Full Transcript – Paul McCarthy – Wild Business Growth Podcast #217

This is the full transcript for Episode #217 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Paul McCarthy – Simplicity Super, Founder of Snapfix. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Paul McCarthy 0:00
You don’t get to walk into your local library and pick up a book and say, This is how you do this. So we’ve got to make this up as we go along

Max Branstetter 0:21
What is up? What’s up? Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 21.7. If you remove the decimal, I’m getting so intricate with these. And today’s guest is Paul McCarthy. You heard that right, Paul McCarthy. Paul is the Founder and CEO of Snapfix one of my favorite company names of all time, but a super cool company that is building the maintenance platform for the world. Snapfix helps properties, teams buildings, communicate with each other and solve problems and solve maintenance issues and building issues. Through the use of things as simple as photos and traffic lights. That’s traffic light imagery and symbols. It’s an absolutely awesome platform. And it’s all about simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. That’s what we talk about with Paul, which rhymes with all. And in addition, we get into how to give your team that autonomy needed to help your business explode with growth. And a little bit about Paul’s background growing up on a farm in Ireland with about 487 siblings. It is Paul Wall McCarthy. Enjoy the shoooooooow!

Aaaaalrightyyyyy we are here with Paul McCarthy of Snapfix and so this is sure to be one of the snappiest fixes just you know, make up your own adjective or adverbs, now adjectives interviews you’ll ever hear. Paul joining us from sunny Dublin, as you said, thanks so much for joining Paul, how you doing

Paul McCarthy 2:27
today? Absolutely fantastic. Max, I’m delighted to be here and to be chatting to somebody in New York, my own hometown for 10 years.

Max Branstetter 2:34
That is so cool. So yeah, born and born and raised in in Ireland, which we’ll talk about, but spent a decade in New York and I know you lived in the East Village, what’s your favorite memory from living in that part of town?

Paul McCarthy 2:46
I think it was just a mix of the community. The village was was was evolving at the time and it was just fantastic place great cafes. It’s gotten to be the cafes, the restaurants, the nightclubs was absolutely wonderful place to live at the time. Oh, yeah. Nice edge. The neighborhood.

Max Branstetter 3:02
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s so I used to live in Murray Hill. So I guess, you know, right next door to each village in, especially on the weekends, you know, Friday, Saturday night. You know, my friends and I, you know, oftentimes we’d start at my apartment or my buddy’s apartment nearby, have some drinks before going out. And then sure enough, we you know, we take a cab or take an Uber downtown and go to the East Village bars or out in the Lower East Side. There’s just so much so much to do there. Yeah, it’s it’s really cool that you live there. Speaking of village, I want to talk about villages in Ireland as well. So I heard that you actually grew up in a farm in Ireland.

Paul McCarthy 3:37
That’s right, Max I grew up in a farm in out in the country in Ireland, and I’m one of 12 kids. So we joked growing up, we were a soccer team and a substitute.

Max Branstetter 3:50
Oh my god, that’s, that’s a great line. Wow. It makes me think of so my my grandpa Fred, who passed away recently, he actually he grew up on a farm and he was one of 10 children. And fun fact, he actually, you know, had the love of his life. My grandma Barb, she, he was the youngest of 10 siblings. And she was the oldest of 10 siblings. So talk about a range of cousins there. But anyway, that’s that’s a little aside. So you grew up on a farm with a full football team and a substitute growing up in that farm environment. what did that teach you about life and business? Kind of what lessons can you trace back to that?

Paul McCarthy 4:28
Great question, Max. I think one of the key lessons from growing up on a farm is you’re always there’s always something to be done seven days a week didn’t matter if it was Christmas Day or any other day of the year. There were always you know, cattle to be fed the resolvers fences to be mended. There was always crops to be sewn or harvested or whatever. There was always something going on. And there was there was not a lot of downtime to be perfectly honest. The that the advantage of it was, you know, you got kind of the entrepreneurial bug you’re we’re always doing things buying and selling things trading. Things go into horse fairs buying and selling horses, buying and selling, you know, stocker our produce, as you call it from from the farm itself, buying and selling farms, and then developing businesses out of that, including a warehousing business and the property development business. So it was a great foundation of teamwork, of innovation of survival in many cases, and just trying to get things done all the time.

Max Branstetter 5:27
This is a two-parter. Sorry, because I hate two-part questions. But I have to ask, what was your favorite and least favorite task to do around the farm, when I

Paul McCarthy 5:37
had a motorcycle, the favorite one was rounding up the cattle. So that was cool. So it was like, you know, I was I was actually barred from getting a motorcycle. And I just arrived home at one at the age of 16. And, and I had it paid for and I had the helmet and everything like that. So using it on the farm was kind of the quick way into to have it accepted in the house, the least favorite one would have been doing stuff that was highly inefficient, even as a young kid I hated wasting time. So very often, we’d have we’d have some some work to do. And you could have got a machine for it. And it would have done it in an hour, not a way to do it manually. And it would have taken, you know, six of us a week to do it. And so because there was a lot of manpower or woman power available in the farm, we probably didn’t do a lot of things very efficiently. And they used to drive me nuts.

Max Branstetter 6:30
That is some incredible foreshadowing to your business, which we’ll get to a minute. But the the image of herding cattle with a motorcycle in the Irish countryside is like so awesome. That sounds like something out of a movie that’s so wonderful. Like, I would love to do that. That should be like an amazing excursion or some sort of travel thing that you can do is drive around a motorcycle on a farm. Like that’s so cool. So so your life is a movie basically, is what I’m saying. But the other aspect is fascinating, fascinating about your background, you know, the whole roster of your football/soccer team. So 12 of you, that is a heck of a of a busy house, or busy farm. So what did you learn from having so many siblings, and you know, so many people under that same roof growing up, you

Paul McCarthy 7:19
learn to share pretty quick, you know, and you learn how to protect your, you learn how to protect your lunch and dinner with your life. Or it can be taken from you know, I’m joking about that part of us. I never got beaten up as a kid, which was always kind of a bonus, you know, and, and we were never robbed or anything like that no one would ever come near our house and just you wouldn’t get away with it. No, but be more seriously. I think the spirit of teamwork was engendered it was very, very, very, very early. Very often, we were using a lot of heavy machinery and heavy equipment and really dangerous equipment. So you had your family in lives in the palm of your hands on a regular basis, you know, they could be up at a height and you could be, you could have a tractor with a front loader on it, and you can have them 2025 feet in the air, you have to be super careful around health and safety. And this is when health and safety wasn’t a thing. But you knew that you just have to be super careful at all times.

Max Branstetter 8:17
You mentioned inefficiency, and just hating groaning on things that are inefficient growing up, and you look to your business now snap fix, and I think it’s all about efficiency. So no question that you have kind of deep rooted passion in that area and making things efficient, making things simple. So let’s get to snap fix, which is an awesome name. By the way, I think, you know, when people are picking a name for their business are often the one to use, like, vivid verbs are just words that are really quick and intuitive to and have strong meaning behind it snap fix the both of those words are incredibly visual, and fun to say so. So kudos to you on picking those two syllables and words there but snap fix. So it’s kind of in the hospitality or maintenance space. How did you get into this space to that you ultimately started a business round in the first place.

Paul McCarthy 9:13
Yeah, so So my background today there’s over 25 years in computer software development, I graduated with a with a computer science degree back in today. In parallel with that, as I mentioned, I’ve always been involved in managing and maintaining properties. So about five years ago, a joke with people that I had about 50 post it notes stuck to my face with requests coming in from tenants and guests and and residents in offices to to have items addressed and I was trying to communicate those to contractors and I was stuck in the middle. And the common denominator Max was WhatsApp is the most wonderful tool for chess and for for just chatting and communicating. It’s not very good for and it just was never built or fit for purpose for getting things done from a kind of a project. After a task management perspective, so I set myself the mission to create the simplest maintenance platform on the planet by using photos as a means of communication, and identified the traffic lights, as the simplest means of collaboration. The traffic light is the universal symbol of teamwork, it doesn’t matter what country you go to, and you drive to a junction, everybody uses traffic lights. So in a very lofty, futuristic sense, we’ve created a language for people to be able to communicate using photos and collaborate using traffic lights, without the use of any text at all. But of course, you can use text in Snapfix.

Max Branstetter 10:38
And when did you realize the tension there of Yeah, WhatsApp is awesome. It’s you know, it’s literally globally used. It’s very effective. But when did you realize it wasn’t so efficient, for you know, these maintenance requests and property management tasks

Paul McCarthy 10:53
very quickly, because using WhatsApp, I just spend my spend my days scrolling up and down trying to figure out what requests were new while we’re in progress and what we’re doing. And I just literally just wanted to answer those three things. And that’s, that’s the beauty of the simple three traffic light colors, red means something needs to be done, yellow is in progress, and green is done. And for most people, that’s all they ever need to know.

Max Branstetter 11:17
It is. And again, you know, it, it likens back to the name like simple and quick and easy. Traffic light is the same sort of thing. It’s got beautiful imagery and very, very quick to internalize whether something you know, needs workers or is good to go or is in between, in terms of Snapfix what was involved on the on the tech side of actually, you know, developing this platform.

Paul McCarthy 11:43
Well, one of the greatest fortunes I’ve had to date was meeting my CTO, I met maybe about 10 companies before meeting Cathal Greaney. And when I, when I was explaining to him what I was trying to build, he literally kind of started taking the sentences out of my mouth. And he carried on talking about it, because we’re talking about a a global distributed, child based architecture that synchronizes instantly between Apple and Android and websites and all of this stuff. And he just got it right away. And we hit it off within about 45 seconds of meeting for the first time. And it’s been absolutely fantastic, since the second part of that equation would be the design of the system. And I often use the analogy of Microsoft Word, nothing against Microsoft. But we all pay for 100% of Microsoft Word, and we use 1% of it. And I was absolutely dedicated and focused on only working on the 1% solution. And that’s what’s not fixes.

Max Branstetter 12:42
The tech part of it is super cool that the tech for, you know, for the layman, for the for the average person can be totally, you know, like above your head and like I’m somebody that knows tech pretty well now, but I still like I don’t know much about the coding side of things or software development or you know, even like it and troubleshooting things like that. So it becomes so much more important, you know, for the average consumer to have that simplicity. And simplicity is an area that I’ve heard you talk about time and time again, of this needs to be simple. And we’ve created a simple solution to do these things. Even though the tech can get complicated on the back end of that, or front, I don’t even I don’t even know what’s the right way to say that. But on the back end, how do you and the development team keep that emphasis on simple simplicity for the end consumer,

Paul McCarthy 13:32
a couple of key couple of key areas there, the first thing is we start with no, we start with there isn’t going to be another feature in Snapfix. So every new feature that we do allow in has to pass through a whole series of gates. And we have two rules for it, it has to be the simplest possible solution on the planet for that feature. And it has to be universal, so that everybody will be able to use it. So we maintain a relentless focus on that. And the second thing we do max is, is have instructed our product designer who’s who’s a wonderful designer to remove 10% of snowflakes every year. So we can see by the data by our own data analytics, what people aren’t using, and you know, sometimes we get a couple of things wrong, we take it away because then you’re not carrying forward. The cost and effort of maintaining that code going forward. When no one really no one really wants us. And sometimes it’s just down to trying a different type of feature rather than the feature that was there and not being used for example.

Max Branstetter 14:32
I love that it’s the trim the fat as people say, How can you be more efficient? How can you cut out that aspect? And so you keep a consistent focus every single year to be more efficient there. That’s awesome. of the features that are still remaining. It was probably one feature left? No, I’m just gonna have the features that are still remaining. What are you seeing, you know, in these first few years in business, of being the most commonly used features, you know, across the across the network of stuff Up next,

Paul McCarthy 15:00
a few different sectors we use Max. Okay, you got hospitality facilities management, construction engineering, and they’re like, in construction, they’re using it quite a bit for, for punch lists, they want to Hiva, the high volume of activity. So we take a picture of this, it goes to the electrician to take a picture of that goes to the plumber, I take a picture of that something else, it goes to the carpenter, they’ve started using video a lot more, especially when there’s when they’re down to the end of the construction phase. And there’s an issue like maybe a leaking pipe or something like that. Well, a video within snap fix communicates that very, very effective effectively. The other one is people don’t want to use apps, it’s a hassle to download another app. So what we allow people to do is to use a QR code. So every QR in, I believe that every cue every building should have a QR code, so that anybody could just point their smartphone camera at the QR code, and they can contribute your snap pics. So one of the things we want to enable is to allow people to leverage the the eyes and ears of everybody in the building to help make it the best it can be at all times. Somebody might spot a flickering light, well, they should be able to report that instantly. We shouldn’t have to wait an hour for your maintenance guy to spotless and it should be easy to report us. And then going into the future, you should be able to use Slack or WhatsApp or email or whatever, whatever user interface you want to be able to communicate into snap fix. So we do not want to prescribe people to use our app, they should be open to use whatever they wish.

Max Branstetter 16:34
Yeah, I think that it goes back to simplicity. But ease of use is so huge, especially when you’re in the business of adding more consumers and partners to to actually use this because it can be so helpful. You mentioned several different industries that you’re in. I guess on the the marketing or distribution side, how have you been able to get snap fix in front of these different vendors and industries in order for them to actually start using this?

Paul McCarthy 17:00
Well, I guess from day one, when I was bootstrapping it, I showed it to a number of industries, I showed it to hotels or shoulder to engineering companies, facilities, management companies, property managers, and hotels really took to it in the early days. So hotels operate 24/7 They have a large audience and multilingual staff, and the demand the highest quality. And when I came across the hotel sector, I really gravitated to it because it would stress test the hell out of Snapfix. Because as you can imagine people check out a hotel rooms, you know, every 24 hours, they might check out an apartment building every six months or 12 months. So we identify the most intensive sector that’s really, really hard on buildings. And that was a wonderful, absolutely wonderful sector to start with. We kicked off officially in September 2019. And then six months later, of course, COVID came along and punched us all in the face. So all of our hospitality customers were struggling at the time. And at that point in time we broadened out to office buildings, apartment buildings, mines in Africa, engineering companies, construction companies. And we were very fortunate that we have architected and designed the solution for the wider sector when when COVID hit.

Max Branstetter 18:15
I’ve always thought that hotels is just a really fun space to be in. It’s an industry where obviously, so much of the time people are traveling, like they’re on vacation, or maybe they’re traveling for something for work where they’re you know, more often than not, they’re they’re in a different city, they’re you know, it’s an experience or maybe an adventure that they’re on. So there’s just kind of like that energy there with hotels. And you’re with Snapfix, you’re kind of like in the in the behind the scenes of like what makes hotel you know, what makes a customer service great, or what makes their hospitality so hospitable. But, so it’s a really neat space to be in. I know that you kind of started the business, you know, with hotels and other businesses in Ireland and now expanding to Florida and different countries as well, not the Florida the country. But you know what I mean? What’s been involved in expanding internationally outside of Ireland with Snapfix?

Paul McCarthy 19:09
Well, as I mentioned, Max, when when COVID hit, we had to go wide and we need to go with go internationally. So we were selling b2b which is bedroom-to-bedroom because there are customers were in their bedroom, and we were in our bedroom selling to them. We went wide at that time using a combination of social media and email marketing. And we were very, very lucky to meet some amazing customers during that time who just were amazed at the simplicity of it to find somebody who was as nutty and crazy as myself who was just obsessed with simplicity. And they were they all came back saying we’ve been looking for something like this. We don’t want 1,000 features. And we’re delighted that we met you and the spreading of we using word of mouth after that has has helped has helped us grow as well. We’re on five continents now you know which is fantastic. So I keep telling the team, who do you know in the Antarctic? And who do you know, in the Arctic, the Arctic, we got to get the we got to get the last two continents.

Max Branstetter 20:08
Yeah, exactly the those might be a bit. I know at the time of the year of recording by you and by me, it’s not the warmest but I’m sure it’s, it’s a heck of a lot warmer than it is in Antarctica. So that might be a whole new endeavor.

Paul McCarthy 20:23
Even if we have to post even if we have to mail a phone to each location and get somebody to fix we’re gonna we’re gonna get them in the next year or two.

Max Branstetter 20:33
So looking back on these last few years of growth and going from bootstrapping to you know, I know you’ve since raised funding, and obviously, you know, the five continents you mentioned, like your business has grown a ton. What has been some key decisions that you’ve made, or key steps that you’ve made that have really been inflection points in the growth of Snapfix?

Paul McCarthy 20:53
Really, really good question on day one, I think it’s, it’s deciding to build an exceptional team. When you when you interview people, and you meet some people, you can meet some people that are, you know, better than others. So when I say better notice, I don’t mean twice as good or three times good. I mean, 50 times better. And we’ve been very, very focused over the last couple of years to build a really, really hard team, kind of an A team. And everyone in staff is today, and we’re a small company, we’re less than 30 people. But everybody in the company now takes ownership of their own role. They’re really, really good at what they do. They challenge me, they challenge the management team, they challenge the rest of the team to improve snap fix in their area. And that’s, that’s wonderful to see. So I can’t say enough about the importance of team on day one. It’s so important, where we’re married to each other for the next X number of years. And it’s so important to work with people that you like, and to give them the autonomy to run with their side of the business too. And let them run through walls, let them make mistakes, we have a no, we have a no blame culture in Snapfix. As I tell everybody, I make 10 times more mistakes than everybody else. So stop worrying about it just for not making mistakes not moving fast enough. And that’s it. That’s it we just give people autonomy, they can they can they can make their impact on Snapfix as we make an impact on the world.

Max Branstetter 22:22
How do you instill that culture of Hey, it’s okay to make mistakes to your team.

Paul McCarthy 22:27
I think everyone on the team knows me at this stage for being fiercely impatient. So I was going to change

Max Branstetter 22:32
I’m so sorry, by the way, you’ve been incredibly patient dealing with me through the course of this.

Paul McCarthy 22:38
I’ve been thinking of changing my title, the CIO Chief Impatiance Officer. But I enjoy it. It’s you know, when we, when we hit a milestone, we do celebrate. And I honestly say like, Guys, we could have been there three months ago or six months ago, you know, and we we can’t, I refuse to use the excuse of COVID or anything else like that. And I think people people enjoy the autonomy is the first thing but then enjoy the focus on simplicity. We’re building something special here. Like we’re building the next Twitter or WhatsApp. We’re building a billion-dollar business here and the team that we have around the table at the moment, globally, are really, really committed to that. And we’re, we remind them that we’re trying to do something that no one’s done before, we’re trying to build the maintenance platform for the world. You don’t get to walk into your local library and pick up a book and say, This is how you do this. So we’ve got to make this up as we go along. And let’s not sweat the mistakes. And sometimes you have to get used to accepting that. You know, when you make a plan, and we have 10 items in the plan, well, one item is a mistake, just plan to make the mistake and let it blow up and just move on.

Max Branstetter 23:51
One place to move on to after your next mistake is the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, it will solve all the problems. No, I’m just kidding. It won’t do that. But it will provide podcast production tips for you and some behind the scenes stories from the Wild Business Growth Podcast you can only get there. You can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. And yeah, we can even talk about all the mistakes that we all make. Because mistakes are an important part of business, obviously, as Paul says, Now, let’s get to some more mistakes. So I know by this point, you’re realizing the mistake and accepting to come on this interview. So thanks, thanks again for dealing with it. But let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s get to you as a person and even outside of work, how you stay inspired, how you stay creative. And so much of what you’re saying keeps going back to simplicity and you’re talking about it within the business but I’m curious outside of work. Is there anything you do kind of like at home or in your personal life that maintains that mantra of simplicity

Paul McCarthy 24:59
I’m bound to I’m using the “S” word at home because I have a very patient wife and three very patient kids who are sick to the teeth of me obsessing about it all the time. No, just kidding. I think myself, first of all, I like to swim in the sea. And it’s freezing cold here now at the moment, and it was in the other day, and it was sleeting. But it was, it gives you an electric shock to the brain on a regular basis. And, and I think that that really, really helps. I’ve never been a fan of a lot of equipment, or a lot of accessories or anything like that. You have people who go in swimming, and they’ve got they’ve got four bags of equipment to go down there. And we’re when we go down, you just hop straight and hop straight out. And that says, You look, if you gotta tell, it’s less, less is more, we all need a lot less. You know, I’m not materialistic, I’m trying to do this, to really have a positive impact on the world. And to save people time to give people some joy around the satisfaction of getting things done. I have an intention to do something very meaningful to the community who do we deal with a lot of beautiful buildings, and have an intention to do something very meaningful with people who do not have a roof over their head, the homeless communities in the world. And if we can, if we can make stuff like super successful, there’s going to be a big part of this will be will be giving back.

Max Branstetter 26:24
That’s so great. And it just makes it that much more meaningful when you have that giving back aspect to it. I’m blown away. Did you did you say that? Even like, in the winter, you jump in the sea,

Paul McCarthy 26:39
we were very fortunate where we live, we live a few blocks from the sea. And there’s a very famous swimming place called a Forty Foot you’re gonna have to come over here some time. And check it out. And you can Google it. It’s really really famous. There is a James Joyce Martello Tower, where he wrote Ulysses is right there at that point. And people swim all year round, let’s we have our own polar bear club and, and people are in 5am 6am, the same same people arrive on the hour, every hour, right throughout the day. There’ll be people in there at midnight tonight. And it’s absolutely freezing outside.

Max Branstetter 27:15
Wow, I can only imagine that. How would you characterize the jolt that it gives you when when you pop into freezing water like that, it’s an

Paul McCarthy 27:25
electric shock that clears everything, because I’m very intensive work and very impatient at work, it’s very stressful at times, if you know, it is incredibly stressful at times. And it’s really, it’s really hard. And when you do that, everything stops, and you just forget about everything. And it just for me, it separates the workday from the evening. And when I can come back home then after that, you know, I’m much more relaxed with my family and everything.

Max Branstetter 27:49
So how often do you do this?

Paul McCarthy 27:51
I’m about four, sometimes five times a week. That’s amazing.

Max Branstetter 27:54
So it’s really, it’s a daily routine for you. That’s incredible.

Paul McCarthy 27:59
A lot of people do seven days a week, I mean, all of those people, you know, and then you get the people in February, they do it for charity. On February 1, you stay in for one minute and February 2, you same for two minutes, and then all the way up until you know 28, 29 days. And that’s tough go on. So my hat goes off to those people because I cannot do that.

Max Branstetter 28:20
Oh my god, I’m freezing thinking about it. I’m gonna need to just curl up, sit next to the fireplace and read a book about something warm after this. So that kind of refreshes or cleanses you in your transition from the workday to home life later in the day. How about in the morning? Is there anything you do to like, get into the work mode or wake you up in the morning?

Paul McCarthy 28:45
No, I’m I’m actually a morning person. So the minute I get up, I usually just make make a pot of coffee and I’m sitting down within 10 minutes of waking up that may not be wanting to be recommending to people. I hear a lot of people saying you need to do something for 30 minutes or 45 minutes for yourself every morning. I’ve heard it every time and I believe it. But I just haven’t another another practitioner. I am best if I wake up at 6am I’m best at 6:10 just turning my day and and getting focused.

Max Branstetter 29:16
Well, I think you should have been freezing cold water for half an hour in the morning too. I mean, you’re really you’re, you’re slacking there. I don’t know if you’re spending enough time there.

Paul McCarthy 29:25
Like I’m not worthy. I’m just not worthy.

Max Branstetter 29:29
So speaking of cool and unique and unusual things, let’s get to the unusual so I won’t let you say you know the polar bear club for any of this but this is pet peeves quirks weird talents so what is a what’s a weird talent or some say party trick that you have something that you’re really good at? Maybe just around the house or a memory trick or something? But it has nothing to do with your business.

Paul McCarthy 29:54
Oh, that was that was a very difficult question. Now you’re no you’re still

Max Branstetter 29:59
wasn’t gonna be Easy, nobody said it’s gonna be easy.

Paul McCarthy 30:02
party trick. I do tell I can tell a couple of jokes. I’m not going to tell any here because they might some of them might be not relevant to this conversation. Well,

Max Branstetter 30:11
okay, well, I have to stop you there. So we are rated explicit. So there’s no concerns about content, or there. Is there a joke that you’re willing to share? Given that people know this is an exclusive show?

Paul McCarthy 30:24
I don’t think so. But the jokes I’m thinking, Okay, let’s move on to the next question.

Max Branstetter 30:31
Okay, maybe maybe you’ll tell me offline, and then I’ll use ESP to tell people about it. Okay. All right. So you’re a good joke teller. You just have to believe it, though. What about pet peeves? Is there something that just really ticks you off at some something rather minor in life, but it really just annoys you for some reason.

Paul McCarthy 30:53
Um, I’ve got a number of those. I hate I hate people wasting time in the business setting. I think if you’re giving a presentation for 10 minutes to 20 people, you have a responsibility, whatever, 10 minutes by 20 is your responsibility to make that valuable to those people. And you should prepare for that. I hate people coming into meetings and just rambling and you’ve just wasted 10 minutes for 20 people or whatever. So wasting time, don’t get me started wasting resources. It’s as simple as when I was growing up, you would just hate to be in someone’s house and they will have the clothes dryer on when it’s a beautiful day outside. That’s wasting resources that’s wasting valuable, you know, natural resources. People who don’t recycle. That’s, that irks me, you see somebody putting a, a aluminum can into it into a trash can, you know, instead of instead of recycling it, or glass or whatever. So that would tick me off a little bit. So you get three Peeves to counter, you know, tell them a joke.

Max Branstetter 31:53
Perfect. Yeah, no, you’re making an extra valuable for us. And then quarks. What is something a little bit quirky about your personality? I won’t let you say the simplicity aspect. But what is something a little bit unique to your personality? That there’s no shame in it? No, it’s great. It’s who you are.

Paul McCarthy 32:09
Sometimes I can probably speak a little liberally, and maybe maybe nothing think things out. Before I just say it straight out. I’m prone to exaggeration. I mean, the joke that some people say is I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate. So I’m prone to that. So I could very often say something to somebody, then I have to actually pull it back because they’ve actually thought it was being serious. You know, this has happened 487 times and it’s a 47. Of course, it was exaggerating, you know, it happened six times, you know, so I’m probably a little bit prone to exaggeration, in order to get my point across.

Max Branstetter 32:49
That’s fantastic. And that explains this interview so much is that you’re just known to blow things up. So much. So thank you. Now. Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. Are you ready for it? Sure. All right, let’s get wild. What is your favorite all time? restaurant or bar or pub in the East Village?

Paul McCarthy 33:17
Oh, in the East Village, it’s not there anymore. There was there was an insane place called The Village Idiot.

Max Branstetter 33:25
Now this sounds like a joke.

Paul McCarthy 33:27
It literally was an I used to bring customers there. And it was it was it was a small narrow bar. And when the owner his name was Tommy would would feel offended by something. He would use the soft drinks dispenser thing and just spray everybody. So it’s just I just I just love the energy of that guy. He was crazy. Hopefully he’s still alive. Could have no idea. But if you were best of luck to you, but that was that was kind of cool. That was very cool.

Max Branstetter 33:59
That was cool. Idiots all around. Absolutely love it. Well, you know, you mentioned you’re on five continents. I think actually, you could probably exaggerate up to eight continents, and people would believe you. But I’m sure you’ve done some travel as part of your growing empire of Snapfix. What’s a place that you didn’t know too much about that? totally surprised you and you absolutely loved visiting

Paul McCarthy 34:23
Easter Island, myself and my friend Chris from Texas. We did a bit of research once on the remotest inhabited island on Earth. And we said we got we got to find a way to go there. And it turned out that it was Easter Island. And we hung out there for a couple of weeks. And we hung out in the hills and in the hills with some of the local guys and just pitched our tent up there with them. And it was just extremely cool.

Max Branstetter 34:48
That is extremely cool. And that’s where those giant heads are right. This giant heads or whatever that whatever they’re called the Easter Island heads. Sorry, what’s it called?

Paul McCarthy 34:59
I believe It’s spelt M-o-a-i, Moai.

Max Branstetter 35:02
how would you characterize in those in person

Paul McCarthy 35:04
just thinking about the engineering to create these and to stand them up in an island where you can stand at the top of the island and you’re looking at the Pacific Ocean all the way around. It’s just it’s it’s frightening to think how they accomplished that with such engineering accuracy. I couldn’t I still can’t get over it execute, still can’t understand it. And it wasn’t a big population of people.

Max Branstetter 35:27
Yeah, it’s unbelievable. It’s like that Stonehenge, the Pyramids in Egypt, like those are all just mysterious, but awesome. Engineering Marvels.

Paul McCarthy 35:36
Mind-blowing.

Max Branstetter 35:39
How long did it take you and your siblings to get ready for school when it’s 12 kids getting ready for school?

Paul McCarthy 35:44
minutes, because we would, we would typically try to sleep in late and then somebody would scream the bus. And then you’d run out scrambling to the door. And then they would finish their sentence by saying is read or something in the bus wouldn’t be there at all. So you would just scramble. And sometimes you’d miss breakfast and just just get out there. But the bus stopped literally outside front gate warehouse, which was cool.

Max Branstetter 36:08
That’s an incredible image. I swear it your childhood is a movie that goes back to the motorcycle running around. But that’s just incredibly visual image. And then last one, I couldn’t resist with this. How often do you get confused for Paul McCartney?

Paul McCarthy 36:22
I met a guy in a local restaurant recently. And his name was Eddie Murphy. I said I’m Paul McCarthy, he said, if you get the same heat that I guess, said Yeah, so the outcome I just have to usually just say this guy’s you do not want to hear me saying that’s how I shut up.

Max Branstetter 36:42
Wow. Well, Sir Paul, thank you 487 times for for coming on. for making the time today for for all you do the awesome Snapfix story really, really enjoyed talking to you and you have me itching to visit Ireland again. Just a magical place and just love with your what you’re doing. So thanks so much for coming on. Where is the best place for people to check out learn more about Snapfix and if they want to connect with you online? Well, first

Paul McCarthy 37:09
of all, thank you very much Max, you’re you and your listeners. Everybody’s welcome to Ireland and bring your swimming trunks.

Max Branstetter 37:16
Although you might force us to jump in the water when it’s negative degrees Celsius.

Paul McCarthy 37:21
It’ll happen it’ll happen and if anyone would like to reach out with us with any with any if we can help with any buildings infrastructure equipment, we’re on Snapfix.com

Max Branstetter 37:31
Perfect. And then last thing Final Thoughts it could be you know, a joke that you might decide to tell no, no pressure could be a song now it could be quote words to live by whatever you want. Send us home here the stage is yours.

Paul McCarthy 37:43
Be kind. I’ve benefited from amazing kindness from a number of people. As we’ve been building Snapfix, and they’ve been very generous with their time with their advice, and and their support. And it’s something I always want to make sure I give back. And that’s it. Just be kind.

Max Branstetter 38:05
Be kind and please rewind if you want to hear Paul again. Thank you so much, Paul. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast, sharing your story, sharing the Snapfix snappy-fixiness that is just sensational. And thank you Wild listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business will follow. Make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite podcast app and tell a friend about the podcast and then go to visit Paul in Ireland and dip into the freezing cold water as you try out Snapfix but don’t get your phone or tablet in the water. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are fantastic podcasts and podcast recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!