Cam Richardson from Paysquad

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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy

[Ad]: Today's checkout features Cam Richardson, founder of PaySquad, the group payment platform that's flipping checkout on its head. Cam shares his fresh perspective on E commerce, his latest inspirations, and the tech that he can't live without.

Nathan Bush: Cam, thank you so much for joining us on the Checkout. We had a brilliant main conversation where we talked about the amazing things that you're building with PaySquad, allowing groups of customers to join together to make big transactions either as gifts or for people in their friendship or family circles. Some of the amazing stats that you gave us in there was around the average order value being over $800 and that was over 95% of groups actually reached their target goal, which blew my mind. But we are here to learn a little bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?

Cam Richardson: Thinking recently like it was a $35 bee suit and it wasn't for beekeeping but to do battle with wasps in my backyard.

Nathan Bush: I actually pictured you dressing up as a bee.

Cam Richardson: That'd be good, you know, throw the wasps off a bit. But I wanted to add another little answer to this one of like the same friends who bought me that three wheel motorbike also once bought online live locusts to release through my bed. So you know, it's sort of a give and it takes sort of friendship there. So we might be seeing locust squads.

Nathan Bush: They fill your house with smoke from a motorbike that they gift into and then they give you a plague of locusts.

Cam Richardson: Yeah, we can't tell the landlords about this

Nathan Bush: all right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?

Cam Richardson: Gotta say craft club. They have such creative ads, a sweet product range, almost 250,000 followers. And like, it just was really.

Nathan Bush: What kind of products are we talking?

Cam Richardson: They're Australia's fastest growing craft brands. So like, they're always like, hey, rather than having just another movie night with your friends, get out their kits. They can send through for embroidery or rug making or moss kits and, you know, be nanas for the afternoon. And they have just built the coolest brand around that we plug for them. They also do corporate craft gigs as well. So it's a great team builder.

Nathan Bush: Awesome. And you could pay as a squad if you needed to.

Cam Richardson: You could indeed. And that is to help more crafternoons happen. Oh, how good.

Nathan Bush: Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.

Cam Richardson: I said we'd go sort of like notion or something here, but I know really for us it has been LinkedIn. Like, when it's not the center of cringe, it is incredible for learning and networking and just finding out who's moving and shaking at the moment. There's also like a pretty strong e comm contingency on there if you can tie down the algorithm.

Nathan Bush: Yes. How do you tie down the algorithm? Let me in on your secrets.

Cam Richardson: You just have to like all the people that are just posting vacuous, like, nonsense. You just have to like, be like, hide, you know, block, unfollow and all the people that are just pumping out great content. Kyla from Profit Peak comes to mind. You're like, you know, you're always commenting like, and it helps her reach, helps, you know, keep your algorithm pure as well.

Nathan Bush: She's awesome. You do an awesome job of letting people into your personal life as well on LinkedIn. That's always the challenge for me. I'm very good at using it for work and sharing lessons and insights and connections. I'm more hesitant around sharing personal stuff on it. It's just me. But you do a great job in that. Yours isn't cringe, yours is genuinely tied to your mission. How do you approach that?

Cam Richardson: That is a relief. You know, you never know sometimes when you're posting, like, oh, geez, you know, for business, you know, everyone's always talking about what's your why and everything. And so, like, you might as well just share your real why. You know, like, that's the whole thing. If there is an aspect of your why, then you might as well just share it and be real and straight up. About it, because that is what people connect with and it reinforces it in your own mind as well.

Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it. Don't stop doing that. That's awesome.

Cam Richardson: Thanks, man.

Nathan Bush: All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?

Cam Richardson: A really good one for dipping your toes into AI? Is this day an AI podcast? You know, there's just so much out there, but if you go on there and look through the titles on something that you're like, oh, I did want to know a bit more about that. And throw it on. That can be pretty, pretty powerful.

Nathan Bush: What's the best hack or time saver that you're using AI for at the moment?

Cam Richardson: The start of the day, I do a huge voice note recorder of just, like, talking through all the stuff that is on my mind, all the ums and ahs and I need to talk to this person. Then I post it all into an AI and just say, hey, based on all this waffle, can you create a. We plan for my morning to do this. And then some of the interesting go to market AI plays mean that we can keep our team nice and small and strong and still reach people without just absolutely bombarding with terrible things, but just ways that scale that effectively.

Nathan Bush: Yeah. Cool. Great tips. Last one I've got for you, Cam. What is your biggest challenge today?

Cam Richardson: Honestly, it's looking at all of the opportunities and being intentionally brand and customer driven because we either have to fall on the side of the squads that we serve or these merchants as well. And we want to do both in tandem, ideally, but sometimes there are merchants that come that just wouldn't really fit with. We had one, but, like a car cleaning one that was like, yes, like, we want this. And. And you're like, it could be worth trying. But then they had, like, sort of these special requirements for the whole thing, and it would be really easy to sink half a day into serving that, that need or that merchant. But we just haven't seen the buying signals from the squads that have already used Pay Squad. And so being the kind of person in the company that's not just chasing every new option, but being really brand focused has been important and a big challenge, frankly.

Nathan Bush: Yeah, I can imagine.

[Ad]: And I got that sense from our

Nathan Bush: main chat when I was the idiot throwing it to you. Every, like, little scenario, whether it's gifting, whether it's joint group decision making, there are so many ways, and I'm sure you've thought of them all around, all the angles that you could go. But What I love is that you've gone. Actually, we're solving a really specific problem and one that no one else is solving. So let's get this right first, because that's the bulk of the market, and then we can kind of spread the tentacles.

Cam Richardson: Yeah, that's the one.

Nathan Bush: Love it. Cam, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout Legend.

[Ad]: To hear more from Cam, jump back into episode 502, where we unpack why Gen Z and Millennials are ditching credit cards and why group buying might just be the next big thing in E commerce.