but it's usually something that can help in some way. Talking about it, acknowledging and confronting the, the stress as usual.
I, I find that when I do get stressed about things, it's. Usually something that I've ignored for, for too long, right? If I've put it to the, I'll deal with that later, but it's always in the, you know, the back of your mind. Um mm. That's what I find. Things that I've ignored can become quite stressful, but once it's [00:36:00] out in the old bed, then you're confronting it then. With people or that diminishes that kind of, you know, the problem, the challenge, the thoracic diminish. Yes. Thank you so much for sharing your humanity there, grant. You're so right. That's okay. That once an idea is out into the world, it's like a balloon can pop. And then you might actually just free up enough brain space to be able to come up with the solution because you've taken that layer of stress off the top.
Fi
And I agree, speaking to people who care and are able to listen and see the best in you, that is always the first step is like getting it out of your mind and into words. So I love that there fact, I don't always do it, but I know once I've done it. Yeah, it's always better, right? It's like no one always deals with, you know, times of stress.
Perfectly every time. Right. But because we're humans, we don't do anything perfectly.
Grant
Exactly. But I know that even sometimes when I'm, I've in inadvertently like raised something and then. [00:37:00] And I'm like, oh wait, we've talked, we've spoken about that now, and now I feel a lot better about it even if I didn't sort of initiate the, the talk or the, you know, that process for knowing that once I've got stuff out in the open and you can actually take input on it.
Fi
Yeah, you tend to, you tend to find yourself at a better place. I love it. Look, I think anyone listening would be able to hear that you are so passionate about your customers and your team, uh, so much so that you still have your first customer. Your team has been with you for a very long time as well. Yeah. Uh, they're very green flags, in my opinion about a business. Yeah. I think it's, um, it's clear to me just listening to you about your passion on those areas. I'd love to know what does the future look like for round It? Where are you going from here?
Grant
Yeah, so you know, what we started to, you know, to, to build the best accounting app for Australian sole traders is still very much what we plan on, on doing in the future, right?
But as we've discussed, the, the ecosystem is [00:38:00] changing a lot and so. We've got plans around like, you know, how do we better facilitate sort of subsets of customers who are perhaps not sort of our, our bread and butter for quite a while has been so, just because of my background as a creative freelancer, a lot of our type of core customers sort of fits within that definition, I suppose.
But you know, we're now getting a lot of customers who are coming from. Very different, very different industries. And so they're coming with different challenges. Our, well, one of the great things about our customer is they're very vocal and usually nearly always in a, in a very constructive way. They're always telling, like, we've gotten a number of ways for our customers to give us feedback on the product.
And, you know, they're always sharing, you know, what, what are the challenges that they have and here's how, you know, you could adapt the software to make my particular challenge easier. And you know, we've got it. A scroll of, uh, you know, of those, um. Least, you know, a mile long, um, of those, uh, customer challenges.
But I love it. It, one of the things that I like, that I [00:39:00] really like to do is to start, you know, sort of reading through all of those and start to sort of get all the ideas and put them together and say, okay, so we've got maybe, you know, a hundred people, 500 people, boom, ads, this particular challenge, and you start reading about it.
Andre, like, okay, they're actual, this challenge is quite similar. They're coming at it from different angles and different industries, but. What can we do to actually, you know, try and build a solution that will make 90% of that group happy? Right? You can never make everyone happy. And probably one of the, actually now that's one of the learnings, is that you can never make every one of your customers a hundred percent happy, right?
Fi
Um, we try. But one of the hardest scenes to say is when to say no. If we build this particular thing, is that time to lead US Australia? Is that gonna be a great change for the majority of our hospitals? So one of the hardest things is to choose what we do build, but obviously what we don't build. Right.
Grant
That's actually probably a harder procedure as [00:40:00] to, as to what we don't build. And so anyway, that's like when we look at where roundup's going, right? It's when we look at all the, the different kinds of customers that are coming in and we're looking at the challenges, uh, that they have, right? So we now we've got a lot of customers who need things like, uh, kilometer trap. Because they're out and about all the time. And that sits at top of our feedback right now. It's say, okay, well people need to track the kilometers, which is an exciting project, but, uh, you know, for us, but it's still very much sort of fits in with how do we make, you know, accounting better for cell truth.
Fi
And that would be a wide use case as well.
Grant
So yeah, it definitely is now, right? Um, 10 years ago, maybe not. Mm. Um, because you, you have largely a lot of graphic designers and newspaper. To have that particular need. Mm. When we look around and we've got a lot of the core functionality, it's pretty now, right?
Like the, the core accounting functionality is, is pretty mature. We're still improving that, uh, regularly. One this year we've made [00:41:00] more changes and improvements to the invoicing system than we have since we actually, you know, from day one. So we're still constantly improving the core functionality because there's, you can always improve the, but.
When we look at where we're going, there's just, there's a lot of exciting things happening in that sole trader ecosystem. Mm-hmm. Right? So we, you know, like where, how do we bring in data from, you know, again, like some of the other pieces, other services that Sole trader used, right? How do we get that into round and how do we process that data in a very simple and easy way that it just comes out, you know, in a simple profit and loss.
So that is, uh, you know, data comes in, it gets processed automatically. Tells them everything that they need to do for their activity statement and uh, you know, end of financial year. Mm-hmm. You know, that's where we're kind of gonna be focusing on in the next couple of years is so a lot of the, what's happening in that sort of big, broader, broader ecosystem and how do we sort of bringing those things together 'cause like, so I believe consolidation to gonna be a big thing over the next couple of years.
And so out [00:42:00] like a lot of these other services that our customers are using, are we able to bring those services inside around it, but still. Stay true to what it is to come, made us successful in Salesforce.
Fi
I love it. Deciding what to say yes and what to say no to, to me is the key to strategy. I love that you are planning to stay very close to your roots, which is sole traders. Their needs not straying too far from that and bringing in every brand and feature that one person asked for. Yeah. Um, yeah. Grant, it's been absolutely a pleasure speaking with you today. No worries. Thanks very much for having me.
I've loved hearing about your passion for ux. I've loved hearing about your creative background, your passion for this business, and your genuine care. About sole traders and freelancers and their experience of using rounded as a tool to help make their business easier. Is there anything you'd like to leave the listeners with today? I guess I, I, [00:43:00] I assume a lot of our customers listening to this podcast as well. I'm hoping. I'm hoping they do and they should.
Grant
Mm. So, you know, obviously Thank you. Any opportunity I get to thank to our customers and so always take that opportunity. So thank you. But, um. I think, uh, it's been a, been a great chat for, um, yeah, I think I get the opportunity to speak about these things all, all that often, but, um, I've really, really enjoyed having a chat.
Fi
I have too. Thanks so much for your passion, your humanity, and really just lifting the curtain and showing us what it's like to create your own tech company. So thank you so much for being with us Grant. No worries, thanks. What I really loved about that conversation with Grant from Rounded was just. His passion for the customer, and I mean, he's a UX designer, so his whole background and sort of trade is about thinking about user experience and user design, but you don't actually hear many tech founders who are that passionate [00:44:00] about their customers, the people that work for them. I love how Grant talked about how he works through the emotional distress that comes from being a business owner. I love how he talked about how talking things out just makes things easier, and when you have a problem and you can share it with someone, instantly you feel relief. And that most of us, what we do is we ignore our problems hoping that they will go away, but they actually get worse.
So the sooner we're able to actually bring them out into the open and say them out loud, especially to a trusted person or team member, the quicker that we can actually move to the solution. I really love what Rounded is doing in terms of creating a software for sole traders, which is so simple and specific, and I think. At the heart of being a successful business with longevity is [00:45:00] deciding what to say yes and no to rounded first ever. Customer is still their customer 10 years later. If that's not an ad for their product, I don't know what is. Their team have been with them, a lot of them since the start. Again, it's a massive green flag for a small business like rounded or perhaps a medium business.
Absolutely loved talking with Grant and really hope you enjoy. Yeah, learning about what it's like to actually build a tech startup from scratch and what it looks like 10 years later. I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners.
Outro
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