Hi there.

My name is Matt Baxter. I’m the CEO of Wedge HR and welcome to Virtual Intern Experience.

We are a one-way, on-demand, or nobody can spell it, but asynchronous video interview tool. So usually, in most cases, it’s used as a prescreening tool. You have a bunch of applications. People typically would phone screen or have in-person interviews and then kind of carry on depending upon the type of role. It’s great with any sort of high-volume use cases.

We work with everything from call centers to retail, to restaurants, to fitness. The core business is selling that software into typically HR departments that want to use it as part of their hiring process.

I first started my entrepreneurial experience journey mowing a few lawns. It was literally chubby neighbor kid push-mowing a few lawns, borrowed my dad’s lawnmower. That’s where it started. It wasn’t anything sophisticated; there was no big purpose, grand plan, anything like that. It was literally, I can go mow a lawn and make 30 bucks, or I could go work for a fast food chain and take five hours to make the same kind of money.

So it just started there, and then I started talking to more people. The landscaping company grew quite a bit. By the time I was a senior in high school, I hired my first full-time employee. I lived in the Celine Ann Arbor area and then went to Hope College. I knew I was going to be back and forth between semesters and summer, so I needed to hire somebody to help expand and grow the business, and it took off from there.

I got approached by a company to buy the lawn care business. By that point, I think I had three full-time employees and probably seven part-time guys. We were doing about 80 accounts, mainly mowing. We had some mulching jobs, some spring cleanup, but none of the big projects, and that’s why they wanted to buy us.

I sold that my sophomore year going into my junior year at Hope. It wasn’t a big tech exit by any means, but it was a cool experience, learned a lot of what not to do. I had this idea for hiring because I hired pretty well. It’s such a service-driven industry; if you hire great people, you’re going to have a pretty good business. I felt there were challenges in the hiring space, and that’s where the idea for Wedge came about.

In the context of how the entrepreneurial experience began, there wasn’t any moment where I was like, “Man, I want to own my own business.” It was more like this was a need that I started to fill with mowing and fell in love with it. The whole concept of setting your own schedule doesn’t really exist; you’re working 24/7, but it’s on your own terms. I fell in love with that process and having the opportunity to build great businesses.

Senior year, fall at Hope, I was starting to think about graduating early and really focusing on Wedge. I got introduced to an alumni from Hope. It was a three-minute phone call. The guy picks up and says, “Hey, you’ve got three minutes, two minutes to tell me about yourself.”

I started talking about my lawn care experience, and he goes, “You got one minute to tell me what you’re trying to do.” So in that three-minute phone call, he says, “Alright, thanks, that’s all I need.” Three days later, he calls me and asks how I’m planning on funding this thing. I said I might get around 10 or 20 grand on it myself. He goes, “No, we’re not going to do that. Let me write you a check. Let me buy into the company.”

So he literally mailed me a check for 50 grand, and that’s kind of where we got started. That was my first unintentional approach to raising capital. Since then, we’ve raised about six and a half million bucks through predominantly angel investors.

I have made every mistake you can imagine when it comes to raising funds. Not all capital is good capital. On the flip side, there’s a lot of people who want to back entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people who never had a chance to be one, but they’ve had success in other ways and want to support you. Many folks are betting on you, not just the business.

You learn a lot through trial and error, and it’s a fascinating space. People get enamored with raising money; it seems like this big sexy thing, but you’re not growing the business when you’re doing that. Yes, it helps and can accelerate things. Capital can speed things up when done effectively, but I spend most of my days talking to investors, giving updates on how things are going.

Being a CEO, a startup founder, or executive can be lonely. Every day I wake up and think, “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be a CEO; I shouldn’t be leading people.” But you just kind of do it, figure it out, and learn on the fly. The more you can bring in others or tap into people who have been there or who you look up to, the better.

I’ve started to call it the payroll club. On Monday, you don’t know if you have enough money to make payroll. Once you talk to a few other business owners, they say, “Been there, done that,” and you realize you can get through this.

I think the question of doubt never goes away. Some of the most successful people I know are experiencing the same thing, just with a few more zeros behind it. Being a CEO, startup founder, or executive is lonely, and it really is.

And so I think the more you can tap into other people who have been there, um, that’s definitely served me really well. There’s been times where I’ve kind of isolated myself or really didn’t think that anybody else had experienced what I have, and I called a buddy, or called a friend or called an investor. They’re like, man, I’ve been there. Like, let’s talk about it. And that’s, I think that’s helped me quite a bit.

I’ve never really felt that I was much of an inspiration to others until I’ve had people reach out and been like, Hey, I’ve been following you from a distance. I wanna launch your company. You know, I’ve got this idea. Can I talk to you about it? And I’m like, oh, that’s cool. Like, there are people out there like watching that inspired by that. And, and I’m not doing it for that, but it’s when you have those moments, and same thing with our team members. Like, I get to, at the end of the day, create jobs for other people and hopefully create good jobs, not just from a financial standpoint, but jobs that people love and they’re happy and they wake up and they’re not miserable.

And the fact that as an entrepreneur, you get to do that for others, I think is one of the greatest callings in the world. And, you know, every, the 360 days you get punched in the face is worth it for the five days that you realize you get to inspire other people. So that to me is like, there’s nothing better. Ironically, the thing I hate about it is you have that responsibility, right? I’ve got people that their jobs, their lives, their mortgages, at the end of the day fall on me. Now, there’s more to it than just that.

And I think, you know, in the twisted, you know, darkness, spiraling you can go down. I think you can convince yourself that that is all on you. And it’s not. But you know, there’s definitely a piece of that, you know, and also not like I’ve got one of the most amazing set of investors in the world. Like, we have good pressure, kind of the kick in the butt, like, let’s go, you know, keep growing. But, you know, I definitely hold a lot of weight of, I have taken other people’s money. I’ve pitched a story that I believe in, and it’s my responsibility to make sure we succeed.

And so there’s days that, you know, two steps forward, one step back. That one step back I think feels like it’s way more weight than it actually is. And so, you know, I think it’s just the weight of success or, you know, at least hopeful success, I think is definitely pretty heavy. So, you know, carrying that, I try to avoid that as much as possible. But you feel it some days for sure.

Some challenges that I’ve definitely learned a lot from, um, I’ve hired friends, I’ve fired friends. I have one of the best working relationships with my partners, uh, Rob and Patrick friends before this. Um, but I’ve also hired friends that didn’t work out. So I think some people say never work with your friends. I don’t know if that’s true. But you also have to, uh, build a pretty special relationship with that person that’s able to be both friendly and confrontational. Um, and that’s, that’s a challenge for sure.

So the biggest kind of overarching lesson I’ve learned when it comes to mistakes usually comes down to like, at the people level. And I think the majority of the world problems are started and continued with unspoken expectations. If I have a relationship with an employee and I have not laid out my expectations of them, and when they miss those expectations, it’s not their responsibility to take that, that’s my responsibility to lay out those expectations for them.

And I think so many people have expectations of others and they don’t share those. And when they fall short, they’re upset. And that’s not on the person, that’s on the leader, right? And so, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s business, whether it’s partner, whatever it may be, I think laying out your clear expectations of somebody else and having a discussion about them solves so many problems well before they actually begin. And that’s something that I’m definitely spending a lot of time working on.

Anybody who wants to think about joining a startup should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves, am I okay with chaos? I think people love the thought of being okay with chaos. I think people love the, oh man, like, we’ll deal with the crazy, the long hours, the whatever. I don’t think most people are ready for it. And it’s not a bad thing, it’s just like a realization like, are you okay waking up and not knowing what your job is today? But you know, you need to work for the company to make the company better, and you don’t know what that is.

So that’s where I’ve struggled to lead at times, because most people don’t want that. People like structure, people like, uh, very clear goals, very clear targets. And working for a startup like that changes. You might have goals, but that’s gonna change tomorrow or that might change today. And so I think if you’re interested in working for a startup, ask yourself like, are you comfortable in totally unknown.

And again, I think people get like, even somebody listening to that, it’s like, yes, I am. It’s like, really? Are you actually like, it’s, it’s difficult and I’ve had challenges with employees and friends who’ve worked with me. It’s like, I don’t know what we all need to do today. I don’t even know what all the goals are, but we just know we need to make the company better. And that’s gonna look totally different.

And so my philosophy with at least our employees is, I’d rather you take 10 swings and nine of ’em be wrong, but at least you were doing it, versus sit there and wait for me to explain the one that you have to do when I don’t even know what that is, right? So I think it’s be comfortable in chaos, be comfortable in unknown. And if you’re not okay with that, there’s nothing wrong with that. I just don’t think startups are for you.

If you as a candidate, as an individual, and I’m this way too, I don’t want to trust the process to make sure that I get the job, go find somebody to talk to, send a LinkedIn message, reach out to somebody, call the business owner, get scrappy with it. Literally just, and you’d be shocked at how many times you can kind of beat the system.

I would say, like, I can’t tell you how many investors, clients, people that I found by a random LinkedIn message me just said, Hey, would you grab coffee with me? People are like, yeah, of course I would. And I’ve been shocked by how many people have said yes. So I think if you’re trying to avoid the whole typical, you know, my resume got submitted and I have no idea what happened to it, pick up the phone, find a way to get to the person, reach out to them on LinkedIn. There’s tons of free tools that you can use to get to somebody to potentially, you know, up your game or find a connection to ’em.

People are obsessed with having to be perfect. And I think as a business leader who is hired, I would much rather be somebody, somebody be authentic and make a mistake than try so hard to be this canned perfect response like that to me, that’s not who you are. And you’re not gonna have that in normal reality. So that’s why I kind of go back to is just like, be you. And if you make a mistake, that’s totally fine. Like that’s gonna happen in the workforce.

And I don’t think employers really care that much about a small little mistake or hiccup or, oh, I miss said this, just whoop messed up. But acknowledge it and move on. Ask questions, and don’t be afraid to approach your leader or leaders. And can we grab a coffee? Can we grab a beer? Can I take you to lunch? Um, that might seem daunting, but it’s amazing. I had, I had a, he’s not a kid anymore, but he was a 17 or 18-year-old, reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I live in Detroit, um, I’m willing to drive to Grand Rapids. Can I come work for you for free? And I’m happy to drive over across the state to meet you for lunch, and I just want, I just wanna get to know you. So I was like, dude, come over. I’ll buy you lunch. We chatted and we hired him not for free, but we hired him. And that ambition was like awestruck inspiring. Like the fact that he was that motivated, it’s like, I will hire you no matter how skilled or not skilled you are.

So if you’re an intern, don’t be afraid to go to your, literally the CEO and be like, can I take you to lunch? It’s amazing that as a leader, when somebody asks you for advice or just to get to know you, that feels good as a leader. And so if you go do that for others, it’s amazing how impactful that can be. And you never know what happens if the CEO says yes; you have no idea how far that just got you if you have that opportunity.

So I would say learn as much as you can. Ask as many questions as you can, and don’t be afraid to make an ask to an executive or a leader in your organization to just learn from them. Say yes, yes, yes, until you find something you really enjoy and then say no, no, no. I think being very careful of the timing of that is important.

So for me, I met every person I possibly could. When I went to Hope, I kinda had a rule. I wanted to have coffee with at least two new people each week. And whether that’s talking business, whether that’s friendships, whatever, just talk to and meet as many people as you possibly can, because number one, you never know the network you’re gonna build. You never know where the idea’s gonna come from.

Um, so just spend as much time as you can interacting with new people, learning from new people. Um, and then I think that’s what starts to generate your next big idea, your next thought, your next business that you wanna start. Then once you find the thing you’re like, that’s what I wanna focus on, start saying no as much as you can.

I’ve fallen into the trap of saying yes to everything forever, and I’ve been very distracted at times, consistently. And that’s the feedback I get from all my investors: all right, you’re a little distracted. You’re bopping around all these different places. And so for me, we’re now at a stage where it’s like, we now know our niche. We now know our focus. We now know what we’re doing and start saying no to everything else.

Most people I talk to are like, I’d love to start a business someday. I just don’t have a good idea. Most businesses that I know were never like this. It was more, I was working on this, and man, I started to go down this rabbit hole and solve this problem. And maybe this person over there is solving it, but not very well. Let’s see if we can do it better.

There’s very few brand new ideas that are out of nowhere, and the ones that are, they’re typically not good businesses. Don’t be obsessed with finding the next great business. And don’t start a business just for the sake of it. Be open to solving problems, and then discover if there’s a product to sell or a solution to offer that you’re solving that problem. That’s where you can build a great business.