Intro: [00:00:01] You’re listening to Innovation Radio, where we interview entrepreneurs focused on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Innovation Radio is brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs the Livin center of innovation. The only innovation center in the nation to support the founder’s journey from birth of an idea through successful exit or global expansion. Now here’s your host, Lee Kantor.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] Lee Kantor here another episode of Innovation Radio. And we could not be doing this without the support of our sponsor, Leuven Center of Innovation. They are the key to making this happen, and I am so excited to be talking to today’s guests. Lil Roberts with Xendoo. Welcome, Lil.

Lil Roberts: [00:00:45] Thank you. Lee. I’m excited as well. You are quite a host. I’ve listened to your first couple of episodes and I just love it. So thank you for all you’re doing for our community.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:54] All right. Well, let’s get into it a little bit about Xendoo, if you don’t mind. Share your mission purpose, how you serving folks.

Lil Roberts: [00:01:02] Absolutely. So Xendoo is an online bookkeeping and accounting platform for business owners across the United States and in other countries that may happen to have a business in the US. So that’s usually it managed services and e-commerce. And as a serial entrepreneur, I just felt that it took too long to get the monthly financials from the accounting industry and I wanted to change that. So back in 2017, started building technology that allows us to deliver financial visibility to small business owners. And when I say small business owners, that’s anybody from, you know, a couple hundred thousand all the way up to 30, 40 million in size is still considered a small business. And we want to give them their financial visibility so they can make timely decisions and and have financial peace of mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:50] Now, was your background in kind of bookkeeping and finance like that, or was it were you had another business and you were realizing that this is a too much of a pain for what it should be?

Lil Roberts: [00:02:01] It’s the latter. And so my journey, I’ve had 8 or 9 different businesses and my journey has been from systems integration date myself a little bit here. Back in the 80 seconds, I was in Systems integration as an early mover in the publishing space. When desktop publishing came about, then had some product businesses. Then I went into manufacturing and I had several manufacturing businesses. And so when I exited the manufacturing business in 2015, I wanted to be very intentional about the next business that I built. And I wanted it to be a technology based business, and I wanted to help reshape an industry. And the audience I wanted to help was fellow business owners and entrepreneurs, because I feel we’re the backbone of the US economy, right? The backbone of many economies. If you think about it, Starbucks started as as a small business. It started as one location, right? And most businesses do start that way. So I wanted to set out to find out why the people in the accounting industry didn’t have the proper tools that they needed to be able to deliver in a timely way. So we have built those tools and but we also have the team of people besides the tools, and we help thousands of small business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:14] And that’s great advice for our listeners that are our founders or in the startup community, focus in on the market first and then the idea just kind of make it bespoke to whatever the problem you’re trying to solve rather than have an idea and force it into a market that may or may not exist.

Lil Roberts: [00:03:34] So truly, you know, lots of times people ask me, Well, how did you come up with this concept? Or how did you decide what business to build? And I’m a big believer in scorecards. And so I built a scorecard on the front end, and the scorecard was based on that. I wanted to build a business to scale to 100 million and RR. I wanted it to be venture capital backed because I wanted to take that learning journey, whereas all my other businesses had been on my own back and the banks money and my money. And so I wanted to really build a high growth business that could help thousands of people. And then I said, the audience I love working with are entrepreneurs and business owners. And there is a difference, right? As we know. And I wanted to work with that audience with technology first to build something unique and reshape an industry. And then once I had that thesis, then it was time to go look for what industry. And so I was looking for an analog industry and at the time analog industries were that that would fit that that criteria were legal insurance and accounting and have feeling the pain firsthand in the accounting industry of not getting my financials in a timely way. And it would cost my company money because I didn’t have the visibility I needed. So I thought, let’s solve that problem. And it turned out to be a fun time. We’re helping a lot of people. We have been through a couple of rounds of funding and have some great investors and we love what we’re doing in the market that we’re helping.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:04] Now. When you’re working with other entrepreneurs, do you find that some of them haven’t even considered if they are truly in that right business?

Lil Roberts: [00:05:15] So true. So true. I find that a lot of people end up in a business that doesn’t necessarily serve their highest purpose. And what I mean by that is that they’re either in a business because they went in for maybe the wrong reasons. Right? You you you can’t go in business to make money if you’re you’re driving force is that you want to make a lot of money then that’s not the right reason to go and build a business. Right. You should build a business because you want to solve a problem and you want to provide an environment that has that serves customers and that also builds great team members internally. Right? So your team members, your your staff are your internal customers. And so when I find that business owners go in to to do that and typically business business owners will choose that. They’ll they’ll find out that, wow, this is much harder than what I thought. And then they don’t want to stay because it’s not serving their motive of getting in. And I’m not saying by any means that that’s the bulk of people. Sometimes people will just take over a family business and maybe their love is in some other area. And so what I always say to to friends and people that I meet that that want to go through that journey of finding out what’s the highest purpose for their what kind of business they should be in is first, find out what your passion is. If you do what you’re passionate about, whatever that may be. There’s always a business that aligns with that and you will find that. But do what you’re passionate about because when times are tough, it’s the passion that gets you through.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:50] Right? And but you also have to match that passion with a market.

Lil Roberts: [00:06:55] 100% like that goes without saying. Do your homework on the market first, right? Like say, okay, you know, how big of a market is it for me to sell whatever the widget may be? And then how do I prove before I invest a lot of time and money, how do I prove that the market wants it? You may love some product, but there may not be a big enough market. It may be too soon. Like Lee, you and I have seen this over and over. You know, think about when I was first starting to build Xendoo. It was 2017. And you know, Andreessen Horowitz, which is a huge name in the VC world, had invested something like 100 million plus in a drone company. That drone company never made it, and the reason being it was too early. So you have to take an idea, you have to test it, and then you have to look at the timing. And you could either be too early or too late and either one has the same result.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:52] Now, how do you advise entrepreneurs in today’s world where it seems like the technology landscape is changing so rapidly? And I don’t know how people can keep up and play in the in the new sandbox, like in this AI sandbox, for example. Um, you know, while they still have a day job, I know it’s important to always kind of keep your eye on the horizon and ahead, but it just seems like it’s changing so rapidly. How would you recommend that entrepreneurs kind of, you know, focus on on the work that they need to do today, but also keep an eye on the future?

Lil Roberts: [00:08:27] It’s a really great question. So there’s a couple of things. So to really be proficient in the AI space to understand, you need to invest 30 hours. And I’m loving like I’m absolutely loving what’s happening with chat GPT three and chat GPT four as Microsoft is using. That’s not even on the open market and it will change our worlds. And you know, there was an interesting thing from a billionaire that I read that said that during the Industrial Revolution, when machines started to replace humans on on some of the manual work they did, the humans first balked at it and didn’t want that. And then they found their way and and then they went to the next stage of it, right? And the next stage was that they were using these machines to be even more productive. And then the stage after that was that there was more automation and they were able to be even more productive. And I think with Chatgpt and AI, the same thing is going to happen if you invest the time in it. And your question is how do you find the time to invest? And I’m going to answer that for you. But if you invest the time in it, it’s going to accelerate what you do for your work.

Lil Roberts: [00:09:35] So you have to don’t when you go in, don’t just spend time reading a lot about other people’s opinions. That’s not the only way to inform yourself. You know, open up an account on open AI and and it’s free right now and start playing with it and asking questions. And then the creative mind that we all have that sometimes we put in a corner is going to allow you to understand how you’re going to be able to utilize that to then buy yourself more time and with the time you buy yourself by utilizing the tool, then take that time and reinvest it in learning more about what’s happening in the marketplace. And so really, to answer your question, it’s about reinvestment. You can’t manufacture time if we all can manufacture time that, you know, we would be major heroes because that’s what we all are running out of in today’s world is time. And but you have to figure out how you can utilize tools and accelerate your productivity to buy yourself time, essentially. And then with that, reinvest it and I think answer it for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:42] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s an important thing you mentioned about not just reading about it. Roll up your sleeves, get in there and play with it, and you’re going to start connecting dots in ways that no one else can because you’re uniquely you and you have unique problems and challenges. And by playing in the in the sandbox, you’re going to that’s going to open your mind to things that you haven’t considered because you don’t know yet exactly what it can and can’t do 100%.

Lil Roberts: [00:11:13] And you have to be careful, right? Because the one thing about AI and Chatgpt and and look prior to that and business owners are just at the very beginning of this right now in the sector of 40 million and less businesses of revenue of the digital transformation. But with the AI, you have to be careful. So you have to inspect what you expect. You have to, you know, trust and verify, right or verify and trust. But you have to make sure that that you you check that. I’ll give you an example of where we use Chatgpt recently. And it was fantastic. So we needed to write a job description and I was chatting with my h.r. And normally, you know, it would take an hour, an hour and a half to write it. And I said, let’s check out this tool. And I spun it up and in natural language wrote what we needed, just two sentences. And it came back with the first draft That was unbelievable in less than a minute. And so from that first draft, fine tuned it and that was it. It was ready to go. So there’s an example of where, you know, 49 minutes, 54 minutes were saved.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:17] Right. And that’s, again, one of those things where people are quick to dismiss some technology because it isn’t perfect. And if you just kind of manage the expectation of, look, I’m not looking for chatgpt to solve the problem exactly. I’m looking for them to save me time and give me that good first draft or, you know, a lot of writers call it the crappy first draft. You know, the first draft is the thing that you’re procrastinating and not doing because it’s hard. And if you can just get that kind of crappy first draft out of the way, then you can edit it and it’s a lot faster. It moves faster from there. And if Chatgpt can give you that, you’re way ahead of the game.

Lil Roberts: [00:12:56] So well said. You hit it on the head. First draft is the hardest and we all can’t help it, but we put our own, you know, preferences or thoughts or ways we think about it in that. And what you really want is you want a first draft that is open minded as possible, um, to give, to spark the ideas, right? And, and that’s what Chatgpt does. So very interesting. I think that we are in for a very interesting next 3 to 5 years and if people. Race it. They’re going to be able to to glean ideas and things that we would have maybe thought weren’t possible before that are going to be possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:37] Yeah, I think it’s funny that I’m kind of old and I have a memory of when calculators were first introduced into the schools and how there was so much pushback of if these things are here, then that’s going to no one’s going to learn math and like, why learn math if these things are going to do all the work for you? And then over time you realize it’s just a tool and it helps you be better and get a deeper understanding of math. Having this tool and and you’re getting similar pushback with Chat, GPT and other AI services in a similar vein. You know, it may not be exact, but it rhymes.

Lil Roberts: [00:14:14] Oh, 100%. And you know what I say to people that may have hesitation about it? As I said, look, this is the opportunity to really hone and craft your critical thinking skills and what computers will won’t replace for. I won’t say never because everything’s possible. Right? But I would say for at least the next 15 years, they’re not going to replace the critical thinking skills that humans do, where we take many pieces of information and use that to make a decision. And, you know, the machine models have to be trained and they’re not always going to make the right decisions. And so the way to ensure your career path is be sure that you choose something that’s not a repetitive but that requires critical thinking and then and then do the work to craft and hone your skills. Read A lot of people don’t you know, they gave up on reading and they let everything do the thinking for them, whether it is Google search or any type of search engine, you have to, you know, spend some time away from technology and grow your mind and exercise your mind and make sure that you exercise your thinking.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] Right, because it’s your uniqueness and your unique experiences. Those are the things that can’t be replicated. That’s what you uniquely bring to the table. So you got to lean into that. You can’t try to just kind of be like everybody else. You really have to be truly yourself.

Lil Roberts: [00:15:43] 100%, 100% and look at all the great businesses that we have that are in today’s world that help us, right? Uber and Airbnb and and many of them, you know, right down to Google, all of that came from people being creative in their thinking and seeing a problem and saying, how do I go about solving that? And so us as humans, we need to never stop wanting to solve problems. We need to not be lazy. And the concern would be is that it’s very easy to let technology make you make you lazy, right? People don’t even know family members phone numbers because it’s in their phone. Well, what happens if their phone is dead and they’re stranded on the side of the road? They’ve got to at least memorize the basic couple of people, you know, lifeline people’s phone numbers, but they don’t think about it in those terms. And that is exercising your mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Right. And that should never stop no matter your age.

Lil Roberts: [00:16:42] True. True. Be a lifelong.

Lil Roberts: [00:16:44] Learner. That’s one of my core values, is to always be a lifelong learner.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:48] Now, do you have any advice for folks that are in the job market today? On one hand, you’re hearing that, you know, unemployment’s at record low and then on the other hand, you’re hearing that it’s so competitive to get jobs in the areas that a lot of people are trying to get jobs in. What’s your take on the hiring in today’s marketplace?

Lil Roberts: [00:17:09] Well, I can speak a lot about it. It’s something that’s near and dear to me. I love to build teams and I love to to have an opportunity to have great team members come on and grow with the company and to continue to learn. So I would say that part of the challenge in today’s market is that a lot of people, you know, have grown up in the digital age, digital technology, and they may not I’m not saying everybody, so I don’t want to to have anyone upset here, but they may not be as strong as they need to be on soft skills. So, you know, competition is good and competition comes and goes. We’ve seen many cycles in the market, as you and I have been through many of them. So if we’re in a cycle where it’s it’s a competitive job market, the things that are going to make you stand out over the next person are things such as soft skills, know how to communicate in writing. And what I find is that that we haven’t done a good job on the last couple of, you know, let’s call it the last decade, have given people the opportunity to really understand, you know, how to write proper emails, how to connect, how to be relational, you know, on on texts. We do all these abbreviated words and we don’t say good morning or hello or hi or hope your day, hope this finds you having a great day. Those types of things are going to help people when they’re hunting for a job, when they can display and show a potential job opportunity that they do have great soft skills that’s going to help them to stand out.

Lil Roberts: [00:18:41] The other side of it is they have to make sure that they have all the technology skills as well. And then the third component of it is, you know, we’ve gotten somehow into a society where people look to just job, job change, you know, quickly job hop over, over pay. That’s the worst thing that you can do, right? Because you what happens is that it’ll work for a while. You end up working yourself into a position that you don’t have all the skill you need to be at that level of pay. And at some point it catches up. And you could probably speak to this because, you know, we’ve seen this happen in cycle after cycle, but a lot of times people don’t understand that there’s an investment. When you’re first coming out of college. There’s an investment that you need to make that will help you and pay off, you know, by multiples in your later years. And that investment is you need lived experience. You need to be mentored by other people and you need to work with them and learn. And if you rapidly advance your your role just because of pay, you’re going to end up in a cycle when there’s going to be a lot of people that have an opportunity that they can be hired and and they’ll have much more skill set than you may have.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:54] Right. They say at the beginning of your career, you focus on learning and then in secondarily, you focus on earning. And then if you kind of fast forward past the learning stage and you’re just on the earnings stage, you’re expected to be the one who knows things now. So if you haven’t picked them up now, you’re going to be in trouble and that’s going to, you know, kind of have some ramifications down the road.

Lil Roberts: [00:20:17] Oh, yeah. You may be thinking, you know, especially with the cycle we just came through, that you’re living large and the pay is out there. But we’re starting to see the early signs of it with all these layoffs and big tech companies that when the layoffs happen and they start to, you know, to reset their workforce internally, they’re going to they have a big choice of who to hire. And somebody may be standing right next to you and they have more experience. They’re going to get the job. So invest in yourself, get the experience. Don’t hop just for money. Find the place that’s going to teach you the most. And and that’s where you want to be first.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:53] So now regarding Xendoo, what is it that you need right now? How can we help you?

Lil Roberts: [00:21:01] Thank you very much. Um, we need team and we need customers. And so if anybody is listening and they’re in South Florida and they have a degree in accounting excuse me and have a degree in accounting, we would love to chat with them. So we are constantly hiring. We’re constantly growing. And if there’s also business owners and entrepreneurs that have businesses that they need somebody to handle their accounting, their tax. Fractional CFO Check out our website Xendoo.com.  Sorry, I have something in my throat here and and live chat in with us and let us know either that you’re interested in how can we work together to to help you with your business for the accounting side or like I said, if you’re local, we are an in-office company and we’re an in-office company because we believe in the swivel chair collaboration. And there’s a lot you know, we we take care of a wide range of businesses, from e-com to professional services to franchise groups to technology companies to medical companies, to retail companies, you name it, to trade services. And by having our team all under one roof, we can collaborate and solve problems very quickly. And and so we love it. And also, there’s a lot of learning that happens just when you’re all under the same roof versus being on Zoom.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:29] Now, do you also work with like your end customer is the business owner, but do you work with like accounting firms to help to get to their business, to help them in their business, you know, serve their clients better because they have better bookkeeping? Do you work collaboratively with like CPAs and other partner groups?

Lil Roberts: [00:22:47] We don’t actively pursue that. And we have, you know, and we have two, two CPAs that give us some of their bookkeeping customers because they don’t want to if the if the CPA practice is open to us having a relationship with their customer, then by all means we’re happy to take care of them. But if we’re working through a third party, I have not white labeled our software at this point. And so basically what we did is with my background in technology is I built a what somebody would call a CPA practice management software. I built it on what’s called the Knowledge Work cloud, which is data driven prioritization, workflow and measurement. And so we have a technology platform that wraps around Zero and QuickBooks Online that when our team comes to work, they come in and it feels like they’re running downhill. Instead of coming to work and feeling like they’re climbing uphill, which is typically what happens for accountants at CPA practices is that the information is in a lot of disparate places. And, you know, you have to constantly be thinking about where to find your information. Our team, it’s all sitting in their dashboard and in the platform and so they can come in and and just do what they love, which is to do the accounting.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:59] Now, I think there’s a lesson here for other founders. Can you share a little bit about that decision? Because it seems on the surface for somebody I’m not familiar with how your business works, obviously, but to partner with CPAs seems like a logical kind of in front of you, low hanging fruit choice to say, Oh, I’ll partner with them and then they have customers and then we all work together in our problem solves a problem that they probably have. But you chose not to do that and you chose to go to the end user and, and, and not pursue that. Can you talk about was that a consideration or was that something you eliminated initially? Because that I’m just trying to educate other founders where some things might look like they’re there for the taking, but there might be really a backstory of that might not necessarily be the best path 100%.

Lil Roberts: [00:24:52] And so, Lee, the danger is when you ask me a direct question, I have to give you the answer. So I usually tell people I come with a disclaimer. So it was it was an intentional decision. And so my lived experience throughout my life and in business was that the world is moving to a direct relationship right through. That’s one of the things technology brought us and that easily we could go out and we could probably, you know, scale at this level that I could take our platform white, label it and start to take it out and sell it to CPAs. And they would absolutely love it because there isn’t something that’s really great in the market that allows them to do their work. I did not want to be on the side of having to educate the the masses in the industry to change their thinking. I wanted to go to the people that feel the pain firsthand. And so the our problem is our ultimate goal is to deliver a financial peace of mind to small business owners. Right. And the way to solve that is to directly go to small business owners who have the pain point. They want their financials in a timely way.

Lil Roberts: [00:25:57] We deliver 65% of the monthly. Financials by the fifth business day. Unheard of in the industry. So imagine if I chose to take our platform to CPAs and say, Hey, you could deliver your financials to your customers by the fifth business day. They’ve been used to doing it for years where it’s delivered by the end of the following month. If anything, maybe by the 20th of the following month, but typically by the end of the following month or even into the month after. They don’t understand the the benefit of how that impacts the small business owner. I live that journey. I could not get my financials from the accountant company that I had. I constantly would have to, you know, hey, I really need my financials. Hey, where’s my financials? Hey, I need my financials. Um, and they didn’t understand that because they’re in the business of being a practitioner of, of what they do, of the accounting. And they, they don’t always understand the benefit that it delivers to the to the small business owner. So my decision was go to who’s in the pain and solve for the person who’s in the greatest pain.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:00] Yeah and that’s that’s kind of a great determinant if you have a good business, if if people, you know, need an aspirin and you’re the person with the aspirin, that’s a that you have a chance there as opposed to you have a vitamin that might help down the road. You should be solving urgent problems if you want to kind of run a successful business 100%.

Lil Roberts: [00:27:22] And that’s the challenge. People will stop at the point of what they feel they want to do instead of going all all the way to what solves the pain point. And and I’ll tell you, it’s much harder, right? So it’s much harder to go out and and find a thousand, 2000, 5000 at 15,000 customers will be at 100 million. Rr And and so it’s much harder to build at that where one could say, well, I could just go, you know, get 1500 accountants that all have, you know, 100 customers. And and so that’d be an easier 1st May think, well, that’d be a lot easier, but not necessarily. Not necessarily at all. And not to say that, you know, at three, 4000 customers we won’t bifurcate and take our platform to to also help CPAs because I know that they want to deliver the product in a timely manner to their customers. But I want to move as fast as we can. And the way to move as fast as we can is take your solution to the person who’s in the most pain.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:27] Now, before we wrap, do you mind sharing a little bit about your feelings about how the Levant center of innovation, how important it is to the South, Florida and the whole region’s ecosystem?

Lil Roberts: [00:28:40] Absolutely. So the Levant Center is not only important for South Florida and the region, it’s important for the globally. You know, John has spoke at in Dubai that they’re looking at our model, that other countries are looking at our model. It is the first center of its kind in the world where from beginning to end or cradle to grave, as I like to say, that it takes an entrepreneur’s journey all the way through and the tools, the programs, the community engagement and involvement that they have there. If you’re a founder that that wants to build a business and you’re just not sure what get involved in the Levant Center. If you’re a founder that has scaled and exited a business or that is at a point in your business where you’re not as hands on and you have an opportunity and time to give back, get involved at the Levant Center. And if you’re the general public that you maybe don’t want to build a business yourself or be a founder yourself, still get involved with the Levant Center because at least go and tour and take a look at it to see what tools are there. The the educational seminars and interesting workshops that they have going on are good for everybody of all ages. You know, we talk about chat GPT, they have robots that you can go to the van center and chat with their robots and see what’s possible and it’s amazing. And bring your kids, you know, bring children that are that are five years old to to 15 years old. They need to be exposed to this. This is going to be their world. And we need to have them learning and understanding and have their minds be creative by being around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:28] Well, Lil, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lil Roberts: [00:30:34] Thank you so much. Lee. It’s a great honor to be here with you today, and I appreciate your time.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:38] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Innovation Radio.

Intro: [00:30:43] This episode of Innovation Radio was brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs, the Levant Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founder’s journey from birth of an idea through successful exit or global expansion. If you’re ready to launch or scale your business, please check out the Levant Center of Innovation by visiting Nova. Edu Forward Slash Innovation.