George Boutsalis Wants You to Chase Your Dreams, Work for Yourself and Blaze Your Own Trail!

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[00:26] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: The number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:33] SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to meet George Butsalis from Cast App.
[00:39] SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into the podcast right now.
[00:44] SPEAKER_00: So George, once again, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:48] SPEAKER_00: And I already said to you, I love you back drop.
[00:51] SPEAKER_00: It's great. And I mentioned Long Podcasts,
[00:53] SPEAKER_00: Podcasts, do do do. I know.
[00:55] SPEAKER_00: So we have similar interest in this channel, if you like.
[01:03] SPEAKER_00: But before we go much further,
[01:05] SPEAKER_00: in the course you're promoting pals.
[01:07] SPEAKER_00: I feel bad because I don't have it on.
[01:12] SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
[01:16] SPEAKER_00: Why you're here sitting in front of me in Canada's entrepreneur
[01:20] SPEAKER_00: and what you do.
[01:23] SPEAKER_00: Sure.
[01:23] SPEAKER_01: Well, Phil, first of all, thanks for having me.
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: To be honest, as you said, we have a podcast,
[01:29] SPEAKER_01: the pals podcast, but not here to talk about that.
[01:31] SPEAKER_01: This is actually my first time being interviewed in a podcast.
[01:34] SPEAKER_01: Despite the fact that we've ended up at almost 100 episodes now.
[01:37] SPEAKER_01: I've never sat on this site.
[01:38] SPEAKER_01: So I appreciate you having me.
[01:40] SPEAKER_01: There's about a ton.
[01:41] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, you know, I think I've earned it now.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: It feels good.
[01:45] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, pleasure to be here.
[01:48] SPEAKER_01: A little bit of homie.
[01:49] SPEAKER_01: So I'll try to keep this brief because,
[01:52] SPEAKER_01: you know, I feel like I've done quite a bit over the last,
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: I would say my entire life, but the last decade,
[01:57] SPEAKER_01: things really ramped up.
[01:59] SPEAKER_01: To take it back to kind of the beginning,
[02:01] SPEAKER_01: my roots and how I ended up kind of in the entrepreneurial space.
[02:05] SPEAKER_01: My father came immigrating here from Greece.
[02:10] SPEAKER_01: I only was 17 years old.
[02:12] SPEAKER_01: You know, no, as he tells me, no money to his name.
[02:15] SPEAKER_01: Couldn't afford shoes.
[02:16] SPEAKER_01: And just had that entrepreneurial spirit wanted to make a name
[02:19] SPEAKER_01: and provide for his future family.
[02:21] SPEAKER_01: And, and yeah, it was in the food business
[02:23] SPEAKER_01: that he got into the cleaning business,
[02:25] SPEAKER_01: where he currently is today.
[02:27] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if we have a pretty well-established cleaning business
[02:31] SPEAKER_01: in the city of Ontario and Canada.
[02:34] SPEAKER_01: And from a young age, I saw his drive in his ambition
[02:37] SPEAKER_01: and what he wanted to provide, you know, for myself,
[02:40] SPEAKER_01: my siblings and my mom.
[02:42] SPEAKER_01: And I just really resonated with me.
[02:43] SPEAKER_01: And he taught me a lot growing up on just how to, you know,
[02:46] SPEAKER_01: chase your dreams, you know, want to work for yourself, all of that stuff.
[02:51] SPEAKER_01: And I kind of followed in his footsteps.
[02:53] SPEAKER_01: I was at a young age, you know, started with lemonade stands
[02:56] SPEAKER_01: and mail routes and shoveling snow.
[02:58] SPEAKER_01: And just always wanted to find a way to, to blaze my own trail.
[03:04] SPEAKER_01: That kind of pursued through university.
[03:06] SPEAKER_01: And then following my four years at Western,
[03:09] SPEAKER_01: I jumped right into the family business,
[03:10] SPEAKER_01: worked alongside him.
[03:12] SPEAKER_01: Started from the bottom level as a janitor,
[03:14] SPEAKER_01: worked my way up and did not enjoy it,
[03:17] SPEAKER_01: but it taught me the value of a dollar and hard work
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: and respecting where our employees started.
[03:23] SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah, I worked there for the last,
[03:25] SPEAKER_01: I would say decade or so.
[03:27] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just came to a point where I really wanted to kind of
[03:30] SPEAKER_01: further blaze my own trail and make my own name.
[03:32] SPEAKER_01: And while I am very proud of what our family and my father has done,
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: I just, everything I learned, I took, I realized that I had a little bit more to give.
[03:40] SPEAKER_01: That's where I am now with our startup cast,
[03:43] SPEAKER_01: which is a social media startup we just launched.
[03:45] SPEAKER_01: And obviously the podcast is kind of a side hobby.
[03:48] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's kind of fun.
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I want to produce wire differently.
[03:55] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you grew up with a dad who was an entrepreneur
[03:59] SPEAKER_00: and immigrant, not an uncommon story on Canada's podcast.
[04:04] SPEAKER_00: But, I mean, you think we wire differently.
[04:07] SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you have friends that are in corporate life and
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: do you see yourself as a little bit sort of different than that?
[04:18] SPEAKER_01: You know, I do and I don't.
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: I do think that some people are just born or predestined
[04:26] SPEAKER_01: to kind of chase the entrepreneurial spirit.
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: I know myself.
[04:30] SPEAKER_01: I just always knew that I wanted to do what I wanted to do just for myself.
[04:33] SPEAKER_01: I want to do a brought me joy, not because I had to do it,
[04:37] SPEAKER_01: not because someone told me to and that's what I knew I wanted.
[04:40] SPEAKER_01: I've always been, I guess I've been a bit of a person who's questioned
[04:45] SPEAKER_01: authority or questioned the status quo always.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: So, I've always had that vision of how do I do things different
[04:50] SPEAKER_01: or better or why it doesn't have to be this way.
[04:52] SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, I do think some people just, you know,
[04:54] SPEAKER_01: that develops over time and they say, you know,
[04:56] SPEAKER_01: I don't like doing things the way it's always been done.
[04:59] SPEAKER_01: I think I can do it better.
[05:01] SPEAKER_01: For myself, I think I was born with this mindset.
[05:04] SPEAKER_01: And I think that it was born within my DNA and it's been cultivated over the years.
[05:09] SPEAKER_01: But I also do think some people, some people develop it.
[05:12] SPEAKER_01: They just at some point in their life, they say, you know what,
[05:14] SPEAKER_01: I've had enough of the corporate structure
[05:18] SPEAKER_01: or just following the status quo, I'm going to do my own thing.
[05:21] SPEAKER_01: So, I do think it can be learned.
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: So, just with cast and what you're doing now,
[05:28] SPEAKER_00: it's a bit different than the family business.
[05:32] SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, duh.
[05:34] SPEAKER_01: How did you get into that?
[05:37] SPEAKER_01: Very different.
[05:38] SPEAKER_01: It's by myself and my two best friends, co-founders,
[05:43] SPEAKER_01: Ricky Leody and Dave Benwatt.
[05:47] SPEAKER_01: For a long time, we've been a very, as guys,
[05:50] SPEAKER_01: we debate a lot of stuff and we can be very opinionated.
[05:54] SPEAKER_01: One day, we just, you know, we keep, we have our thoughts
[05:57] SPEAKER_01: and we study sharing them and say, you know,
[05:59] SPEAKER_01: there's no, there's nowhere that online that kind of
[06:03] SPEAKER_01: assembles all these different points of views,
[06:06] SPEAKER_01: these different debates on trending topics, these different perspectives.
[06:10] SPEAKER_01: You know, we started finding that media, social media,
[06:13] SPEAKER_01: portrays one side of the argument, not often the other.
[06:17] SPEAKER_01: It's the loudest voice gets amplified.
[06:20] SPEAKER_01: These sort of things.
[06:21] SPEAKER_01: And then we started seeing, you know, with the news as well,
[06:23] SPEAKER_01: that they kind of have that clickbait, if you will now.
[06:26] SPEAKER_01: And they promote kind of what fits their narrative.
[06:28] SPEAKER_01: And we just said, you know, there's not, it seems like objectivity is leaving the media.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01: And kind of that, not just objectivity, but transparency, all those things.
[06:36] SPEAKER_01: And we said, you know, that's not right.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't, the media is journalism,
[06:40] SPEAKER_01: it's supposed to have integrity and kind of a code where they serve you the facts
[06:44] SPEAKER_01: and let you formulate your own opinion.
[06:47] SPEAKER_01: And we just started seeing that if that's not the case,
[06:49] SPEAKER_01: it seems like there's an agenda and a narrative,
[06:52] SPEAKER_01: whether it's on social media, in the media,
[06:55] SPEAKER_01: where every day life, wherever it is.
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: We said, there's got to be a way to solve this.
[06:58] SPEAKER_01: We need, you know, we should be letting people think for themselves, you know,
[07:02] SPEAKER_01: independent thought and critical thinking is super important.
[07:05] SPEAKER_01: It's how people become entrepreneurs and want to pursue their own ambitions,
[07:08] SPEAKER_01: being told what to do doesn't cultivate that.
[07:11] SPEAKER_01: So we said, you know what, let's, let's try and hash this idea out and see if we can create a
[07:16] SPEAKER_01: platform that allows people to weigh into a topic and share their unique diverse objective thought,
[07:22] SPEAKER_01: not being skewed by external forces.
[07:24] SPEAKER_01: And let's give people a place where we aggregate the information and then they can see
[07:29] SPEAKER_01: it interpreted as they will.
[07:31] SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how cash came about and a lot more to it obviously, but yeah,
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: that's what we wanted to do, just bring objectivity, transparency,
[07:37] Speaker UNKNOWN: balance, and so on.
[07:39] SPEAKER_00: A bit like our side of things have turned to objectivity,
[07:43] SPEAKER_00: don't have to put nourish it and doing that.
[07:45] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what, you know, what's the greatest challenge
[07:50] SPEAKER_00: to starting up like like you are?
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: You know, I know this is not going to count the family business,
[07:57] SPEAKER_00: you kind of rolled into that sort of.
[08:00] SPEAKER_00: So what's the greatest challenge you've faced, you know,
[08:04] SPEAKER_00: starting up this new business?
[08:07] SPEAKER_01: The greatest challenge I think, with any business, whether you're pursuing something you know
[08:11] SPEAKER_01: already or something, you've never pursued it as we did, I think the fear of the unknown is
[08:16] SPEAKER_01: always scary. You know, everybody, myself included, you know, you always think you have a million
[08:23] SPEAKER_01: dollar, a billion dollar, whatever, idea on your hands.
[08:25] SPEAKER_01: And you know, your close circle says, you know, this is a great idea, it's horrific,
[08:30] SPEAKER_01: but there's always that unknown is that what I think is that what most people think
[08:35] SPEAKER_01: and most people want, and my is my thought unique and this is only a problem for me.
[08:39] SPEAKER_01: So I think taking that first step and saying, you know what, I'm going to, you know,
[08:43] SPEAKER_01: risk it, I'm going to leave my career, I'm going to put all this behind me and take a,
[08:46] SPEAKER_01: take a leap of faith and hope that my idea is a sound and as in demand as I believe it is,
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: to me, that's kind of the biggest thing. I mean, starting a business hard in general, like, you know,
[08:57] SPEAKER_01: doing all the legwork of, you know, incorporating, like getting the legal work done, hiring people,
[09:02] SPEAKER_01: all that stuff is tough for myself with my background, you know, in the family business and
[09:06] SPEAKER_01: working well, you know, essentially running the operations. That stuff was easier for me,
[09:11] SPEAKER_01: but yeah, taking the leap, I think, is always the hardest because you just never know what's
[09:16] SPEAKER_00: going to happen every day is kind of learning. Today's podcast is brought to you by the cooperators.
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[09:41] SPEAKER_00: But you're starting a business in the pandemic. I mean,
[09:44] SPEAKER_00: isn't that kind of crazy? Well, I mean, I mean, just, just thinking, you know,
[09:49] SPEAKER_01: yeah, no, you're not wrong. I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty and, you know, when starting
[09:55] SPEAKER_01: a business, like I said, you're taking a leap of faith, which is one scary in and of itself,
[09:59] SPEAKER_01: and in normal times, statistically speaking, businesses don't have like new businesses don't have
[10:05] SPEAKER_01: a very high success rate. I mean, I think it's, you know, out of the gate, a lot of businesses
[10:08] SPEAKER_01: fail just by nature and the statistics outline that going into the tech space, it's even more
[10:13] SPEAKER_01: competitive, but not only that, we're doing all of this with uncertainty of a pandemic. So it's
[10:18] SPEAKER_01: like we're trying to, you know, we're jumping on to a floating iceberg and we don't know if it's
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: going to keep floating along or this was going to go collapse and keep moving like it's very dynamic
[10:27] SPEAKER_01: or situation. And, you know, we're just doing our best to kind of mitigate risk and make calculated
[10:32] SPEAKER_01: decisions as we move with the facts that we have in hand. So, I mean, it's risky. It definitely is,
[10:37] SPEAKER_01: but I guess they say, you know, no risk, no reward. On the on the mentoring side, and it sounds like
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: your dad has been pretty good mentor to you. You know, what's that? What's the best piece of advice
[10:49] SPEAKER_00: that you've been given that you use constantly? Oh, that's a good one. I know, I mean, I've got
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: something that I carry around with me that actually my dad gave me and it's interesting because
[11:06] SPEAKER_00: that is one of those nice, nice questions because we don't all have the same answer. Yeah,
[11:13] SPEAKER_01: no, it's a really good question. You know, I got to give my dad, you know, Chris Asshado, he's
[11:20] SPEAKER_01: giving me a lot of advice. He likes to tell me that I don't listen enough. I think that I think that
[11:25] SPEAKER_01: I would listen to father. And I don't think I would be here and able to stand in this position
[11:31] SPEAKER_01: comfortably, giving an entrepreneur advice if I didn't hear the words that he shared with me.
[11:37] SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the biggest thing was that just don't have a fear of failure, especially he told me
[11:43] SPEAKER_01: when I'm young, you know, I'm a 30 something and I'm actually 30. But you said, you know, you don't
[11:49] SPEAKER_01: have a, you know, you don't have a family, you don't have kids, you know, you can be a little bit
[11:54] SPEAKER_01: riskier. Don't be scared to fail, but also have, you know, be calculated. Don't just, you know,
[11:59] SPEAKER_01: throw all your money on red and hope that the wheel lands on red, right? You know, mitigate risk
[12:04] SPEAKER_01: a little and, and, and hedge your bets, but also don't be scared to fail. I mean, when you're young,
[12:09] SPEAKER_01: you can be a little more resilient and bounce back and failure is not something to be scared of.
[12:13] SPEAKER_01: You're gonna, you're gonna fall down a lot and it's not about not falling down 99 times. It's
[12:18] SPEAKER_01: about the one time you get back up and you say, okay, you got to figure it out. Let me, let me work
[12:21] SPEAKER_01: on this one and then they move forward with this. So I would say he told me just don't be scared.
[12:26] SPEAKER_01: Take, take, you know, take chances. Don't be scared to fail.
[12:30] SPEAKER_00: So just some quick questions that they ask everybody almost. Are you a morning or a night person?
[12:38] SPEAKER_01: It varies. Right now. So I, in the summertime when the sun's up nice and early,
[12:43] SPEAKER_01: I can get up at the crack of dawn and without an alarm and I'm ready to go and I actually love
[12:47] SPEAKER_01: getting my day started early. Winter now, I mean, you know what, what, what, uh, the Canadian
[12:52] SPEAKER_01: winters are like. So a little bit tougher and I typically work a little better into the night.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: Overall, I'll say a morning person. If you had to pick one word to describe yourself,
[13:02] SPEAKER_01: what would it be? And why? One word to describe myself, thoughtful maybe? That's, I mean, kind of a
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: self, not, kind of praise myself, but I just, I don't want to say contrarian because I think
[13:15] SPEAKER_01: that's used to loosely. I just think that I really like, I, whether it's good or bad, I tend to
[13:20] SPEAKER_01: think about things a lot and sometimes overthink, but, no, yeah, I think thought, I think it's like
[13:25] SPEAKER_01: the think about every situation that plays itself out, but thinking about people, how my decisions,
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: you know, as the, as the founder and the CEO will impact others, will impact employees,
[13:35] SPEAKER_01: colleagues, investors that are users. I think it's, you always have to be very thoughtful and mindful
[13:40] SPEAKER_01: of how your actions impact other people. And yeah, I just like to think about things a lot. I kind
[13:46] SPEAKER_01: of kind of go off in these tangents. So I guess that's how I describe myself. What's keeping up at night?
[13:52] SPEAKER_01: What's keeping me up at night? You know, honestly, not to get into it, but just with the state of the
[14:00] SPEAKER_01: world right now, it's interesting because there's no, it seems like there's no rhyme or reason,
[14:05] SPEAKER_01: there's no common denominator with any decision made. So I just always, you know, thinking we're just
[14:09] SPEAKER_01: kind of chasing a moving target. And we don't know where the end and the finish line is.
[14:14] SPEAKER_01: A very unfortunate situation ran from a health perspective, a global health perspective, but
[14:19] SPEAKER_01: keeps me up because I also, I'm someone also because I like to think a lot. I like to know where
[14:23] SPEAKER_01: the finish line is. I like to know what I'm chasing for the most part. And right now it's
[14:28] SPEAKER_01: unprecedented times. You don't know. We don't know what rotation exactly. So that kind of keeps me up.
[14:34] SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're a book reader or a podcast listener or whatever, but, you know,
[14:39] SPEAKER_00: what book are you reading, what podcast do you listen to? You know, and what would you recommend to,
[14:46] SPEAKER_00: you know, are kind of entrepreneurial audience?
[14:51] SPEAKER_01: Good question. I do, I am an avid reader. I listen to podcasts a lot. I'll start with that.
[14:57] SPEAKER_01: Podcast, naturally, I am a fan of the Joe Rogan podcast because I like how he gives everybody
[15:02] SPEAKER_01: a platform to speak, whether he agrees or disagrees with them. He's kind of just, you know,
[15:06] SPEAKER_01: an objective listener. His I like a lot from a reading perspective. Right now, I am reading two books.
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: I am reading the letters from Seneca on stoicism, which is about stoicism. And I just recently read
[15:21] SPEAKER_01: meditations by Marcus Aurelius. So I really enjoy reading on stone reading about stoicism because I
[15:26] SPEAKER_01: think a lot of the principles are still really relevant today. How to keep yourself kind of grounded
[15:31] SPEAKER_01: and just level headed. Favorite book that I will recommend. I don't know if my favorite, but one
[15:36] SPEAKER_01: that really resonated with me was Freakonomics by Steven Levin. Steven Dubner. I read the
[15:44] SPEAKER_01: grade 12, my last year of high school. And that taught me one thing that stuck with me to this day.
[15:50] SPEAKER_01: And it just basically said that correlation is not always equal causation, meaning that sometimes
[15:56] SPEAKER_01: there's more to a scenario than you can, like, you can observe. And just really question, does
[16:02] SPEAKER_01: X really equal Y or is there something you're missing that could also be a factor? And that's stuck
[16:06] SPEAKER_01: with me through my business endeavors and entrepreneurial spirit. In this, like, some about 24
[16:15] SPEAKER_00: connected world that we're in, I mean, it's just accelerated in the last 12 months. How do you
[16:21] SPEAKER_01: disconnect? It's really, really tough. And I actually, right before, kind of before we started
[16:29] SPEAKER_01: getting ready, getting ready to launch cast, we got the company kind of off the ground in August.
[16:35] SPEAKER_01: Before that, I would just, I would turn my phone off and I would, you know, pick up, excuse me,
[16:39] SPEAKER_01: pick up my Kindle or a book and just read for a couple hours a night. And that to me calm
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: down. And it was the world of the noise stopped. Unfortunately, that I don't have that luxury anymore
[16:49] SPEAKER_01: because cast is a social media app. And, you know, I naturally have to be either connected,
[16:55] SPEAKER_01: running the business day to day business operations or at night on the app, seeing how you
[16:59] SPEAKER_01: use their interacting with it. So I wish I could say, could this connect? I try to meditate a little
[17:04] SPEAKER_01: bit, 10, 15 minutes a day to kind of clear my head. But it's tougher now than it was earlier in
[17:10] SPEAKER_00: the pandemic. Okay. I think we're coming to the end of it, George, but it's been some good
[17:17] SPEAKER_00: observations for me. I always ask how people can get a hold of you because, you know, people listen,
[17:24] SPEAKER_00: you know, have questions. So not at me, generally, of the person I've interviewed. How could people
[17:31] SPEAKER_01: get a hold of you? So the best way to get a hold of me is either on Instagram. My username is
[17:38] SPEAKER_01: at bootsalis.botsa.lis. You can find me on LinkedIn. I am very active. I'm LinkedIn.
[17:45] SPEAKER_01: Connect with me. You can drop me a message there. My emails on there as well. And I guess
[17:52] SPEAKER_01: I one thing I like to tell everybody is I mean, if any questions, any advice, anything at all,
[17:57] SPEAKER_01: if someone's just just chat, say hello, I'm a very open book. I'm an open communicator. And I love
[18:02] SPEAKER_01: you know, talking and communicating with new people. So feel free to drop me a message anywhere,
[18:06] SPEAKER_00: and we can have a chat. Okay, George. Well, thanks very much for, you know, letting us
[18:12] SPEAKER_00: inside your story a little bit and appreciate you coming on to Canada's podcast.
[18:16] SPEAKER_01: Of course, pleasure. Thank you for really appreciate the time. And yeah, thanks for having me.
[18:21] SPEAKER_00: It's been fun. Today's podcast was brought to you by the cooperators, business and
[18:26] SPEAKER_00: children's. Their head out, make sure you and your business are protected today and into the
[18:32] SPEAKER_00: future. Visit carbreakers.ca to find a local advisor today.