Joe Keeley, CEO & Co-Founder at Justifi | Episode 177

My guest this week is a self-proclaimed “accidental entrepreneur” with a passion for facilitating the extraordinary. Justifi CEO and Cofounder Joe Keeley has had a fascinating journey through the world of entrepreneurship that all began with an employment ad that “wouldn’t be found anywhere but Minnesota.”

It was during his undergraduate career, and he was just looking for a way to make some extra money. When thumbing through the paper one day, Joe came across an employment ad for a nanny position with one major requirement: the applicant had to be a hockey player. Not only did this catch his attention due to the sheer uniqueness of the request but he was also highly qualified as he was playing hockey for his college team. His willingness to respond not only got him the job but also led him down a prolific entrepreneurial journey that lasted 15 years and resulted in 200 national locations and a lucrative sale to a public company.

And this was just his first business. For those of you who may not know, Justifi is a company that specializes in providing the technology for platforms to be world-class at payment monetization and going beyond payments. They accelerate the potential of vertical SaaS platforms and help them increase their value in the areas of payments technology, virtual fintech and the beyond payments space.

According to Joe, if you structure payments correctly, you can anticipate all the things customers want to do in the future and be set up for success. Tune in this week to hear him talk about his journey to CEO, including where he sees the industry in the next 2-3 years, the orchestration within his company that allows for the monetization of payments and beyond, as well as the various reasons why platforms shouldn’t always aim to become a payfac and how that can actually be a better business decision.