Alumni Feature: Mike Plunkett

“I understand how an experience like being at the Bloch School can change a life.” – Mike Plunkett

By Mike Plunkett

Mike Plunkett (’91) is co-founder and COO of PayIt, a Kansas City-based government tech company that successfully closed a $100 million growth equity investment in 2019. Before that, he was a top executive in startups throughout the area. Very active as a Bloch School alumnus, he serves on the Bloch Accountancy Executive Board and the Bloch School Advisory Board. He also was the speaker for Bloch’s 2019 winter commencement ceremonies.

He is, however, not the editor of the Bloch Magazine. That would be Mike Plunkett, who works in UMKC’s Division of Strategic Marketing and Communications (MCOM) and has written about business and entrepreneurship for various publications before coming to the university in 2018.

Confused? So was PayIt’s email filter, which labeled Mike Plunkett (MCOM)’s emails as “Suspicious Impersonator” in Mike Plunkett (PayIt)’s spam box.

Both sat down at the Bloch School to talk about lessons learned from Henry Bloch, working hard as an entrepreneur and giving back.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MIKE PLUNKETT (MCOM): Was coming to UMKC always part of your plan after high school?

MIKE PLUNKETT (PAYIT): No, it was never in the plan. I wanted to get away from Kansas City at that age and looked at a lot of schools but ended up going to Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. And so I spent two years there but I was also working my way through school. I liked SMU a lot, but I realized I didn’t want to live in Dallas. I loved Kansas City. At the same time in 1988, Henry Bloch had put all of the investment into this school. And so it was a convergence of a desire to live and work in Kansas City, and I wanted to change schools and be in an area and in a situation that would lend itself to working after school. This was the perfect place to come. And that’s still something the Bloch School is about. They are very passionate about being fully in Kansas City and helping students make that transition.

In many respects, it’s a small town. But it’s a big city. It offers world-class amenities, professional sports, all the things you have in a so-called NFL city. But you run across the same people with similar values who want to be here. It’s wonderful.

Did you ever meet Mr. Bloch?

One time. I wish I would have had an opportunity to speak to him, but I shook his hand and thanked him. I certainly have met Tom (Bloch, Henry’s son and founder of University Academy) many times. I have a tremendous respect for the Bloch family. I came to the Bloch School with just the intent to study business, and got into the accounting program because it was challenging and also just rich with opportunity for student government and student involvement. It was fun but also a very, I would say, life-changing experience for me.

Tell us how PayIt came about.

I had always been interested in the startup and entrepreneurial world. There’s a friend of mine, John Thomson, that I’ve known for most of that time. I was in a previous business and certainly they had the desire and intent for me to stay, but I was thinking about what I wanted to do. Being happy and being fulfilled and doing things that I’m passionate about is important.

John had the idea for what is now PayIt: to digitize, modernize and simplify government for everyone. He and I met in coffee shops, Panera, etc., to talk about whether we were going to do this full-time. He decided to do it full-time and become the CEO. This is now six years ago. I decided I would do the same, to join him as a co-founder of the business. Lots of people said we were idiots and maybe we were.

I read that PayIt may be Kansas City’s next billion-dollar company. When you hear that, what do you think?

Well, we’re so focused on the building blocks of the day-to-day, what do we do at two o’clock today and three o’clock next week. Those kinds of potential outcomes, or even stepping back and looking at what we’ve done so far, is not something we focus on at all.

Our intent is to build literally the next great Kansas City company. We were offered considerable amounts of investment to move that business in its early stages to Austin or Silicon Valley or somewhere else, and it’s rewarding to do what we’re doing here in Kansas City.

I mean, just generally to answer your question, what do we think about that? The outcomes that we’ve had, and we will have, just are byproducts of the work.

But I do think entrepreneurs that are so focused on the exit or the outcome can be at risk of losing sight of the work that it takes. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the work with objectives in mind. Right. There’s this element of the glamour of entrepreneurship. People think startup life is you’re in Silicon Valley and you live in San Francisco and it’s wonderful. But it’s a grind.

The people who want to be entrepreneurs for the glamour of it are destined to fail because it’s not glamorous being at a hotel at 11:45 at night, even at the stage we’re at, keying in things to get a 401k plan started or developing a proposal to a potential client because that’s just whatever it takes. And it takes everything from the most mundane detail to the most strategic aspect, and most of those all happen in the same day. They literally do.

What is it about Kansas City that still makes it so ripe for a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem?

Well, I think there are a lot of things that coalesce to make Kansas City a great place to build a business. Amongst them is the geographic location. I think the work ethic of the people here works. People want to find places to invest their career, and it’s not such a transient workforce. Early in my career I had somebody say, “Hey, listen, you will always be able to leave your job to go make a little more money. Don’t make a life change for a pizza a week.” This is literally what he said, and I’ve never forgotten it. You don’t. I mean, you could always go make more money, but I think people here tend to get invested and they’re loyal.

And this is a great place for folks to come. It’s got affordable cost of living. It’s a good city. Although, we could use a few more nice days a year, weather-wise.

It's fair to say that you have a strong loyalty to the Bloch School?

I do.

What still drives that for you?

Because the experiences I had at the Bloch School changed the course of my life. I mean, there’s just no other way around it. It was foundational for me at a young, maturing age to be connected and to gain the confidence and the knowledge and have mentors here, both on the faculty and fellow students. I guess I just have a strong sense of connectivity. I understand how an experience like being at the Bloch School can change a life.

And I don’t think it happens for every student, but it does happen for students who want to be here, who invest in themselves and immerse themselves. It’s very similar to me, to my experience at Missouri Boys State. Those two experiences, as a 17-year-old and the other one in my early 20s, are foundational building blocks for me.

This magazine coincides with the one-year anniversary of Mr. Bloch's passing. Are there any particular lessons and experiences that you feel Mr. Bloch has either directly or indirectly taught you in your own journey?

Of course, and I’d put them into two major categories. First of all, in business, I think he demonstrated to all of us that hard work and a dream can go together to create massive change. And not only wealth but impact in the world. One of the themes, by the way, for me in my graduation speech, is dreams don’t have to be unrealistic. They shouldn’t be. They should be achievable. But dreaming should be part of what you do, visualizing something that’s not there and then working towards it. But you can’t just dream and not have the hard work that goes behind it.

And then responsibility, or passion is probably a better word, to use what you have to give back and to make a mark on the world. It’s not just financial. Because Henry could have written a check and gone off and played golf for the rest of his life. He didn’t do that. He was in meetings and he’s understanding what the school needs.

I took that at a young age. From the moment I got out of Bloch, I have given back to the Bloch School, whether it be mentoring students or recruiting students to work. That’s what I love doing the most, in addition to giving money for scholarships and other things. That’s a big lesson from him. Give of yourself with all the resources you have, including yourself.

As the photo shows, there are (at least) two Mike Plunketts in Kansas City.