[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello, and welcome back to happy time happy money podcast and I'm your host, Viktoriia Miracle. And today in this awesome long interview, we have Brian Roland. And Brian is a social entrepreneur and founder of Abenity. That 6x Inc 5,000 company that is powering corporate perks for top brands, including US Bank and Mastercard. And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company, the company is social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program that they deliver. Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving in hiring a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team.

[00:00:58] Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and three daughters is investing his time and efforts that helps like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own. Hi and welcome Brian.

[00:01:15] Brian Roland: Hi there. Glad to spend some time with you today.

[00:01:17] Viktoriia Miracle: Absolutely. I am so excited to learn more about you about Abenity and about what you do. But before that first, I always love to learn more about you and how, what, what are you doing? How, what inspired you to start that company? What inspired you to start maybe other companies that you started it for? I know entrepreneurial journey is always very interesting story and give it to us.

[00:01:43] Brian Roland: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:01:44] So I'm from Kansas city originally, right square and then the Midwest can spend your finger on the map and, and find Kansas, the United States here. And I went to school really to get involved in the music business. So I shot over to Nashville and spent a good 16, 17 years in Nashville going to school for the music industry mostly showed me that the entertainment industry is just not very entrepreneurial. It's got a lot of politics, a lot of red tape, not a lot of freedom of thought and, and it really led me to take a job in outside sales. So as a 23 year old kid, I abandoned my kind of music ambitions and took a job, selling cell phones and, and really, in an outside sales role. So my, my boss at the time, said, here's your $18,000 a year salary. Basically don't come back until you find 30 phones. And if you don't find them before the end of the month, then you know, there's not really a reason for you to come back. So it was a high pressure go knock on the door try to find 30 phones from businesses.

[00:03:00] And as I was, you know, strategically thinking, how am I going to get 30 phones? I stumbled into the, realization that these very large companies, like Dell and HP and Pepsi and Coca-Cola, they have corporate benefits and corporate discounts for their employees.

[00:03:22] That's part of their benefits and the cell phone companies offered a discount to these employees. So instead of knocking on doors as really a music industry kid, and talking to a CFO, and I didn't even know what that stood for. I started calling HR people over the phone and said, Hey, if I send you a flyer about your sprint discount, will you email that to your thousands of employees?

[00:03:51] That technique really worked that got my phone ringing. It got my inbox coming in with interest, which led me to call my brother who is out in Southern California at UC Irvine getting his master's degree. And I said, Hey, look, I need a website and fast cause I need something that'll take orders for what I put together.

[00:04:09] And so we started building these web procurement portals where employees can order cell phones at their employee discount. We started to branding it for the cell phone company and the company that was offering the discounts to their employees. And it really took off with, with Sprint and otherwise. And it led us to build Abenity where we manage corporate merchant relationships and discounts on behalf of their employees.

[00:04:38] And today, 13 years later, we've got over a million redemption locations and thousands of local and national discounts that we do this for across millions of different members, we see about 2000 new people every day and, and that joined the program through these employers. And it's a, it's a really fun niche that we discover.

[00:04:58] Viktoriia Miracle: Very interesting. I've never heard of that niche and I think I'd never worked in corporate, so it's like absolutely like foggy to me. What do you still do? I got, you got me lost somewhere. I've never worked in a company where this, like, what is it they're using, they're using a discount code to purchase a phone.

[00:05:19] Brian Roland: Yeah. So originally it started with the phones and offering these corporate discounts. So it was typically, Hey, you work for Pepsi, so you get 25% off every month off your cell phone plan. So if you'd walk into, the carrier and you get a hundred dollars a month, As a Pepsi employee, you'd get the same exact plan for $75 a month.

[00:05:41] So it is actually a huge discount of really valuable for folks and what we learned was, you know, these companies were trying to get as many offers as possible. So we started volume in negotiating discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, hotels. So we wholesale tickets, from Disney parks from six flags parks and SeaWorld from Regal and AMC.

[00:06:08] And we deliver these at up to 40% off to the employees as a benefit. We brand the tickets for the company. So they have a corporate experience all the way to the box office. And then we go out and negotiate with folks like Quiznos and Papa John's and we say, Hey, will you give us a private offer for, for our membership?

[00:06:27] And they'll do, you know, free chips and a drink with purchase of a sandwich or, you know, 25% off your pizza order or whatever. And so we just, we just continually are coming up with new merchant relationships and offers, to help these employees stretch their hard earned payroll dollars, even, even further.

[00:06:48] Viktoriia Miracle: That is, that's such a good idea. It's like, you're just connecting right. Connecting to companies on this is a great people have discounts. So I know your company that how I mentioned in the via was mentioned that you got an Inc 5000 6x. So what does it take to get there for six different times?

[00:07:12] Brian Roland: Yeah, it takes a aggressive, consistent, fast growth essentially.

[00:07:17] So, so we, have, we've had six really great years where, we just continue to make the list only the fastest growing 5,000 companies in America make that list every year. And that was, that was a really great honor that, that we kinda, we had something to show for the hard work that, that we've, that we've done.

[00:07:40] And, and Inc 5,000 is a great kind of metric for all entrepreneurs to shoot for, to get out there cause it really, it really shows you how your growth is fitting in with, with other entrepreneurs around the country.

[00:07:55] Viktoriia Miracle: Cool. I mean, but what is it, how do they count on like 5,000 Inc? And it's like, what is it? The measure? What do they look for?

[00:08:03] Brian Roland: So the, so the initial measure is you, you have to have over $2 million in revenue. And from there they take a three-year average of your revenue and they sift them. And so the, the 5,000 companies with the facet with the highest percentage, make the, make the list.

[00:08:23] And so it's a really simple trick. It's a really simple metric. It's all financial driven, results driven and, they, they order you, they rank you that way.

[00:08:34] Viktoriia Miracle: That is so cool. So my next question for you is like, what do you think is like the top three characteristics? For entrepreneur that will support them to make things happen?

[00:08:47] Brian Roland: Yeah. That's I love that question. Great question. I, you know, entrepreneurs just, they always need to have their eyes open and essentially our entrepreneurial idea came from a problem. I encountered when I was selling phones to incidentally the Walt Disney company, there was, there was a day where the wrong information was provided the Disney corporate about their phones.

[00:09:09] Disney corporates priority was not to update this flyer that was incorrectly published on their intranet and the only people at the time that could control the content of the internet was IT. And IT had bigger things to work on. And so it took several weeks to get this down, which w which is really the aha moment where I had, I felt like.

[00:09:36] I had seen a gap that needed a bridge and it led to the conversation that said, Hey, you know, now that we've got this fixed, what if we built a platform that managed these merchant relationships for you so that you and HR are not responsible for it so that IT isn't responsible for it so that we are responsible for it.

[00:09:56] And we can get it done quickly for you to avoid this whole mess in the future. And that, that merchant management platform idea really took off and, has been the foundation of what we do today. So entrepreneurs need to keep their eyes open, look for gaps and be thinking about ways they can fill that gap. And this is how you find an awesome niche where you build a product. The, the second thing that I think entrepreneurs need to remember is, the, how is always in competition with the wow. And as an entrepreneur, you are the likely overwhelmed with the wow of your idea, your super excited. And so anybody that you're going to bring it to you are going to bring the, wow, that's your job.

[00:10:40] They're going to reflect back the how. So they're going to start asking you hard questions and they're going to say, well, isn't that like this, that already exists. Oh, well, how do you plan to overcome this? Well that you're going to feel like that's negativity. It's going to make you want to quit. It's going to shut you down.

[00:10:56] You're gonna make you want to shut down. The reality is they're trying to help you. They're trying to relate to you and you need to trust where they're coming from and also trust your guts because as the entrepreneur, you, you, you have the how in the back of your mind, and you've already overcome enough of those issues to, to feel like this can work.

[00:11:15] It's good to listen to the how, but don't let other people's reflection of your wow with their, how de-motivate you and make you quit. So push forward. If your gut says, Hey, this is worth trying. And third, I think it's really important that entrepreneurs just show up half the battle is just to show up, you know, show up to the meeting that you're not sure why you're there show up to the invitation that you got.

[00:11:41] Show up by getting out of bed and going somewhere and talking about your idea, like just, just show up and those steps lead you and help you refine and iterate those, the, your business to a place of success. And then

[00:11:58] Viktoriia Miracle: that's three and it's like the last one it goes to that. I always, always keep saying it's a consistency and commitment and it's not like that motivation, right? That's a lot of people speak about it. Like how do I get motivated to get there, to go there, to get up and do things. It is a commitment because when you commit, you don't need motivation to get up and do things you get to just get up and go. And they having that as. A game changer for me personally as well.

[00:12:25] When I started my entrepreneurial journey, it's to stop looking for motivation, just commit to, okay, this is what I'm doing. Doesn't matter how I feel. I get to get up and do it and that's definitely works beautifully. Yeah, keep your eyes open and looking for problems and find solutions. And that's what entrepreneurship is all about.

[00:12:45] It's solving a problem for another human beings might be one, you might be a hundred, it might be a millions like for you, which is super cool. Right?

[00:12:57] Interesting, you know, in our podcasts and call happy time, happy money, because we're also all about productivity and efficiency on how can you still run a successful company. And be, I don't know if there is a balance, but we feel well in all areas of life, but how do you manage that work-life balance that we call it normally.

[00:13:20] Yeah. Well,

[00:13:22] and I know we have a many, many kids too. It's not just one.

[00:13:27] Brian Roland: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a great question that I could spend a good chunk of time answering. So I'll, I'll try to just try to keep it short

[00:13:35] Viktoriia Miracle: Oh go for the good chunk we want. We want the good chunk of productivity here all.

[00:13:43] Brian Roland: So I think the, I launched a Benetti coming out of a place where I was selling the phones and I, I was doing really well as a kid, straight out of school.

[00:13:55] And I was making more money than my dad, pretty much right away. You know, he had a good government job, but, I was making six figures in a sales role and, And so money very quickly before I was married before I had any kids, like I didn't need, I didn't need a lot to do what I wanted to do as a 20 something year old.

[00:14:17] I wasn't ever really motivated by the money and putting. So having more money than I necessarily needed was kind of started to become more of a burden than, something to celebrate, because it's like on, I have to manage this. People are telling me to do this, that, and the other way. You know, you buy some fun things and then you're kinda like I got to take care of those fun things or, he just move on to the next thing.

[00:14:42] And you only do that so many times before. You're kind of like get like, okay, so it's not about the things. And, so I, I really always saw money as a tool, you know, it's, it's, it's just another tool in your toolbox. You use it to accomplish the goal. And so when we founded Abenity, I had already, I had enough life experience to know, Hey, work, work is hard.

[00:15:06] You know, if you work hard, you'll make good money. And good, good money doesn't make things less hard. Sometimes it increases a responsibility and so you've just got more that you have to deal with. And, if your, if your, why is rooted in, why do I care? Why am I working so hard? Why am I putting every ounce of my life into selling cell phones?

[00:15:30] And you're like, oh, well, that motivation only goes so far. And so I sat down with my brother, who's my business partner. And I said, Hey, look, if we're going to start this business. I want to set our why on something that's outside of our brand. It's outside of our products and services. It's outside of our industry because our industry is going to let us down.

[00:15:52] Our competitors are going to come at us. If we do things right, our competitors are going to come at us. That's going to be hard and demotivating. If we're building our products and services right, we're going to fail and that's going to be hard and de-motivating, and, you know, our brand, and who we in putting it into our people and all, you know, if our identity and our, why is just in our people, people are always going to let you down.

[00:16:14] And so we said, Put our let's let's create a social mission around our brand. And this is in 2006, it's the same year that lake Makowski from Tom's shoes is, discovering his, buy a pair, give a care, give a pair model in south America. And so social entrepreneurship is not really a thing yet. And at the same time, we're thinking let's create an output for a cause for every input into our business.

[00:16:43] And this ultimately became, the best Y that we could have created cause no matter how hard things get there, there were always, these kids that we're sponsoring in the developing world who had extremely they have that they have a lot less than we do, and then they need a lot of support. And so we, we aligned ourselves with the biggest problem we could think of, which was extreme poverty.

[00:17:11] So United nations number one goal is to eradicate extreme poverty in the developing world, by the year 2030. And, so we, we started chasing after that. And so for every ticket that our team sells you know, it's a percentage of that money that saved from the experiences going to support these kids.

[00:17:31] Today we have 250 kids that we're sponsoring through world vision like you said, in the intro, it took 12 years, but we'd given over a million dollars directly towards the fight against extreme poverty in a variety of ways and it has been a fantastic why to be behind. So that, we fit into this kind of happy money, lifestyle that you're talking about, where.

[00:17:54] Where you have, where, where your work is fulfilling and when you get burned out, you're, you're not burned out on the why, and you know why you're not having this, this moment where everything is meaningless, why am I doing this? I just need to, you know, completely quit and, and, you know, just go rediscover myself.

[00:18:15] It's like, no, it's, it's hard. It's bad in you. You pull back and you protect yourself from burnout, but you always have a why that's worth fighting for. But what I was excited to discover was for me, that meaningful work that was created with this social mission, started providing meaningful work for our team.

[00:18:36] So as we're hiring more people, they're also excited about our social mission. They're excited to know that for every action they do in the company, there's a reaction that's fighting extreme poverty and helping people, you know, who are, are desperate for help. And by our team, all having the same meaningful work, it started to create and align our culture.

[00:19:01] And our culture started aligning around this cause driven social mission and cultural alignment is extremely difficult to pull off in any work environment. Our work environment, since 2006 has been fully remote. So we've always had a fully remote team and that really, that really helped us. And as the culture aligned, it built a community, and the community around our social cause extended to our customers and our clients and the people using our program.

[00:19:36] And what I never expected to happen was that community alignment, for our cause, provided us with a competitive advantage. In our space, I never expected giving to become an advantage. And, and our marketing and our sales efforts, time and time again, when clients say they chose, they, why they chose us, they say, well, we really, we love your product and we love what you stand for with your social mission. And, that just created this really great formula. And, and the biggest thing that I'm really preaching these days is I know a lot of great entrepreneurs who are very generous. They have giving hearts and they plan to give, they don't know what they're going to give to yet because they don't know how much they're going to give yet because they're waiting for their CPA or their financial people to say, Hey, this is how much you have to give this year.

[00:20:29] And so while they're planning to give, they don't have a plan for giving and without a plan, they don't have a story to tell. And without a story, they don't have a way to align their culture and build a community and get to this place of competitive advantage. And so I've put together an impact plan. That's really, it says, Hey entrepreneurs, you can unlock all these same advantages for your business.

[00:20:53] Just put together an impact plan that gives you a story to share internally, externally gives you something to fight for that's out of your, outside of yourselves. And ultimately, it leads to a point of competitive advantage. So it actually increases your bottom line. So you don't have to be scared as like, giving away my profits is going to take money out of my pocket.

[00:21:14] Well, my experience is that it actually increases your profitability, making you more successful for your cause and more successfully, in your personal finances as well.

[00:21:25] Viktoriia Miracle: So what I'm hearing, you're saying, I love the story first, that. Right. The question was from productivity so that you can be very successful and productive in the company.

[00:21:38] And then I, no life, no matter right. What you do it's so it's our entrepreneurship. It's just like nonstop business. Like your life, it's a business, but if you can be more productive when, you know, what are you doing it for so that you don't have that motivation problem, because you know, what do you get up for in the morning and what impact is going to create in the world?

[00:21:59] So that I have what I'm hearing is lending with me from your story.

[00:22:04] Brian Roland: Yeah. I like how you circled that back around. Yeah, and as a product, it is, it is a tool for productivity because ultimately if you, if you, if you hit that point where it is like you know, I don't want to do this anymore and look, no matter what you're doing, you're going to get to that point where you're just like, I don't want it.

[00:22:24] This is hard and it, it happens everywhere. And so you, you know, that mission gives you the ability to press on and keep fighting. Cause you're fighting for something greater than yourself and that's extremely valuable for your productivity.

[00:22:38] Viktoriia Miracle: And when there is a culture like you're creating in the company that are contagious, right?

[00:22:43] Your mission is contagious like there are people there are having the same mission. They're not just going to like, let you stop it and say, oh, I'm tired. I don't know if I want to do that anymore. It's like, they will keep you accountable for that. So I, I think it's a beautiful answer. I've never, you know, Put it in my head from that perspective, the mission matter is so how much the mission matters.

[00:23:06] Yeah.

[00:23:07] Brian Roland: Yeah.

[00:23:08] Viktoriia Miracle: Awesome, and you mentioned, I know about your impact plan. I know that you actually have a forgive. That is the, that I'll just get, download the free gift free copy of that plan.

[00:23:21] Brian Roland: Yeah. I'd love for entrepreneurs to think about how they can craft an impact plan of their own. There are so many great causes out there that, that need your support from your business and your business can scale up support for them.

[00:23:36] And it can give you a mission for your company to pursue, and you craft the mission around whatever you're passionate about. That's the best, that's the best thing about it. And so you can, you can download a free copy of my impact plan. It's a blank PDF where you fill in the blanks. That kind of goes through the process that's worked for us. So you can get that by texting the word impact to, +1 for the United States, 6 1 5 8 0 2 6 8 5 3, that's area code 6 1 5 8 0 2 6 8 5 3 text word impact. You will immediately get a response with a PDF to download. And you can

[00:24:16] Viktoriia Miracle: Is that only for United states, you said it's.

[00:24:21] Brian Roland: Worldwide, you can do it just like put, plus put that plus one ahead of the phone number for that US indicator.

[00:24:29] Viktoriia Miracle: Oh God, I'm going to get one. That's interesting. I love going through, you know, it's just always like reevaluating and really readjusting, just getting through the process. It's always great to remember. And my last question is, you know what I really want to circle back with, like, what is your advice. Like what advice would you give? You have, so somebody who's just starting because you are so far ahead already, and you've seen this so many, so much, so much, so much. I can not imagine for, you know, 12 years of business, like what would you tell them? Like where to start, how to can, they can get started?

[00:25:09] Brian Roland: Yeah, and I think this is a good re, I think it's back to those simple three principles you outlined in the beginning.

[00:25:14] I think, I think the biggest, if you're, if you want to be an entrepreneur, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes open. That's it that you have what it takes already. Pay attention, look for a gap to fill. That number two was don't let other people talk you out of it like if it's, if your gut says this is important, don't let them talk to you out of it.

[00:25:35] And press forward and then just keep showing up, show up and press on and, and be consistent and persistent and you've got what you need.

[00:25:45] Viktoriia Miracle: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brian, for that beautiful interview. Thank you for your time and if you are watching or listening, thank you for being here with us today.

[00:25:57] You will find just a down below either you're watching or listening, link to an episode page where you can click and they will take you to the page with the video, audio with some information and links that all that were mentioned here above and contact information of both of us. Thank you so much for being with us today and I'll see you next week in the next episode on happy time happy money podcast. Bye. Bye Brian.