https://youtu.be/cpnj7Ggx7q4
Andy Alsop is the inventor of the Employee Supremacy Operational Model and the CEO of The Receptionist, a leading iPad-based visitor management solution installed in more than 5500 locations worldwide. We talk about the effectiveness of visitor management solutions, employee supremacy at the workplace, and how company cultures influence employee loyalty.
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Promote Employee Supremacy with Andy Alsop
Our guest is Andy Alsop, the inventor of the Employee Supremacy Operational Model and the CEO of The Receptionist, the leading iPad visitor management solution installed in more than 5,500 locations around the world. Andy, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Steve.
It's great to have you on the show. So as always, I'd like to start with your entrepreneurial journey. So give us an overview of, a short overview of how you arrived at owning the Receptionist and your growing the company.
Well, I've always been an entrepreneur for my entire career. It's pretty much like I feel like I was born to be an entrepreneur. Many people don't know what they wanted to do, but I knew very early on in my life that's what I wanted to do. And it probably was influenced by the fact that I come from an entrepreneurial family. I have been the founder or co-founder in about three tech startups in New Mexico and involved at a high level and a few others over the course of about 20 years.
And then in 2014, after not really feeling satisfied with the success I'd had in New Mexico, I decided I was going to move my entrepreneurial career to Denver. And so I decided, why not pick up my roots, my entrepreneurial roots and bring them to Denver. And I really, what I ended up doing in July of 2014 was really just saying, I'm gonna get to know as many people as I can. I leveraged my networks, people who I knew in New Mexico, the new people in Denver, really getting to know people, not just Denver, Boulder, even some meetings down in Colorado Springs.
And then as a result of that, I kind of networked my way into this opportunity where I met a guy by the name of Ted Guggenheim, who owned Texas. And Texas is a small startup that had two different startups running under one roof with no money. And one of them was what was then called the iPad receptionist. So he and I collaborated and I said, you know, what if I just bought this from you? And he said, that'd be great. Gave them a little infusion of cash. And then also gave me the opportunity to take over a business that already had product market fit. And that was huge because, you know, starting something from scratch is really hard.
And these guys have done an amazing job where they had brought on about 120 locations, not many, to use this software. It was kind of a distraction to what they were doing with their business text us. So it's kind of like this good fit where I ended up taking over the iPad receptionist, now known as the receptionist, and been able to, luckily enough, take that from 120 locations to getting close to 5,000 locations, actually. And it's just one of those stories. We started a folding table in this coworking space called Industry that is in the North side of Denver. And it's just me in it and one of the sales guys. And that's kind of where it all started and how I ended up getting to run the receptionist.
That's an amazing story. So going from 120 location to 4,500 location, that's a big growth to manage. So before we dive into the growth, I'm really curious. I mean, is this a competitive market? Do you have other people trying to do the same thing or are you pretty much on the market?
Yes, we do. In fact, there's a lot of consolidation going on in our business right now. We are the only ones who have not taken on venture capital. Pretty much every one of the competitors or what I like to call rivals have taken on anywhere from probably 15 million to $150 million in venture capital. And now what's happening is they're being bought by private equity companies, they're merging with other companies, they're taking on more capital to execute a huge land grab strategy.
So yeah, it's been pretty impressive. Some of these companies starting out, you know, after we started, and I feel like we've had a lot of success based on the fact that we've kept it bootstrapped and we haven't gone, you know, wild with a whole bunch of capital. And it gets down to this philosophy you introduced, which is employee supremacy as well.
I definitely want to ask about that, but just curious that, do you feel like you can compete with these people who have all that capital available to them to grow?
Well, it's been interesting in the strategies that they've taken. There's one, probably I don't mind mentioning our competitors. One is called Envoy. And their philosophy is they're going to create all the electronic components you need for your office. So visitor management is one, but you need room booking. With the pandemic and what's happened with how we're now officing, they've created hot desking. They have a delivery solution. I really admire what their strategy is. And they need to be able to kind of go after everybody with all of these solutions.
And that takes an enormous amount of capital to be able to do so. The other one is somebody I admire a lot is the attraction guests. They go very heavily into, we have all the tools that you can use within your enterprise, and then they got bought, and then they're going into a roll up where there's gonna be a lot of different solutions put together. Those philosophies or those strategies do require a ton of capital to be able to get to where they want to be in the marketplace.
But what was really interesting is that one of the entrepreneurs I've mentioned in my past who has been very influential in my life is one of my brothers. And he happens to be a venture capitalist. And when I bought this business, he said, you know, Andy, I'm not sure you really actually need venture capital to be able to grow this because SaaS businesses throw off a lot of cash. And so far we've been able to compete. We do, you know, I hate to say the word steal, but we do end up getting a lot of business from previous Envoy customers and other customers out there. And I know that they take some of our customers as well.
But I've heard some of the metrics out there, and with all that venture capital, I don't believe they have acquired that many more customers than we have. We are launching a new strategy, which we're super excited about, we've been very deliberate about, and that strategy, I believe, fits the bootstrap model that we have. And we're gonna be able to create a ton of value as a result of that strategy. I'm looking forward to being able to announce that pretty soon.
Okay, that's very interesting. I mean, it's a great opportunity if you can grow bootstrap and you're not beholden to a venture fund and the timelines of a venture fund and all the pressures of the next round of funding, which can be a major distraction for a company. So that's pretty awesome. So that takes us to the topic of the management blueprint of your company, which you called the employee supremacy operating model. So Andy, tell us a little bit about what this is about and how it works and why it's so powerful.
Well, and I wanted to ask, because I know that you said that what has been most influential, there's been two. So, can I share two?
Sure.
Right. Okay, good. I mean, there's lots of I, I listened to a lot of business books, I consume a lot of information, because there's so much you can always get out of that in terms of how you want to operate your business. But the two that are seminal to what what's happened with us, is one I know that you're very familiar with, which is traction, get a grip on your business by Gina Wickman. And what that gave us was really one of the most important things for me, which was core values. I did not realize how critical core values are to your organization.
Discovering the significance of core values was pivotal for organization's growth.Share on X
And the book really showed me that. And I was able to, we really dug into that one. And it has changed because now we know things like who are the right people to get on the bus with you? Who are you looking for? And the people on the bus that you get on with will impact what you do in your business. So it also really kind of taught us the organizational side of the business. How do you organize? How do you have level 10 meetings?
You know, all the different philosophies and it helped us kind of like take the chaos that was our startup before and kind of bring it down to something that's a little more calm and peaceful and we were able to kind of run for it with it. The next one was, it has been the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek and this has only been maybe in the last, I would say, 18 months that's made a change to that for us. And one of them is, he has all sorts of philosophies in the book. And there are five of them that are really important to kind of what I would consider the people component.
But the one that he brought up, I was reading his book and it said things like trusting teams. Yeah, yeah, we got that. Worthy rivals and understanding who your rivals are and existential flexibility. I was like, yeah, yeah, we're flexible and we do those things. Courage to lead, we have the courage to lead. But he said, you need to have a just cause. And I remember reading that and saying, what is our just cause? I mean, yeah, I wanna build a great business management company. Nah, that didn't feel like much. So that really were, those are the two kind of, I would say the blueprints and the business framework that we've begun to operate on. And without them, I just don't think that we would be where we are.
A just cause is the compass guiding a company's journey, illuminating the path towards purpose beyond profit.Share on X
I love that way of expressing just cause.
