2013 COMPENSATION SURVEY RESULTS
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In WItH:
Mike Ponder
Wendy yurgo
Greg Cohen
Wendy Yurgo practiced law until
she discovered acquiring.
Now, she’s an ISO striving
for integrity and customer
W
endy Yurgo’s introduction to the world of merchant services came in an unlikely place — the courtroom.Yurgo was practicing as an attorney in Nevada when she needed to intervene on behalf of one of her clients. The client, a multi-level marketing business, was in a dispute with its payments processor.
“The client was just launching their business,” Yurgo said. “And since their merchant services got shut down and they were getting transactions declined all around, the word of mouth went south fast — It was catastrophic for them.”
As the attorney, Yurgo’s job was to get up to speed quickly on the payments processing business and help untangle who owed what to whom. And since she was approaching the situation cold, she didn’t know a terminal lease from an interchange rate.
“I came to this really without knowing anything about the industry,” she said.
It turns out that Yurgo was a quick learner. After studying the case, she was able to untangle the situation, get her client’s money back, and get the business up and running again.
The dispute taught Yurgo something else, too. Yurgo said she saw problems in the way the payments industry operated, and she figured there was a better way to do things — she believed she discovered a need in the market that she could fill.
And that’s how Metrics Global Inc. was born. Perhaps predictably, though, the road from attorney to the office of president and CEO of her own payments company was not without its obstacles.
After the case with her legal client, Yurgo began seeking out insiders who could help her get started in the payments industry.
Her first move was to find some lawyers and consultants who could provide advice.
“I hired consultants, but all they kept saying was ‘your idea will never work,’” she said. “It was a bumpy introduction to the industry.”
One consultant, in particular, stands out in Yurgo’s mind as an obstacle. Yurgo said she hired the woman and discussed her idea for a business.
“The consultant said, ‘I can help with that’ and then went and got prices for what I was looking to do,” Yurgo said. “But then she turns around and tries to convince me my idea just couldn’t be done.”
Yurgo said the woman instead urged her to abandon hope of setting out on her own and suggested she instead should sign on as an agent with an ISO based in Florida.
“But I had no interest in being an agent for someone else,” Yurgo said. “I had a vision. I have big ideas. I have no interest in splitting 50-50 with someone.”
Yurgo said that when she told the consultant she had no intention of signing on as an agent, the consultant became enraged. Yurgo said the consultant even went so far as to call vendors and tell them not to work with Yurgo’s startup.
“It’s hard to believe that there is an industry that is more cut-throat than lawyers,” Yurgo said.
Undeterred, Yurgo went ahead with her plans and looked for someone else who could help her lay the groundwork. That is when she found Mark Dunn. Dunn is a consultant and runs Field Guide Enterprises LLC.
“Mark Dunn was one of the people who said my idea would work,” Yurgo said.
She enrolled in one of Dunn’s seminars and began her new career.
Dunn said he remembers the sessions with Yurgo, and said she stood out as a quick learner, a focused student and someone with a sharp mind for working out deals.
A Legal Advantage
As one of the younger students in her law class — she was 23 when she enrolled in the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law after graduating from Michigan State University — Yurgo said she already had experience facing down tough situations before trekking into the payments industry.
“I had been knocked down plenty before that, so I wasn’t dissuaded,” she said.
As a younger law student, she said she didn’t have the benefit of years of professional experience to inform her coursework and always felt she was at a disadvantage to the students who had a few professional years under their belts.
Still, she did well in school and after graduation, worked her way up the legal ladder, eventually landing a job as General Counsel for Cinnabon Inc. in Seattle. She went on to serve as vice president for business development for AFC Enterprises, the parent company of Popeye’s restaurants where she helped craft several international deals.
“As a lawyer, I was always involved with business, and I was always business-minded,” she said.
She describes herself as one of the rare lawyers who is also a businessperson.
“The joke was always that the legal departments were called the ‘business prevention units,’” she said. “But my attitude was always to determine my clients’ goals and figure out ways to help them achieve those goals.”
That legal background is what Yurgo points to as one of her primary competitive advantages now that she is working in payments.
“I understand how to make money. I understand how the business owners are thinking,” she said.
One of Yurgo’s hallmarks, according to Dunn, is the entrepreneurial view she has of payments services — one of the key virtues he says he tries to instill in all his aspiring ISOs.
“She really is extremely entrepreneurial,” Dunn said. “I tell people, ‘Don’t attack the competition at their point of strength. Look for niche markets that are underserved and exploit them,’ and that is what she does. If you go toe to toe with the giants, you are going to get squashed.”
Dunn said one of Yurgo’s greatest strengths has been in finding opportunities where other people hadn’t.
“She really has done a good job of picking out some markets that are underserved and has done very well with them,” Dunn said.
Seeing Markets Others Overlook
One area that hints at her entrepreneurial approach is her strong involvement in the direct sales and multi-level
marketing industries — areas many ISOs would likely overlook.
Yurgo said she was introduced to multi-level marketing in much the same way most people are — she had a friend who was selling Amway.
Yurgo said she looked at the way the front-line sellers were working with the distributors, who were then working with the higher levels of the organization, and she saw opportunity. “We are really more in the corporate side of direct sales. We are a couple levels up from that front line and our real goal is to solve their big-picture problems,” she said.
The bigger-picture problems faced by the higher levels of the organizations, whether they are multi-level marketing companies, franchise groups, day care centers or country clubs, are the ones that appeal to Yurgo. She said she enjoys her job most when she is facing the most complex problems.
“The greatest thing for me is when I have just finished helping someone with some part of their business, and then the CFO tells the owner, ‘Wow, I love that. That just took five hours out of my work day,’ ” she said.
A focus on problem solving is what she strives to bring to the table, regardless of the size of business she is working with.
“It doesn’t matter if it is a small merchant or a big merchant. From a service standpoint we hope all our clients feel loved,” she said.
Meticulous Use Of Metrics
An area of consulting Yurgo said she loves to introduce to her clients is metrics — it is literally built into the name of her firm: Metrics Global.
“Everything we do is tracked, and we are meticulous,” she said. “Metrics is a measure of profitability. And that is where the name came from.”
Yurgo said she does her best to use those metrics to help all her clients improve their profitability.
Wendy Yurgo with client Jose Figueroa of Salon Jose in La Jolla, CA
“She really has done a good job of
picking out some markets that are
underserved.”
– Mark Dunn, Field Guide Enterprises LLC, commenting on Wendy Yurgo
“And we are not just talking about payments. There are other places I can help,” she said.
She said she never crosses the line and never gives legal advice, although several clients have asked if they can retain her — she just doesn’t practice law anymore.
“But I can help them with ideas that will drive profitability,” she said. “We share with our clients tips and strategies to reduce their fees. We really stress education. We always try to stay on top of all the rules and laws and changes to make sure we are maximizing the benefit for our clients.”
She said she also practices what she preaches and uses metrics to monitor customer service at her own firm, and that emphasis has ensured customer satisfaction among her clients.
“We are a company that offers great customer service and our product just happens to be merchant services,” she said. “We have customers who tell us things like, ‘Wow, you return calls.’ And we do.”
Another hallmark of Yurgo’s focus is also built into her firm’s name: global perspective. Yurgo said she loves helping her clients with international and multi-currency transactions.
“Our world is a very teeny tiny world,” she said. “I remember when I went to school, China and all those places were so far away and exotic. But that’s not the case anymore. Now everything is globalized.”
Yurgo said with e-commerce and Internet-based transactions, people from all over the world can buy products from all over the world.
“E-commerce is a natural progression for our business, and I am happy and excited to process in multiple currencies,” she said.
Yurgo said she works hard to instill a sense of integrity in everyone who works for her.
Her work ethic and deep moral beliefs were founded when she was a girl, helping her father out at his business. Her time there taught her that as a leader of an organization, it is her responsibility to set the tone for the workplace and provide a good example for everyone around her.
“My father owned a chain of supermarkets, and beginning at 10, I was bagging groceries. He told me to work in every department and work harder than everyone else BECAUSE I am the owner’s daughter. That is a lesson I still hold to this day,” she said.
Dunn said that Yurgo’s virtues shine through in her professional interactions.
“There are people in our business who are successful and who can’t find a reason to be nice, but Wendy is very, very, nice to work with,” Dunn said.
Her focus on integrity is especially important because in many instances, people and companies in the payments industry have resorted to tactics that are less than honorable in the pursuit of profit, she said.
“There are still some players in our industry who lack integrity,” she said. “When you are in a bad economy, people struggle, and when they struggle, they are often willing to compromise. Their priorities are off.”
She said in any industry with large volumes of money moving through the system, potentially bad players often succumb to temptation.
“For a lot of people — if your values and integrity aren’t a rock-solid foundation, money can be very corrupting,” she said.
Yurgo said having high integrity goes beyond merely following the law. She said she tries to steer clear of things that aren’t in her client’s best interest, even if they are perfectly legal.
Looking Out For Clients
She points to a common practice from a few years back — leasing equipment.
“When I first got into the industry, all the sales agents were leasing equipment. It was a great money maker, but the lawyer in me found that appalling,” she said.
One of Yurgo’s early clients was a country club. When she began looking at the country club’s system, she found they had a 48-month non-cancelable lease for two payments terminals at $170 per month.
“Those would have cost me about $119 wholesale to buy outright,” she said. “For me, that was a scam. That was horrendous.”
As a policy, Yurgo said she doesn’t lease terminals. “We sell them at cost for all our merchants,” she said.
Yurgo is the first to admit Metrics Global isn’t the biggest player in the industry — and she likes it that way.
“Often times, when companies get too big, they forget about the client and the client gets lost in the shuffle,” she said. “Their agility is lost and everything gets very bureaucratic.” She said she isn’t interested in growing her company into the biggest firm. Instead, she wants to maintain quality and customer satisfaction.
“Service is key to us. Whenever I travel, I try to check in with our customers in that area. I want to know how
“People ask me, ‘Do you really have a
99% retention rate with your merchants?’
And I tell them ‘Yes.’”
we are doing,” Yurgo said.
“Some people want to be the biggest, and I get that, but I don’t think you can be the biggest and always be the best,” she maintained.
Client service is an absolute virtue with Yurgo, and she says that focus brings joy to her professional life.
“I don’t wake up to an alarm clock. I don’t even own one,” she said. “I wake up happy and excited and ready
to help the client.”
And, according to Yurgo, a client-centered approach has also helped her keep clients much more loyal than most companies in the industry.
“People ask me, ‘Do you really have a 99% retention rate with your merchants?’ And I tell them ‘Yes.’ Only a couple handfuls of companies have ever left over the history of our company,” she said.
Keeping her focus on integrity, problem solving, customer service and creative solutions has been part of that formula for success.
“Money is the byproduct of doing the right thing. We will be successful if we do the right thing,” she said. ISO
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