Jeremy Weisz 15:18
To me Amit is, when you are in the industry you’re in, you have to do a lot of hiring. And you also have to get feedback and make sure, okay, we’re hiring a lot. But you don’t just like if you’re an Uber, there’s like, you know, there’s a lot of technology behind that in the rating system and everything. So I love to hear first, we’ll talk about your hiring process, what that looks like. And then how did you incorporate feedback, see, like, people like, yeah, I love this person. They were amazing. Or, you know, when dealing with people, there are people that don’t show up. Also, right? So talk about the hiring process that we can all learn from what you do because you are hiring a higher volume, probably the most competent?
Amit Oestreicher 16:02
Well, first of all, we have a very quick and easy onboarding process, you just have to fill out with a few details and you’re in, you see all the feet of jobs that you are able to work at. And if you’re interested in one of the jobs, then the process really starts and we send you to fill all the forms needed for you. And then we do the interview in which we decide if first of all you fit in if you fit to what kind of job you fit. And what happens. Although there’s a lot of technology, there’s still people that decide, my staff decides who’s who’s gonna go where. Because I believe that in the end, when you manage so many people, and we employ 1000s of people a year, there has to be a decision making process made by people.
Because there are a lot of variables in the human factor. So it can be fully automated, there’s a lot of automation, but in the end, it’s a human decision. And then, of course, there’s the feedback, because although we have a very, very easy onboarding stage, the real customer journey starts when the employee leaves his home, goes to work, and then ends his job and gets back to work. And it’s our it’s an hours of user journey, which I don’t really have any control over it because it can be late for the bus, it can be you know, somebody, it’s raining, somebody shouts at you, or whatever, so it really disappoints, you’re going to process. So we’ve had both sides. As we vet the employees, we also have the businesses, I won’t get any business into the platform, he has to be really good for them, he has to treat them, right. I fired businesses as well, as I fired, you know, employees were not good for the platform. We also find businesses as we understand that the feedback that we’re getting is not good. You know, if you’re getting bad feedback one time, second time.
Third, you understand that the problem is not with the employees, the problem is with the business itself, and it’s not good for you. So we have a two sided rating system, the employees are ready to shift after the job is done, when they clock out. The business is ready, an example is when he gets the timesheets. And we can see who is blocking who his favorite is. So this is the best way to build a team making everything work right for them. Are there any
Jeremy Weisz 18:41
other things we should point out with the technology piece? And, and the feedback because I’m sure there’s other stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. When they’re less valuable to you when that person leaves? What’s happening with the company? What kind of things are they entering in? And how does it get processed on your end?
Amit Oestreicher 19:03
Well, we collect a lot of data over the employee, it’s really extensive data, nobody treats part time and on demand staff the way that we see it, because although it’s part time, there are people using us for almost eight years. You know, they come and go whenever they can meet the standard as seniors who have finished high school. And now the users through all those services in the IDF when they go back home, and they change jobs every now and then you just click a button and go to work.
And then when they’re students, we give them the flexibility not to get obligations. One job who wants them to work like five days a week because they need to have the flexibility to learn and of course after they finish the graduate and we have four , I did their real job for the rest of our lives. So we collect a huge amount of data over the people to really know what they’re capable of, were they good, whether or not we helped the business of making the right decision? How did you decide how to charge? And
Jeremy Weisz 20:23
Dual- sided marketplaces are difficult, right? You need these companies of these workers and you need companies that are unique. And that, that flexing up and down?
Amit Oestreicher 20:34
How do you decide? As far as charging goes, first of all, the employees are not paying, of course, it’s free for them. We charge the businesses. We built the dashboards, we built the dashboard, we did a lot of experimenting, seeing things running. And then we understood, we took the KPIs for that and we understood how much it cost to recruit a worker, how much it cost them to go to work. How much do I need to charge in business, in order to make it profitable to me and how long? And we now know, we have so many dashboards and statistics to show that if you send a new worker to Amit, it will probably leave after the first time. And if you send it to Jeremy, it will stay you know, because we understand that this is good for allocating new workers. And this one is not so it’s really a lot of dashboards and understanding throughout the years of doing optimization about how much do we need to charge?
Jeremy Weisz 21:42
I’m wondering, you know, oftentimes, at least myself, I learned a lot from the mistakes I made. Do you remember early on learning that you had to shift with the pricing model because of something you learned? Yeah,
Amit Oestreicher 22:00
we had a contract with a big business. Well the company was killed, we gave them a very, very attractive price, in order to make everything happen. And the obligation from their side was to bring us jobs throughout the year, all year long. And they didn’t do their site. So it was really fluctuating and seasonal again, and again, which affected the recruitment, revenues and cost much more than expected, and we lost a lot of money in the deal.
Jeremy Weisz 22:46
So what did you do differently? I can see, okay, we’ll give you a good deal. Because you’re going to, you know, give us a little more stable work. And then the stable work doesn’t happen, and you’re still paying out what you need to pay out. What did you do differently after that scenario?
Amit Oestreicher 23:07
With everything in the contract, and not relying on the promise itself? Yeah. When did
Jeremy Weisz 23:19
G-nie come about? So Xtras? The next year, and then you started G-nie? Yeah. Um,
Amit Oestreicher 23:28
I was walking through my customers, and we’re doing demos, you know, sometimes face to face, not only online. And I realized that I’m sitting during the onboarding for this side of the platform, just like, you know, looking over my shoulder and saying, Okay, you give me a portal to make the orders and see the timesheets, and the invoices and the staff and everything. But what is the admin that you use here for yourself? I want to, I want that admin for myself as well to manage my own co-workers, because you build something amazing for yourself. And then we understood that we’ve built for ourselves something that many other businesses can use, as well.
So for last year, during the whole year, we changed the whole infrastructure of Xtras, in order to make it the SaaS platform in order to duplicate it to optimize it for every business that wants to run its own workforce management platform. We understand that the work today is going more and more into gigs, not full time jobs. And when a business wants to schedule people into gigs usually doesn’t have the platform in order to manage it because it’s used to have you know, people working firms like Monday to Friday, nine to five, then people started to say okay, I don’t want to work full time job for your work like part time, instead of one person that needs to have to hire to But how does he manage that? This is what God does for the business. Saying that we do for ourselves.
Jeremy Weisz 25:10
Yeah, so you built a solution that you needed to use to manage Xtras. And then people saw it. And they said, I want that, also. So what kind of companies are using G-nie. And by the way, if you’re listening to the audio, there is a video component we’re showing. And the G-nie website here is G dash and ie.io. And obviously, there’s people, companies from all over the world that use this. What kind of companies are using this?
Amit Oestreicher 25:43
First of all, everybody that uses scheduling platforms, you know, it’s not built for a tech company that says it’s full time employees that come to work into the office every day, it is for blue collar industries. If you’re a staffing company that’s using blue collar industries, that’s really tailored for your needs. If you’re from the events industry, and using gigs of every now and then need for people to come to work for you detail for your needs, if it’s a retail industry company that want to optimize its workforce in several branches, to move people whenever they can want to, in order to optimize the workforce, to make them work full time jobs, not even in one place. It could work for them as well. These are the main industries and segments that we can bring value in.
Jeremy Weisz 26:38
And I think, you know, we were talking before we hit record. I’m not sure if this was gene for Jeanne or Xtras, but you’re mentioning that you’ve seen a lot of companies that are wanting volunteers.
Amit Oestreicher 26:56
Use your knowledge of your offerings. Yeah, that happens G-nie these days. Because of the situation here in Israel. There’s a lot of volunteers within Israel to volunteer like everywhere, and it’s everything that happens overnight. Or ventures that came into the air and just needed the mass manpower to go everywhere. So and then they start working in sheets, and in WhatsApp groups, and then like everywhere, and it’s hectic. And one day, someone called me and said, you have a solution, right? I remember you for one day, and you said that you have to shoot. Yes, of course. And then we did a quick onboarding. And you know, hundreds of people just went in like two hours and things such as rollouts and then spread the word to other people, other places and companies. And this is what we’re doing here in Israel. Right now. We’re running volunteers throughout the country, but in many, many jobs. They’re new.
Jeremy Weisz 28:06
Yeah, so a company before I mean, it could be any company, I mean, this situation, with the volunteers, they’re doing it off of a spreadsheet, okay, like this person can come, they can work at this time. And this day, and like, here, they can just easily go on. And they can we’re looked at, they can manage a schedule, there’s different people, and they can actually plug people in and just manage it on one dashboard. They
Amit Oestreicher 28:33
tell people just everywhere where they need to be to give them the contact person they give them before location, they ask them for an attendance, they have a clock in and out that just shows that the people really arrived at the place that they were supposed to be at. It lowers their attention as well. Because when you’re looking for volunteers, you just say people, you know, go and there’s someone to pick oranges tomorrow in the field like 6am, but the person needed like 20 people. And 100 people are showing up because they saw they want to do something but then you tell 80 people, I don’t need to go home. You know, and what do those people do?
They don’t show up for another volunteer. And other times, even if they wanted to, because they’re so disappointed. You know? So we give everything that is peaceful and quiet. Just show everybody their schedule or do not give them the full instructions. You know, we lower the noise of just sending mass messages from everywhere to everywhere. We again keep the data of the human factor in one place because the person who runs everything is also volunteering, you know, and if next week, you’ll go back to work. All the data related to what it did stayed within his phone or with his Google sheet you know, so this is not the thing that needs to be done. So we keep everything in one place. You know,
Jeremy Weisz 30:07
I mean, when you have a company and you’re running that company, you know, Xtras, with technology behind the scenes, and now you have a front-facing piece. That’s a SaaS company. Now, what features did you
Amit Oestreicher 30:24
have to build in
Jeremy Weisz 30:25
to make sure this was ready for a front facing piece? Like you could see here, I’m looking through this. What’s interesting is like, there’s a lot of things that are built into this, right? There’s a shift schedule, there’s a time clock, there’s RSVPs, as a rating system, what were some of the key features that you got feedback from when you released this, that helped you improve the platform?
Amit Oestreicher 30:50
Well, first of all, we really developed everything in house for ourselves. I know, a lot of people asked me throughout the years, why aren’t you using third party companies or features in order to be implemented, because it’s open source, and you can do it by minute and things like that. But I’m really protecting the data of my users. Because usually, when you’re using third party companies, you need to give the data to other companies and other people. And I never wanted to do that. So we developed everything in house. We love that we got a lot of feedback throughout the years from our clients, and from our employees, like, we would love a button that will do this.
For me, I would love a feature that will do that for me. So we really listen, we really listen, we do surveys a few times a year and ask both sides what they love and what they think needs to be improved. Because, you know, I remember that one time, I was thinking about the future. And I was, you know, handling with myself how to build it, and what do I need to do? And then I woke up one morning and said, I have 1000s of employees, you know, why won’t I ask them? If they need it? Then if they do, what did they want to do with it, you know, just, you know, spread the survey within the app? And ask them? What was one of those
Jeremy Weisz 32:19
things? I mean, do you remember or maybe a few that you got feedback from the
Amit Oestreicher 32:26
the rating system is great, you know, the time sheets, the feedback that we’re getting from the clients is that everything is organized. Now, they say I’ve never seen anything like that in any other companies, people are saying to me, they used to send me the list of people in WhatsApp or in mail, or, you know, just logging into the sheet. And here, I just log into one portal, and I can see everything from my order into the invoice. Everything is run in one place. Everything is very, very neat and nice. And, you know, we have videos where we do instructions, but we’ve learned to see that even the elderly people are getting along with it just fine. Because it’s so easy to use. No.
Jeremy Weisz 33:22
Yeah, I’m seeing some of these rating systems. I’m sure it’s improved over the years. But you could see, again, I’m sure there’s a reason for all of these things. But you can see, you can add to your fair employees. And it’s not just about what kind of job they did. But there’s an appearance, there’s a general function and a punctuality and I’m sure what happened was this person was a great worker, they’re punctual. And someone was like, I’m guessing. I mean, like, they just didn’t show up looking professional or whatever.
Amit Oestreicher 33:57
So this is what it’s all not only technology, there’s a lot of technology side by side, I think that the thing that really defines this is the service that we give to both sides, from the staff itself, we answer everything, we answer them weekly, we give them service seven days a week from morning to night. So everything is answered in less than a minute. Really, every ticket is answered in less than a minute. And if you’re asking really I was walking years ago into one of over an event with one of my advisors just to show him everything that goes around and and I told them the client, tell them what’s good enough and I was expecting as he said here, the technology, the staff and everything like that and you said the service seriously the Service said yes you know People come and go, there are people everywhere but give us the I’ve never seen any service that really comparison to what you give as as, as a whole, you know?
Because in the end, it’s all about, you know, listening, and understanding and giving the answers not not all the time, you know, the answers will be derived as to what the client expects, but it’s still the answer. And by the way, both of them are clients, the workers are also clients, and I see them as more important clients than the one who actually pays. Because if they’re not happy, if they won’t be any employees that want to go and grab that job, this company would survive, you know, even if the client would pay me a million dollar for each worker, Southern needs to say, yes, I want to do that job, and they need to be happy, they need to be satisfied. So much more important to me, than the businesses that are paying for this company.
Jeremy Weisz 36:12
I mean, are there any surprises of companies that use the platform that you didn’t expect? Like you’re saying that blue collar I can see use cases for nonprofits, I can see restaurants, you know, like, people who have a lot of maybe shift workers, what are some use cases you found, that maybe have surprised you of people using the the software
Amit Oestreicher 36:38
companies, that companies or you really expect them just to hire full time employees and things like that. And they can run into project based workers, their job jobs for a few weeks or a few months? I didn’t see them first as potential clients. And it was very surprising to see that we can bring value to them as well.
Jeremy Weisz 37:07
Then we mentioned COVID. Right? Your client base evaporates overnight. Because you’re in the hospitality industry. Then October 7, tense, right?
Amit Oestreicher 37:21
What happened?
Jeremy Weisz 37:22
Where were you when everything went down?
Amit Oestreicher 37:26
Well, October 7 was Saturday. I just came from a flight the day before I was jetlagged. I fell asleep on my sofa. I woke up to 632 sirens. And fortunately here in Israel, we just hear the sirens here and there. And I asked myself really, is there a song right now? Okay.
Jeremy Weisz 37:53
And sirens for people who don’t know what they mean?
Amit Oestreicher 37:58
Yeah, missiles, suicides because of missiles firing from from somewhere. So I just ran to the shelter. And then when it was all finished, I texted my family. I know what happened. There was just silence here. But I’m too tired of going back to sleep. And then I woke up a few hours later, and everything was like, hundreds of messages and everything was chaos. And, of course, everything was shut down again. And we started, four weeks have passed since we reinvented ourselves again during the fun. So because businesses shut down
Jeremy Weisz 38:50
and it’s reminiscent of, you know, losing, evaporating the business, what do you think and what are you doing? We’re still in the midst of that right now. What’s going on? So how are you thinking about rebuilding for, you know, because people don’t need staff when they’re shutting down? Well,
Amit Oestreicher 39:12
So we lost all of our client base in one day. Again, it’s starting to go back now very, very slowly. But again, just like COVID There’s a huge shortage of people because hundreds of 1000s of people are in the IDF right now serving as reserve soldiers. So there’s a shortage of like 10% in the labor market of people right now. There are a lot of people who’ve been evacuated from the homes in the South and in the North, who were really located right on the center result and they do need some kind of work so try again to You better bridge the gaps between the demand and supply. For those people, we’re seeing a huge opportunity to take a bigger part in what’s going on right now in Israel, to help people really going back into their feeds, and help them to make a living these days. And for the businesses again to survive. It just got to be a lot different from what we did today. Again.
Jeremy Weisz 40:35
How is this different? I mean, like, I mean, you again, you say so casually, the sirens go off, there’s missiles, I go into my bomb shelter. I mean, that shouldn’t be normal. But you speak of it like it is normal. How is this different? Because you’ve obviously heard sirens before? How has it affected you? And how is it different this time,
Amit Oestreicher 40:59
it’s not anything like everything that I ever experienced. And I don’t wish everyone would experience something like that. In his life. It’s a life changing event. If it’s a small country, and what’s happened here, perspective and affects everyone, I don’t think that there’s a family here in Israel that doesn’t know somebody, or a friend or a family or whatever was murdered or not. During those seven it’s nothing I’ve unlike everything that anything that they have experienced, really, it took us as an entrepreneur, as an as an a company owner that really have to go back on his feet. Because a lot of people rely on me. It’s like an automatic automatic mechanism. That forces me to go back on my feet and start running again. But seeing my staff, 95% of them are women. Seeing them, you know, not not being able to function and seeing them daily in the mornings, you know, just crying.
It’s just I don’t find geometry and find the words to even try to explain what’s what’s going on right now. It’s heartbreaking. Yeah. I was EO and helped you? Well, first of all, yo, I’m just finishing my first year in yo. So the one of the biggest advantages that I found in you, is not being alone. Now was a solo entrepreneur who did everything by himself. And it’s very, very hard journey, even if you have partners, and by all means, if you’re if you’re alone, the forum, and the chapter is an amazing place to be as a network, and someone to speak with and to understand that you’re not alone with your peers and your doubts and with your decision making process. And the network itself. You know, I’ve met a lot of people throughout this year from the Google network. And then I start to get messages and emails from people like saying, are you okay? Everything’s fine? How can I help you? Really, it’s heartwarming, really, to see all the support that we got to dive into the I got from people who have hardly known me. It’s amazing. Really, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 44:08
And for people who don’t know, EO is, you know, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and it’s, it’s a worldwide group, you know, all over the place. I think it’s over. I don’t even know how many 15,000 entrepreneurs across over 60 countries. So my last question, first of all, I mean, thank you, thanks for sharing your story, your journey and everyone should check out you know, if you’re in Israel Xtras.co.il And then if you’re not, check out geni.io which is g dash and IE, dial and poke around there, and if it’s, you know, someone who that’d be a good fit for let them know about it. Um, last question. I mean, it’s just On your entrepreneurial journey, you know, we all have mentors we have, it can be colleagues, people who have helped us along the way have given us advice, who are some that you can have considered mentors and maybe a piece of advice they’ve given you along the way?
Amit Oestreicher 45:18
Well, fortunately, I met a lot of amazing people . Although I’m a solo entrepreneur, you know, I wouldn’t be here. If I didn’t have amazing advisors and people who helped me just because they wanted to help. really did. But one of the biggest pieces of advice I could give is to just treat any advice and advice. Because it’s only advice, you know, I met a lot and made a lot of mistakes, because people gave me advice. And I said, Wow, this is just, you know, I just talked with a billionaire, and he gave me advice, he has to be wrong, you know, but his advice was for his journey, not for monitoring. But every journey, we have one mountain to climb on, but there are many paths to climb into. They’re on it. So its journeys are very unique. And listen, but don’t go and run to do everything that people tell you to do.
Jeremy Weisz 46:29
Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things I love about eo is people aren’t giving advice, but they’re actually just sharing their experience. And then we just take what is helpful for us from that experience, right? But is there a mentor that you that sticks out like when you when you lose
Amit Oestreicher 46:49
all your clients overnight?
Jeremy Weisz 46:53
And twice that you call to, to just for whatever reason, who are the people you lean on in the business world that you can just to whatever, whatever a tour, but my lawyer because
Amit Oestreicher 47:10
not not not because he’s my lawyer, because seriously, because it is a very known businessman, he built everything with his with his, you know, 10 fingers and he built in a few businesses and he’s amazing person, that I’m really proud that he’s taking the time even to listen to my questions. And you know, I’m really happy to be a lot of times the say the stupidest man in the room, just learn from people experiences and the thoughts that they’re willing to share with me. What they did in the past, maybe can help me when he’s one of them.
Jeremy Weisz 47:50
Is there a firm name? We should give a shout out to. How do you spell that?
Amit Oestreicher 47:57
R. F. A Di galili, g a li li. Well,
Jeremy Weisz 48:10
I mean, I want to be the first one to thank you, everyone. Check out more episodes of the podcast, check out Xtras and geni.io and we’ll see everyone next time. I mean, thanks so much.
Amit Oestreicher 48:20
Thank you.
