Yoseph West (00:00):

I want people to feel on the journey. I want them to feel engaged. And so understanding how do I show up in the scale that we're at and be the person they need me to be is hard. The ability for the business to grow is a function of how much you grow.

Mike Michalowicz (00:13):

Wow. I hope our listeners are saying question everything. The biggest names in business didn't start out that way. These are the unfiltered stories of entrepreneurs who turned small business into big success and transformed themselves along the way. Because success isn't just about what you build, it's who you become. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and this is Becoming Self-Made a podcast from Relay. And today I'm speaking with Yusuf West, CEO and co-founder of Relay. You are about to learn how to become self-made from Yusuf West, the co-founder and CEO of Relay. What you're about to learn is how to scale a business the right way and the secret question, everything. He has a talent of documenting everything and analyzing everything well. The result speaks for themselves. Enjoy. I hear footsteps coming. Hey, how you doing man? It is so good to see you, brother. Great to have you here. It's been too a long, my first time in Toronto, I think in about 10 years. Thanks for having me here. I wanted to kick off when I was doing research for this interview, you were saying back in the day, I have a chip on my shoulder, but that's not the guy I know.

(01:28):

Help me resolve this.

Yoseph West (01:29):

I mean, I'm trying to think of where to start. Part of the through line of my journey and how we started Relay and all this stuff is this desire or drive to prove that you're good enough or that you can do it. As we were on the relay journey, we would do 360 pretty regularly. And so I got a 360 and I read this piece of feedback someone wrote, which was effectively like Yusef, whenever he's in a room, he wants to prove that he's right. And I was like, I don't care about being right. I care about winning. I care about getting to the right answer. How do we get there? When I reflected on it and I was talking, I had a coach that I was working with and her feedback to me was like, look, you've got to be more compassionate to yourself in the journey. And then we had this moment in kind of the relay journey where there was some bad actors trying to attack our customers. And I remember it was like Labor Day weekend 2022. They had been attacking our customers for a better part of a week and just give me context,

Mike Michalowicz (02:34):

What does that mean to be attacking a customer,

Yoseph West (02:36):

Getting access to their account, so people who reused passwords and kind of things like that. And in that context, we got into the weekend, so they took their Saturday off of Labor Day weekend and they were like, Hey, we're going to take a break. Bad actors need to break too, right? Yeah. They work nine to five and then on Sunday morning, suddenly they started again. And I remember getting into that afternoon and hadn't had breakfast, hadn't eaten anything in my one bedroom apartment, just working and thinking like, well, this kind of sucks, but how often in your life do you get to earn the right for a group of people somewhere in eastern Europe slash Russia maybe, where you've built something valuable enough that they are having this concerted effort to try and harm what you've built and what a lesson. This is not a lesson you want to learn again, but what an opportunity to learn. And from that moment, it went from like, okay, is everything about proving how good I am or is everything trying to prove what I can learn in the moment? And I shifted, it shifted my whole perspective of how I show up in the moment, how I interact with the world, and it shifted me towards, let's say, something I really care about doesn't go the way I want it to.

(03:57):

How do I take that and improve it on the next time? And how do I have more of a perspective that that's not going to be the last time I do that thing?

Mike Michalowicz (04:05):

So what I'm hearing is you attribute your success and I guess learning and growth to the Russian mob there maybe no, but there's a transformative moment. So my question is this, do you first need to have a chip on your shoulder to become self-made and grow through that, or is that not necessary? Is that the catalyst?

Yoseph West (04:26):

I mean, I don't know. Well,

Mike Michalowicz (04:27):

For your story, tell me for

Yoseph West (04:28):

You. Yeah, everyone's journey is definitely different. I think for me, I think the idea of proving that I could do something in a world where maybe there was a certain amount of doubt about that ability was really important.

Mike Michalowicz (04:45):

Does a chip on the shoulder negate a competitive spirit? I consider you a very competitive guy. Actually, I have a personal story I want to share with you, but you still have that ultra competitive spirit, I believe. But without the chip, it's more of contribution.

Yoseph West (04:57):

It's more about contribution. It's more about how do we have as much impact as possible? That is really the thing that drives me and how do I learn and grow? Because as building a business is really hard. That's the nature of the work, and it's one of the best vehicles for growing as a human being. That's my honest belief. And so when people ask me what's the long-term plan for relay? And it's like if I'm having fun working with people, I like working on problems that matter and I'm learning and growing, what else would I do? Right? I'm just going to try and do this again. If I wasn't doing this

Mike Michalowicz (05:29):

Well, I think your history proves that. So just about the competitive

Yoseph West (05:32):

Spirit,

Mike Michalowicz (05:33):

You were kind enough to become a supporter of Profit first. And I do want to explore that journey with you of how we came together. But you came down to our event and that meant a lot to me. We have an event for account and bookkeepers and we're going to run a 5K or something. And I'm like, I'm going to show this young buck what it's like to run. I got a speaking event the next day and I couldn't go to the event, so I'm just checking in. I'm like, who won this thing? They're like, oh, Yusef crushed everybody. I was so grateful.

Yoseph West (06:02):

Forfeited. I was so grateful. I mean, it's a very nice story. The real background is that I tied for

Mike Michalowicz (06:08):

First. Oh, I didn't realize that.

Yoseph West (06:10):

And there was another par for first member who was a professional run, runs a lot. And upon reflection, he definitely paced with me versus Oh,

Mike Michalowicz (06:20):

Okay.

Yoseph West (06:21):

That's what I think. That's what I, and then he left for the trophy ceremony. So I think I by default got the trophy, but that was the background.

Mike Michalowicz (06:28):

Here's what we're going to go into. I want to talk about this lifeline. Its an exercise I've been doing when every interview I've been particularly looking forward to yours. I've been doing research on your history growing up or being born in London, moving to Canada, Persian

Yoseph West (06:41):

Family,

Mike Michalowicz (06:42):

And I think there's some formidable lessons here. So we're going to go to this little chart.

Yoseph West (06:47):

Okay. I warn you in advance, my drawing skills are not so

Mike Michalowicz (06:49):

Good. Oh good. That's okay. I'll start us out and just form the chart and then your joint skills are your responsibility. Okay. Alright. Lemme take that chart back. Okay, good. Here we go. Okay, so let's put up here so our guests can see us do this too. I'm going to start. So you start here, you go up. Yeah. So just start with the formable years here. What was the most impactful, if we look at these three or four elements here, tell me one of the most impactful things that made who you are today.

Yoseph West (07:22):

If I had to choose, I would go with, I've written independent thinking and

Speaker 3 (07:28):

Yeah, what does that

Yoseph West (07:28):

Mean? Yeah. So growing up, my parents, they had a healthy maybe disrespect for authority and they would always encourage me to, if we were going to doctor's appointment, they'd be like, okay, what questions are you going to ask me? As an 8-year-old being like, oh, I'm asking this doctor and forming my own perspective, this is huge. So

Mike Michalowicz (07:50):

Just walk me through the details. So you're going to the doctor and your mom says this to

Yoseph West (07:54):

You? Yeah. She's like, okay, so what questions you can ask the doctor as, so I'm the one leading the doctor's appointment. I would ask,

Mike Michalowicz (08:00):

Do I get a lollipop?

Yoseph West (08:01):

Right. I know. She's like, what's wrong? Okay, you ready? Literally, this would be the thing that was an important thing. It was like, hey, you come up with your own perspective, ask the question. It doesn't matter that this doctor that has all this experience and that you're an 8-year-old, just ask the question.

Mike Michalowicz (08:17):

That's remarkable. And with teachers, if I remember right, you were the same way you would ask teachers questions and even challenge them.

Yoseph West (08:24):

Yeah, a hundred percent. Fundamentally, it's all information. I think our job as leaders is to gather information and then make decisions. And so for me, this what a gift it was that my parents had this weird relationship with authority where they could share that with me, where I felt like, okay, it doesn't matter who you are, it's all information. And there's an equality in that and you can find your path if you learn the right set of information. It's

Mike Michalowicz (08:54):

Remarkable. So now I'm starting to understand your makeup, but let's continue on in this block of life, you go to law school and did not become a lawyer, thank God. Did not. I know God. God help us all. But it sounds like it served you. What in this block of your life helped form you and who you are today, would you say? Most?

Yoseph West (09:11):

I didn't love school, the whole teacher thing. I didn't find school that engaging, but I was also taught a raised with English and Persian parents. So you got to do good in school, you got to get good grades. Education is your path to make it in the world. And in that context, I was like, okay, I have to do school. This was the view that I had, but I was like, how do I do as little school as possible?

Mike Michalowicz (09:35):

Interesting.

Yoseph West (09:35):

Okay.

Mike Michalowicz (09:36):

Optimizing this.

Yoseph West (09:37):

Yes, exactly. Maybe what I could do was complete high school in three years. And so that's what I set out to do initially, honestly, it was to get my parents off my back a little bit. It was like, okay, I could do this thing

Speaker 3 (09:48):

And

Yoseph West (09:49):

Then leave me alone and I could just coast a little bit. And then when people started figuring out that I was doing this, they started telling me what a bad idea it was.

Mike Michalowicz (09:57):

Who's the people telling you to? Bad

Yoseph West (09:58):

Idea. Other high school friends, whoever where you're

Mike Michalowicz (10:01):

Missing the parties.

Yoseph West (10:01):

Yeah. Yeah. You're like, you have to extra stuff. And I was kind of like, oh, okay. I actually disagree. And I started to lean into it more. I was like, yeah,

Mike Michalowicz (10:11):

That's brilliant. Yeah. Is that you challenging authority, chip on the shoulder? Yusef, is that you because you were so good at questioning? Actually questioning the herd mentality. They

Yoseph West (10:22):

Had the feedback. I was just like, this doesn't make sense to me. How valuable is high school? And if I could finish it sooner, why wouldn't I do that?

Mike Michalowicz (10:30):

Dude, this interview is already over. It's so juicy. I not saying I hope our listeners are saying question everything. Don't follow that herd mentality. And just because the rule structure says it takes four years, you can do it in three or two.

Yoseph West (10:43):

Yeah,

Mike Michalowicz (10:44):

Why not? So you graduate high school, give me the next big chunky

Yoseph West (10:48):

Section here and then I'm going to go slightly detailed here and then we can get in

Mike Michalowicz (10:51):

Here. Rock and roll.

Yoseph West (10:52):

And so the other thing I learned was a Persian mom. So you got a couple job options. Doctor, lawyer really is the two. I later learned other Persian parents offered engineer as an option, but that was not one extended. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to go be a lawyer, I get to make money. It's a good career. I'll get independence. Awesome. And I learned that in the UK you could do law school straight out of high school and it's a three-year degree. And I was excited the prospect of like, okay, I don't have to spend seven years at this point. I'm like 17. I'm like seven years, a long time. I spent seven years in school.

Speaker 3 (11:29):

I

Yoseph West (11:29):

Could do this in three years. It was really hard. It was really hard. But I went out and did that from high school

Mike Michalowicz (11:34):

To law school and had a law degree. Your third year of university, and you only did high school in three years. So if I'm running the quick math, you were still a teenager with a law degree or 20?

Yoseph West (11:46):

20. Yeah,

Mike Michalowicz (11:47):

20. Wow. But you decided not to become a lawyer.

Yoseph West (11:50):

Yes.

Mike Michalowicz (11:51):

Why is that?

Yoseph West (11:52):

So on the note of independent thinking, I kind of got there and I was like, oh, this sucks. It's not that intellectually interesting. You're kind of reading a lot of stuff.

(12:02):

I remember going to this job fair and there was a guy who was clearly a trained lawyer and he didn't all look happy. He is not a happy guy. And he comes over to me and my friend, he's like, guys, it's all a big lie. Nowhere he comes. It's all a big lie. It is a terrible job. Don't do it. He's at a job. Good for that dude. And I was kind of like, whoa, this is not great. So there was these moments where I was like, okay, I'm going to get through this thing, but this is not the thing that I'm supposed to do.

Mike Michalowicz (12:29):

How do you know when to listen to someone versus not? Do you have a filter for

Yoseph West (12:34):

That

Mike Michalowicz (12:34):

You knew that lawyer was telling you something you needed to listen to?

Yoseph West (12:38):

If I had felt like this work was great and I really enjoyed it, I would've been like, okay, that's for you. But there were internal signals where it's like,

Mike Michalowicz (12:48):

Okay, and this was data that was now supporting internal signal?

Yoseph West (12:52):

Yes.

Mike Michalowicz (12:53):

But it sounds like you're judicious enough to listen to the other signals too and see how to

Yoseph West (12:57):

Lies. Yeah, it's all information. You got to pull it all together.

Mike Michalowicz (13:00):

That's the theme for this show. It's all information. Okay. Tell me to the next big sign in

Yoseph West (13:05):

Your life. So I ended up, I was trying to start something with some friends because half my family are lawyers, half my family are entrepreneurs, and these are the paths that seemed viable. And so I ended up starting this company called vru, which

Mike Michalowicz (13:17):

You didn't like that name.

Yoseph West (13:18):

I don't love the name. It's

Mike Michalowicz (13:19):

Not a good name.

Yoseph West (13:20):

Guru

Mike Michalowicz (13:21):

Meets

Yoseph West (13:21):

Value, value, value guru together.

Mike Michalowicz (13:23):

I think VRU is not a bad name, but do you think there's a cost? Was there confusion?

Yoseph West (13:27):

People couldn't spell it. That's a cost. That's a cost. And they would always mispronounce

Mike Michalowicz (13:31):

It. That's a cost. That's a huge cost.

Yoseph West (13:32):

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (13:33):

Okay.

Yoseph West (13:33):

So we started this thing kind of a couple friends, and that was a turning point. It was like I got a shot in text, someone wrote a check for what now seems like a very quaint amount of money compared to the tech world that we live in today. It was like 25 grand Canadian. That's

Mike Michalowicz (13:49):

$18,000. Dude, that's real money.

Yoseph West (13:51):

It's money.

Mike Michalowicz (13:51):

That's real

Yoseph West (13:51):

Money.

Mike Michalowicz (13:52):

So that was your first entrepreneurial gig. You had an exit, so you put that out on your CV and you got some cash. Yes. That ain't too shabby. Not bad. Your questioning and always being curious and listening to that thread you see internally and getting the data back. It is amazing. And I love, I think PF stands for profit first. It does the PF partnership. Yeah, I want to explore that. So let me put this down and then we're going to dig into some other stuff. Sounds great. Okay, now this is about to get real. Okay. I want to talk about the startup days and I really want to focus on collaboration during our conversation. And I even want to talk about our partnership in a little bit. It can get crunchy and there can be friction, but you've had partners in every one of your businesses. What's your observations, your learnings from having partners? Let's start with oo, what was it like having partners?

Yoseph West (14:41):

Yeah, look, I mean we were part of this kind of accelerator program and the feedback we would hear about the way me and my business partner at the time fought. They were like, it's like brothers. We would yell at each other and really go at it.

Mike Michalowicz (14:54):

And

Yoseph West (14:54):

We were like 22, 23, we didn't know anything about the world.

Mike Michalowicz (14:58):

Testosterone's flown.

Yoseph West (14:59):

Yeah, we're just trying to figure it out. We want to win. There's all this stuff that's like, there's an ego kind of wrapped up in it,

Mike Michalowicz (15:06):

But don't you think everything at that

Yoseph West (15:07):

Age? I was trying to figure it out. I don't think we knew. I think we were trying to make it up on volume. We're like, we're just going to work really hard.

Mike Michalowicz (15:14):

What were you seeing as success in that partnership? What did you envision the future being and did your partner see it differently?

Yoseph West (15:21):

I think we had different profiles or how we approached the world and complimentary in some ways and perhaps not in others. We're still good friends today. Actually. I'm calling him on my way back from work back home. That's amazing tonight. But I think that the big thing with that partnership, what I learned is you really have to have a shared understanding of what the future will look like. And I think at that point we weren't mature enough to be able to say, Hey, this is what we think the world will look like in 10 years and is we're working towards,

Speaker 3 (15:52):

There

Yoseph West (15:52):

Was kind of a little bit of like, Hey, we have this idea. Maybe this idea could be something and let's work really hard to try and make it something. And it was hard. It was also hard because the business didn't, it sort of worked. We got to an outcome, but it wasn't, it didn't really work.

Mike Michalowicz (16:08):

That makes sense. So was your exit from OO facilitated by the partnerships seeing its path or was it just opportunistic? Someone wanted to give you money? How'd that work

Yoseph West (16:16):

Out? We had built this relationship with this company called Wave that was based here in Toronto and we're kind of like, yeah, I think I'd emailed them saying We're kind of you, but for stocks, that was the point. And they were kind, have to spend some time with us. And one of the founders joked like, oh, maybe we'll buy you one day. And I was like, okay, lock that in. That's awesome. And so we were at this point where we could maybe raise a little bit of money from people that were not sure whether they're the right people for us or we could potentially take this path. There was an exit path. It was an okay path. It was kind of good for us. Fine. And so we're like, okay, this seems like an opportunity for us to go and learn from people that are better than us. They'd built something more meaningful. They'd raised capital from world-class investors, like tier one investors. And we're like, okay, we will go. We'll be part of this thing. We're young and we'll spend a year or two there and we'll learn.

Mike Michalowicz (17:07):

How old were you when you sold it?

Yoseph West (17:09):

24

Mike Michalowicz (17:10):

Really have, is it in hindsight you see that this was a good move to learn so forth? Or in that moment when you're 24, are you looking forward saying, this will help me structurally for the next stage of my entrepreneurial life? I

Yoseph West (17:22):

Remember having a

Mike Michalowicz (17:22):

Conversation with my dad.

Yoseph West (17:24):

He's like, why would you sell this thing? You finally got it up and running.

Mike Michalowicz (17:28):

You had tens of thousands of customers.

Yoseph West (17:30):

We had people who sort of cared about it. I think that's the real answer,

Mike Michalowicz (17:33):

Right?

Yoseph West (17:34):

And I was like, well, if I get a bit of money in my pocket, get a win and we can kind of build and I can grow and I can learn. And there was kind of a view that everything is expansive. Just because you do this one thing doesn't stop you from doing other things.

Mike Michalowicz (17:50):

Yeah, it really is. Entrepreneurship is an endless game. It just seems to keep on going and going and morphing. So I know you were acquired by Wave. You worked for Wave for a period of time. I think you worked for Hubdoc too, right?

Yoseph West (18:01):

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (18:01):

What inspired the start of this company of Relay?

Yoseph West (18:04):

I spent 10 years in back office tech, accounting, tech, financial services, working for small business. And I got to meet all these, as you probably know, actually know better than I how inspiring these people are.

Speaker 3 (18:15):

Oh,

Yoseph West (18:15):

And it's like they all have great stories. They're all unique, they're all quirky in their own way. We all are. And I think being able to support them was like, it is kind of the through line of my career and something I kind of fell into, honestly, it wasn't planned as it is starting Relay. It was kind of like I spent four years at Hubdoc, four and a half years and scaled that business from three people to the exit to Zero. And through that journey I wrote down every problem we saw building that business.

Speaker 3 (18:44):

Wow.

Yoseph West (18:45):

And so this is going to date me, but everything was in an Evernote notebook.

Mike Michalowicz (18:49):

No

Speaker 3 (18:49):

One

Yoseph West (18:49):

Uses Evernote anymore. I know. And I love Evernote. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (18:53):

Now I'm on OneNote. What's your tool now?

Yoseph West (18:57):

What do I use? I use Google Docs or something.

Mike Michalowicz (19:00):

But you had all tracked in Evernote and you're seeing problems, I guess common recurring issues or opportunities or problems.

Yoseph West (19:09):

Exactly. And so it was big, small, even something I'm like, is that a a dumb idea? I'm just going to write it down. So smart. And so at the end of the four years, that summer, I kind of spent halftime consulting halftime going through these ideas and trying to figure out what was good and what was real. And I was kind of crossing off a lot, Mike, you kind of like, oh, someone else is doing that or that's stupid.

(19:31):

Why did I write that down? But then eventually came across this core theme around financial visibility. And that was something that was really hard for us as a business. At one point, I think one of the founders had to use his personal credit to get Amazon Prime consumer credit cards to issue to the leadership team so that we could actually spend money. They were canceled two weeks later because Amazon was on it. But these were the challenges we faced. And so what I'd really seen was we had spent 10 years working on real-time financials for small business and it didn't work. It was a patchwork. And the small business owner, all they do is they check their bank balance. We know this today, it's like 92% of small business

Mike Michalowicz (20:08):

Owners. That is an absolute reality.

Yoseph West (20:09):

That's what they care about. They speak cash. And so our perspective was like, okay, what if we created a smart bank account that was deeply interconnected into the small business back office? Could we increase financial visibility for these small business owners? So brilliant

Mike Michalowicz (20:22):

Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank banking services provided by Thread Bank member F-D-I-C-F-D-I-C deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass through deposit insurance coverage to apply. I want to rename his podcast from Question everything to question everything, document everything and analyze everything. That's what I'm seeing in you. You're constantly asking questions. You're recording it in your Evernote, which I think we were talking about logos. I think that's the one logo I remember it was an elephant. It is an elephant. It's an elephant

Yoseph West (20:58):

With green on the outside. I remember

Mike Michalowicz (20:59):

The logo. And then you consider everything. And it sounds like you got to the root problem. Most technology that exists for entrepreneurs as I see it, is always on the surface, but it doesn't go to where the entrepreneur goes, which is right to Cash Speaks. So you decide I'm starting a banking platform. Did you think it would be a banking platform? Did you think about I, I'll start my own bank,

Yoseph West (21:18):

When I was trying to figure out how do you do this when I think that's a question you ask, right?

Speaker 3 (21:23):

Yeah.

Yoseph West (21:24):

How is this possible? And I was like, okay, if we start with a customer, what's the best customer experience? And so where we started was actually I was like, okay, what would it take to start a bank? And then you realize you got to have 50 million in cash that just sits there, takes four years, you got to hire a bunch of bankers. I don't know what they're doing for

Mike Michalowicz (21:40):

You have to have a suit.

Yoseph West (21:41):

Yeah, exactly. I only and it fitting suit baggy pants hopefully. And so I was like, okay, that's not feasible. And then we kind of worked our way down to like, Hey, could we partner with Community Bank or someone like that that would have their banking charter or hold the funds and then we would be the technology partner to them from a regulatory standpoint.

Mike Michalowicz (22:00):

Absolutely. Brilliant. Let's talk about our relationship. So your organization Relay my organization, PRS professionals. We're having a dialogue outside of us and we have a team that protects our brand. So many different businesses abuse a brand like oh, we support Profit First and so forth without any of our authority control. So we have a little bit of a pit bull mentality to protect the brand. Your company was reaching out to us and it sounds like we came at you a little bit like a pit bull. And for about a year and a half we hit this stagnation. The number one determinant, if there's a good partnership is not the legalities or any of that stuff. What it was is customer interest. I was hearing directly from customers saying Relay is the best platform out there. Profit First is relayed and I hearing over and over again. So I call our team, what's going on? Oh no. Get the lawyers involved. No dude, thank you to you. We had a mutual friend that you spoke to. He contacted me and said, we don't know what's going on. There's constant conflict here. Yusef would like to talk with you. And I said, oh, I would love to talk with Yusef.

(23:11):

And all that stuff went aside. We spoke, I told you a couple ways to navigate our internal challenges, but we talked about the common vision and it was a no brainer. And I want to say days later, days later, we're now in this movement of building this partnership and it's been for us, for pre professionals, most extraordinary relationship. We have tens of thousands of our customers, our users on your platform, and they love it and they're doing better with Profit First as a result. That's what I saw as a relationship. And the lesson for me was we got to pick up the phone, but your story is from a different side of the mountain. So what did you see?

Yoseph West (23:47):

Well, I think at the beginning when you're an early stage company, you're just trying to figure out how do you get customers? That's really the thing. And my past experience at Hubdoc, we had some adjacency to profit first and exposure to the brand and methodology. And I was like, oh, one of the biggest pain points for our customers is opening multiple bank accounts.

Mike Michalowicz (24:08):

It was down.

Yoseph West (24:08):

Yeah, that was the big challenge. I was like, oh, well relay, we actually opened multiple bank accounts really easily. And so I was like, oh, there's this perfect fit. And so just trying to figure it out ended up reaching out to some of your Profit First professionals and in that context definitely poke the Bear a hundred percent. Poke the Bear, especially knowing that context now.

Speaker 3 (24:29):

Right?

Yoseph West (24:29):

A hundred percent. And in our heads we're like, oh, it's just QuickBooks. We're just reach mistake in the context. I think we were in some level of discussion at the same time. And so it probably compounded

Speaker 3 (24:41):

A

Yoseph West (24:42):

Feeling of like, Hey, we need to protect in this moment and how trustworthy is this partnership or potential partnership? And I think looking back on it, the opportunity that presented itself is like, yes, that mutual friend found our path to actually getting on the phone when we were going through that. From my side, I was like, Mike and Ron, I feel like if we just sat down, we would understand that there's so much in common, so much in common between ourselves, between the organizations. And I was so excited when we finally got to do

Mike Michalowicz (25:12):

That. Oh, it was amazing. And there is so much in common, and you're right all just take a discussion between me and you, Ron, who's a co-founder of Five First Professionals got involved and it was like, oh, there is magic here. And we went full throttle into this and our organization has grown tremendously as a result. It's so funny, even today, even in 2026, there's banks that do not allow you to set up multiple accounts. When you ask them, I like to set up multiple accounts for my business because it's a way for me to understand what I'm using money for. They're like, that's ridiculous. No one does that. Are you crazy? It's astonishing. And with Relay being so successful at this, I thought all the copycats would clone it and no one has. It's such a competitive advantage and it's great for Relay, but why aren't other banks or banking platforms doing this?

Yoseph West (25:59):

I think it's harder than it looks is the honest answer. So it's like to actually have multiple separate checking accounts with separate account numbers and routing numbers, there is infrastructure that goes behind that. And so something that feels really magical, you just literally click and you name the account. There's a lot of work behind it. I think that's part of it. And then I think they also see that we have such a deep partnership. They're like, okay, well why would we try and add this when this is clearly the gold standard? I think

Mike Michalowicz (26:26):

You're totally right. It reminds me of the airline safety card. I open it and it says, here's how you escape the plane. There's a door that weighs half a ton, and if you're 98 years old and frail, you can still do it by pulling the red handles and moving it the system. The plane is designed for safe escape and it's irrelevant who the customer is. And I think that's what Relay is doing. There's all this intricacy that makes it so seamless, but you just pull the lever and you're in or out in this case. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (26:54):

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (26:55):

Let's talk about scaling.

(26:57):

I think many business owners that are watching this say, I want to have the extra relay. You got hundreds of employees working here. It is taking over the world. You have recognition everywhere and it's happening so quickly. I mean, you're seven years in now, but I think they confuse scaling and growth. I want to give you my definition and then I want to get your perspective. What I believe growth is is where it takes more resources, more effort, more things to get more output. What scaling is is the reduction of resources. It's the alignment. So it takes fewer resources and results in a more focused growth, but a more exponential growth. Traditional growth where you're putting more resources is very linear, but scaling is exponential. And you're one of the few companies, everyone says they're scaling, you're actually doing it. Do you agree? Those definitions. And then if you do, tell me how do you scale?

Yoseph West (27:45):

So I would say the biggest part of the definition of scale is how do you find leverage?

Mike Michalowicz (27:50):

Leverage?

Yoseph West (27:50):

What are your

Mike Michalowicz (27:50):

Points of leverage? That's it.

Yoseph West (27:52):

That is all of it. And so I think a big, big focus for me, I think for the business is figuring out, you've heard of the 80 20 rule

Mike Michalowicz (28:00):

At the creative principal.

Yoseph West (28:02):

What is the 20% that's going to drive the results? And so it's a very different mentality. Like Jeff Bezos, he talks about it's probably one decision a month that matters.

Mike Michalowicz (28:10):

Yeah, he's not packing your book order and then shipping it to you. He probably has very few decisions, but he's in the biggest, most important decisions. Right?

Yoseph West (28:18):

And so I think that's the critical lever when it comes to scale, is knowing what those decisions are. And maybe it's not. When you're at Amazon scale, it's like one decision a month, and maybe when you're at relay scale, it's like seven, right? But I think that core idea of understanding what those levers are and spending the time rallying the team around it are really, really critical.

Mike Michalowicz (28:38):

But that must be radical growth for you because on day one, you're the guy who's got to be starting the business programming, doing whatever you do day, whatever we're in now seven years later, if you're doing that, you're actually interfering. So how have you grown in the process of scaling?

Yoseph West (28:53):

Yeah, I mean you compare the version of me from 2019 when we launched this product to today. It's very different. It's very different. I see old colleagues, some people that I see once a year or twice a year, and one of the pieces of feedback I get is, every time I see you, you seem different.

Mike Michalowicz (29:11):

You have to keep reinventing

Yoseph West (29:13):

Basically. And so Mike, when you asked me how have I changed, there's a lot. There's a lot that's

Speaker 3 (29:19):

There.

Yoseph West (29:20):

I think the story I shared before about, Hey, how do we go from a place of wanting to prove that we can do this to a place of learning and a little bit more of that abundance mindset of there's so much opportunity for us to build something meaningful. And so that was one kind of big change. I think the scale that we're at today, you mentioned the size of our team. It's great. It's very exciting, it's very energizing. It's kind of crazy. It's a little surreal, but in that context, when you're leading an organization of that size, your personal relationships are a little bit different. And so that was something that I had to adjust to and change because I really care. We talk about partnership. I really care about, I want people to feel on the journey. I want them to feel engaged. I want them. There's a little part, I was talking to my fiance last night about this, and she's like, well, you do care that people like you. And I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't influence my decision making. She's like, yeah, but if you know someone who doesn't like you, it makes you a little sad.

(30:24):

That's part of it. And so understanding how do I show up in the scale that we're at and be the person they need me to be is hard. And so things that I've done along the way to get there is a lot of coaches.

Mike Michalowicz (30:41):

That's the technique. The coach in the beginning is helping you maybe grow the business, the coach later on. It sounds like they're helping grow you.

Yoseph West (30:49):

What I would say is the ability for the business to grow is a function of how much you grow.

Mike Michalowicz (30:54):

Wow.

Yoseph West (30:54):

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (30:55):

Wow. I've seen this over and over again. Jesse Cole of Savannah Bananas. I remember when I was interviewing him, he said, 600 employees, he doesn't know who works for him anymore, and there's this inner hurt, but he's like, this organization won. Only grow as much as I grow. Does that also mean abandoning your past learnings in some capacity? I can't comprehend the change.

Yoseph West (31:16):

I think if I was to break down my growth journey, maybe we can do that and we can talk about it in the context of coaching and we can work our

Mike Michalowicz (31:22):

Way.

Yoseph West (31:22):

So initially it was like, okay, the biggest team I had led prior to Relay was a team of six people.

Mike Michalowicz (31:29):

Yeah. Okay. Wow. Yeah.

Yoseph West (31:32):

Biggest

Mike Michalowicz (31:32):

Huge context

Yoseph West (31:34):

For me. There was a lot of leadership skills I needed to go and learn. Even that team of six, it was a good team. We were high performing. Was I the best leader? Maybe the results were good. Did people feel good about it? Maybe not. That was challenging. And so leadership skills were a big part of it. Initially we hired a leadership coach, like an executive coach that worked with me and worked for our whole leadership team. That was awesome. She had a lot of context on all the people that I worked with.

Mike Michalowicz (32:04):

How big was the leadership team?

Yoseph West (32:05):

We were like five people.

Mike Michalowicz (32:06):

Okay, that's interesting. So was a collective learning. So as you're growing, the leadership team is actually part of that too. And they're growing.

Yoseph West (32:13):

Exactly. And so that was the beginning of the growth journey. And then I got to a point where I'm like, okay, I feel like I've got the foundational leadership skills that I feel like I need to be able to scale relay, but there's this emotional kind of piece that I needed to figure out how I can unlock and that anxiety or that whatever it was, I felt like it was blocking me from getting to the next level to be able to, you talked about the Savannah Banana, Jesse, and he's like, oh, well there's that deep hurt, but I got to show up for the 600 people.

Speaker 3 (32:47):

And

Yoseph West (32:48):

Being able to unlock myself to be able to do that,

Speaker 3 (32:50):

I

Yoseph West (32:50):

Was like, okay, I need someone that's going to help me with kind of the emotional side of leadership at scale. And so I got introduced to this kind of coaching group that were ex-Marines operators, and their whole MO was like, Hey, we go out and we find all the woo woo stuff and we try it out and we see what works and see what's real. And then we bring it into our coaching practice. I was like, okay, what is this stuff? What do you need me to do? And I was like, can we try it? And so I get on this call, I was in New York in a buddy's office at the time in one of their little call booths, and my coach said to me, okay, Yusef, this is going to be a little weird. Are you open to doing this? And I was like, open, let's try it out. And so what we tried was in psychology, it's called Internal Family Systems. So if traditional psychology is you have a mono mind and then you have bad parts to your mono mind that you need to fix. The whole perspective between internal family systems is that you have multiple parts

(33:55):

To your psychology and each serves a purpose. So there's a book called No Bad Parts by Dr. Schwartz. Really great book. Really great book. And so that's the whole theory behind it. And so I'm sitting there in this call booth in New York, and he's asking me to talk to different parts of myself and I'm fully inside. It was very kind of psychedelic, a little, and you feel like all the, anyway, so I went through this process of working through each kind of component of my psychology. And people say that anyone who has any level of success or drive is just a walking anxiety disorder that's found a way to be true, to turn it and channel it productively.

Mike Michalowicz (34:41):

That is so amazing that you've done that. I also feels like your fiance is also this outside voice who's not in the business, is she? No. Who can give perspective from the outside. Yeah. That's amazing. Relay has partnerships with small and medium-sized businesses. Tell me what's that structure and how has that helped you

Yoseph West (35:00):

Grow? Small and medium-sized businesses is our bread and butter a hundred percent. I think when I look at the experience I've had in my career, a lot of partnerships has been really key to how we've grown historically. And that came into Relay. So if you look at our relationship and how we've used that to be able to grow together being very successful.

Speaker 3 (35:21):

Totally.

Yoseph West (35:21):

And some of the things that work really well in that context are a long-term orientation. Figuring out, hey, what matters to Mike? What matters to Profit First team? What matters to us? How do we create a structure that helps us both win? And we do this across this relationship. We do this with accountants and bookkeepers that we work with Profit First professionals and there's this element of, Hey, can we understand the other side? And we go back to information. Let's gather that information, let's understand what we care about as well, and how do we pull these things together to get to a great

Speaker 3 (35:52):

Outcome. And

Yoseph West (35:53):

So today, relay serves 120,000 businesses across the US and has 1.1 billion in deposits. It's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (36:02):

And the partnerships you form, it sounds like you see you have a common customer, but you can serve 'em from different vantage points. And how does one plus one equal 11? Exactly. I love that. So I'm curious about relations between small businesses and other small businesses. They want collaborative relationships too. And so what is your advice on how they get those relationships going?

Yoseph West (36:25):

Yeah, look, when you're partnering and you're sharing information, that can feel maybe scary. But I think the thing to step back from is like, okay, what would success really look like? Thinking of what that outcome is and then kind of working your way towards it. And I think there's an important piece of advice when it comes to partnerships is you want to understand what are their goals and what are your goals, and figuring out how you collaborate to get to that point. And I think the other piece there that you have to keep in mind is that they're also trying to figure it out,

Speaker 3 (36:55):

Right?

Yoseph West (36:56):

And having empathy for that can help you navigate. Sometimes in partnerships, things can go awry. Something we expected someone to respond a certain way they didn't. And you've got to figure out, okay, how do we get back to the place we want to be at? And so I would say that's the other piece is that human empathy and understanding.

Mike Michalowicz (37:14):

That's brilliant. One last question for you because we're both into biohacking. What's your newest cutting edge thing that you're experimenting with? Biohacking.

Yoseph West (37:23):

Okay.

Mike Michalowicz (37:24):

The Divided Mind has me freaking out now I be racing home.

Yoseph West (37:27):

It's crazy stuff. I'll share the book. It's pretty cool. We were talking about creatine.

Mike Michalowicz (37:32):

Tell

Yoseph West (37:32):

Maybe that.

Mike Michalowicz (37:33):

Alright, tell me what you're doing with creatine.

Yoseph West (37:34):

I don't know. No. I'll give you something a little weirder.

Mike Michalowicz (37:36):

Oh

Yoseph West (37:37):

Yeah, I'll give you something better. I've started using mouth tape at night. Yes. And so the whole perspective is

Mike Michalowicz (37:44):

The whole office just said neither had, everyone's like, yes he does. What is going on here?

Yoseph West (37:49):

Okay. Okay. So the perspective is if you breathe through your nose,

(37:52):

It is better for you because it acts as like a natural filter. And then it is also activating your parasympathetic nervous system so you are calmer when you sleep and you sleep more deeply and it is better for your jaw. There's a whole bunch of different kind of benefits. And so I started doing this and I was influenced by other friends around this. I was like, oh, that must be terrible. I don't really breathe through my nose. I dunno if this is going to work today. You feel like you're suffocating. I tried it for one night. I was like, oh, that was a little dicey. But second night I was kind of okay. Third night, totally fine. Honestly,

Mike Michalowicz (38:26):

This is going to sound inappropriate, but you had me at mouth tape you a enjoy spending the afternoon with you. Thanks for this

Yoseph West (38:33):

Brother. Thanks. Mike

Mike Michalowicz (38:35):

Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured Bank Banking services provided by Thread Bank member F-D-I-C-F-D-I-C. Deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass through deposit insurance coverage To apply. Thanks for listening to Becoming Self-Made a Relay podcast. Follow the show to make sure you don't miss a single episode. And if you like what you hear, rate and review while you're at it. Becoming Self-Made is produced by Relay. In partnership with me, Mike Michalowicz and Pod people.