Episode 444: Transforming the Gig Economy: Insights with Gary Engels on Strategic Growth and KPIs

Speaker A: Since 1974, I've read a book a week searching for what it takes to achieve business success. After thousands of books, hundreds of client success stories, and decades of hard won business wisdom, here's what I know for sure. Working yourself to death isn't a badge of honor.

Speaker B: It's a failure of strategy.

Speaker A: So thanks for joining us today. I'm Josh Patrick and this is the 5050 accelerator where we explore how, uh, real business owners are cutting their hours by 50% while growing their profits by 50%. No consultant BS here, no theoretical frameworks, just proven strategies from people who have actually done it. Because here's the truth. If you're still working 65 or more hours a week, putting out fires and missing family dinners, it is what it is. But that's not how it has to stay. So let's get started.

Speaker B: Hey, how are you today? This is Josh Patrick and you're at the 5050 accelerator podcast. And my guest today is Gary Engels. He is the CEO of my gig. It's a fintech company from what I understand. But we're going to have Gary tell us what it is and then we're going to jump in and do a little bit of work on how Gary might think about 5050 his business. And 5050 stands for, by the way. 50% more profits, 50% less time on tactical activities. So let's bring Gary on. Hey Gary, how are you today?

Speaker C: Wonderful. Josh, Good to see you here today.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot for joining me. So tell me what my gig does.

Speaker C: Sure. So yeah, my gig is focused on business services. Uh, you know, gig. What is a gig worker? Let's start with there. The people that we serve are essentially 1099 workers. In today's uh, economy, uh, 52% of uh, uh, our workforce has a 1099. Uh, the world is changing. And you know, many of them have W2s also. Uh, but they have a side gig that 1099 income, right? And when you fall into that world, right. When you fall into a side income or a gig worker, a lot of times you don't have access to a lot of the same resources that a large company might have. Right? A large company might offer health, uh, benefits, uh, they might offer, you know, security systems, it, uh, security for your computers and things like this. Uh, they might, uh, offer a peo, uh, HR, uh, solutions and whatnot. And as a gig worker, as a 1099 worker, you don't have access to those things. So we help them out. You know, we, we provide a lot of those solutions, uh, for them, you know, you know, the Gen Z World, uh, 72% of Gen Z is a 1099 worker nowadays.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And it's just growing at an exponential rate. And things are changing. And so we want to make sure that those, um, uh, that side of the workforce is taken care of and has the business solutions that they need. Uh, on top of that, my gig is an affiliate platform. And so we offer an opportunity to sign up as a reseller for those services and create a side income for

Speaker B: themselves so they can sell your services. Is that what you. Boom. That's cool.

Speaker C: Cool.

Speaker B: So let's talk a little bit about your business. So I noticed, you know, just for everyone knows, every guest that comes on our show, I have this little assessment I asked them to do because it helps me figure out what we might want to drill in on and talk about to have a reasonable conversation that will help Gary and help you at the same time. So, um, Gary, uh, um, it appears that you, um, are not thrilled with your hiring. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker C: Well, you know, when we're, when we're just getting started here, we have a solid team in place and we're just having focused on that side. So when you say, you know, not thrilled about it, it's just, uh, not something that we really tremendously focused on. We are recruiting right now. Right. We're recruiting new, uh, certified resellers, uh, enterprise partners and channel partners that we work with. And so, you know, as far as like, hiring versus recruiting, those are just two different things. And the hiring side of our business, we haven't focused a whole lot on.

Speaker B: So do you hire people?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we have 25 employees. But, uh, you know, we um. Yeah, just not, not rapidly expanding right now. We have a solid team in place.

Speaker B: So what's your success rate when you hire?

Speaker C: Well, success rate would be higher. Well, we just launched here in June with my gig, and so I don't know how to really answer that question.

Speaker B: Been around long enough to really have much, much in the way of turnover, Correct?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. How happy are you with the people you've hired?

Speaker C: Yeah, great. Like I said, we have a solid team in place. That's why we haven't needed to focus on hiring. Um, we came from a situation where we brought company anchor accounting and 10 years of experience with what they were doing, and we brought a lot of their people, uh, over here, um, as well, you know, anchor. Ah, the, the Anchor group is our parent company and they helped, you know, create the formation of my gig so my gig is. Is new, but it's not new. Right. We've been around for 10 years and working with other tax credits and other services, business services for. For a long time. So we took some of the existing staff and the people that we had with the larger company and we move them over into my gig. And so, like I said, the hiring process hasn't really been a, A major focus of ours because we already had a team in place to be able to step into those roles.

Speaker B: So the anchor folks, what do they do for your customers?

Speaker C: Well, they're. If you think about reselling, uh, a service. Right. Uh, you know, there's kind of a couple different sides to, you know, selling. Right. One is selling, then one is the fulfilling side of it. You don't have to do the fulfilling. Right. My gig as a certified reseller, you don't have to fulfill any of the products. That's what Anchor does. That's what our partner companies do when you resell the solution.

Speaker B: So what does Anchor do?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, anchor accounting is an example. We anchor accounting as a FICA tip credit that they offer. A lot of restaurants, uh, overpay in their FICA taxes. And so anchor accounting has a platform where you can bring a restaurant to their service. They will go through all the filing for them, work with them directly as an accounting service, and, you know, file the claim, and they can get a significant portion of those FICA tip, uh, uh, taxes back for them. And so like I said, as a reseller, you sign up a restaurant, you bring somebody to, you know, the, the landing page and kind of help them get into the funnel in the situation. Well, the reseller doesn't have to actually be the accountant. The reseller doesn't have to be the person to fulfill. That's what anchor accounting does.

Speaker B: Okay, so what's the biggest challenge that you're having with my cake?

Speaker C: Biggest challenge? Okay. Uh, well, you know, it's a. I would say just, uh, you know, speed to market. Right. And so when you're getting up and running, right. We are, um, right now actively recruiting certified, um, resellers. Right. We have a solution that is plug and play. It's ready to go. Um, we're just a matter of looking, uh, for those resellers to be able to step in and start offering those services to other people. And so, you know, biggest challenge right now is just, you know, we're ready to rock, we're ready to expand, and, uh, uh, you know, we're just in the process of recruitment.

Speaker B: So, um, when you're recruiting. What are you. You're recruiting people to resell your services, correct?

Speaker C: That's correct, yeah.

Speaker B: And how do you go about doing that?

Speaker C: Well, we have, uh, different incentives there. We have. Our, um, channel partners are the biggest focus for us right now. Our channel partners are some of these larger organizations, uh, that have groups of people that they already work with, um, and they're bringing them in for us. Uh, we work with some enterprise partners, like an accounting firm and places like this that already have staff and already have a group of people that they bring together. And so we're partnering, working with them right now. And so, you know, like our, our, uh, our VP of sales, uh, Alex, uh, he is right now just booking meetings every day and just working with some of those enterprise partners to bring them in.

Speaker B: Does he have a challenge getting in front of these folks?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that, uh, you know, we could always fill, uh, that calendar more. And that's where I think that the hiring process and things like that is going to come in even more. But, um, you know, in any business is. Businesses, uh, are. Are run by systems. Right. And those systems are run by people. And the systems right now are in place. And, uh, we have our VP of sales and our sales team is, you know, building those systems out. We just need to plug people into those systems.

Speaker B: You also need to train them.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: So how do you go about doing that?

Speaker C: Yep. So my gig has a whole learning management system and we have a whole series of training videos and we call them certified resellers because we don't just. We don't just sign somebody up and then just say, you know, go. Right. We have a whole certified, uh, reseller process where you're going to go through like with this FICA tip credit that I was mentioning. Right. As one product that we offer, um, we have a system for training where they step in and they watch a series of videos and they become a certified reseller and they get a certificate, you know, showing that they went through that training. But that helps them build the confidence Will, to understand what it is.

Speaker B: You've not been around long enough that probably have any rogue certified resellers yet, have you?

Speaker C: Yeah, no, there's some few, uh, people that have gone through that process.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, rogue. I mean people who you certify, but they end up not doing what you want them to do.

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Too new to even say that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: And of course, of course that's going to happen. That's where the compliance department comes in. Yeah, you, you know, we're going to make sure that we, we're protecting our opportunity and protecting what we have. So that way people aren't going out and saying something that they, they shouldn't be saying. Right. Uh, you know, you can't go out there and start thinking that you're representing the IRS or, uh, you know, making guarantees or promises. You know, your promise is a restaurant. You're going to get this much money back. You can't do that. And yeah, the compliance stuff, that's part of the training. Why that stuff is important.

Speaker B: So is Anchor. How big is Anchorage?

Speaker C: Well, Anchor has, uh, processed uh, about a billion dollars in tax credits through erc, uh, and the self employed tax credit and things like that over the last ten years, um, you know, as a referral or affiliate platform, that side of things, I mean, they've, you know, paid out, uh, um, in just, I don't know the exact number million tens of millions of dollars in commissions paid out to their affiliates that have, um, shared those, those numbers or shared those offers in the past. And uh, they're, they're huge. Uh, they just, they just transferred everything over from an older platform that they had into a new platform called My Gig.

Speaker B: Okay. So does Anchor own you guys or are. How's, how's the relationship between you and Anchor?

Speaker C: Yeah, they're the parent company. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: Okay. And, um, can you talk a little bit how you decided to join with them? What was your decision process with that? Because this is, you know, a lot of companies are, you know, say, okay, well if I go with a larger company, I'll have more resources and more scale and more blah, blah, blah, blah. But I've found often in the past that sometimes it doesn't work out because it's not a very good partnership. So how did you go about, through the process, design Anchors who I want to, who I want to partner with?

Speaker C: Well, that's not exactly the relationship there. Right. Anchor, the Anchor Group is, uh, was, was the founder of my gig. Right. We created it together. Right. This is something that. This is not my idea. This is, I'm not the founder of my gig. Right. My gig was created by the Anchor Group.

Speaker B: You're a hired guy.

Speaker C: I was brought in, you know, as, as CEO to help, uh, manage and promote and build my gig. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: And how do they decide to bring you in? And how did you decide that you want to be brought?

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, there's, there's definitely some past relationships and some past, uh, uh, things that I'VE done, um, you know, I built a marketing agency and we were spending millions of dollars a year and you know, Facebook ads and things like that. And I've gone down that road. I've. I've been a gig worker, you know, a entrepreneur in the, um, I ran a brick and mortar business. I ran a martial arts school for 20 years. You know, so I've been in that world and understood, you know, what that takes, you know, to run a, uh, just a brick and mortar business, uh, you know, all the different side gig type, uh, you know, opportunities and things like that in the past that we've done. And then I was even brought on as a COO of a, uh, an education company. And uh, we built that company up to be sold, uh, and purchased by a larger company that bought us out and kind of worked myself out of a job. And so, um, you know, that was, that was a great, uh, exit and that whole process and that led me into a place where I had some open time and uh, so through some relationships, uh, that would, brought me into it and uh, relationships that uh, trusted and understood what I was capable of. Uh, they said that I'd be a great fit for the CEO position to build or step in.

Speaker B: Cool. So, um, uh, you work for folks at Anchor, correct? How did, how are they going to evaluate your success?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. And obviously, uh, on results, right. We track our KPIs daily. We track, uh, you know, the success of our certified resellers. Right. Those are, those are important measures. Right. You know, if you want to be successful yourself. Right. It's completely 100 tied to the success of others around you and uh, that's all matters.

Speaker B: This is one of my trick questions.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What's more important, your staff members or your customers?

Speaker C: That is a trick question.

Speaker B: It is,

Speaker C: yeah. There's, there's no great way to answer that. Right. Um, I always looked at, you know, in business, in any, in any opportunity, right. That the, ah, your customers are your boss. Right. If they're not happy. Right. Everything falls apart. Um, but, uh, how do you keep them happy? Uh, good staff, good training on the staff to keep them happy. And so, um, you know, it's a symbiotic relationship. You can't, you can't possibly say that the customers are more important than the, than the uh, the staff that helps them be successful.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But my experience is if you don't treat your staff as your very best customer, uh, they will return the favor to your customers, meaning that they don't love working for you and love what they do. Uh, they're going to make your customers lives not as friendly as they could.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: And so I've always maintained that the number one job of a, a company is to have really happy frontline employees. Because if your frontline employees are happy, your customers are happy.

Speaker C: Yep. Couldn't agree more.

Speaker B: And I use United Airlines as my favorite example of that. About 15, 20 years ago, um, United had a CEO from hell they're flying on. United was nothing but terrible every single time you stepped on their planes. I used to fly them a lot then around, you know, six, seven, eight years ago, they changed CEOs, and all of a sudden, United went from being a terrible experience to being a pretty good experience. It was really simple. The CEO stopped punishing their employees and started treating them with some value.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and for me, that was a pretty big lesson. So you guys, um, you're very system driven. You're very KPI driven. And, um, I like to take KPIs and make them into dashboards, but that's just my sort of.

Speaker C: I do the same thing. I agree. Yeah.

Speaker B: So how did you come across choosing your KPIs? This is a big deal, by the way, for folks who are listening, because too often I go into a business and I see, I ask them what they're measuring, and they give me this laundry list of 32 items.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so how many KPIs do you guys focus on every day?

Speaker C: Um, about 10. Okay. And, uh, you know, what's, what's interesting about, um, the idea that is something that I actually used to teach in the martial arts world is, uh, the idea of momentum goals and milestone goals. And I think that that kind of helps us understand where we came up with, you know, these, these KPIs that we're going through. The, the idea of a milestone goal, like kind of, you know, where. The top of the mountain. Where are you headed? You know, what's that big, you know, ultimate goal that, that you're looking to accomplish? Right? The, the, you know, the bhag, right, the big hairy, audacious goal. Right? What's that, what's that big thing that you're. You're aiming for? And then you start to work backwards, like, well, you know, before I can get there, what has to happen? You know, and before I get there, what has to happen? Before I get there, what has to happen, you start to walk your way backwards on that journey. And, and it's a great exercise to sit down and kind of go through all this and you say, you know, all right, so right now to the daily process, right? The daily goal. What, what is necessary to accomplish. And that's where, you know, your momentum goals come in, your daily KPIs, right? There was, uh, there was one time part of a black belt test that I had to accomplish. I had to do 50,000 push ups in a year. And it was, it was a part of our process, right? It was just one of those things, right? It was like. And I realized this has nothing to do with the pushup. It has to do with learning how to and account, you know, set and achieve a, a large crazy, you know, goal. And, um, there was a lot of other pieces to that. But just to simplify and break it down, it was like, you know, it was 150 a day and I can't do 150 push ups. I don't know about you, but, you know, so how did that break? They got to do 50 in the morning, 50 in the, in the afternoon, and then 50 before bed, you know, and, uh, that was, that was something that was achievable, right? And if you couldn't do 50, okay, great, then you break it back down to, you know, I'm going to do 10 every hour or whatever it is. But, you know, eventually you'll find a place where it's like, okay, I can do that, right? That's, that's achievable, right? And you start to, you know, shape your daily process, shape your, your day around, you know, how can I achieve that smallest piece, right? That, that's that tiny KPI. And I think that's, you know, the process of it. And we're still working on it too. Like I said, still, still new in the process of, of, uh, understanding these. And we're still fine tuning those.

Speaker B: But. So I'm going to, I'm going to make a suggestion. I don't know if you're doing this or not.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: It sounds like your KPIs are all historical, meaning you're measuring something that's already happened. Do you have any KPIs that are predictive, that, say this KPI, if it moves this direction, is a good thing. 90 days from now, it moves in a different direction. It's a bad thing 90 days from now. So I have like three, four, five things I can really focus in on. Um, that's going to tell me whether I have a problem in the future or not.

Speaker C: Great advice. I'm not tracking that currently. No.

Speaker B: Okay, okay. In my experience, is way more important than the goals we set.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: Here's, um, why I used to be in the food service and vending business back in the dark ages, and I tell this story a lot, is that, you know those grassroots vending machines that have, you know, candies and chips, pastries and all that kind of garbage? Well, our average, um, collection per service was $43. And if I had set a goal of what we accomplished, which was a 400 improvement, nobody would ever improve whatever have believed it. We never would have gotten there. So we just did better. So we did these experiments along the way. You know, we, you know, went from saying, okay, we're going to get rid of the jujubes and put two rows of Snickers in, because Snickers were always sold out. And then we ended up doing three rows of Snickers and four rows of Snickers and four rows Of M and Ms. So eventually we went from having 40 items in the machine down to 15 items machine. And you would happen when we did that, because it was the right 15 items. Our, our productivity went from $43 a service to $142 per service. Oh, now you think about that.

Speaker A: Now.

Speaker B: I could have never in the world use KPIs to get me there. Um, so it's one of the reasons I say, you know, my goal is better, but at the same time, I want to know what's going to happen in the future. The way we used to measure that was we tracked headcounts at our customers. So let's say we had an account that had 575 people, and every quarter would ask every customer how many people were working there. If that went from 575 down to 525, down to 475, down to 425. We knew we had to go back to that client and renegotiate.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: If it went from 575 to 675 to 775, we knew we had to be more. We had to sharpen the pencil because our competitors would be in. So that's an example of a predictive KPI measurement that's going to tell me what I need to be doing in the future.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. And I can really see from the Snickers example, too. Right. If you had a KPI of, hey, we want to sell 10 Snickers a day out of this machine. Right, Right. And, you know, you're, you're celebrating like, hey, we hit 10, you know, know, we hit 10, we hit 10. And then you never realize how, how much more you could grow.

Speaker B: We actually could have sold 40 a day.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So a lot of times when we're doing our measurements, we want to be really, really mindful of what's going to help us move the needle in the future.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And having big rocks is always a great thing. No, there's nothing wrong with having that, you know, a three year goal. Five year goal.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: I'm not supposed to be fine a 10 year goals because I don't think anybody can look 10 years out and say this is what's going to happen. But some people do it. And so I'm not opposed to it. But I'm more excited when somebody tells me, here's the measurements. They're going to tell me what's going to happen in the next 90 days of my business.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's like predicting the weather, Right. The further you go out, the less accurate it is.

Speaker B: Like, I work a lot with contractors and if you look at a construction company, what's one of the, what's the most important number for them to track is backlog. Because if their backlog is going up, they know they might need to hire people. The backlog is going down. They better get their sales force in motion or they're going to have a problem in the future. So it's really pretty simple. Uh, and I think every business has that sort of stuff. So I would encourage you in your business, say, gee, what can I do to make predictive measurements that will be help us figure out we're going in the right direction or not? That's just my.

Speaker C: No, that's great. That's great feedback. Yeah.

Speaker B: So, Kerry, unfortunately we're out of time. So how would folks go about finding you if they wanted to, if they wanted to become an affiliate and you happen to be a gig worker? Um, how would they do that?

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, you go to, uh, joinmygig.com is the easiest place. Joinmygig.com and would you be willing to

Speaker B: talk to folks who are interested?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, happy to. We have a place on there where you can watch a, you know, overview video and you can also book an appointment with us if you wanted to speak with, uh, you know, with one of us to be able to discuss, you know, questions and whatnot before getting started.

Speaker B: So, yeah, that's great. I've got two things I'd like you to do.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: Uh, the first is please go to wherever you're listening to this podcast Whether it's Spotify or Apple or Amazon or wherever, and leave us an honest rating and review. If you love us, you give us five stars. If you found some real value in this conversation, you can give us five stars. You said, well, this was a waste of time. You give me one star and I cry and you don't care, but I cry any. I usually cry when I get one stars. And the second thing is, if you own a business and you're like, Gary and you say, gee, this is kind of be fun to be on this podcast as a guest, why don't you send me an email? It's really easy. Just, it's Jay patrick. It's stage two. That's number two solution.com and solution is singular. So it's jpatrick2sample.com and just say, hey, I listened to the podcast. I'd like to be a guest. I'll send you a link. We'll have a conversation, see if you. If it makes sense for you. If it does, then you're on the show. So this is Josh Patrick. We're with Gary Engels. You're at the 50 50, um, accelerator podcast. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.

Speaker A: Look, I spent enough mornings thinking and writing about what it takes for business success. Here's an important final thought.

Speaker B: The old ways work for a reason.

Speaker A: But the best legacy isn't just about what you build. It's about building something that outlasts you without burning you out in the process. If you found value in today's podcast, do me a favor. Take 30 seconds to rate and review the show. And yes, I mean honest reviews. I'd rather have the hard truth than empty praise. Your feedback helps other business owners find these conversations. Hey, I'm Josh Patrick, and this has been the 5050 accelerator. It if you're ready to work less and profit more, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And remember, you've built something incredible. Now let's make sure you're actually around to enjoy it. See you next time.