Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: BILL Founder and CEO René Lacerte

I recently interviewed BILL Founder and CEO René Lacerte on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a leading entrepreneur in the world of fintech. René Lacerte is the founder and CEO of BILL, a multi-billion dollar company that helps hundreds of 1000s of businesses manage their financial workflows. Renee, thank you for joining us.

René: Well, thank you, Adam, for having me on the show, and thanks for all you do to get the leadership tidbits and secrets out there for all of us to learn from. So thank you.

Adam: I appreciate that, I'm excited to have you on entrepreneurship is literally in your blood. Your parents were entrepreneurs, your grandparents were entrepreneurs. You're actually a fourth-generation entrepreneur. Can you take listeners back to your formative years, those early days, what early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

René: I feel very fortunate that I am a fourth-generation entrepreneur. And I think the thing that if you were to kind of take a high-level learning from all that is that is possible, that you have to have a dream. You have to have a lot of hard work that goes into pursuing that passion that is possible. If you look at the different types of businesses my parents and grandparents had, there's a lot of variety in them. All of them, since the 60s have been more financial services. But prior to that, there was lots of different variety, and all of them had success in their own ways, and all of them had opportunities to do better. But what I've learned at the dinner table, and I like to call it affectionately the dinner table, MBA, was that if you have a dream and you work hard and you have a bit of luck in life, you can make it happen. The important thing is just knowing that it's possible that you have to have a growth mindset. If I think about all those conversations at the dinner table, all of them were always about, what do you learn from today. Whether it was my parents talking about their businesses or my dad and my grandfather talking about their business, it was always, how do we get better? How do we serve customers better? How do we make a better place for employees? These are things that we're talking about at dinner, and they actually wanted everybody's input. It wasn't just that. It was the two of them talking. It was a conversation across the whole family. And so I would say that's the big takeaway, is that it's possible, and you got to work hard at it, and you got to believe in yourself, and you got to focus on always being in a growth mindset. And those things combined can enable entrepreneurship to be a successful and rewarding part of your life.

Adam: I love that, and that's a key theme that I've heard from so many of the most successful people in America, the most successful entrepreneurs, and the most successful leaders across all disciplines. The most successful people are continually trying to get better. Focused on not what have I accomplished so far, but what do I need to do to take that next step. Who can I learn from? And the answer is, I can learn from anyone. The most successful people have that mindset,

René: Yes, it's 100% true. I think back to my first job opportunity after undergrad and grad. I was talking with lots of different companies, lots of different types of firms, consulting, technology firms, and then I landed talking with some accounting firms, and there was a partner from Price Waterhouse in San Francisco that had talked about he heard my story a little bit, and he says, Look, it seems like you're going to be an entrepreneur someday based on the parents and grandparents, and the language of business is accounting. You might want to think about learning that. And that's when I made my decision because nobody else had been recruiting me to learn. Everybody else had been recruiting me to use me as a cog in the wheel to get paid for it, but to use me to actually advance their goals. And he talked about me getting something out of it that was more than money, and it's something that I think is super important for any young graduate or any person looking for a job. Is what are you going to learn? Because that learning path will take you to a different place. And I did not know in 1989 that someday I would be running a FinTech company that's serving hundreds of 1000 businesses across the US and millions across the globe through our network. I didn't know that I would need to understand the language of accounting as intimately as I do, but it was an opportunity for me to keep up. Learning, and so that's why I did it. So I think that growth mindset is something that you can't take it for granted, either you have it or you don't, but when you have it, you got to keep leaning into it.

Adam: We're talking about growth mindset. We're talking about a soft skill. You mentioned the importance of learning the language of business accounting, a hard skill. What were the most important skills that you developed that have fueled your success? And what are the most important skills that you would encourage anyone to develop as they're trying to become successful in whatever it is they're pursuing,

René: It probably depends on the career path you've taken. So first I'll talk about being a technologist and kind of being in the field of developing software and converging payments like you have to have domain expertise. You have to know what it is that you're building, and you have to be able to leverage that to solve problems. So ultimately, I view myself as a problem solver. I go in every day and try to help make the product and experience better for our customers. I'm trying to make the work experience better for our employees. It is problem-solving. So I would say there is a general skill that goes across any job, is that you have to like problems. You can't admire the problems. You have to actually solve problems. But you have to like problems. You have to like understanding and knowing that there's a lot of contradiction in a problem that's going to be very difficult to resolve, and you have to accept that. You have to accept that you're not going to have the perfect solution. So that's probably a broad thing around problem solving, that every category of leadership needs. There is specific stuff for any domain that is relevant, and folks should understand what it is that they're going to focus on to be able to get that demand and to continue learning on that, whether that's evaluating other software that's out there, in my case, or going to conferences to hear how new entrepreneurs are thinking about the world and the landscape, or listening to larger companies about how they think the technology is going to apply. All of that is that constant quest for learning. So I would say problem-solving. And then I would say, when it comes to people's empathy, all too often, people forget that we work with individuals, not cogs in the wheel. The most important thing that we can do as humans is to connect with each other if we have more connection across not just our professional lives, but personal lives. And through our social network, if you will, real empathetic connection if you combine that with the problem solving, then you end up solving problems for other people, which is what I based my career on, is solving problems for other people. That's what I enjoy doing, and my goal is to do as good a job as I count on that every day. So I would say you gotta like problems. You gotta have a fair bit of empathy that you're always extending that to others. Go into the third thing, which is kind of obvious, humility and listening. One of the ways about humility is that arrogance is thinking that your truth is the truth, but humility is knowing your truth is a truth. So the difference there being the truth and a truth, and it's so important that when you combine the implicit requirement of listening into humility, and you combine that with the empathy and combine that with problem-solving, that's when you do great things for other people, and that's when you get to actually have fun doing it as well.

Adam: Renee, you've ticked off so many of the key characteristics of the most successful leaders, empathy, humility. Great leaders are great listeners. How can anyone become more empathetic? Develop more humility. A lot of what we're talking about falls in this bucket of EQ. How can anyone improve their EQ?

René: It's a great question. I mean, part of me says that gets kind of hard to teach, but part of me also says that I can tell you the paths I've done that have increased all those things. For me, I'll first start with the humility. Because if you go back to those teenage years, and there's just a lot of attitude that any of us have, we have a lot of confidence. And you need confidence because you're getting ready to separate from the nest. You need confidence to be able to make your own way in life. And so that confidence for me, in my teenage years, high school, college, turned into a few moments that were somewhat arrogance, and I think some of that was insecurity, and some of the learning points for me on that is one time I don't remember exactly what I was saying, but I said something to my mom, and moms do not let things go by. They listen intently. And I just said something that she felt was a bit boastful, if you will. And she said, Brene, I know there's a God. And I said, No, no, it's just because everybody's crap smells, and that's kind of crass, but that just brings home that we are all human. None of us are any different. And obviously that learning stuck with me, that I had to constantly be evaluating. Why did I think mine didn't if I thought that, then there was something wrong with me. I had to really step back and really think about that. And there were a few other things along the way that I've always kind of humbled but that's partly I would say maybe the important thing for any of the learning that we're talking about is just to be present and to know that you're not perfect, that you can never be perfect, but you can actually strive for it, and that's possible, but you never are going to and if you accept that, then you're going to find ways that you learn on empathy. One of the things that I think is super important in a relationship is just really with your coworkers, with your family, is being of service. I'm a strong believer in servant leadership. I believe that all of us are here to serve each other and to make the world a better place. And if you really believe that, then you can't not do the simple things in life. So if you think about where I'm at right now, I could potentially have other people do things for me that would be more effective from a time perspective, but I won't give it all up. I still do chores around the house. I still do the dishes. I still like to cook. I don't do it as often as I would like to, but dishes and cooking and doing shorts around the house. That's a way for me to be of services people I care about how I will do that with the company is I will actually don't get a chance to do as often as I did when we were smaller, but make margaritas and guacamole for the teams, bringing people together, share a meal with them. Like that's an important way to kind of say, Yeah, we're going to get together and we're all the same. So to your point about how do you coach and grow your empathy? Because you need to make sure you're exposed to it and that you're always doing something for others, and if you're not, then your empathy isn't going to grow. But if you can always make sure that you frame your decisions on a daily basis around that, and make sure that you take time to get back in a way that's meaningful, that you wouldn't have to that actually grows the empathy, I think, across all that, and then listening is probably the hardest one when you get to position of leadership, because people always want to know what you think, and they are ready to kind of make a decision based on just what you have an opinion on, and that's not healthy for the organization. So sometimes you have to bite your tongue and you just have to step back. And that reminder that I have is there's a phrase that says, God gave us two ears and one mouth. Used them proportionately, but you need to be listening to its as often as you are talking, at least, if not a lot more, that the tendency is to kind of back into. While people ask me how I've been in let me give it. And sometimes it's better to return a question with a question.

Adam: Renee, you shared a lot of great stuff there, and there's a lot we can dive into. I want to highlight a couple of things that stood out to me. The story you shared about your mom being honest with you as all moms are, I don't know of any mom out there that isn't honest. Renee, have you ever met a mom that is anything but honest? Never. I don't think that exists. Surround yourself with people who are going to be honest with you. Could be your mom. Could be your grandmother, if you still have a grandmother, the people you hire have to be honest with you. Your closest advisors have to be honest with you. Your closest friends have to be honest with you. The people who keep you honest are going to keep you humble, going to keep you grounded, going to keep you real, going to keep you empathetic. Another thing you shared, which I really like is the importance of participating in activities that keep you grounded. For each of us, it could be something different for you, it could be cooking, cleaning, doing a chore that reminds you of what it was like before you became the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. For someone else, it could be something different. Could be going to your church or synagogue and hanging out with the people who you hung out with before you were a big deal. Lots and lots of things that we can think of and do that bring us back to a place where we are able to be grounded, be humble. And the more we can do that, the more we can be, the empathetic leaders that we need to be that will allow us to thrive day in, day out.

René: Yeah, Adam, such a great point. One of the things that is always interesting to me is that if I bumped into you in the hallway at the office and I said, Adam, how's your day? Most people will just say, Oh, it's good. Yeah, and most of the time I might just say it's good, but much of the time, I'd be like, I'm kind of excited about this and that, like, I try to give a real answer. When I ask anybody how their day is, I actually really do care. And I want to know how their day is. I want to know if there's something I can do to make it better. I also want to know if there's something they're excited about, because, by the way, energy is contagious, and if there's something that they're not excited about, well then maybe my energy can help them. And so like asking somebody how their day is. It isn't just a pleasant treat, it's a real question, and people should treat it as a real question, and people should really try to answer that and be thoughtful about it, and not take all day on it, but just be thoughtful instead of just saying, Oh, it's good. Like, I'm excited about this. Like, that's super important from developing that empathy and the leadership thing too. That's super simple. As you were talking I've often said, and I thought this would be interesting to talk about, is that leadership can start just with opening a door for somebody else. You see somebody at the grocery store, and if you're wearing three bags that they can only really handle. Two, offer to take an extra bag. We all have that type of time in our life, yet we don't, we don't act like we do. And so anyways, leadership can be very small, opening a door, asking somebody how their day is, and stopping and listening, and then if you can help afterwards, that's super important.

Adam: Renee, I love that, and something that I tell people all the time, you don't need to have a job title that says leader, that says manager, you don't need to formally oversee people. You don't need to be responsible for someone's time sheet, someone's performance review, to be a leader. We're all leaders. Every single one of us is a leader. We have the opportunity to be leaders in the workplace, outside of the workplace, in our family, in our community, in our day to day lives, the example you gave you're at the grocery you have the opportunity to be a leader. Every interaction you have, you have the opportunity to be a leader. It comes down to your mindset.

René: Absolutely does. Absolutely

Adam: I also love the example that you gave about someone asks you, how are you doing? You take the time to give them a real answer, be present. So much of leadership, so much of success, is being there, being present, showing up, and showing up with intent.

Rene: Absolutely, it's easy to think about any of our jobs responsibilities of being very consuming, all-consuming, and it can be all-consuming. But I found in a number of lessons in life, it says that if I can't be present, then I can't actually serve. I can't actually do the rest of the time that's necessary. There's a terrible story. Professor goes in and he's got, let's say, 100 engineering students, a lot of them physics, super smart people, and he walks in with a face and it's empty. And he puts in a bunch of big rocks into it, and he asks the class, is the face full? The class says, yes, it's full. And then he pulls out a bunch of little rocks and he puts those in, is it full? Yes, it's full. Professor. Then he pulls out some sand and pours that in. Is it full? Yes, it's full. Then he takes a glass of water and fills it up. And the whole point is, you don't get to do all those little things in life unless you focus on those big things first. You're never going to get those big things in. If you fill it up with sand and water first, you're just not going to but if you fill up those big chunks that are important. And this is, how about being present like you have to know, what are those things that give you energy every day? Because when you're in a leadership position, you do receive a bunch of energy, but a bunch of energy is needed from other people, from you. And so if you don't take care of yourself if you don't focus on what's going to give me that energy to be able to serve others, then you're not going to be that useful to others. And so for me, the point that brought this up was being present. What are the things I need to fill my cup today? And obviously a lot of it comes down to family. For me, exercise and diet, all those two things are super important. But once you get those things kind of in that rhythm. You have a lot of time for a lot of little pebbles and sand and water to fill up your cup, and that makes it a lot easier to get back to your team.

Adam: I love it. So how did the idea for bill.com come together? And how did you actualize it?

René: I would say I didn't know I was going to be an entrepreneur. My dad, even though he was an entrepreneur, never really encouraged it. He wanted the choice to be mine, right? He's like, Oh, you got to go do this. Just go have a choice anyway. So I had started my first company after leaving Intuit. I'd started a payroll company, online payroll company, in the 90s, late 90s, 99 and as I was managing that day to day of running a business, that became very clear to me that the way I was managing that business was no different than my grandfather had managed it 60 years before when he started his first business, paper-based filing cabinets and writing checks to pay people and calling people up to get collections, very slow, manual, painful, tedious process. And so when I was at Intuit, I built both payroll solutions for Intuit as well as Bill Payment Solutions for Intuit. So I knew the FinTech landscape. I knew what capabilities were out there, what tools I could use to leverage my own time at the office, and I wasn't using any of them. And so that got me questioning again, this is the learning part, the growth mindset. And I was just like, it doesn't make sense. Why am I not using all the tools I built before, and I started just solving that problem in my head. And there was workflow that was necessary. There was payment integrations that was necessary. There was the fact that buyers and suppliers talk to each other, yet there's no system that lets them connect to each other. There were all these things that kept coming up that when I put all together, I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's a great opportunity. And it happened to be maybe 2004 when I started coming up with the idea. So it was so early in the evolution of the cloud that I actually and I was building an internet-based payroll application. So I actually understood where technology was going reasonably well at that time, that I could see the advantages of pulling all this together into one platform. That was where it came from, and it's taken 18 years to get to this point. It's not always easy to build companies, but it sure a lot of fun.

Adam: What were the keys to growing and scaling Bill and what, in your experience, are the keys to growing and scaling any business, there's

Rene: a number of different frameworks that businesses use to set goals, and the one that I particularly like is a framework called HARD goals. And there's a book out there, and I should remember the author. I don't remember the author, but HARD goals, it stands for heartfelt, animated, required, and the D is difficult. I like to stick an extra D in there and say, damn difficult. And the reason I like those goals, and this is back to kind of your question, is, like, pick a problem that's really hard that you have no idea how to solve, that you're passionate about, that needs to get solved, and then make that your mission to go do that. When you make that your mission to go do that, one, you're never satisfied, and not being satisfied is a good thing in life. I mean, we don't always think that way, but that pursuit of actual perfection, if you will, that I talked about earlier, that’s actually a motivator to engage in the world in a way that's positive. And so I'm not satisfied. I've got a goal that we're not going to hit, and yet, we get closer and closer every day. And so that's the thing that I think is the key to kind of that long-term success is having a lot of passion around your mission and then having the grit and the persistence to never give up. One of the ways I think about this is being an entrepreneur. And I think this is true in other professions, but being an entrepreneur requires both patience and impatience. It is the impatience that gets me out of my seat to go do something different. It's because I've not satisfied the world. I know the world can be better. That's impatience. But then the example I just give is Bill, we're 18 years old. With the first 14 years, we got to about 100 million, and the last four years have gone from 100 million to a billion plus. Like, you have to have that patience to keep building and executing across all the different dimensions that a business requires and be ready when there's a time to be impatient. And there are multiple times when I've been impatient, if you will, and there are multiple times when I've been patient. And I think finding that balance, that's the part that I wish I could distill into advice for everybody. It's going to be up to every individual's business and every individual's opportunity. But I think this is also true for any career, any leader, there is a time for patience and a time for impatience, and knowing when to use both for either is super important.

Adam: You kind of robbed me of my follow-up question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Do you have any advice, any framework, any thoughts for when to be patient, when to be impatient, when's the right time to go and when's the right time to take a step back and wait?

René: Yeah, I think the right time it goes when nobody else is doing what you think needs to get done. That's one example. The right time to go is when you see an opportunity that won't be there for long. So the two examples I can give on this is I saw an opportunity in 2004 I started noodling it. I started the company in 2006 that nobody else was doing it. I could go. I needed to go. I need to start working on this problem. Examples of when there's not that much time frame would be, examples of responding to the economy, whether it's a 2008 recession or COVID or whatnot, like you cannot wait the SVB regional bank crisis, you cannot wait. There has to be impatience and driving resolution opportunities to acquire some of the companies we acquired that was understanding in the market, and seeing that the market was unfolding quickly, and we could not wait. So there's lots of times when the market will actually dictate sometimes of the impatience and the need to go, I would say, on the patients. Does always around having faith that execution matters. And I think sometimes in the startup world, people don't think as much about execution. And when I talk about execution matter, I'm talking about building a company that lasts decades, a company that actually changes the way people work together, or in our case, change the way businesses manage their own work, but having that persistence and that commitment to be a servant leader to your constituents, which would be your employees and your customers, like having that commitment to stay grounded, to your values, to stay grounded to your mission of serving customers, and then persistence to actually execute on that day in and day out, and just get a little bit better every day. A lot of what we do in the world, and sometimes there are stair steps, but a lot of what we do in the world is incrementally getting better every day. And when you step back and look behind you. It's like, Oh, my God, that's a lot of progress, but there's no way you could ever predicted that progress without saying, You know what? I know I want to get to there. The next most important thing I need to do to get there is this, and you do that, and then tomorrow you wake up. Okay, what's the next most important thing? And then the next most important thing that laddering of these incremental improvements is what I would say, is persistence. There is never a silver bullet. People sometimes think there is. And so I would say, I guess, around your people, your culture, your commitment to your customers, that's when you got to have that patience and that commitment to make those improvements over yesterday, but also over time.

Adam: How can leaders build the kind of culture that you're talking about, the kind of culture that fuels excellence on a consistent basis, that fosters the kind of execution that enables companies to perform over time? Yeah,

René: I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I've had the short version is, if you were to ask your listeners, how many of you had family values growing up written down, nobody would probably say that they had some written down. If you ask all your listeners, what are the values that your family had growing up? Could you list them? My guess is you could the siblings. People would be pretty consistent on this in the families, having a very strong understanding of what those values are, are important, and those values cannot be aspirational. They can't be platitudes. They have to be about who you are. The first time I saw values written down as I went to boarding school, and it was in the stained glass windows, temporatia, fiducia, Constantia, simplicity of life, self-reliance, and directness of purpose. 40 years later, I still remember those values. They impacted who I am. I think about those values on a consistent basis because it was about who you are when you show up at that school, who they wanted you to be. And then I think about college. I don't know of any values for the college going to. There weren't any values across the Waterhouse. My parents didn't have values. Then I landed at Intuit. My parents had values on the wall. I should say I landed that Intuit and there were values there, and I found the values, they sounded good. And so when we started the first company, we took some simplistic version of what they have, because we had 10 at the time out into it, and I wanted something smaller or five. And so we had five that pay cycle that was in the company. And then as I continued to lead and help that company grow, I found that the values weren't that helpful to me. So I. You grow, and that's going to be something that takes you on a journey that you have to sometimes be patient for. Personal growth is not something that changes overnight for most people unless there's trauma. So I can't get enough time with customers and employees, and finding more time is something that I work hard at, and that's probably true for most leaders, it's hard to make all those time commitments balance each other out, but that's the one that actually gives the most growth and the most enjoyment, honestly, is when you're serving other people.

Adam: René, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

René: Well, thank you, Adam, it's great to be here. I appreciate your time and all the great questions.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.