Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 22. Candy, Lawn Care, and Claude Code: Joe Siegel's Wild Road to Fractional CFO & Numvex

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22. Candy, Lawn Care, and Claude Code: Joe Siegel's Wild Road to Fractional CFO & Numvex · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:02
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. The show where I sit down with
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  your favorite consultants and we take the comedic route. Find out if they're successful today
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  because they're sophisticated, because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO
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  of Pineapple Consulting Firm. The fun fact of the day, bananas are technically berries, but
• 0:21
  strawberries are not berries. You can't trust these other non-pineapple fruits, people. That's neither here
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  nor there though. Today I'm joined by my friend Joe Siegel. He's the founder of
• 0:31
  Greenlight Financial Group. He's the CEO, he's the CFO, he's born and raised in Maryland.
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  And Joe, we know you're successful today, but the question I have for you, do
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  you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more on the scrappy side?
• 0:46
  Definitely on the scrappy side, man. I don't know, I don't want to say I'm
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  sophisticated because I think if you operate like you're the dumbest person in the room
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  rather than the smartest person in the room, you stand a chance to learn more.
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  Usually the person who thinks they know everything doesn't learn enough,
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  That's exactly right. I love being the dumbest person, which for me is pretty easy
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  at any table.
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  truth very true
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  All right, so take us back to the beginning. Obviously, you're an entrepreneur now. Where'd
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  you grow up in Maryland? Did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?
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  Yeah, so yeah, I grew up Maryland in the Bowie area. For those who don't
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  know, it's near Annapolis. Yeah, both of my parents are actually entrepreneurs. My dad is
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  a personal trainer who actually trains clients online. Used to start out training people inside
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  the house before I evolved him into the online world. My mom growing up was
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  like a photographer for weddings and things. so yeah, so two parents that were very
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  entrepreneurial. So they definitely... I'd like to believe inspired a little bit of who I
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  am and why I'm scrappy, you know?
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  Yeah, both parents hustlers - guerrilla marketing, bulletin boards at Starbucks, boots on the ground.
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  yeah, he was, what they used to call guerrilla marketing - going to Starbucks putting up cards.
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  Yep. Yeah. So you get looped into this entrepreneurial world pretty early on.
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  Do you have any entrepreneurial spirit? Like, do you have a lemonade stand as a kid?
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  Yeah, for sure. I mean my parents used to do yard sales and I used
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  to love yard sales as a kid - lemonade stand with baseball card upsells.
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  sports cards - buy a lemonade, get a little baseball card with it. Whatever crappy card I didn't want.
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  love it. Getting upsold by an eight-year-old with a crappy baseball card.
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  for sure. The lemonade is like five cents. Country Time, whole pitcher for two bucks.
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  Right. Okay, so there's yard sales going on. Are you selling candy at school at all?
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  Actually, yeah. funny enough, I was that guy - my fiance laughs when I tell her these stories.
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  In middle school I was selling pixie sticks and all the different candies - Ziploc bags, pre-orders, ten cents a pixie stick.
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  By high school, a buddy said we should sell sodas. I'll bring sodas, you bring candy. We were crushing it.
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  Dude, you've had a distribution of under the table candy and sweets. The cool guy handshake, $20 bills.
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  Right. Under the table pixie sticks. How long does this go?
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  This started in middle school. We did it all the way until ninth grade - seventh, eighth, and ninth.
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  Wow, did the feds ever catch on?
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  A teacher caught on - I gave them some candy so I wouldn't get in trouble. Hush money goes a long way.
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  Little hush money goes a long way. That's fantastic. Very entrepreneurial, very scrappy.
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  At the time I was a skateboarder. Going to 7-Eleven, Burger King, or sticking it in the bank.
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  Okay, a responsible candy dealer.
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  What's the first actual traditional job?
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  First job at 13 - auto mechanic. My dad was training this guy. Oil changes, transmission flushes, sweeping. Quickly learned labor wasn't for me.
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  Payment was funny - no set agreement. Wad of cash at end of day, or food truck next door. Sodas, sandwiches - happy fat kid.
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  That's aligned incentives. When he does well, you get free stuff.
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  100%. They were shady guys - deadbolt room with stuff pulled from towed cars. Pick something from the room. Got Fast and Furious lights.
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  Basically a lost and found room.
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  That's awesome. How are the grades in high school?
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  Elementary school was terrible. Middle school better. High school - ninth grade didn't go well, private school for 10th and 11th, then dropped out.
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  Grades were okay - just wasn't challenged. Public school system was terrible. Could do algebra in seventh grade but got stuck.
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  Was terrible. Seventh grade could do algebra, teacher was supposed to move me up, she got sick, got stuck. School just wasn't hard, just boring.
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  Right. Why did you drop out?
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  Got mono in 11th grade, missed a whole month. They said I had to repeat a year. Refused - dropped out at 15, got GED. Dad said: GED or move out.
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  Pretty wild. That's a pretty young GED. Jumped ahead of the curve a bit.
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  Yeah - tried community college but was 16. Culture shock and overwhelming. Way too anxious. Difference between 16 and 18 is huge.
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  Also the difference between 16 and 18 is like pretty significant. Not raising your hand to use the bathroom - nerve wracking at that maturity level.
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  Right, yeah, that's a lot, man. What job do you get after leaving community college?
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  After mechanics, worked at Panera for three years. Got to see corporate structure. Did everything except bake bread. Then 2009 crash - couldn't afford college.
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  Dad said come work for me as a personal trainer. I had lost a lot of weight - best shape of my life. Started going to BNI groups at 18-19.
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  That's pretty crazy. BNI - think referral group, networking referral group. I joined one at 26 and it was nerve wracking.
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  At 19 though, you're talking to some 67 year old plumber who's been doing it for 40 years. I can help you and they're like, get lost, kid.
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  Oh yeah, 100%. Nobody was giving me any respect in that room. My father told me to go and I better do a damn good job.
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  Yeah, no choice. Success is the only option. Panera was hot back then - structure, data-driven forecasting. You carried that forward.
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  For sure. The general manager had a sheet based on weather, day of week, time of year - predictable sales and how much to bake. Data-driven decisions.
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  Data-driven decisions back then! That's amazing. So let's fast forward a little bit.
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  Yeah, for sure. First real business was lawn care. But my accounting firm is truly the most sincere business I ever gave a try to.
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  Okay, let's go landscaping first - I'm guessing there's some scrappy roots here.
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  I was the door knocker - could go up and talk to people. Friend was the mule. 12 yards, push mower, $400/month each.
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  To scale we needed a truck, trailer, bigger mowers. Investment was too far away. Needed more money now than time to get there. Shut it down.
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  Okay, is this the same friend who introduced soda into the candy scheme?
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  No, no, different friend, different friend.
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  Okay, but still - scaling mindset, financials mindset. How do you go from landscaping, personal trainer to financial expert for small business?
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  Always wanted to go to college. Found out at 24 you're independent for financial aid. Strategy: survive until 24, not make too much money.
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  Bartended through my 20s, soaking up what was out there. Got financial aid, took eight classes at a time, got paid to write papers - was a hustler.
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  Yeah.
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  Got into Loyola - $60k a year, no way. Got into University of Maryland Business School, top 20. Left community college with nearly a 4.0.
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  Got to Maryland and they asked what major I wanted. I said business. They asked what type. I said - don't you have regular business?
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  That sounds fancy.
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  Accounting is the backbone to every single business. My MMA coach said his biggest regret was not going to school for accounting. That was the sign.
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  Okay, you did MMA too? All right. So accounting is the move. How do you start Greenlight?
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  Worked at Clever Profits - started with 6 people and 15 clients. In three years as right-hand man, grew to 50+ employees and 250+ clients.
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  After three years realized I'd never be seen as an equal. Had the skills. Time to go. Took three-month sabbatical. Within a week, 12 former clients called asking to work with me.
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  Read Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey - where others see red lights, I see green lights. I see opportunities. Started the company. What I made in salary was easy with 5 clients.
• 25:24
  Nice. So you start off with a base of clients that just transfer over with you.
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  That's awesome. Testament to them liking you, not the company. So are you doing ramen noodle dinners in the beginning?
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  No ramen. I always practiced what I preach - have a full year of bills covered. Could have lived out of my camping truck if needed.
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  Yeah, so far I wasn't eating ramen yet. No rice and eggs, no ramen.
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  Okay, there's a yet. There's a but coming. We started strong, today we're strong. Seems like there's a dip in the middle.
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  Got to 15 clients, then the iOS update crushed online businesses. Had to double ad spend, results cut in half. Big hit to client load.
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  YouTube picking up more. Client load went up, came down. Had to learn to market for myself, utilize ads, figure things out.
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  Okay, very nice. Tell me what the business looks like today - who do you work with, what's the team?
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  About 12 clients today. Team of three. Work with online course creators, agencies, influencers, e-commerce businesses.
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  Okay, very nice. What does the next 12 months look like for you?
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  Lost a long-term client two weeks ago - friend and client. He failed to understand the value I provided. Realized I needed to change something.
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  We operated in Google Sheets - beautiful dashboards but still kind of tacky. Tried Looker Studio. Then a friend built an app and I thought - why can't I build this for myself?
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  Ducked my head down for four days and built an entirely intricate financial dashboard.
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  It's got everything - financial metrics, eliminates the $5k/year API connector and Slack costs. Fraud detection with five alert types. If your avg Zoom cost jumps from $100 to $1000, it flags it.
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  Right - account level, transaction level flagging. Turns the unexpected into the expected.
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  Education tab with P&L tutorials, balance sheet videos. AI review section every month - exclusively catered to their business. Can't afford CFO advising? This covers it.
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  That's really cool. Did you vibe code this?
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  Used Claude Code and Manus. Asked AI what's the best way. It said create a server on Render - never heard of it. Paid $7 a month, built it all.
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  Never felt more empowered to customize what my clients need. Had a call with a Facebook stranger who previously asked about alerts. Sent him a Loom video - he said where can I pay you? Offered three months free - he said I don't want free. Just send me the payment link.
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  Whoa. This is gonna be huge dude, this is amazing.
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  This guy's a stranger - I didn't even sell him. I just showed him what I built. And four old clients who left - sent them the video. They all immediately said I'm in.
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  Whoa. Wow.
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  My friend who helped build the app looked at it and said if you wouldn't have told me you built this, I wouldn't believe you. Every single thing you see - I dictated the creation for.
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  That's gotta feel awesome. Made it into a SaaS product. Already talking to three friends who own accounting firms. They all said I'm in.
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  I might have a few people that are in right away as well. I'm going to send them this podcast and they're probably going to reach out.
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  V1 launched Monday - client loved it. Got bugs but that's the point. Is this separate from Greenlight?
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  To be honest I hadn't anticipated any of this. Just building something to solve a problem. Named it Numvex - number vertex. Where the numbers meet to create clarity and confidence.
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  Didn't plan it. Day six of having head down. Was in a car six hours to look at a wedding venue in North Carolina - worked the whole way on a hotspot.
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  This is the scrapiest thing I've ever heard. Found a problem, bet I can solve it, figure it out one step at a time.
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  Yeah, crazy. It's been crazy.
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  V1 is live. First client call - they said I'm missing this one thing. I typed it in. Five minutes later it popped up on screen.
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  Holy crap, wow.
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  Built an MCP connector to GitHub and Render so Claude could work even faster. Updates can happen like that now.
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  Full-blown software engineer.
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  We're living in a time where you don't have to be an expert anymore. You just have to have the will. My client left the call and said help me build this for my clients. I said - it needs to be you. AI is dummy proof if you have time.
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  Yeah, knowledge is free now. It's about the determination to actually put your head down and do it. It has to excite you - Lex Friedman / OpenClaw creator story. I was up until 4am, 57 commits, Claude said go to bed.
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  And I was like, sorry Claude, keep going.
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  What to do. You're a robot. I'm smarter than you, damn it. Dude, that is awesome. I hope you get bought out for a billion dollars by OpenAI.
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  One can only dream. I'd be happy with way less. Man, this is great. Let me do lightning rounds - scrappy versus sophisticated. Take me inside the office. Professional camera, professional mic. What year are your earbuds?
• 43:55
  AirPods 2 or 3 - still have the lightning port. That tells me older model.
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  Okay, a little old. How many monitors on the desk? Are they all the same model?
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  Three. Two are the same, one is different.
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  Okay, docking station or cords going into the laptop individually?
• 44:32
  No docking station, all going into the laptop. Did get to keep a monitor holder from the last company.
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  Okay, that's not bad. Any ridiculous office lighting where you've got to prop something up on a stool?
• 44:57
  Some lights on stands behind monitors for content. Bought a $1,500 Sony camera and $1,000 lens. Got lights at a yard sale for $5 that were worth $100. Full circle back to yard sales.
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  Okay. Look, somehow we ended up back at yard sales. From slinging candy and soda to now a fully built AI platform.
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  Yeah, for sure, man. I'm pumped about it.
• 46:39
  Congrats! What do you want to promote? Numvex - N-U-M-V-E-X.
• 46:36
  Okay, anything else you want the folks out there to know?
• 46:39
  This product is great for people who aren't willing to take large leaps on investments. Smaller businesses get hurt by upfront CFO setup costs. Reach out - willing to let someone try it free for three months.
• 47:40
  Okay, very cool. Folks, reach out to Joe. Thank you for being the definition of Scrappy. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening.