Stuart Balcombe is in startup mode. PaymentLink is a unique solution that offers freelancers and small business owners a hassle-free way to get paid. No invoices needed.

But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. We talk about the struggles in the run up to the launch, including the research he did to ensure he had a ready market. He explains how he boosts retention by making PaymentLink more than just a product.

We also talk about…

• How to speak your customer’s language
• The biggest challenge in software development
• The best place to get feedback on your product
• Why customers don’t buy features
• And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in This Episode: Paymentlink.me and Stuartbalcombe.com

Episode Transcript:

David Elmasian: Welcome to The Hub of Success. I’m your host, Dave Elmasian. Today, I’m excited to talk to Stuart Balcombe, co-founder of PaymentLink, a payment solution that’s transforming the credit card and digital payments industry. Stuart helps businesses and freelancers take the pain and suffering out of payments and the payment process. As a freelancer himself, Stuart soon realized this industry is ripe for change and it requires and needs of fresh approach. Welcome to the podcast, Stuart.

Stuart Balcombe: Hi, David. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

David Elmasian: That’s great. Tell us a little bit about PaymentLink and how it all came about, Stuart.

Stuart Balcombe: It’s a good question. PaymentLink officially started at the start of 2018. I had just finished up working at another startup in a similar space. I worked there for three months or so, we were originally building a random story I guess. We were building a digital marketplace, connecting freelancers with small business owners to build websites, and we pivoted that business. That’s also paying the freelancers in the marketplace for experiencing, we pivoted that business to build an invoicing solution, which became Sale. And when that shut down it was acquired January, last year, was out of a job, and I had been talking a lot with people who were building their own product. And I had been following the Google stories, Amy Hoin, Nathan Berry, who’s now hugely successful with ConvertKit. But I set out to do my own thing. So I did the three month challenge, where the goal was to build a software product in 90 days and get to a thousand dollars in real revenue.

David Elmasian: I love that goal. I remember reading that on your website. I just think that’s fantastic, because number one, most people don’t set goals for themselves, and I’m in that category myself, I’m a repeat offender as far as that goes. But I also like the fact that it was pretty specific, and I like the fact that you had a dollar amount. And, you know, a thousand bucks, it’s not like it’s nothing, it’s a nice amount. Just for some reason, that resonated with me, so I think that’s fantastic. But, go ahead, so, you set this goal, of starting this product or this service. And again, not to interrupt you too much, but do you consider it a product, or a service, or both? Are they interchangeable? That’s one question I’ve always wanted to know from a product guy.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think we could absolutely dig into that, that’s a whole episode by itself, answering that’s question. So PaymentLink is a product. When I started the challenge, I wasn’t entirely sure about what I wanted to build. I guess I should preface this with, I’m not a developer. I’m pretty handy with html, JavaScript, but as I found out, building a cash product, it’s true that in general it’s hard, and without a developer, I failed. I did not build PaymentLink in three months.

But yeah, PaymentLink is a product, but I think, well my approach to building a product is that it’s not really about building a product, it’s about making customers successful. Which, I think the best products do this, but particularly early-stage products, when you don’t have a lot of product there, you have to argument with service in some way. Software and services, it’s a big service component there, and I think that’s something where companies can really innovate for the ecosystem you build around your product. It doesn’t all have to be software, it can be really a mix of software and services in the company.

David Elmasian: Sure. So let’s step back a second. So your goal with PaymentLink was to make customers successful. And again, we all define that in different ways from different perspectives. But tell me about that, what’s your thinking? How do you define your success? What’s your vision, I guess is the best way of saying it maybe.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, I think with PaymentLink specifically, and I guess it’s going to spill over to most products, people are either trying to save time or money. Right, and with PaymentLink, we hit that sort of in two different ways. One, saving time by allowing freelancers or whoever is using the product to sort of link to customers to pay directly on their website, embed it in an email, put it in a message, wherever you want to put it, and have a link that’s the same every time, that you can just memorize and share. We remove the need to have to do some of the sort of manual admin work, creating invoice, waiting for it to get paid, following up on that invoice to make sure it gets paid.

David Elmasian: But Stuart, people love that stuff don’t they? Don’t freelancers love doing all that paperwork, sending out invoices, and waiting, and waiting, and reminding people they owe them money? They love that stuff don’t they?

Stuart Balcombe: Know what they love more than taking all the time to do all that stuff is not being able to bill a client for it.

Yeah, it’s amazing. Like I said, I was previously working with a similar audience, creative freelancer space. And it’s amazing when you look at the rate that freelancers build their clients and at the rate that they actually track all your time and averaging that out with your actual return on a project bid.

David Elmasian: Yep.

Stuart Balcombe: So, that’s sort of the goal, is through the link, it enables you to put this link wherever it is you need to get paid. Plus it lets you save payment methods on file really easily and really securely, so when you have, eventually, following up on late payments, waiting to get paid, you actually have a little bit of leverage. To build clients, and in my experience, clients are not trying to be bad clients, they’re not trying to not pay you.

David Elmasian: I can think of a few that I could refer you to, if you’d like, you know. But no, you’re right.

Stuart Balcombe: It’s okay, you don’t have to do that.

Stuart Balcombe: But yeah, most of the time, clients are not trying to be bad clients, they see you running a business. And anything you can do as a service provider to make their lives easier is ultimately good for everyone.

David Elmasian: Sure, okay. So you came up with this, working on another project, working with another company, and you realized there was a need for that. And I did a little stalking on you, I mean that in a good way, I don’t mean that in a crazy way. And one of the things, again, that impressed me, was that you solicited a lot of feedback from me, I get, I’m an old guy, so for me it seems a bit unconventional, but I recall one of the posts that you had on your website mentioned that you solicited feedback from people like on Reddit groups. Am I correct in that?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, those forums in general are a good place in my mind to observe. Like to find out what people are posting about, what language they use to when they describe problems they have.

David Elmasian: And why did you feel that was so important, I guess is really what I’m getting at in that regard.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, I mean really building anything, particularly software products, there’s a huge investment of time, and I guess not so much money cause it’s just time, but opportunities cost us, things you could be doing with the time it takes to build something. And really being able to validate that there’s demand for a product before you spend too much time building not only in forms of the solution that you should build, but hopefully avoid, I mean the worst thing you can do is build a product that nobody uses right?

David Elmasian: Right. That usually doesn’t work out too well for anybody.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah. Unfortunately there are a lot of abandoned side projects or projects in general that suffer from that.

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: So usually the goal though is to validate that there was a problem there that was worth solving, and that it was problem that people were willing to pay to solve.

David Elmasian: Sure. And the other thing that came out of that research that I did on you, that I thought again that was fascinating, was, you wanted to get people to talk about the issue, or the problem, or whatever term you want to use, that was using the language as they describe it, other than as somebody else describing it. And I think as a business owner myself, I find that that’s really valuable because we see things from a different perspective as from what a customer sees things. And if we’re not speaking to them in language, and in a way that they can understand and grasp what they’re solving as a problem, like you said, you’re kind of working in a vacuum in that way.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, absolutely. Understanding the customer’s context is so important. I’m a huge fan and advocate for the just be done framework, that to which for those not familiar, essentially, is a little different and I guess more traditional approach of using personas and identifying customers by demographic data, it essentially looks at, what’s the progress that this person is trying to make in their life, and sort of, it’s human nature to want to improve your current situation. So it also then talks about what does that improvement look like, and what are the constraints that are preventing you from achieving that progress? Which I think it’s easy to forget when you’re building a product, and helping people in general, is really if you just look at it from your perspective and you say, this is the way that it should be, like because this is the way that I designed it, right? Whereas, there may be things that you aren’t aware of, and lose context, which now prevent that from being a viable solution for that.

So an example of that with PaymentLink which, when you think of a payment product, it has to process payment and it has to make that easy for the customer, or for our purpose the customer, and then it has to be easy to get that money to the person who’s getting paid. But, actually, one of the bigger challenges when building a payment product, is, how does that payment integrate with an accounting solution?

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: Right, all businesses have to have an accountant, right, like the IRS is pretty strict on that.

David Elmasian: They get a little cranky if you can’t produce accurate numbers, yes.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, exactly. But everyone uses a different tool for accounting, everybody uses a different accounting system, they store data in slightly different ways. And all these things are important to understand if you want people to actually adopt and use your product. Right, like even if you, this one goes beyond just marketing and getting people to sign up. It’s using their language that people use to describe their pain, certainly valuable there, it’s the best way to convince somebody to do something, is to use their own words, their own terms that they speak in. But then once you go beyond that and you get them to sign up, the only way to get them to continue using it and ultimately continue paying for something is to ensure that it’s actually able to help them achieve the progress that they’re looking for.

David Elmasian: Well yeah, because you’ve hit upon something that, I call it a deal breaker. Like you said, if your solution doesn’t work with their accounting software, let’s say QuickBooks, or what have you, which is obviously popular with a lot of small businesses, it’s a deal breaker. They can’t use you. They may want to use you, they may think your ideas are great, they may thing you’re a great guy, but if it’s not going to work with an accounting software, like you said, which they rely upon, and they probably dug into it, that’s the nature of accounting software, it’s like switching banks, it sounds like it should be easy, but it never is, you’re not going to get that customer.

Stuart Balcombe: Totally. It’s all a cost-benefit, right. There’s a great quote, I think it’s Jason Fried Basecamp, “Everybody’s switching from something.”

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: Even if they don’t have a software like everybody else, like these are our competitors, right. Actually, this is probably the best training quote, “Everybody has competitors, but not all of them are software products.” Right? This anecdote, “Everybody building a product better than software, but people are still using Post-It Notes.” Right, like how many software products are trying to compete with how Post-It Notes are there as a competitor?

David Elmasian: Yeah. That’s a good comparison. I like that. So, let’s talk about the whole accounting thing, because I think that this is something that a lot of small business owners deal with and I think there’s some value to it. So, in your particular case, when somebody gets exposed to what you’re doing, I imagine getting that information quickly, or earlier in the process is helpful, meaning, what software, if any, they’re using. But how do you compete when somebody says to you, “Hey Stuart, I use QuickBooks and I email out the invoice, it has a nice little link at the bottom there where the customer can get it and fill out their payment information and boom, you know, I get my money three days later, or whatever the timeframe is.” How do you compete with that? How do you address that?

Stuart Balcombe: Right, yeah, and I think that really comes down to how we’re positioning and how we’re constraining the product. Like I don’t see PaymentLink as an alternative to an invoicing tool. Because, in cases where you’re doing variable amounts of working, whether you’re billing a different amount of hours each week, or you’re billing slightly different services each week, or each period you have different amounts, an invoicing tool is going to be better than PaymentLink. Just because it’s built for itemized billing. Where PaymentLink is really advantageous is when you have long-term clients who you want to subscribe to some kind of recurring billing cycle, whether that’s monthly, whether that’s annual, whatever it might be. Where they’re going to be billed on a repeated basis and you need a secure and easy way to set that up for them. So they can, ideally, self-serve, right they can come to your website, or on a phone call with you, they can sign up for a plan, and that’s about as much as you have to think about billing them.

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: You can automate dunning, if they’re card expires during their plan, send automated emails for them to update that. And then, the trick is making sure that that data makes its way into whatever accounting tool that you’re using, in a way that is easy for your revenue recognition, whatever you need to do.

David Elmasian: And from the side of the person making the payment, what’s important to them in your view?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, so I think that knowing the payment’s going to be process securely. And that all the card information is going to be processed securely. I know that it’s 2018, and people know that giving this information over the phone isn’t terrible, I guess, because there’s nothing to record their call, there’s no record, but you don’t always know what’s happening on the other end. I mean anybody who’s asking for payment information on paper I’m sure is getting some questions from clients about how quickly they shred that, who stores that. There’s a lot of liability there.

David Elmasian: As they should. Yeah, absolutely.

Stuart Balcombe: So safety and security is definitely a concern for the client. And, I mentioned earlier, if you’re getting billed the same amount every period, whether it’s monthly or whatever it is. If you’re getting billed the same amount, having to re-enter your payment information every time seems like an unnecessary step.

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: Right so you have this agreement, and truly there, the key is that you have some kind of relationship with this person that you’re billing. And they know you’re going to provide this service whether you have a contract or however your service agreement is set up. They know they’re going to be billed that amount, they don’t want to have to remember to go pay it every month.

David Elmasian: Sure, yeah. So, why did you choose freelancers as a good target demographic, or target market for PaymentLink?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah. Interestingly enough, I don’t know that freelancers actually are that good of a demographic.

David Elmasian: I’m laughing because as you go through the process, sometimes surprises come out of that whole-

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah. I think that this, it depends on the freelancer. I think that the more that I, we recently ran into this with Sale as well, that freelancers is an incredibly fragmented market. The same message that resonates with one freelancer won’t resonate with another, because some may be doing graphic design, some pay be doing web development, may be doing copywriting, some may bill their clients hourly, some pay put them on retainer. Like everybody does things differently.

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: And sooner you get to it, the sooner your threshold in freelancing, where, until you get to a reasonable level, there’s certainly a difference between people who say they’re freelancers and do sort of freelancing as a side hustle or side gig, versus those who describe themselves as a, I’m a business owner. Right, and I think the biggest difference there is the propensity the pay for things. If you’re doing freelancing on the side, you probably don’t manage expenses in quite the same way. If you see it as a business expense and it saves you time, then you can actually do it as a cost-benefit, if this is a tool worth purchasing. And you know you’re going to expense it anyway.

So, I guess the way that I would like to define, or sort of reframe, and, a lot of this is actually the same people, but is, people offering services to clients. So that may be web design, may be one of those services, but it could also be IT support. It could be fitness coaching, it could be really anything where you have a personal relationship with your client. But the focus is on that ongoing relationship, rather than sort of a one-off. And you can, you certainly can, you can use PaymentLink for one-time purchases, but it’s not as powerful and-

David Elmasian: Yeah. They’re not fully utilizing the capability and the value in it, is kind of what I’m hearing from you.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah.

David Elmasian: Okay. So, now that you’ve had time to kind of reflect, and you know, like all new businesses, you start one way and there’s some curves thrown your way and some things that surprise you unexpectedly, sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a bad way. At this point, could you really describe your perfect customer?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, I think that the, in terms of their persona, I think somebody who is looking, and this actually comes back to the product versus service aspect. Somebody who is looking to, they have a successful business, that may be somewhere between 10 and 50K in an MRR. Which they could be doing solo, or they could have people as employees or contractors. So someone in that range, successful, and viable business, but they fit some kind of plateau, in terms of being able to scale their business, because they’re being held back by the manual work of dealing with payments. So whether that’s that they want to make it easier for their customers to pay, because they think that they could unlock more growth by uploading their customers software to sign up on their website and then going through a more automated online process. Or whether it’s just, they currently need a lot of internal process which slows everything down.

David Elmasian: Okay, so I’m laughing Stuart, because you’re describing my business perfectly. So I guess, you know, which I like to say were unique, but we’re certainly not, in many ways. I think some of the things that you hit upon there, are certainly relevant. And I see this when I talk to a lot of small business owners, in that it seems like, I think you and I talked about this once in a previous conversation. The whole payment processing system, itself seems a bit antiquated and a little, not really technologically savvy, in the sense that it hasn’t really kept up with the other industries. Am I correct in saying that?

Stuart Balcombe: I mean, I think there’s certainly two different, at least in my mind there are two different types of provider. There are sort of what I call legacy payment providers, like companies that have been around for a long time. They are certainly very successful businesses, but they are not the most user friendly from either a customer or a business owner perspective. They take a lot of time to set up, they’re self-serve options are limited.

All these little whole range of tools now, which essentially are built on top of Stripe. Stripe is definitely, I would say, the leader in modern payments. But they are, Stripe has the opposite problem, well I guess they attacked it, in that they’re very developer focused. So, as a non-capable business owner, which, unless you’re running a software business, you have no reason to need to write any code, it’s difficult to get started with Stripe unless you’re using something that sits on top of it. And I think that’s sort of where we come in, is essentially providing that sort of on-ramp to accepting payments and you get all the benefits of Stripe. Which actually, we were very conscious of was making sure you were still able to get all the benefits of it as if you are using Stripe, but you didn’t have to be technical to do it.

David Elmasian: Yeah. So you’re providing a high degree of value is what you’re saying.

Stuart Balcombe: Hopefully. That’s the goal, right?

David Elmasian: Right.

Stuart Balcombe: I think one thing where we’re, sort of our next step, definitely the most requested thing or benefit I guess from customers is being able to process ACH or bank transfer payments in a really user-friendly way. Because there are significant talks about saving time, automating some of processes. But in terms of saving money, credit card processing fee, unless you’re doing huge volume and you’re able to negotiate rates, credit card processing fee we’re sort of stuck at around 3%. Right?

David Elmasian: Yeah.

Stuart Balcombe: Whereas, ACH you can true stripe the cap of a five dollars per transaction regardless of the transaction amount, which if you’re selling a T-shirt for nineteen or twenty bucks or whatever it is, it’s not a huge help. But if you’re, you know people are charging rent for example, or you’re charging clients a five thousand dollar a month or ten thousand dollar a month retainer, the savings from that are significant.

David Elmasian: Absolutely. That definitely brings a smile to my face when I hear a cap of five dollars per transaction, as opposed to like you said, the 3% or more. I mean some of the quote unquote affinity cards, AMEX and others, it can get very costly very quickly for a company that does a lot of transactions that is not that unusual. Most services businesses, that’s pretty common. So, what’s next for PaymentLink, in terms of the roadmap at this point?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, I mean, we’re pretty early. So I mean the focus is on onboarding, and making sure that like these things we talked about, integrating with the workloads of the other tools everybody’s using. Which, at the moment, we can do pretty easily, it just requires a system of thinking, we integrate really well with Zapier for connecting tools together, which allows you to pass data around really easily. It’s pretty limitless in its potential it just takes some knowledge of the tool to get all the pieces together so that’s something that we’ve been doing.

Helping coach people on, part of the service aspect of it. Some of the actual products sort of next level features for PaymentLink are ACH certainly. But beyond that, I think, we’re not trying to be everything for everyone. We want to build a very focused, easy to use product, we want to sort of double-down on what we’re good at, which is going to be recurring billing and ACH. I was going to say, being able to use ACH and our recurring billing tool.

David Elmasian: Well, like I said, you’ve talked about the past and just recently, those are two big ones, those are two that really get my attention as a small business owner. I’m sure there’s plenty of others as well, too. So I think that’s very, shows your experience in this space of realizing, like you said, that you don’t want to be everything to everyone, and that really diminishes your value to the people that you’re trying to attract right? And so I think that’s a very savvy way of doing it. That come from a little bit of experience right?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, there’s certainly a lot of recurring billing tools out there, a lot of billing tools out there in general. As they grow, and as they get bigger, they become more cumbersome to use, right. Like you find, I guess this is not specific to billing tools, but the bigger a company gets, the bigger their prices increase, but you start using a small percentage of their product, because you just don’t need everything that they, like you signed up for one to fulfill or achieve one specific job, right. Unless you go in on everything, need everything they’re using.

David Elmasian: Yeah. Well, not to make this about me, but that reminds me of how I got started in this business. No one wants to hear my story because you’ll all fall asleep within 30 seconds, but, I got my start in technology, official start, by working for a company that provide telephone support. And I know some of you are going to laugh when they hear telephone support, that that’s actually a real thing, and it was. This was you know, pre main-stream Internet. And, the first product that I supported, after I got my training, was on Microsoft Word. We’ve all heard of Microsoft Word, right. Again, I’m dating myself, this is when we all went from Word 2.0 to 6.0, and many of you probably listening don’t even know what I’m talking about.

But, I saw some stats from Microsoft when they launched Word 6.0 many many years ago, and they went from 12,000 to 43,000 features in Word 2.0 to 6.0. And, you know, after spending 2+ years getting calls from people for support issues on Word, guess what? Most of our calls were one of five things. And so, that’s a good example of when you have all these features, and all these bells and whistles sure, it’s a mainstream product and a lot of people use it for many different things, but ultimately, as I’m sure you’ve learned, it’s really only a few features that people really use, and that’s really the real value that people provide in it. And I think that you know, if you have unlimited resources like Microsoft, you can do things like that, you can have 40,000 features and it’s not going to break the bank, because they have a really big bank. But if you have a smaller organization like yourself or like us, you really can’t afford to do that. And it’s really not going to give you a great return as well. And more importantly, you’re treating the customers you do care about, you’re providing them a great value, I think that’s more important.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, I think that’s the challenge with software development and product development in general, is it’s, if you take a business first outlook like a lot of people do, right, and ultimately doesn’t have to after that, after that’s over. Take a business first outlook you can add features all day right, but the real litmus test is how much of those features get used?

David Elmasian: Yeah. And how much value they providing to the people that are using them, right?

Stuart Balcombe: Right.

David Elmasian: Let’s switch gears a little bit. You know, the name of the podcast, it’s called the Hub of Success, and that means different things to different people, but we intentionally included the word hub in there. And for the people that don’t know, it’s a term used for the city of Boston, by some people as well. And right now, you’re a Philly guy, right? You reside in the Metropolitan of Philadelphia area am I correct in saying that?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, technically. I live in New Jersey, about 20 minutes from the city of Philadelphia.

David Elmasian: Okay. So, do you have a Boston connection at all, Stuart?

Stuart Balcombe: I do, I have a pretty significant Boston connection.

David Elmasian: Really?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah. Oh, I guess you didn’t know that. Yeah, so Boston is a really special place to me, I met my wife there. She was in grad school in Boston, I went to school in Providence. Spent a lot of time in Boston, both personally and professionally actually. First job out of college was at Betaspring, which is an accelerator out of Providence. I led the growth team on that, the accelerator. We worked with portfolio companies, both in Providence, but also in Boston.

David Elmasian: Nice, see, I knew there was something about you I liked. Many things, but it’s just the icing on the cake so to speak.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, no, big Boston fan.

David Elmasian: You know, this begs the question, and I have to say it, cause, you know, I can’t not say it, you know with the recent football situation, last year, with the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. Well that’s what I was going to say, where are your allegiances? I know you live in the Philly area now, but who were you rooting for? Were you happy or sad that the Eagles won?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, at risk of offended anyone listening to the podcast, I’m definitely a Philly fan.

David Elmasian: Aw, man.

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, my wife is from here so, had to support the Patriots in Philly.

David Elmasian: That’s okay, I’ll let that one pass. That’s alright, you know. Stuart, we’ve talked a lot about PaymentLink and we’ve talked a little bit about your background, and I know there’s a lot more to the story than just PaymentLink. But as you know, with all podcasts, there’s definitely a time limit where people start losing interest, even for somebody like yourself that actually has a pretty compelling story.

So, just to wrap things up, there’s a little segment we call Check Your Tech, it’s meant to be fun, it’s a little quiz, if you want to use the word quiz. There’s no wrong answer, and I really genuinely mean that. And I know, having spoken with you, you’ll pass with flying colors, not that you have to pass. So, just let me run through it real quick and I want to hear your answers.

So are you a Mac or PC guy?

Stuart Balcombe: Definitely Mac.

David Elmasian: Definitely Mac? Not like almost kind of sort of, but definitely a Mac?

Stuart Balcombe: No, definitely a Mac. I can’t remember the last time I used a PC.

David Elmasian: Ooh, alright. I won’t hold that against you either. No, I’m kidding. So, maybe this is an easy one, and I think I may know the answer, but I have to ask anyway, so, are you an iPhone or an Android guy?

Stuart Balcombe: iPhone.

David Elmasian: I see a trend forming here.

Stuart Balcombe: I had an Android once.

David Elmasian: Okay, once. So, how about, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn? And it could be one, all, all of the above, none of the above?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, definitely Twitter for me.

David Elmasian: Really?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah. A little bit of Instagram, but no Facebook, rarely LinkedIn.

David Elmasian: Okay. This one may not be relevant to you, but I’ll ask anyway. How about Alexa or Google Home?

Stuart Balcombe: Neither.

David Elmasian: Alright. Okay. You’re giving your H away now, Stuart, you know.

Netflix or Hulu?

Stuart Balcombe: Netflix.

David Elmasian: You know, I still haven’t gotten a Hulu person yet. I don’t know why I’m pulling for it. Maybe it’s the underdog bet, you know. How about Roku, Apple TV, or Chromecast?

Stuart Balcombe: None.

David Elmasian: Wow. I won’t go any further than that, I don’t want to ask. How about Gmail or Outlook?

Stuart Balcombe: Gmail.

David Elmasian: Okay. Now this one may be the tough one. You went to Johnson and Wales, am I correct? Am I doing my stalking on you?

Stuart Balcombe: Correct, yup.

David Elmasian: Okay, so, Johnson and Wales, it’s a great institution in Rhode Island, so the question is, are you a Coffee Milk or a Del’s Lemonade guy?

Stuart Balcombe: Definitely Del’s.

David Elmasian: Really? Now I’m not saying Coffee Milk correctly, I’m not using the correct Rhode Island pronunciation. Coffee, is that my best way of saying it?

Stuart Balcombe: You’re not offending me, I’m not from Rhode Island.

David Elmasian: That’s okay. So you’re a Del’s Lemonade guy, not a Coffee Milk guy?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, definitely Del’s.

David Elmasian: Alright. Well Stuart, what a story, I feel like we could talk for hours, you know, unfortunately we’re running out of time. But before we finish up, is there way for people to reach out to you if they want to learn more, or maybe become a customer of PaymentLink?

Stuart Balcombe: Yeah, definitely. Feel free to just shoot me an email, [email protected]. I’m more than happy to help guide people through. Or paymentlink.me is the site. Go ahead and sign up, and yeah, I’m more than happy to have a conversation to help people out. Personally, I do some consulting, mostly focused around helping software companies make themselves successful. My personal site is stuartbalcombe.com, yeah, those are the two best things, depending on what you’re looking for.

David Elmasian: Well, that’s great. Stuart, thank you for joining us here on the Hub of Success and sharing your story.

Stuart Balcombe: Thanks so much for having me.