Episode 82

Monica Eaton-Cardone

Monica Eaton-Cardone has a rage to master. As a child she helped her father run his businesses until she was old enough to begin her own. Upon leaving high school she began the iterative process of creating her own business masterpiece with a DNA level drive to solve problems, work hard and grow her acumen. In this conversation Monica shares lessons learned on the path to mastery with threads on scaling, gender and her current business, Chargebacks911.

Joe

Joining me on SP^X today is, amongst other things, the founder and COO of Chargebacks911, Monica Eaton-Cardone. Welcome.

Monica

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Joe

I don’t believe you’ve ever had a job, right? You’ve been completely your own boss from the very beginning.

Monica

Well, I wouldn’t say that I’ve never had a job. I mean, I started out when I was 12, I had an official job, working in a mink ranch. I’ve done corn topping and worked in fields. But it is true. As I got older and left high school, then I quickly just delved into business opportunities really as a result of solving a problem. And just born out of necessity.

Joe

Right, I mean a lot of entrepreneurs, it was fair to call you a serial entrepreneur, would you say?

Monica

I hate the word serial entrepreneur.

Joe

I do too, actually.

Monica

It really sounds like…

Joe

It sounds like you fail a lot and start over.

Monica

Yes, exactly. I hate it. I mean, I guess technically, yes. I’m a serial entrepreneur, but…

Joe

What’s a better word, a DNA-driven entrepreneur?

Monica

Yes, you know what. I just have that gene, I have that odd gene that just is that insatiable appetite to continue to solve problems. And it’s not like I’ve ever really gotten out of business. Things just continue to pivot and move and you have new opportunities.

Joe

Yeah. And so, I’m going to make a pledge never to use the word serial entrepreneur again, starting right now.

Monica

I’m probably the only one that doesn’t like it.

Joe

No, I don’t like it either. But you know, were you when you were young, doing entrepreneurial things?

Monica

Yes.

Joe

So, what are some examples? I mean, obviously, the typical ones were the baseball cards of the world and things like that. What were you buying and selling? Or how were you exercising that gene?

Monica

So, let’s see. So, I have four younger sisters, I actually have six younger step brothers, like we are the typical…

Joe

Customer base.

Monica

We’re the Brady Bunch, right? And yes, total customer base, baseball team, you name it, like we have a business just already made. So, I grew up in Idaho, in the middle of nowhere, very, very rural areas. And my dad had this great idea at the time, I hated it. But we had acres of every type of vegetable you can imagine. We had chickens, we had cows, we had everything. And so, I started out actually selling vegetables, and working with my sisters and making sure that you know, everything was cut and presented, and we had red wagons. And literally, that was my first job. And I don’t know, I was probably eight maybe, and recruited my neighbors to do this with me. Even some neighbors were a little bit older. After that, I remember putting together like a skit or a theater play, which was probably horrific. But we convinced parents to pay us to attend. So, I’ve always had, you know, just an interest of getting things together. And probably the money. You know, I read a quote once. I think it was by Warren Buffett that you don’t do things for money, you do it because it’s a means of keeping score. And for me, it was kind of that same way.

Joe

Yeah. It was a famous quote, I think in the poker world as well that said, money doesn’t matter. It’s just keeping score of who’s the better poker player. And sort of, you know, just by your birth order that happenstance, you’re thrust into a leadership role, right? So, you’re now managing a team of your younger siblings. Does that feel like some early roots of leadership for you?

Monica

Yeah, yeah, probably.

Joe

And merchandising, obviously, too, as you got the wagons and had to make them. Did you feel like there was a lever? If I make the wagons look really good. I sell more.

Monica

Oh, 100%. No, I was all about presentation from a very early age. One of my sisters had a beautiful voice, and she was absolutely beautiful. And she needed to be the person that knocked on the door, because she was the one – if I knocked on the door, they would think, “Well, that girl, she just wants to sell us something.” My sister on the other hand, this angelic face, and instantly, you know, there’s compassion. And so now they’re going to listen to us and buy something.

Joe

Yeah. And I guess there was an innate entrepreneurial-ness to the family as well. So how much do you remember your parents driving you to do that?

Monica

So, I had at the time, you know, like all of us, I thought that I had the worst upbringing because I had to work so hard. All of my friends didn’t have to work and I had to work on the farm and do manual labor, and all of these things. But you know, in retrospect, it was I had a very fortunate upbringing, my dad was an entrepreneur as well. And we moved a lot like, you would think that we were a military family because we moved to so many different houses. And one of the reasons why we moved so often is because he would buy businesses, and all sorts of businesses, outlet stores, beauty colleges, farms, gas stations, and whatever you would buy, then, of course, he had his own little workforce, and then we would work in the store. So, I learned at a very young age, I actually spoke Spanish in our stores, where we lived in like farming communities, I learned how to reconcile our bank statements, make orders, you know, balance the books. And it’s funny, we had this one general store. And I remember getting into probably the worst trouble I ever got into, because I was a teenager, and I found you know, what, all of my friends drink beer. And so, I think I need to actually start a business selling them beer

Joe

Yeah, that’s entrepreneurial logic.

Monica

Exactly right.

Joe

It happens in my life a lot.

Monica

I thought, you know what, they’re going to get it anyway, from some store. I didn’t drink, but I could definitely, you know, be the source. And oh, my gosh, I got into a lot of trouble.

Joe

That’s a good learning opportunity. And then when you think back to these businesses that your dad ran, were they linear, where it was sort of one and then another, and then another, or how many of them were kind of going in parallel?

Monica

So, he would run one. And then you know, like the profit, all these different stories, he was sort of like that. He would find a business where the management was lacking, or they were, you know, in red tape, and then we would move there. And it would be like an all hands-on effort. I would always be given some job with variety. And then we would get it turned around in almost I remember, you know, almost immediately, like within months. Then he would turn it around and put it for sale. And it really just depended. Sometimes we would have different things in tandem, but not very often. But it was always, you know, here’s an opportunity for us to fix these problems.

Joe

Got it. Got it. So only reason why I asked that question is, you know, it could be because there’s sort of a process that you could go through. So, he was actually doing it as the business of selling businesses.

Monica

Correct, yes, it was almost like rehabbing real estate, right? Only it was two businesses.

Joe

So, then you did experience those sales as successes then.

Monica

Yes.

Joe

So, it was yes, this worked. We made our money. Let’s move on to find the next opportunity.

Monica

And sometimes failure. So, lots of success. But also, you know, there were failures, I lived in mansions, but I also lived in the ghetto. So, you know, you learn the appreciation of both sides of the spectrum, and also that you can really learn in any environment.

Joe

That makes a lot of sense. And how was the failure communicated? And, you know, obviously, you had roles in these companies. And so, when he would say this one didn’t go as well, was it very pragmatic, or was there an emotional element to it? How was that was presented?

Monica

You know what, I don’t remember getting very emotional. I mean, as a kid, it was sort of like, you know, now I have an opportunity to think of all the mistakes that I made at this place. Next, I’m going to do even better. And I think my family is very adventurous, I probably have that gene as well. And I think life can be fun. I really believe that you can really engage yourself regardless of what you do, and find fun. And, you know, to the point on jobs, I left high school early, I got three jobs instantly, and just decided, you know what, I need to make money. And one of my jobs was at McDonald’s, and people would laugh about that. They think, “Well, why would you ever work at McDonald’s? You had skills, you had this,” but I didn’t care. I just wanted to do everything that I could. And I loved that job. Within a week, I had a goal, all I wanted to do is become the fastest hamburger maker the fastest hamburger flipper. And I won the contest. And then my manager talked to me said, “You know what, Monica, I know you’re going to leave here because all the good people leave.” And without fail, like the next week, I was gone.

Joe

You’re doing what you needed to do. Yeah, then that’s a great quote, I feel similar. I say if I’m going to sit down at a party next to a plumber, and we’re going to hang out for an hour, when I come out of there, I’m going to know more about plumbing than I ever thought I could, because I just want to get into the expertise and really understand that, and you know, that’s an opportunity to pick up some cool knowledge and some valuable knowledge, you know, for you, I think it seems, you know, just standard logic or whatever. But there are a lot of entrepreneurs who get emotionally attached or get, you know, it’s kind of like riding a stock too long before or while it’s going down, and in the process of going in and out of a business. You know, they’ll hang on too long, or they’ll get too much of their identity wrapped into it, which obviously creates an inefficiency when it comes to operating the business and making the right life decisions. And so, it sounds like between you know, that sort of ability to go in and get out and buy and sell businesses, just a lot of pragmatism that gave you a really clean sort of mindset when it comes to just making the right decisions and not holding on to past sort of things too much.

Monica

Yeah, you know what, I think it’s a healthy aspect for any entrepreneur, frankly, anyone just as a human. Let’s face it, you don’t succeed by just succeeding, you fail your way to success. It’s actually a path of failure. Because you’re constantly without trial and error, you need change, and you need diversity. And you have to confront that. And so, I don’t know that it’s ever a scenario of, “Hey, you know, this business didn’t work.” It always works, you just have to pivot. And sometimes that means reinventing yourself. And sometimes that means looking at things a little bit different. But it’s never really like an end game. Failure is just, you know, one of the steps. It’s finite, and it’s not going to last forever. It’s not indefinite.

Joe

Sure, yeah. And I like to think of it as earning my way up.

Monica

100%.

Joe

You know, I’ve earned the right to get this much of an investment. And now I’ve earned the right to get this big of an investment, or expect this much in revenue, or have, you know, these ambitious of a goal or whatever, and just keep stair stepping up. And, you know, that’s personal to me. I have sort of what I consider a baseline for that, right? Which is, as we move up to bigger asks, and bigger ambitions and bigger businesses, that’s all relative to me. So, coming – and I came from a small town in Ohio. So, similar background, my dad was an entrepreneur. So, you know, as you scaled yourself, you know, has it been an intentional process to have to really be able to expect the biggest of things? You know, to someday have a billion-dollar company or to someday have, you know, or whatever your measure in success is. Has that been a process? Or have you been able to just aim big and go big from day one?

Monica

If there is any business owner that doesn’t say scaling is the number one challenge, I would challenge that viewpoint instantly. That it’s difficult, because I think as an entrepreneur, you know, it’s your baby, like, you’re attached to things, and you learn how to do every single job from the ground up. So, and one of the struggles for me, has been, you know, really getting to that level where, “Okay, now I can see that I’m going to break through this glass ceiling.” And because it gets to a point where I’ve always been a big dreamer. And I believe that if I work hard enough, then I can achieve anything. And regardless if that sounds naive, you know, it’s just what I’m born with. I may not be the most talented. I may not have the best education, but I know I will work harder than anyone. And I will not quit. And that’s when I’m going to get ahead at the end of the day, and it works every single time. It just is, you know, that stamina and perseverance. And then if I surround myself with people that are like-minded. I mean, sure, you have a lot of arguments, you have a lot of passion, but I’d take that any day over complacency. And then getting to the point in our organization, where now we have nearly 400 employees all over the world that’s international. The challenge to get to that point has been a lot more than I could have ever thought. Because it’s putting significant trust in others and realizing that when you grow your business, this is no longer a business founded by Monica Cardone, right? It’s actually I have so many different entrepreneurs in my business, that each business unit, in essence, is owned and managed by an entrepreneur in their own right. And I wouldn’t be here and our business wouldn’t be here if I didn’t partner with those people that have the same owner mentality. And like, that’s the beauty when you start to see how you can, you know, one and one makes 10, and then continue to duplicate that.

Joe

And, you know, just so to clarify, when you talk about scaling being a challenge, there’s logistics of scaling, and then there’s psychology of scaling.

Monica

Yes, it’s the whole nine yards, right?

Joe

But when you’re talking about, there’s the psychology of scaling, really saying, you know, for me to get to the next bigger iteration of this business, I have to let go of some of the things that aren’t a good fit for that. And can you dig into you know, what did you do, obviously, of time and whatnot. But what did you do to make that let go?

Monica

It sounds funny, but in some ways, I think the classic adage is very true. That you need to surrender who you are for what you can become, right? And it’s a constant, challenging the status quo. And I’m big on challenging change. Like any entrepreneurs, we have no problem with change. We like to innovate, we can handle that. We’re probably not as good with just consistent stay in the box and never expand. We’re always looking for ways to grow. But when I look at, you know, how to scale in that sense, then one of the things that I have had some difficulty with is actually realizing I need to lower my standards, which is totally ironic, right? You’d never think if you’re growing bigger then you should never lower your standards. But it’s a false expectation for me to think I want every single soul to have the commitment level that I have. Otherwise, we’re not going to grow anymore. And you start realizing, actually, you know, there’s tremendous value for a lot of diverse roles, and even more expanded roles. And I always thought, every single individual, I wouldn’t have anybody that just wanted to do the same thing every day. And they wouldn’t just want to, you know, follow processes. But then processes are a huge part of growing, and you need that, and you need a lot of the processes, you need the technology, you need the people. So, it’s really about figuring out how those work together. And being realistic in your expectations. As a single person in a smaller company, it’s easier to grow, because you have a lot more control, right? But when you are dealing with, you know, more red tape, because you need those consistent processes, things just take longer, but you also have a lot more risk. So, well, you have a lot more risk, if you don’t do things correct, but you have a lot less risk. You’re not going to lose your business overnight. It’s very stable, you have stable staff, you have a lot of great talent. And there’s pros and cons.

Joe

And how have you knowing that you have these 400 people looking up to you, and knowing who you are and what your expectations are or have been of yourself. And now having to understand that there’s this large disparate group, you know, what have you done in sculpting, how you present yourself and building the culture of the company and managing the sort of conflicting you know, I want perfection and drive and excellence versus I understand, there’s a big blob of people, right? So, have you walked that line?

Monica

I’m probably still a little ruthless. So, I think, I mean, I hold myself to a high standard, I hold the company to a high standard. I think it’s important. I went through an exercise several years ago, we were probably we’re 10 years old, now.

Joe

Congrats, nice.

Monica

10^th year, great anniversary this year. But about five years back, I went through probably what any company goes through, right? You start looking out there, reading all these corporate books and thinking, “Oh, my gosh, you know what, I need to look more like corporate America, I need to be more like Bank of America, I need to have an org chart that is this perfect hierarchy. And I need all these titles. And I need a whole C suite. And I just want to walk the walk and look exactly like that, and wear a suit to work. And I need everyone to wear suits. And I want like only Ivy League’s here.” That lasted about three months. And you know what, all of the processes and all the people that I hired in this, you know, new version of what we’re going to do to actually compete with, this is corporate America, I realized, you know what, actually, I don’t want to be corporate America. And nobody here wants to be corporate America, we like the way we are. We don’t have a strict hierarchy. We wear T shirts and jeans to work, we get into arguments with each other, we’re a passionate, quirky bunch, but we love each other. And we work together and we are having fun, and we’ve experienced astonishing growth. And I take that all day long over, you know, the miniscule growth that you see with some of these large corporates. But it’s, you know, getting to where you’re comfortable with that. You know, for the longest time, I didn’t even have confidence to say, “Guess what, I don’t have a college degree.” Because, you know, you put yourself on a pedestal with others and think, “Okay, well, I know I’m capable. But maybe I’m not qualified. Maybe I’m not this, maybe I’m not that.” But today, it’s like, I’m proud to hire people without college degrees. You know what, it doesn’t matter. Like we have teenagers that make six figures, and they are rock star programmers. And it actually pains me. I think you can’t lose the culture. That is something that I think as a founder, you can let go of a lot of things and you have to, and that takes a lot of discipline, you know, to actually allow people to make mistakes, allow people to learn just like you did. You don’t grow without that, you really have to trust people and risk that, but you can’t let go of the culture that got you there. Sure. Because that is a fabric that is required to go the next mile.

Joe

Yeah, and sort of by definition, you are the culture and you’ve built a team around you and it’s grown from one to two to 10 to 20 to 400 and so like you said, make the adjustments but if you were to let go of you, then all the people that formed around you would be disingenuous. It would be an inauthentic experience for them.

Monica

So, I’ll tell you we started the Tough Mudder which is like this crazy obstacle course, right? When we just started, only because we were all getting fat living on pizza and drinking coffee. That’s what you do when you’re growing business and technology. It’s like, let’s all work 12 hours a day, have pizza delivered under the door, live on coffee. And yeah, we don’t have time for anything else in our lives. So, I hired a personal trainer for the company, that didn’t work, because none of us were committed. Then I thought, “Alright, you know what, me included, we’re all going to sign up for this horrific obstacle course the Tough Mudder and like do or die, we’re going to do it. Otherwise, we’re going to pay a penalty to the company.” So, now we all got involved with a personal trainer. We’ve had a personal trainer on staff since then for many, many years. So anyway, back to, you know, making sure that you stand behind that culture. So now, I don’t think I’ve ran a mile for months, I’ve been super busy. Like, just I’m not in good shape. But the culture is still there in the company. And everyone is like, “Gung-ho, we have to do this.” So, a couple weeks ago, we did this walk or a run for cancer. And of course, like, as the owner of the company, I’m going to show up for every event. And I get asked, “Well, Monica, I mean, what are you going to do?” Honestly, I was like, “Could I please do the 1k?” That’s what I’m thinking, like, I should have brought my kids because then I have a good excuse. But you know, I know that. Okay, it’s expected that I do the 10k I’m just going to have to push myself and do it. And I did it, very painful after. But it’s that type of, you know, mentality, you can’t lose the example that you’ve set. And it was really great to see the team like, “No, we need you to do this. You’re always doing this, we need you to lead the team.” I’m like, “Okay, I’m in.”

Joe

That’s great. You mentioned being insecure about the college degree. And, you know, a lot of those things are just optical legitimizers, right? I think, you know, you’ve talked about the gender elements and doing business. And you know, coming up as an entrepreneur, you actually experienced that as a woman through many stages of your development as a woman. And I think even to one point you, you know, having multiple email accounts where you or a man and a woman, you know, with the assistance…

Monica

I know, crazy, right?

Joe

You know, survival. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So, you know, I think I’d love to hear how you feel today, you know, how do you feel having come through the last, you know, 20 years and living in the world we live in today? How are we doing?

Monica

I think we’re doing a lot better. I think with women, you know, this is not a situation that can be. And it’s not just women, right? It’s diversity across the board, there’s challenges in every type of environment. For me, it’s always been, look, if there’s a will, there’s a way. And so, it may not be that I can go in, as you know, with this particular title in this particular vehicle, but maybe I don’t need to go through the front door, maybe the back door is open, maybe I need to get through the window. All that I have is, my goal is to get inside that house. And so that’s, I think, you know, the mentality that you need to have as an entrepreneur, and just in life in general, when it comes to women. And we created this mentor program called Lift, fabulous program. And it’s really been insightful for me to even talk to even some of the peers that I have in the industry and recognize some of the challenges that they have. And of course, just talking to people makes a huge difference. But first, there’s the lack of mentors, and, you know, not enough leadership roles. For me, I think I had a lot of great mentors, but not one single mentor that was a woman. So, it’s just a little bit different. And then also, I think that there is, we can’t solve some of the diversity constraints with just a top down approach. And I try to hire as many women as possible in our development team, I will tell you, we hardly have any, you know why? Because there are none. I’m not going to hire someone that’s not as qualified as another candidate just because they’re a woman. And that’s really a disservice to her. And so, we can’t solve some of the inequality problems by just putting pressure on corporations, we need to look at the bottom up approach as well. And that means, advocating at a young age and maybe even mandating that every girl needs to take a computer programming class, like China is getting ahead of us, Europe is getting us. Still I don’t know why these things aren’t mandated so that every type of person regardless of what sex they are, can get more exposed to technology to even take leadership courses. I mean, the world is changing. It’s funny, like vocational schools are becoming the in thing. I mean, you probably remember even 10 years ago was like, don’t say, if you go to a location, you kind of want to say that under your breath. It’s like the community college. And now, speed is everything.

Joe

My dad taught at a vocational school, so I lived it firsthand. You know, now, you have people like Peter Thiel paying people not to get four-year degrees, it’s actually becoming sort of bad value to spend four years working on an undergrad degree,

Monica

Right, it’s all about efficiency, and, you know, money in time. I mean, the world is changing. And I think, you know, anyway, back to the top down, plus bottom up, and increasing confidence. And with women, me included, number one issue probably just from years and years of history, and tradition, is just really being able to challenge roles and think it’s okay. If I also have this other role, it doesn’t mean that I’m less of a woman, it doesn’t mean that I can’t do other things. I think, you know, those are barriers that we’re going to have to break down a little bit. And frankly, this same type of stigma holds true with men.

Joe

Yeah. When you talk about mentorship, it seems like an okay segue into the front row you’ve had for the YouTube empires of your husband and his brother, the Cardones. I’d love to hear how you experienced that. A, from just, you know, the interestingness of it, weirdness of it to maybe the opportunities there for doing some of that mentoring and bringing up more women to be those types of influencers or thought leaders.

Monica

So interesting take on that. So, I will say, yes, most people know, at least my brother in law, Grant Cardone, hopefully, my husband Gary Cardone, and they are identical twins. So, it is fascinating, right? We’re always infatuated with even watching identical twins, not to mention these massive personalities, they’re very different. Grant has really created a celebrity empire in so many different avenues. And Gary, likewise, you know, has quite a following as well. And they’re both amazing at social media and building their own brand. You know, this is actually not my number one passion, you won’t find me on YouTube, very often unless it’s like an interview or something else. Now, that being said, I will say I think women and actually everybody can really take some lessons on board. And identify a mentor in that space in social media, somebody that you respect, and follow, and more and more, it’s becoming absolutely requisite, that you have a profile online, it kind of sucks in a way but you don’t exist. Unless someone can search you and they can find you. And either you’re going to be in control of that narrative, or someone else will. I would strongly suggest you take control of it. And that means improve your writing skills, be professional, you know, start doing research, look for people that you respect, read quotes, you know, start to really develop and get to know yourself, what are your real interests? A lot of people, maybe they can’t even answer if you ask them, pointedly, what are all the things that you’re interested in? And when you start to really delve into yourself and think, Okay, now these are all the people I have things in common with, build a community. But I think this networking and mentorship is we need that humanity and support more than ever now, especially with the fast pace. No, that’s not with a caveat to say that. I don’t think that social media is all good. It’s definitely I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing to be told how wonderful you are every day or how much everyone hates you. But it’s a discipline that is a necessity for anybody that is growing in their career.

Joe

And so, dive into that a little bit. Obviously, there is, you know, the internet can dredge up the worst of humanity. And, a lot of people that your husband and brother in law are speaking to or in various states of flux in their life will say for lack of a better way to say it, is that something that you have to or you’re exposed to and you have to handle an undue amount of negativity, obviously with two kids and just you’re managing all of that and understanding that how does that play into your daily life?

Monica

For me, not at all, not even in the least. I think that if you are looking for negativity, you can find it everywhere. You’re going to have people hate you before they love you. And then they’re going to respect you as long as you don’t quit. That’s what I strive for. It’s like actually the long game.

Joe

I mean, that’s something that not many people can take to heart. People are going to hate you before they love you. A lot of people, that first part is really tough to get through.

Monica

It is and I think through my experience starting. I was an entrepreneur in India at a very young age in my 20s. And that was tough. That was really tough. Because, even today, I don’t sign documents, as you know, Monica Eaton Cardone. I actually sign is Monica daughter of, because there’s still a little bit of suppression. It’s so much better, but it’s tough. It’s a very tough environment. It’s tough doing business internationally. It’s tough doing business. I think as women, it’s very tough doing business in technology, especially, working with teams and getting clients in an area that I really knew nothing about. But I knew that I could solve this problem, and it made sense. And that’s what I had confidence in is, I’ve already solved it, I know what I know. And, building that type of self-worth, I think, is crucial. You can’t survive by building self-esteem. Self-esteem can get torn down in two seconds. Somebody tells you, you’re great, you have good self-esteem, another person tells you they hate you it’s gone. Self-worth is what you get from producing. It’s what you get from setting goals and achieving those goals. And if you have that, then you can handle it. If everybody tells you they hate you, because you know that that’s just a phase. And then you’re not going to get enamored when they tell you how much they love you. Because you also know that’s a phase. It’s not time to quit yet.

Joe

Yeah, and that’s how I’ve naturally divided things up. This came naturally to me, but I still think it’s a good way to be is that if somebody comes to me with something that’s negative, and I believe it, it’s hugely valuable that I have that information now. And if somebody comes at me with something that’s negative, and I can clearly see it’s driven by their own emotional state, or their own perspectives, or not even perspectives, almost to do with their own motivations and their own self-interest. And I just happened to be in the way of that, then I can easily discount it. And it’s just a clear line of logic. Either, it’s true and thank you. Now I know this, or it’s not true, and I can discard it.

Monica

I agree 100%. And you’re right. A lot of people don’t have that. I think one of the reasons why I’ve always gravitated to business, and I love business. And I probably have a weakness of not being the most emotional person, but I love logic. And so, for me, it’s a clean decision. And in business, it’s just a logical decision, what’s in the best interest. It’s not complicated, it’s not emotional. And so, when you have negativity, and I love the thought of reframing, right? So, you can even take the most negative experience, and take a minute and step back and think of things in a different perspective, and reframe that experience to something where it’s going to add a positive impact. It’s either going to help you understand what you can do to improve, and then you’re thankful for that. Or it’s going to show you how to find empathy that maybe you didn’t have before, to your point, you know, if you have something where someone’s just outright mean, and you know, it’s not true, take a minute to actually think of how miserable they must be to be attacking you. Because, you know, there’s no basis.

Joe

And you know, therein lies opportunity. And I think you’ve said that in the past where you’ve actually been able to understand sexism and turn it and operate in a way that anytime people lay all their variables on the table, that’s all an entrepreneur could ask for, because you have information [33:29]

Monica

Totally, yeah. The worst thing ever, is to have someone sitting on the fence. It’s like, actually, I just want to know if it’s on the right or the left, just tell me because now I can work with that. Yes. So, understanding, and you take that as a challenge as well, some of the most amazing and I think probably every entrepreneur would say this, because the things that motivate us is that gene, right? It’s like the things that motivate people, most people are being told that you’re doing a good job, a coach that tells you to keep going. And then there’s a type of motivation when someone says, “Actually, I don’t think you’re going to be able to do it.” For me, that’s a whole new level of motivation. Where now, it’s like I heard, so it’s called rage to master, right? So, you can persevere, you can learn quickly. But once you have the rage to master, now you have a purpose. And you can harness that to create something great. So, experiencing sexism or having somebody treat me poorly, I can harness that and think you know what, “I’m going to win them over.” And the most powerful thing I can do is get them to see they’re wrong themselves. Because that’s something that is life changing.

Joe

And to that end, understanding all these variables and how have you had to manage intensity? Do you have to manage down your intensity, or do you find it natural to just go and [34:59]? And I’m just speaking from personal experience. If I get on a roll, you know, five minutes in, I see people starting to like, “I need an IV or something.” And how’s intensity work for you?

Monica

So, I would say most people would describe me as being intense. You know what, I think you just need to own how you are. I don’t think that I’ve ever been a person that is like, I don’t have any energy, I feel helpless. It’s always I’m excited about life, and maybe that’s self-worth and knowing I have the ability to solve problems if I just understand the problem. But I think, maybe work life balance is sometimes a challenge. And really, I’ve read so many books about, you know, dedicate 30% of your time here and another 30% over here. This is what I’ve realized, there is no such thing for some of us to just parse out percentages of our life, and then equally balance it. Some of us, me included, it is 110% in this one direction, and I’m going to do it until I’m done. And then 100% with the kids, and, we’re going to do everything, and I have all the energy for that. And to me, that’s much more rewarding, but it’s that quality and focus. And, for me, that works. When I let myself get dispersed, trying to spread energy in too many different ways. I don’t think that’s as successful.

Joe

All right. You want to say intensity, you know, obviously, if you go speak to a group of schoolchildren. And this is just an extreme example, you’re not going to go in raging. And to some extent, in the boardroom, it’s somewhere in between, where I would think you are, and I am, and has some schoolchildren somewhere in there is the average boardroom. And so, you kind of have to either dial down into that. I mean, there’s just an actual tangible outcome to how you interact with people based on their ability to absorb the information you’re giving them, and the energy you’re giving them. And, you’ve talked a little bit about it with your employees, you can’t just go full board of what is normal for you. For them you have to, slow down is probably the wrong word. But change the frequency a little bit.

Monica

I mean, everybody receives communication, and they understand things a little bit different. So, what I’ve found extremely effective with me is, I love whiteboards. Like literally, I absolutely cannot even have a meeting without a whiteboard, because illustrating it helps many people get up to speed faster, and it connects the dots. And then if I realize, you know, because you’re right, I mean, we both probably have intense personalities. And then I also have pretty thick skin. So, someone needs to say, “All right, you know what, actually, I don’t agree with you.” But I respect that. And we can have a debate. And oftentimes, my staff wins the debate, but I’m going to make them earn it. I want to make sure that we’re going on the right road. Now, I will say I probably am surrounded by a lot of likeminded individuals. I have less meetings where somebody isn’t getting involved. Probably more meetings, where literally, their voice may be louder than mine, which is great, because you want that camaraderie, and you want to make sure that every decision is challenged one. So that you know, it’s accurate. I think you find that a lot in technology. Because there’s always an argument with how to architect that something what we need to do, all these different strategies. But the other thing that I found is, I try to make it a point of just reading the room, taking a minute, and actually giving everybody an opportunity to regurgitate what I said, because this is something that I actually learned in working in India and other foreign cultures. I can have a conversation with somebody who doesn’t speak English as a first language. And chances are, they’re going to say, “Yes, I understand. I’m going to do it. Yes, I got it. I got it.” Now, everything that I say they can actually repeat exactly what I said. And I’m going to get off that call thinking this is going to be a perfect relationship. They know exactly what I want, and they’re going to do it perfect. And then you see the results. And you’re like, “What happened? This is nothing like we talked about.” So, I’ve learned not to be quick in thinking just because I have head nods. I may be getting head nods. Just because people are like, “Yeah, we know you’re the boss. So, we’re just nodding along.” Take a minute and say, “Okay, you know, what, what do you think? Tell me what you think about this.” And I found putting people on the spot, so that I can make sure. Do they understand what I’m saying? Are they following it? And guess what they may not agree. Well, if they don’t agree, it’s their turn. And I think that it makes things more engaging. And the last thing I think any entrepreneurs learn this, especially when you’re scaling things out, you have to let go of a lot of control. It’s not natural, right? It’s not natural for an entrepreneur, because you want to control everything, but to grow, you need to put more faith in your team and continue to put more faith in your team. And that means, actually being willing to say, “Okay, how do you want to do things? You have total autonomy,” and being willing to even if I know, or if I think I know, hey, you know what the decision that our marketing team has to do this promotion, and they’re going to spend money, but I told them, they can do whatever I want. I hate that promotion. I don’t think it’s going to be successful. But you know what, they have that decision. It’s their company, it doesn’t matter that it’s my company. It’s a business unit, and they’re in charge. I can’t expect them to be a leader, if I’m going to trump everything they say. And sometimes, actually, more often than not from our marketing team. They’re right, and I was wrong. And they can’t wait to prove it.

Joe

And we have to correct the slip. You said you told them they could do whatever I want. You meant whatever they want.

Monica

Right. Right, right.

Joe

That’s funny. So, I want to kind of build up to a sort of nuanced question about Chargebacks911. I guess it’s worth digging into it a little bit. You know, you had an online business, e-commerce business leading up to that, that suffered a lot from chargebacks. Tell us a little bit about that business and how it started. And then we’ll go into the chargebacks.

Monica

Sure. So that business started in 2008, probably worst time to start a business, but like many Americans, we were in a position where we didn’t have a lot of liquid assets. And the markets were falling. And so, I had this idea, I thought, you know what, I have previously had businesses where I was doing work for clients, and retailers. And it was my ideas that they were making money on. And I would establish the technology and run campaigns, and even built software. And this was like, my whole life before. Previously, I had sold that business. And I was in retirement mode, newly married. My husband, same thing, he was also in retirement mode. And then 2008 comes along, and we thought, “Maybe we should start something.” So, he got back into the stock market. And I went back to my roots thinking, so previously, I was involved in I would book like television media, and then maintain all of those statistics. And I had a lot of experience in call center technology and different statistics and media campaigns. So, I thought, how hard can it be to just build a website? I think, I have some programming skills, I can figure this out. I know, I’ve studied so much. And I have these tons of acumen with consumer behavior. And I know what I’m doing, oh, my gosh, it was such a miserable failure over and over and over again.

Joe

And what was the business?

Monica

So, it was a marketplace. Then we discovered, actually, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to turn this into something more like eBay. And we’re going to have a marketplace where I can leverage expertise from others. And I can hone in my skills. Well, through trial and error, I actually learned what the internet is. Because it’s a totally different ballgame from traditional ad mediums which I had had expertise in. This is stuff that changes fluently. And it’s crazy, like the color on a page, you change it, and it’s just unbelievable difference in conversions. So, I wrote my husband into that and convinced him to come and join me from his stock market days and said, you know, Gary, we’re now starting to get some traction with this internet business. It’s exciting. We have all these clients, we have joint ventures we’re now selling in the UK, we have products in China, it’s amazing. And it was like, we were right at the verge of really popping champagne, celebrating. And then our Merchant Account got shut down, which of course is pretty devastating. Because without the ability to accept credit cards. You have no business online.

Joe

Was that Pay Pal, or who was the…?

Monica

This was, man, I can’t even – I think it was Bank of America. And we had great credits. I mean, we were like, it’s bizarre that this happened. You know, at the time, this is how naive I was. I didn’t really even investigate. I just thought it was shut down. This is just what happens with e-commerce companies. And so, let’s just go get another one. So, we go get another one. Meanwhile, I’m told you have X amount of money on hold and it won’t be released to you for 180 days. Months later, I discover that’s 180 business days. Okay for a small business, nightmare material. It’s like, now my business was growing. We had hired employees, I had products, we had all these different things going on, and we lost another merchant account. And this merchant account was also I discovered because of chargebacks. So, fasting forward, I did what any business owner would do. What the heck is a chargeback? And how can I prevent this from becoming an obstacle to my growth? And I searched online, this was probably 2010. And there was nothing. So literally, if you searched for the word chargebacks, there was nothing online, nothing available. And so, I figured, “You know, clearly no one has this problem. This problem only exists with me.” This is also what everyone thinks, right? So, I thought, all right, well, here we are, we had nearly no money to our name. So, Gary had liquidated his 401k. We had sold so many things. I mean, we were not in a good place. And so, we thought, probably both of our egos. And we thought, actually, we’re not going to give up. Let’s continue to invest in this business. And so, I knew we had a lot of money on hold at these banks. And we needed that money for cash flow, we couldn’t run a business without being able to handle this chargeback problem. Because every time that we got ahead, then chargebacks would come in and what it does, you could have a $1 million in your bank account today. Now you get hit with a slew of chargebacks. Tomorrow, when you log in, all of that money could be gone. And legitimately, it’s going to go to the bank for essentially insurance to help protect them against unknown claims that may come, because perhaps you had fraud in your account, or you had identity theft, or whatever. So, fasting forward, I took the team that we had, we scaled everyone down substantially with skeleton crew, and decided, I can’t figure out what chargebacks are. So, I’m going to start by reading everything I can find. I read 2000 pages of the most dry legalese, you can possibly imagine with a dictionary, in order to determine exactly how to calculate my chargeback rate. Then I corrected the bank that I was doing business with, because I found out that they were actually calculating my chargebacks incorrectly. So, I really didn’t have the problem that I thought I had. Then I also discovered that there is this whole codified logic with chargebacks. And there’s reason codes and all this noise. But that’s it, it was just a whole bunch of useless knowledge unless you can apply it. So, what I did is I took every single card holder, every customer that had charged back from the beginning of time, and then I had all of our employees, including me, call every customer old school and say, “Hi, we just want to know, why did you charge back? What happened?” And you know what I found out is, eight out of 10 customers told me, they didn’t even intend to charge back. They didn’t know who I was. And I found oh my gosh, our fax number was displaying on the credit card statement. So, no wonder I’m getting all these chargebacks. And I discovered over 100 different errors that I was my own worst enemy. And I didn’t know it. And these were creating automated chargebacks. So, we built technology to use predictive modeling. And this was like the early stages of machine learning. Now that I found I have this error, this error, I have all these different errors if we’re going to check these errors so that we can scale this business, and then started ramping up. I developed a whole process to dispute invalid chargebacks, because I also found all these sorts of methods that consumers were using to take advantage of me, because I also didn’t know about this. And lo and behold! I started recovering all the money that my banks had on file. And within weeks with one particular bank, they gave me all my money back even though I wasn’t supposed to get it for 180 business days. And they called and said, “We’d like to give you a new merchant account.” And this is all because of what they saw we were doing with chargebacks. Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was getting calls by other banks that I didn’t even know. So, lo and behold, I discovered that these risk managers go on a fishing trip together. And this is so funny when I first heard about chargebacks I mean, of course I was accused of being like a scam artist as a merchant because supposedly only bad merchants get chargebacks. It’s a taboo. So, what I did is I took my iPhone and I had my daughter was probably two years old, and I had her on my hip and I took a video of myself. I was like, “I just want you to see who I am. And I want you to see my daughter and I want you to see what I do every day.” Because I kept getting told, well don’t talk to these risk managers, and I thought I have nothing to lose. And actually, I want them to see who I am. Because they’re not taking my call. So, I sent that video. Well, I find out later that video was shared with all of these other risk managers. And I had people calling me saying, “Yeah, I saw your video. And I understand that you have solved your chargeback problem. I have a client for you. Can you talk to this merchant?” Well, one of these merchants was Radio Shack. And that was the minute that I was like, “Wait a second.”

Joe

There’s a business here.

Monica

There’s a real business here and they have chargeback problems. So, I told my husband. I said, “Gary, I think I’m going to start a chargeback company.” He’s like, “Oh, that’s the craziest story. Don’t even think of doing that. It’s the worst.” I said, “No, I’ve been living in chargeback hell for such a long time. I really think I can do something.” So, created a website. And just like anybody who’s gone through pain, I probably spent two weeks, 12 hours a day just writing everything that I could regurgitate about everything about chargebacks and called it Chargebacks911. Never in a million years. In fact, Gary was so smart. He said, “Well, Monica, why are you coming up with a name as stupid Chargebacks911? That doesn’t even sound like payments or a bank.” I said, “Because, I don’t care about banks. I hate banks. I care about retailers, just like me.” And actually, what we want, I want to dial 911 and get rescued from chargeback hell. So actually, this is not about banks. And so, I launched that website, within a matter of weeks, contacted by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal. And fasting forward now a decade, we are now doing business with the world’s largest financial institutions. They’ve gotten over the name, Chargebacks911. And, we help merchants worldwide. So, super exciting.

Joe

Well, so I’m going to do a little one on one, just so we can get people up to speed. So, chargeback is somebody purchases something on a credit card, and then they dispute the charge. And those disputes get divided into a number of categories, which are applied to reason codes, some worse than others. And then if you get too many of the wrong kind of reason code, that all then feeds into the bank’s algorithm on how much of the money they keep as insurance so that those chargebacks don’t cost them. And in that whole process, it’s sloppy, there’s a lot of errors on all sides of the table, but done perfectly efficiently, everybody should be behind it, because the bank should be happy that they can operate more cleanly with their retailers, customers should still be protected, businesses should do everything they can, and if they deliver a good product to not be burdened with improper chargebacks. And so, what you do in providing this service is really cleaning up all this for everybody. And if it works, everybody should be happy. The only people who shouldn’t be happy, are scam artists. I’m curious, then as you break down chargebacks it sounds like you sort of answered this already. And that a lot of it is just a misunderstanding of or, is it putting your fax number or the wrong, unknown name on the credit card statement. People are like, “Who are these? I’m going to charge it back.” How big is the individual and organized fraud element of it? How much of it is like a systemic earning by hackers or whatever.

Monica

So, the good news is, and I think this has been a decade of progress. In order to make the internet a safer place, there’s been a tremendous amount of focus on improving fraud filters, creating more intelligence and using data, and sharing that the neural networks so that we can help identify fraud attempts. So, lots of effort to help reduce legitimate fraud, or I would call like, criminal fraud, hackers, etc. But at the same time, the world has been supercharged speeding to turn into a virtual environment. And if you take that, coupled with the way that consumer behavior has changed, especially over the last two years, consumers today want no friction, they demand no friction. Think about, you buy from – all of us buy from Amazon, 40% of all transactions in the US are from Amazon. It’s that crazy. Why is that happening? Because it’s efficient, because the delivery comes tomorrow. The new standard is actually, “I need my stuff tomorrow. If it’s not tomorrow, I’m going to file a chargeback.” So, we have consumer behavior that is almost like, I call it the age of entitlement, where we need to address demands, and they’re evolving. They’re not going to change. They’re not going to go back. When you make things more efficient. And then with chargebacks it’s now, so efficient. I can go to my cell phone, I can click a button and hit dispute. And it will turn into a chargeback and I will see a refund for that transaction in real time. I don’t have to pay that on my bank statement now. So, it’s that instantaneous scenario. So, when we make things super-efficient, and give customers what they want, that efficiency doesn’t reduce the numbers, it actually expands. Because when you make things more efficient, they grow in volumes. So, to answer your question, out of every 100 chargebacks today, about 20 of them are due to legitimate issues from the retailer, or merchant or criminal fraud, maybe only five to 10% are from criminal fraud. So, roughly 80% are more than likely going to be something that is called friendly fraud, or it’s an accidental chargeback. It’s something done out of convenience, it’s buyer’s remorse. And it’s a lack of consumer education, but also a consequence of how quickly we’ve migrated to this online environment where, it is an entitlement scenario. So, we’re in the process of trying to establish those balances.

Joe

But is it safe to say that the entitlement also exists, because the banks and the credit cards have an inordinate amount of the power. And they basically say, “You’re always going to need us. So, it’s in our best interest to serve the credit card holder at your expense,” because the questions are asked, way down the road of the consumer, they’re charged immediately to the retailer.

Monica

Yeah. So, you know, what I’ve learned? I would have answered that question totally differently if you would have asked me even if years ago, but the payments industry that we’re in is growing so rapidly, and things change so quickly. And just continuously being exposed to what’s really going on behind the curtain. And understanding the true source of these problems has made me realize, when it comes to this type of fraud, and chargeback, actually, we all have the same enemy. And banks are no guiltier than merchants. Our entire economy has been completely built based on the mantra that the customer is always right. That was my mantra as well, until you see that they’re wrong. And you can’t build a business with the mantra, don’t trust your customers, they’re trying to steal from you. You can’t. You can’t build a business watching behind your back looking for an opportunity that they may take to file a chargeback. You can only build a business, if you focus on where you’re going. And you set goals to acquire more customers. So, I don’t think that it’s a scenario of, the bid bag banks, and they’re just doing this. The problem has grown to almost a flywheel effect, where now even the larger banks are suffering from the increased costs of just simply performing what is now turned into just a requirement to service their card holders and their consumers. It’s no longer a luxury, it’s no longer this is a competitive advantage I have and I just want to do what you want and give you your money back. It’s actually if you don’t do this, I’m going to go to another bank that will. And it’s an incredible cost that creates inefficiencies for every single stakeholder.

Joe

And how do we layer crypto into that? As people become more and more comfortable with paying for things in this way that bypasses credit cards, how do you think that changes landscape?

Monica

I don’t think that, regardless, if you use I know that there’s a lot of noise about oh, these alternative payment methods, crypto is going to resolve all chargebacks. It’s just resolving the semantics around chargeback linked to a card payment. So today, we provide dispute mechanisms and a platform that supports disputes between buyers and sellers, whether they use a card, or whether they use an alternative payment method like PayPal or SEPA or Giro. These are some of the European flavors. Crypto is just another type. And I think, with some of the momentum where now you have crypto that is actually able to be used through a card with a recent acquisition for MasterCard. I think we will see the thing with a dispute network or dispute protection. This has been probably the single most relevant factor in maintaining the market share and growth and adoption that Visa and MasterCard have been able to enjoy. There is no other payment method that provides that automated insurance policy on every transaction. Now, with Blockchain, and I always say like what our platform does imagine blockchain in disputes. Like, we deliver transparency with data-driven decisions, because it’s really a digital problem. And we take, manual methods and renovate those to digitize standards that can be rule driven, because this is where things need to go. Whether we’re dealing with advancements in crypto or even digital currencies, with some of the world’s largest retailers. It’s everywhere. So, there’s a lot of pressure to decrease costs of transactional, between payments with merchants, etc. But until we solve the concern, and that protection mechanism that consumers need, I don’t think we’re going to see scale, to really compete with market share that the cards hold now.

Joe

That makes a lot of sense. Alright, so my nuanced question that I mentioned earlier, when you think of you as an entrepreneur, it’s who you are. It’s the act of being in business is what your passion is, and what you’re driven to do. And you have this example of your father moving in different businesses through different business. I look at chargebacks. And the story, you know, its origin story came from, you having one business experiencing this terrible pain, seeing an opportunity in that terrible pain. Fast forward 10 years to now, and you are an expert in all things chargebacks. That’s the most random thing in the world.

Monica

I think everything is random, if you look at it, right?

Joe

So how much of it is the act of doing business, the act of applying yourself? And, operating and solving the puzzle and solving the problems and selling and growing and scaling? How much does the subject matter, matter?

Monica

It doesn’t? I don’t think it does. You know, most people don’t know this. But we have Chargebacks911 of course. Then that branched into FI911 to serve financial institutions in 2013. Then I realized, and this is just part of my genes, I guess, but I was like, I can’t hire any high school kids. And I need labor from high school kids, because, I want to train people from the ground up. We don’t have the money to recruit expert talent. I’m going to invest in resources, but I couldn’t get any high school kids, that would work. And you know, what I realized, these guys don’t have the confidence to work in an organization that feels professional and high tech. Instead, they are going to be more comfortable working at Burger King. So how can I change that mentality, because I see it in their face? I see it when they interview, their confidence is short. So, we started, Get Paid for Grades, a scholarship program that is a nonprofit or not for profit for Pinellas County. And, you were talking about standing up in front of high school kids and doing assemblies like that, this is now a problem that I need to solve. I can either stay in my own little bubble in my business and complain about, my backyard can’t provide me what I need. And so, let me just go get staff from Tampa, or I can do something about it. You know, what I like to do something about it. So, it’s things like that, and then realizing, I think it’s just a natural course. You can either have an attitude where, for me, if I see, I’m starting to complain about something, then just naturally, I want to find out what’s causing this problem, and how can I solve it, because I’d rather use that energy to do something constructive. And fortunately, if you’re really solving a problem, it develops a life of its own. And then it continues. And before you know it, you have a business. I didn’t mean to have a business. I was really just fixing something that I needed selfishly, for myself.

Joe

Well, and then that kind of gets the heart of my question here, because you’ll say, “I love some of those horses,” right? And then ultimately, they just know that they want to do something with horses, and then what they do with horses, whether it’s, breeding them and selling them, or being a vet or, or branding them, or putting them in movies, that becomes the nuance, right? Whereas you’re kind of the opposite of that you don’t have the one subject matter. You have the expression and the subject matter gets plugged into the expression. And so, from that perspective, finding chargebacks was awesome for you, because it gave you a great way to get deep into a successful business and get deep into yourself when it comes to running and operating a business and exercising all these things and problem solving, passions that you have and just became the vehicle for doing that. And to reiterate your point, it didn’t matter that it was chargebacks.

Monica

Yeah, it’s a problem that you’re solving. And I think, with the chargeback problem, let’s face it, we pioneered this whole niche. And so, it’s rare that you find and you stumble into a gap like that. And today, you know, I used to be resentful of all these competitors. I wanted to be the first and the only one in the whole world. But the reality is, I think there’s 26 different companies now and growing by leaps and bounds. It’s fantastic. It’s fantastic, because now it’s a real industry. And it’s a growing industry. And that awareness breeds more awareness. And now you have more demand. And this is one of the most exciting things.

Joe

And essentially, you started. That’s cool. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for taking us on the journey, from all the way back to now. Let’s finish by talking about what the year ahead holds for you.

Monica

Let’s see, well, I would have to kill you if I told you.

Joe

I don’t want that. So, maybe you’ll come back and…

Monica

So, we have a lot on the horizon. Expansion into – I think I talked a little bit about it – alternative payment methods. We’re doing a lot in the Asian Pacific region, Latin America. So, I think and just continuing to expand with financial institutions, and I love the thought of really connecting the dots and just creating a more efficient exchange. For me, I don’t think it’s ever been about the money. I would probably have some of my staff strangle me for saying that. But you know what, I do agree, money is just there as a scorekeeper. And it’s more about, what can I do for the world? And how can I impact something and make things better? And I really think, being able to provide a very efficient exchange mechanism that protects transaction growth, and helps improve the relationship between buyers and sellers would be a phenomenal feat. And you know, it’s a big dream, but I think it’s achievable.

Joe

It’s a very important one too. Millions of dollars back into the hands of the people, that should have it from solving that problem. Thank you so much. We’ll continue to watch your awesome path.

Monica

Great. Well, thank you very much.