Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Turning a Radical Idea Into Reality: The Story of Fringe with Jordan Peace

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Turning a Radical Idea Into Reality: The Story of Fringe with Jordan Peace · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  That's often the case at the beginning of an idea is you just kind of have to hack it together.
• 0:10
  You just kind of have to fake it till you make it, you know.
• 0:14
  Today's guest is Jordan Peace, CEO and co founder of Fringe, a trailblazer in the world of lifestyle benefits for employees.
• 0:24
  Jordan launched Fringe in 2018 and pioneering a new category of workplace perks that go beyond traditional insurance.
• 0:33
  Think everyday expenses like child care support, Uber credits, massages and wellness programs.
• 0:40
  In this episode, Jordan sits down to unpack his entrepreneurial journey from selling software before it even existed to raising millions in venture capital and navigating the challenges of scaling culture during rapid growth.
• 0:55
  You'll hear stories about the startup Grit, major partnerships including a game changing collaboration with adp, plus Jordan's take on leadership, authentic communication and what's next for fringe in 2025?
• 1:09
  Get ready for an inspiring conversation packed with hard earned wisdom and plenty of laughs.
• 1:15
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:21
  All right, Jordan Peace, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:24
  Thanks Dave.
• 1:25
  Really good to be here man.
• 1:28
  Yeah, we appreciate you taking the time.
• 1:31
  So Jordan, you are the CEO and the co founder of Fringe, which is a lifestyle benefits company for those that may or may not know what that is or know your industry.
• 1:44
  Can you just walk us through what, what Fringe does and how it got started?
• 1:48
  Yeah, absolutely guilty on both counts.
• 1:50
  Founder, CEO, still doing that.
• 1:53
  We started the company back in 2018.
• 1:55
  I don't think lifestyle benefits is something that existed in 2018, to be honest with you.
• 2:00
  This was a really, truly entrepreneurial journey of, of something that I thought should exist in the world but that really didn't, at least not in a scalable way.
• 2:11
  So you know, benefits go back all the way to the 1940s.
• 2:14
  Most people don't know why benefits exist, but essentially during the Second World War, the government came out and said, hey, we, we got to cap wages.
• 2:24
  You just can't pay people any more than you're paying them now until the war is over.
• 2:29
  And so as a way to compete for talent, employers came up with, hey, we're going to provide these things we call benefits.
• 2:36
  It's not technically pay, but we're going to pay for your health insurance or we're going to help you save with a pension or retirement fund or whatever the case may be.
• 2:45
  And then that industry has just developed over almost 100 years into what it is today.
• 2:49
  But it's still mostly focused on things like health insurance and other types of insurance.
• 2:54
  You basically have to be sick or dead or disabled or 65 years old to benefit from your benefits.
• 3:00
  And I didn't think that that was a complete picture of what benefits should be.
• 3:05
  And so we came up with this concept that we called lifestyle benefits.
• 3:09
  And the idea was, hey, what about everyday life?
• 3:13
  Like, what if my employer gave me services and experiences that enhanced my life today when I'm not sick or when I'm not, you know, nothing's going wrong, there's no emergency.
• 3:24
  Like, what about a massage service?
• 3:26
  What about some Uber credit so that I can get from home to work and back?
• 3:31
  What about paying for my lunch when we have a company wide meeting and sending me some doordash credit?
• 3:37
  What about childcare?
• 3:38
  Because I've got, I've got five kids at home.
• 3:40
  So like help me out on the childcare front, Mr.
• 3:43
  Employer.
• 3:44
  Like that'd be really nice.
• 3:46
  And so we kind of thought back in 2018, employers and it's particularly employees would love that benefits that they could understand, they could relate to.
• 3:55
  It's not insurance and a bunch of stuff that's written in some alien language, but it's just like normal stuff that people want and people use.
• 4:04
  And so we came up with this lifestyle benefits marketplace.
• 4:08
  We put that out there in the world in 2019, raised some money from some venture capital folks, and away we went.
• 4:15
  And we've been doing that ever since.
• 4:18
  Okay, wow.
• 4:20
  So fascinating, right?
• 4:22
  Because Leo, like you said, everyone has benefits in the corporate world and it's mostly insurance, 401k, all those kind of things.
• 4:33
  And like you said, it's not easy for everyone to understand.
• 4:36
  But, but that's a radical concept when you say, you look at like, these are things that you want to use in everyday life.
• 4:42
  So when you have that idea and you say, wow, I think we got something here, Employees would love this.
• 4:48
  But what was the process like of taking that idea and then turning it into a tangible business?
• 4:54
  Yeah, it's a great question.
• 4:56
  I mean, the first thing you got to do is go out and do your market research.
• 4:59
  You got to find out, does the market want this idea?
• 5:03
  You know, is it just a good idea in my head or will anyone actually buy it if we build it?
• 5:09
  And so before we went out and raised money and pitched investors, I just went on a bit of a journey just talking to as many chief people.
• 5:17
  Officers, Chief, you know, HR officers, CEOs, whatever, as I could and saying, hey, what if this existed?
• 5:24
  Like, would you be interested if that I had a marketplace of lifestyle benefits you could give a certain amount of budget to Your people.
• 5:32
  And then they could take that budget and select for themselves the services or products or experiences that were most meaningful to them, to their family.
• 5:41
  Like I said, could be a massage membership, could be a wine subscription, could be childcare, could be whatever, could be Netflix, you know, whatever people are interested in, they could kind of choose for themselves.
• 5:53
  And got really good feedback, really good responses.
• 5:57
  In fact, we found a lot of companies that were trying to build this themselves.
• 6:02
  Not really in a software kind of standpoint, but just like, hey, we just give them kind of a menu and then they tell us what they're interested in, like super bowl tickets, and then we'll go buy them super
• 6:12
  bowl tickets and give it to them for their fifth anniversary or whatever the case may be.
• 6:16
  So I kept finding companies that were kind of trying to build it themselves.
• 6:20
  And I saw that as a very good indication that a piece of software that would make that both easy and scalable would be popular in the marketplace.
• 6:29
  And so we went out and we raised a little bit of money.
• 6:32
  I think it was like, I don't know, $150,000 or something like that originally, which is enough to just pay some co founders for a little while and help us to like, have time to build a product, find a
• 6:43
  first customer, that type of thing.
• 6:45
  And you know, funny enough, our very first customer, they signed before we had any software at all.
• 6:53
  They list, love the concept.
• 6:54
  We just sold them on, like, hey, here's what the software is going to look like, you know, when we build it.
• 7:01
  What do you think?
• 7:01
  And they're like, we love it.
• 7:03
  How do we get started?
• 7:04
  And so we actually printed off, like, you might call them, like a sushi menu of like, here are all the different services that you could select.
• 7:13
  And we hosted a physical party for their employees.
• 7:17
  They call, came into our office, we gave them the menu, we fed them pizza and beer, I can't remember.
• 7:23
  And they circle with a Sharpie like, I want this benefit, I want this.
• 7:28
  And we collected them all up and then we got online and we signed them up for all the things that they wanted and shipped them to them.
• 7:34
  And, you know, we, we sold software with no software and that they loved it, you know, they thought it was great.
• 7:42
  And so, you know, after a while, we built our MVP of the software and got some more customers and raised some more money.
• 7:48
  And then you kind of turned into a real thing.
• 7:51
  But that's often the case at the beginning of an idea is you just kind of have to hack it together.
• 7:57
  You just kind of have to fake it till you make it.
• 7:59
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• 8:02
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• 8:38
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• 8:42
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• 8:48
  Okay, 2019.
• 8:50
  Wow.
• 8:51
  Selling software with no software.
• 8:53
  What a concept, right?
• 8:55
  Okay, so you, you know, you get feedback from the market.
• 8:59
  People want this thing.
• 9:00
  You say, you know, you get some initial money, you have that, that party for the first customer, and you, you hack it together and you get them going.
• 9:11
  And then what, what happens next?
• 9:12
  What's the trajectory of the company thereafter?
• 9:15
  Yeah, so 2019 was sort of our proving grounds.
• 9:18
  So, like, hey, can you get more than one customer?
• 9:21
  Can you build some software that actually works?
• 9:25
  And, and so originally I actually turned to a friend of mine that has a software development company and we paid them to build the first version for us because we just didn't feel like we were ready from a
• 9:36
  standpoint of building tech ourselves.
• 9:37
  We were more business people, marketing people, salespeople.
• 9:41
  Not really highly technical.
• 9:43
  I honestly, I didn't even know enough to know how to hire a good software engineer.
• 9:49
  You know, I really just didn't know what to look for.
• 9:51
  And so we hired this outside firm, they built it for us, and we put it out there, and we ended up getting a bunch of clients in 2019.
• 9:59
  And it was enough that we went to a venture capital group and said, hey, here's our proof points.
• 10:05
  Here's what the numbers look like, here's how much it cost us to acquire a client.
• 10:10
  Kind of the average contract value, like all the statistics that the VC guys want to see.
• 10:16
  And they were like, cool, we're in.
• 10:18
  We're gonna write a check for like, I want to say it was like a million and a half.
• 10:23
  And what's wild about startups is like, they wrote a million and a half dollar check and we just said, hey, we're worth, we're worth 6 million.
• 10:33
  Does that sound reasonable?
• 10:34
  And they're like, sure, yeah, because there's nothing to base anything on.
• 10:37
  You're just making up numbers.
• 10:38
  Early on, it was like, what revenue do you have?
• 10:40
  I'm 50 grand.
• 10:41
  So we're worth 66 million.
• 10:43
  And so they jumped at that.
• 10:44
  And.
• 10:45
  And we raised a little money.
• 10:46
  And this is all my first time, Dave.
• 10:48
  So this is like, to me, it was like, I'm googling, how does venture capital work?
• 10:53
  What's the difference between VC and private equity?
• 10:56
  I don't know any of this stuff, you know, just like, figuring it out as we went.
• 11:00
  Like, you know, the word entrepreneur definitely applies because I didn't know squat.
• 11:05
  I just had an idea and just went after it.
• 11:08
  And so we raised some money and.
• 11:11
  And then 2020 began.
• 11:13
  And we all know what happened in 2020.
• 11:15
  And so we.
• 11:17
  It's funny enough, we were on a plane to San Francisco early March of 2020, right before, you know, Covid kind of hit America, right as it hit the US and flew out to San Francisco to meet with a
• 11:32
  bunch of investors to try to raise some serious capital to, you know, Build software version 2.0 and, like, you know, really just kind of get into it in earnest.
• 11:41
  And we got out there, and all the VCs we set meetings with, they canceled their meetings, and they were like, sorry, we can't meet with you in person.
• 11:48
  We're not going to meet with anybody in person.
• 11:50
  So we sat in hotel rooms in San Francisco and got on Zoom calls with people across town.
• 11:57
  So we flew all the way out there just to get on Zoom calls, like, it made no sense and kind of flew home.
• 12:03
  And I'll never forget that quarter because I remember we made $0 the first quarter of 2020.
• 12:09
  We had to complete.
• 12:10
  We never had a goose egg before or after, but we made no money that quarter because the whole world just sort of shut down.
• 12:17
  You know, like, no one wanted to spend money on anything.
• 12:20
  We were all scared.
• 12:21
  Safety was the biggest concern.
• 12:23
  Not buying software, certainly not employee benefits.
• 12:27
  And so we had to really overcome.
• 12:30
  That was our first, like, real serious kind of scare of just like, oh, man, is this company going to work?
• 12:38
  Like, I think people want this, but, like, how do we overcome this Covid thing?
• 12:42
  And, like, everybody's working at home now.
• 12:45
  How do we address that?
• 12:47
  And, you know, that was one of the situations where actually just changing our messaging really made a huge difference.
• 12:54
  So we marketed ourselves in this, like, you know, treat your employees and like, you know, treat them like royalty and like all this.
• 13:04
  So that was kind of the.
• 13:05
  The vibe and the messaging.
• 13:07
  And then we changed the whole marketing strategy to this tagline that was package up your culture and ship it home because everybody was at home.
• 13:16
  And that clicked, that resonated with companies that were like, how do we maintain culture?
• 13:22
  How do we maintain touch with our people and keep them connected and engaged?
• 13:27
  And that really, like, took off.
• 13:29
  And so we ended up having a really good rest of 2020 after our goose egg of, of Q1 and, and had a great 2021 as well and raised a Series A about $17 million shortly thereafter.
• 13:46
  And, you know, we kind of turned into a real tech company.
• 13:49
  And, and so we, we've been kind of doing that ever since and, and really kind of expanding the scope of what we do.
• 13:57
  Like I said, we started out with this lifestyle benefit stipend idea of just you, you know, like, day for you.
• 14:03
  It's like you just pay your employees like a monthly, I don't call it 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month.
• 14:09
  It would go into their fringe account, then they would just purchase what they wanted with that.
• 14:13
  Right.
• 14:13
  It was pretty simple, but it became pretty popular and our, our customers and prospects wanted us to do more.
• 14:20
  And so we got into rewards of rec.
• 14:23
  We got into the wellness space and like wellness challenges, like steps challenges and those sorts of things that you see companies do.
• 14:31
  We got into like swag management.
• 14:33
  So like company branded gear and stuff.
• 14:35
  We do that as well now.
• 14:37
  So we sort of expanded the scope of what we do, but really all around this central idea of just enhancing the employee experience and making benefits really relevant and understandable and kind of taking this idea of fringe benefits,
• 14:52
  which is why we call ourselves fringe, which, you know, for the most part, fringe benefits have been something just for the elite.
• 14:59
  You know, it's for the C suite, it's the access to the private jet or whatever the case may be.
• 15:05
  And we wanted to take that concept and democratize it across the entire employee base so that everybody gets to feel like a vip, you know, at the company.
• 15:15
  And so that's, that's kind of our mission and what we've been doing ever since.
• 15:20
  Okay, love that.
• 15:21
  And such a classic entrepreneurial story to where, I mean, it's like in the beginning, you didn't even know what you were doing.
• 15:28
  All you knew is you were, you were doing it.
• 15:30
  You were doing it, man.
• 15:31
  Yeah.
• 15:32
  And so here's a question.
• 15:34
  So when you go from not even understanding how private equity works and really googling stuff in the moment, right.
• 15:43
  To, you know, raising some serious money in a series A, like, how'd you handle that transition as the company scaled and you're dealing with that.
• 15:51
  That level of investment now.
• 15:53
  I mean, I handled some of it well.
• 15:55
  I handled some of it poorly, you know, to be honest with you.
• 15:58
  I.
• 15:59
  One of what I found out is one of the hardest things to scale is company culture.
• 16:05
  Like when.
• 16:06
  When you're early on and you have five people, 10 people, everybody knows each other.
• 16:11
  You talk on the phone, you text each other, you know each other's spouses names and kids names, and it's more of a family.
• 16:17
  And I think that's why small businesses use the word family a lot, because that's what it feels like.
• 16:22
  It's very small, very intimate.
• 16:24
  But then when you grow, I mean, we grew to like 70, 80 people at that time, from like 15, you know, to like 70 in like two months, three months.
• 16:35
  You know, that was.
• 16:38
  That was hard because all of a sudden I had this group of people that we had a ton of trust, a ton of history.
• 16:45
  They were gritty.
• 16:46
  They knew how to fight through adversity.
• 16:48
  They knew that the company was like, maybe gonna make it.
• 16:51
  Probably not, because most companies don't, you know, and they had that mentality.
• 16:56
  But then we went and hired a bunch of people that weren't there for the beginning.
• 16:59
  They weren't there for the big struggle.
• 17:01
  They weren't there for the goose egg in 20, 20 quarter one.
• 17:05
  They, you know, they weren't there when we sold software without having any software.
• 17:09
  And so to them, it was a job.
• 17:11
  It was just like, oh, I got this cool job at this cool company.
• 17:15
  Great.
• 17:15
  They didn't understand the risk.
• 17:17
  They didn't understand the struggle.
• 17:19
  They didn't understand that we've got to innovate all the time.
• 17:22
  They didn't understand that our competitors are going to copy everything we do and everything that we say.
• 17:26
  So we got to be new and novel and shift and move all the time to stay relevant.
• 17:33
  And so we kind of had two different cultures, you know, that formed.
• 17:36
  You know, people that were like, all in Die Hard.
• 17:39
  You're like kind of ride or die people.
• 17:42
  And then employees, you know, they were just kind of like, yep, we're here.
• 17:46
  Please pay me on time.
• 17:47
  I'll do what you ask.
• 17:48
  I'll work hard.
• 17:49
  But, like, I don't really get the whole startup thing, you know?
• 17:52
  And so the.
• 17:54
  The real challenge was trying to fuse all of that together and have everybody understand what they were a part of and why it mattered and what the mission was and what the culture should be, how we ought to
• 18:06
  treat each other.
• 18:08
  And it was hard, but it was Also, like, probably the most rewarding part of the work at the same time, because we did a good job with that and we were successful with that.
• 18:18
  And I think we developed a culture that people very much want to work in, you know, and like, we've even had employees that, you know, have left and they've boomerang to come back and said, man, I thought the
• 18:30
  grass was greener.
• 18:31
  It wasn't, you know, like, I'm happy to be back on, you know, the home turf.
• 18:37
  And so that, that was, that was something that we did well.
• 18:40
  But not always, you know, like, we definitely made mistakes along the way, whether it was communicating too little to our employees or like over communicating the struggles or the fears where it was like causing anxiety for everybody.
• 18:55
  You know, it's a difficult thing to do because you start out with just you and your co founders and you share everything and it's very close, very intimate.
• 19:05
  And then all of a sudden there's a corporate structure and there's a hierarchy and communication gets tough.
• 19:12
  But that's, that's one thing that really jumps out to me as kind of one of the hard parts of scaling a business.
• 19:19
  The other would be figuring out how to go to market.
• 19:23
  So there's a lot of different ways to sell software.
• 19:26
  You know, you can just do a bunch of, you know, cold email outreach and find individual companies and try to get them on a demo and show them and sign them up and just, you know, blocking and tackling
• 19:38
  one at a time.
• 19:39
  Or you can go the partnership route.
• 19:41
  You can find a bigger company with a ton of clients and say, hey, we can add our features to your features and makes your software better, you know, and you can kind of like co sell with large companies
• 19:54
  and, and that's scalable and great, but also slow, you know, because large companies don't move fast.
• 20:01
  They move slowly and carefully, you know, which is not what a startup is at all.
• 20:06
  So there's a lot.
• 20:07
  I mean, I feel like I could talk, I could monologue that for 30 minutes.
• 20:12
  Dave.
• 20:12
  Of just like, what are the hard parts and what are the struggles of scale?
• 20:16
  But I think what I can say confidently is the very hardest part of a startup is going from small, going from small to mid size, and then probably going from mid size to large.
• 20:29
  It's, it's the people management side.
• 20:32
  It's the, the expectations, the culture, that sort of thing.
• 20:37
  Okay.
• 20:38
  Yeah.
• 20:38
  And I'm sure so many of the entrepreneurs that are listening can relate.
• 20:41
  Yeah, I'm sure that.
• 20:42
  That very thing.
• 20:43
  So, I mean, from someone, right?
• 20:45
  That scrappy startup, the way you guys put this thing together and how you got on a roll and started to scale, and then next thing you know, you're dealing with this whole other issue of you've.
• 20:56
  You've got all these excess employees that weren't there from the beginning, that you've somehow got to, you know, merge and bring into the culture that you had built with your initial team.
• 21:06
  Like, what.
• 21:06
  What one thing do you think that you did helped you the most with.
• 21:12
  With making that happen?
• 21:14
  Yeah, I think it's.
• 21:16
  Yeah, I've heard this advice many places, but it's because it's true.
• 21:21
  You cannot communicate too much as a leader, you know, even if you feel like people are rolling their eyes because you've said the same thing 50 times, say it a 51st.
• 21:31
  First time.
• 21:33
  Because no one has the vision, no one has the grit, the courage, the determination, or like the ownership over the mission more than the founding team.
• 21:46
  You know, no one's ever going to feel as passionately about your business as you do, you know, and so you've got to continue to communicate.
• 21:55
  Here's why we're here.
• 21:56
  Here's why what we do matters.
• 21:58
  Here's how we're going to do it.
• 21:59
  Here's how we're going to treat each other over and over and over again, you know, and be honest and be vulnerable and share the good news and share the bad news, you know, carefully, intelligently, share that, that bad
• 22:16
  news and that good news, because you don't get people way over excited, you know, about things that might not happen.
• 22:21
  And there's a lot of that in the startup world, opportunities that don't pan out.
• 22:25
  And you don't want to get people totally freaked out about a piece of bad news that might actually not be all that bad if we just kind of ride the wave for a few months, you know, so you
• 22:33
  got to communicate really intelligently.
• 22:35
  But I don't know, I think I was under the illusion that my job would be as CEO would be more like, you know, 90 fundraising and like, external communication, PR, podcast, things of that nature, like get exposure for
• 22:54
  the company and so forth.
• 22:56
  And it's.
• 22:57
  That's way too higher percentage, you know, like, that's actually much more, 30, 40% of what I do when I'm doing it.
• 23:04
  Well, there's a lot of internal work, and most of that internal work is communicating it, really.
• 23:12
  Just showing up, sitting in meetings, sharing perspective, comforting people when they're afraid, joining in with people when they're celebrating.
• 23:23
  They're excited, they're proud of their achievements.
• 23:26
  Just being present and not being this kind of wizard of Oz, behind the curtain type of leader, you know, that people can't see, can't access, don't see as a real person, you know, they're just the man, the, the
• 23:43
  management, you know what I mean?
• 23:45
  I think that's a really dangerous thing.
• 23:48
  You know, my job is building trust.
• 23:51
  Building trust within police first and foremost with, with customers, second to that.
• 23:56
  And then of course there's the other stakeholders like the board, investors and so forth.
• 24:01
  But building, building trust takes really good communication and really consistent communication.
• 24:07
  So that's the thing that has helped me.
• 24:10
  I haven't always succeeded at that.
• 24:12
  I've made a ton of mistakes along the way.
• 24:15
  There's no other way to be an entrepreneur than to make mistakes.
• 24:18
  You know that.
• 24:19
  That's all you can do.
• 24:20
  If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not an entrepreneur because you're probably just doing something easy and too in your wheelhouse, you know, but, but through all those mistakes, I think we've also seen a lot of success at
• 24:36
  having clear communication and, and getting everybody on the same page.
• 24:40
  And I would attribute a lot of our success to that.
• 24:44
  Okay, and you, I mean, like you said, you as the, the, the face of the company, right?
• 24:48
  CEO and co founder, right?
• 24:50
  That's, that's your job, more so than anybody, is to communicate.
• 24:55
  Like where.
• 24:56
  Because I mean, clearly, right, you, you're very authentic, you're very open.
• 25:00
  And so, you know, see, just, just whether it's, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly, just very, very transparent about it.
• 25:11
  Like, where does this like, communication do you think?
• 25:15
  Where do you think you, you develop those skills?
• 25:19
  Man, that's a big question.
• 25:21
  I mean, there's probably a childhood answer to that, honestly.
• 25:25
  But even beyond that, I think to some degree it's a natural, I'll use the word gifting that I have communicating with people, I tend to be able to take something really complex and, you know, kind of produce a
• 25:46
  metaphor or something approachable, some sort of analogy that people can go, okay, yeah, I get what you're talking about, you know, because a lot of the communication that I'm doing, the people listening to that communication have very little
• 25:58
  context.
• 25:59
  You know, they weren't sitting in the board meeting, they weren't talking to the investors, they weren't in the room with the other CEOs of the partnership companies that, you know, that we work with.
• 26:08
  So I've got to take all of that context and like Package it up and give people something, you know, kind of more bite sized and approachable.
• 26:16
  And that's something I've just been able to do in life.
• 26:20
  It's just, it's a, It's a natural ability that I have.
• 26:23
  I'm also lacking in some natural abilities that would be nice to have as a leader.
• 26:27
  Kind of have to just like take the good with the bad, you know, there's no perfect leader out there.
• 26:32
  There's no perfect people out there.
• 26:35
  And I'm certainly included in that imperfect group.
• 26:37
  But I, I think it's that I, I think it's.
• 26:44
  I think also it's probably suffering.
• 26:48
  The fallout of poor communication has taught me how important it is.
• 26:53
  So I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how to do it better and studying that and understanding, like how people learn and how they take in information and even based on their personality types, how they
• 27:08
  might receive information, you know, and yeah, I think honestly, it's just a big focus.
• 27:18
  It's a big focus of mine.
• 27:20
  And because I have.
• 27:23
  I shouldn't say have to.
• 27:24
  I get to do so much communicating with so many different types of stakeholders in the business.
• 27:30
  I get a ton of practice at it too, you know, but just like anything else with entrepreneurship, a lot of it is learning through failure, you know?
• 27:39
  Yeah, I remember it's probably four or five years ago, if maybe four.
• 27:45
  I remember there was this criticism of me internally.
• 27:50
  Somebody coined the phrase internally that I toxic positivity.
• 27:55
  And, and the criticism was, hey, you're too positive.
• 27:59
  You're.
• 27:59
  You're too sure that everything's going to go well.
• 28:01
  You get everybody's hopes up.
• 28:03
  And then things sometimes, not always, but sometimes things fall apart.
• 28:08
  You know, partnership opportunities or big sales or whatever the case may be, and people are disappointed, you know, and they're upset and it scares them that like, hey, Jordan was all excited about this and it fell through.
• 28:21
  Are we okay?
• 28:22
  Does that mean, you know, is my job security threatened here?
• 28:26
  You know, and so I've just had to learn to be more measured, you know, to be like, hey, guys, there is an opportunity.
• 28:33
  There's no guarantee that anything happens with it.
• 28:36
  But let me tell you about this thing that could happen.
• 28:39
  And like, let me thank the people that generated this opportunity and let me thank the people in advance that will pursue this opportunity.
• 28:47
  And if it happens, let me go ahead and thank the operational people that will actually execute on this opportunity once it becomes real, as opposed to going, guys, in three months we're going to have this great partnership.
• 28:57
  You Know, just sort of like giving this celebratory tone to something that is not yet true, you know, and I think it was a fair criticism and so I learned from that and learned to be more balanced and
• 29:11
  it's a hard thing to do.
• 29:13
  I'm, I'm actually a very emotional person and so I, I have high highs and, and low lows.
• 29:19
  And so for me to discipline myself, to give people a measured level headed communication is, is pretty tough actually.
• 29:31
  But I know how valuable it is to do that so I, I've just learned how to do it.
• 29:38
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:39
  And I'm sure a lot of new entrepreneurs are guilty of that and just getting super excited about potential deals and you know.
• 29:45
  Yeah, like you said, got it, got to be measured.
• 29:48
  Okay, so Jordan, let's Fast forward to 2025 where, what is Fringe doing present day and where are you headed next?
• 29:57
  Yeah, good question.
• 29:58
  So I think I mentioned earlier, go to market strategy could be a lot of different things.
• 30:04
  And so a few years ago we actually decided to kind of deprioritize direct sales and to form some big partnerships.
• 30:14
  So we have a massive partnership with a company I'm sure you're familiar with called adp, who is the largest payroll company in the world.
• 30:24
  I think it's 1/5 of America gets their paycheck through ADP at this point.
• 30:29
  So we're talking like 40, 50 million people that they have, you know, as a frame of reference, like we've got a couple hundred thousand, you know, they got like 40, 50 million.
• 30:40
  It's a massive partner and we've been working with them for years to try to kind of co sell and we finally were able to get embedded into their software.
• 30:53
  So starting actually in nine days on October 16th, they, when, when an ADP customer signs up for ADP, they will also get Fringe automatically so that they'll, they'll, they'll log in for the first time.
• 31:10
  Hey, you got Fringe.
• 31:12
  Here's what it does, here's how you can use it.
• 31:14
  Go fund accounts, etc.
• 31:16
  And so we're really, really, really, really optimistic that that's going to be a major, major win for us because the scale of that is obviously enormous and we're not putting all eggs into one singular basket, but it's a
• 31:32
  hell of a basket.
• 31:33
  And, and we're really optimistic that that's gonna, that's gonna take off.
• 31:38
  And, and if it does then you know, we'll, we'll go, you know, from being this series a company that's like doing pretty well to you Know, something approximating a household name, and that would be a dream come true,
• 31:56
  obviously.
• 31:57
  So I'm very excited about that.
• 31:58
  But like I said, measured tempered.
• 32:01
  Right.
• 32:02
  So.
• 32:02
  So there's other partners, other opportunities.
• 32:04
  We're still doing some direct sales as well, just to be sure that we have a lot of ways of sustaining ourselves and, and continuing to grow our revenue and even if one particular opportunity doesn't pan out.
• 32:16
  But that's the big thing right now.
• 32:19
  You know, that's kind of the, that's kind of the golden ticket in the software world is if you can find one of the big players that has big scale and you can provide value to them, that enhances the
• 32:32
  value to their customers, you know, then what tends to happen is you get embedded in their software and then eventually they tend to purchase your company, you know, which is a very real possibility.
• 32:44
  But we'll see.
• 32:47
  Okay.
• 32:48
  Wow.
• 32:48
  We'll love that.
• 32:49
  So from.
• 32:50
  From gritty startup through a whole bunch of failure, persisting, succeeding, learning, and now, you know, poised to, you know, to really take it to the next level.
• 33:00
  So love that whole story and love what you do.
• 33:03
  And so, Jordan, if, if, if other entrepreneurs are hearing this and they want to learn more about fringe and how they can potentially do business with you, what's the best way people can reach out to you online?
• 33:15
  Yeah, I mean, I think if you really direct and very interested in fringe, obviously come to our website, Fringe Us, you know, book a demo and all of that good stuff.
• 33:25
  But if it's more of a, oh, this guy's interesting, this company's interesting.
• 33:29
  I just kind of want to learn more and more of a casual interest.
• 33:32
  I would encourage, just follow me on LinkedIn.
• 33:34
  That's the platform that I, I write there a lot.
• 33:37
  I post videos there a lot.
• 33:39
  You know, it's a lot of the similar content to this.
• 33:42
  Me talking about business, entrepreneurship, what it's like sharing my journey, sharing some of my personal story too.
• 33:50
  I have a pretty interesting life running a startup and also having five children.
• 33:55
  That is just a hilarious combination of somebody trying to do both of those things at once.
• 34:00
  That's pretty entertaining.
• 34:02
  So if anybody want to get a good laugh out of the hilarity of my life, just follow me on LinkedIn.
• 34:10
  That would be a great place to start.
• 34:14
  All right, cool.
• 34:14
  So we'll link that in the show notes for everyone as well.
• 34:18
  Jordan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this invaluable wisdom from your journey with, with our audience.
• 34:24
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 34:25
  Yeah, Dave, I really enjoyed it.
• 34:27
  Thanks so much for having me, Sam.