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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: So, Nabil, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:08] SPEAKER_00: Great to have you on the show.
[00:11] SPEAKER_00: Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself,
[00:13] SPEAKER_00: your entrepreneurial journey today,
[00:17] SPEAKER_00: why you started it, where it is today,
[00:19] SPEAKER_00: and what the future looks like, basically.
[00:24] SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
[00:24] SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me on film.
[00:26] SPEAKER_03: It's absolute pleasure to be here today.
[00:27] SPEAKER_03: I think, like many entrepreneurs,
[00:32] SPEAKER_03: my story probably started pretty early,
[00:34] SPEAKER_03: and especially with regards to sales compensation
[00:37] SPEAKER_03: and sales incentives.
[00:39] SPEAKER_03: So, I'm going to go back here in time.
[00:42] SPEAKER_03: And when I was 10 years old, I had a newspaper out.
[00:46] SPEAKER_03: And on the newspaper out,
[00:47] SPEAKER_03: you effectively had a set of customers,
[00:49] SPEAKER_03: some were prepaid, and some, you know,
[00:52] SPEAKER_03: you collected payment from.
[00:54] SPEAKER_03: And the way it works was you collected a certain amount of money,
[00:56] SPEAKER_03: and then you had to pay the newspaper.
[00:58] SPEAKER_03: And this was the same cap and standard.
[01:01] Speaker UNKNOWN: A...
[01:02] SPEAKER_02: The same.
[01:03] Speaker UNKNOWN: Yeah, exactly.
[01:05] SPEAKER_02: From St. Coddum's and not an eye to the guy as well.
[01:08] SPEAKER_02: It's great.
[01:09] SPEAKER_02: Great place to have grown up,
[01:12] SPEAKER_02: and I go back there because my family is still there.
[01:14] SPEAKER_03: You know, you have to pay the standard.
[01:16] SPEAKER_03: So, you collect the certain amount,
[01:17] SPEAKER_03: and then you pay the standard,
[01:18] SPEAKER_03: the $7 every two weeks for the newspapers at the time.
[01:22] SPEAKER_03: And they came out with an incentive,
[01:23] SPEAKER_03: a spiff where for every new customer you added,
[01:27] SPEAKER_03: you got $15.
[01:29] SPEAKER_03: And so, the first thing I did was, you know,
[01:32] SPEAKER_03: I was thinking, I tried to go get new customers,
[01:34] SPEAKER_03: and it's tough because, you know,
[01:36] SPEAKER_03: no one necessarily wants to sign up for new paper.
[01:37] SPEAKER_03: And it's, you've already kind of capitalized and maximized your rent.
[01:41] SPEAKER_03: So, I called the newspaper and I said,
[01:42] SPEAKER_03: how long does a customer have to stay on
[01:45] SPEAKER_03: in order to get, you know, to get the payout?
[01:49] SPEAKER_03: And they said only two weeks.
[01:50] SPEAKER_03: And so, I did the calculation.
[01:51] SPEAKER_03: Obviously, $15 is what I get paid as a spiff.
[01:54] SPEAKER_03: It cost me $7 to have the newspaper for two weeks.
[01:59] SPEAKER_03: So, I'd still make $8 if I gave away the newspaper for free.
[02:03] SPEAKER_03: And so, I basically went around,
[02:05] SPEAKER_03: and I became a newspaper salesperson for three hours a day after school,
[02:09] SPEAKER_03: to go out and basically pitch a newspaper,
[02:11] SPEAKER_03: and then give it away for free for two weeks as a trial,
[02:14] SPEAKER_03: if they wanted to stay on.
[02:16] SPEAKER_03: And I ended up, you know, doubling, I won the spiff.
[02:18] SPEAKER_03: I basically sold the most newspaper, you know,
[02:20] SPEAKER_03: and the new newspapers in the city.
[02:22] SPEAKER_03: But also, I ended up, you know, doubling,
[02:24] SPEAKER_03: doubling over quadrupling my actual route size.
[02:27] SPEAKER_03: And so, they had to split it up.
[02:30] SPEAKER_03: What was really interesting to me, though,
[02:31] SPEAKER_03: is the power that incentives, like a 10-year-old,
[02:35] SPEAKER_03: can be motivated that much through an incentive.
[02:38] SPEAKER_03: And so, that kind of, that was the beginning of my,
[02:42] SPEAKER_03: I would say, my entrepreneurial ways and understanding of the incentive world.
[02:45] SPEAKER_03: So, fast forward to, you know, after graduation,
[02:48] SPEAKER_03: I worked at a firm, ZS Associates, and ZS,
[02:52] SPEAKER_03: I would say back in the 80s, was extremely novel,
[02:54] SPEAKER_03: they, you know, they applied data, data science,
[02:57] SPEAKER_03: to solve pharmaceutical industries, you know, sales strategy problems.
[03:02] SPEAKER_03: So, how do you best align territories?
[03:04] SPEAKER_03: How do you design incentive structures,
[03:06] SPEAKER_03: basically leveraging all the data that's available to them?
[03:08] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[03:09] SPEAKER_03: And so, I did all this work around designing incentives
[03:11] SPEAKER_03: and supporting organizations with sales strategy.
[03:14] SPEAKER_03: And what I saw was this gap in how we operate today.
[03:18] SPEAKER_03: And it's twofold.
[03:20] SPEAKER_03: On the one side, we apply the same framework
[03:22] SPEAKER_03: to solving the strategy problems in every business that we go to.
[03:27] SPEAKER_03: The difference is that when you go into a new business
[03:30] SPEAKER_03: and you're applying this framework,
[03:31] SPEAKER_03: you are looking to solve their problems based off of their data.
[03:35] SPEAKER_03: So, you have to spend 80% of the project
[03:37] SPEAKER_03: you're understanding their data, their problems,
[03:38] SPEAKER_03: and then you transform it into our framework to solve it.
[03:42] SPEAKER_03: And so, there's this, you know, inefficiency,
[03:44] SPEAKER_03: because we'd come back three years later,
[03:46] SPEAKER_03: and it would be a different team,
[03:47] SPEAKER_03: a whole new fresh of, you know, fresh analysts and associates
[03:52] SPEAKER_03: that have never seen that customer their data before.
[03:54] SPEAKER_03: And so, they're revamping themselves up on the data
[03:57] SPEAKER_03: to get it to the framework and provide that answer.
[03:59] SPEAKER_03: And so, I saw an efficiency on the strategy side.
[04:02] SPEAKER_03: And then, on the administration side,
[04:04] SPEAKER_03: so you create a sales compensation structure.
[04:07] SPEAKER_03: You know, you come up with an incentive.
[04:09] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to pay you $X dollars if you get this target
[04:11] SPEAKER_03: or $Y dollars if you get that target.
[04:13] SPEAKER_03: And then, all of a sudden, now, we strategize
[04:15] SPEAKER_03: to come up with this answer,
[04:16] SPEAKER_03: and I have to pass it to the IT teams
[04:17] SPEAKER_03: for the sales compensation teams to execute on that.
[04:21] SPEAKER_03: And so, now, I have this bottleneck,
[04:23] SPEAKER_03: because I have to design first,
[04:24] SPEAKER_03: and then I have to pass it to the IT teams to execute.
[04:26] SPEAKER_03: And that could take months.
[04:28] SPEAKER_03: And so, large organizations start this design process
[04:31] SPEAKER_03: six months before the end of the year.
[04:34] SPEAKER_03: And in my mind, it was,
[04:36] SPEAKER_03: we need to fix this problem,
[04:37] SPEAKER_03: because this is not just an efficiency problem.
[04:40] SPEAKER_03: It's actually, you know, this is really a, you know,
[04:44] SPEAKER_03: a market or, I'm going to say,
[04:46] SPEAKER_03: an ROI problem.
[04:47] SPEAKER_03: A trillion dollars is spent every year on sales compensation.
[04:50] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, if we look at how well it's spent,
[04:54] SPEAKER_03: compared to a fund, that's a trillion dollar fund,
[04:57] SPEAKER_03: it's like, it's almost laughable.
[05:00] SPEAKER_03: So, what we did was we created for my AI to solve this problem,
[05:04] SPEAKER_03: to enable sales comp, to be a tool used by sales leaders,
[05:07] SPEAKER_03: to actually drive performance,
[05:09] SPEAKER_03: and better motivate their teams,
[05:11] SPEAKER_03: rather than just be an administrative nightmare.
[05:14] SPEAKER_03: And so, what we're doing is we're helping our customers across numerous industries
[05:17] SPEAKER_03: and numerous segments,
[05:19] SPEAKER_03: better motivate increased performance,
[05:22] SPEAKER_03: increased retention of top reps,
[05:23] SPEAKER_03: and ultimately maximize the ROI of every dollar they spend on sales compensation.
[05:29] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, but getting back to the journey, okay?
[05:35] SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously, what motivated you to become an entrepreneur
[05:38] SPEAKER_00: was at 10 years old,
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: you found a way to make some pretty good money very quickly.
[05:46] SPEAKER_00: And in fact, something that somehow reflects into where you are today,
[05:50] SPEAKER_00: in terms of, you know, you know,
[05:53] SPEAKER_00: the current problem you're solving, if you like.
[05:57] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, why not do it for somebody else?
[06:02] SPEAKER_00: Why not, you know, why not, why be, why kind of take the step into independence?
[06:09] SPEAKER_00: Is it, was it sort of, so you could earn the most money?
[06:14] SPEAKER_00: Was it, you know, what was the motivation to do that?
[06:18] SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes, I don't know, I mean,
[06:21] SPEAKER_00: there's motivations all over the place.
[06:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's a great question.
[06:25] SPEAKER_03: And it's by, I think about if a new entrepreneur was to ask me a question today,
[06:29] SPEAKER_03: is it worth the risk, you know, what my answer would be?
[06:32] SPEAKER_03: And on some days, it's very different than other days, right?
[06:35] SPEAKER_03: Because that is, it is a rollercoaster ride to be an entrepreneur for sure.
[06:39] SPEAKER_03: But, I would say, you know, going back to those days of being that, you know,
[06:43] SPEAKER_03: newspaper delivery, going and finding that incentive to, you know,
[06:48] SPEAKER_03: finding that incentive to make money, it really goes back to, I think, what,
[06:53] SPEAKER_03: you know, I'm so thankful for Canada.
[06:55] SPEAKER_03: I'm so thankful for living in a country that embraces immigration, you know,
[06:59] SPEAKER_03: to be, to be proud.
[07:00] SPEAKER_03: My family, my parents sacrificed everything in their lives to bring us here when I was at a young age
[07:05] SPEAKER_03: to give us a better life.
[07:07] SPEAKER_03: And having seen them have to restart their life early on.
[07:13] SPEAKER_03: You know, I wanted to minimize my financial burden on them as much as possible.
[07:16] SPEAKER_03: So my motivation was actually to make enough money to support myself without having an extra burden on my parents.
[07:23] SPEAKER_03: You know, given everything that they did to get us here.
[07:27] SPEAKER_03: And so early on, my motivation was, you know, more around, you know,
[07:34] SPEAKER_03: just making money to be able to survive.
[07:36] SPEAKER_03: And I think that gave me the hustle early on.
[07:38] SPEAKER_03: But as I, you know, as I had more experience and I entered the workforce,
[07:43] SPEAKER_03: and I worked with ZS where I learned a great deal.
[07:45] SPEAKER_03: I mean, like, there's absolutely, I'm very thankful for everyone that I worked with all the mentors that I had in my tenure there.
[07:52] SPEAKER_03: And at that point, the motivation shifted.
[07:55] SPEAKER_03: It's not about making money.
[07:56] SPEAKER_03: You can make great money.
[07:57] SPEAKER_03: You can have a great life being an employee and continuing the path, you know, down, you know, working it,
[08:02] SPEAKER_03: like, for like ZS or others.
[08:04] SPEAKER_03: I think for me, the motivation is, when you're a part of a larger organization that's solving a problem,
[08:10] SPEAKER_03: or working on a problem as big as this,
[08:13] SPEAKER_03: there's really no motivation to change the way you do things.
[08:17] SPEAKER_03: Why? Because you're making money.
[08:19] SPEAKER_03: It's profitable.
[08:20] SPEAKER_03: The steady state is good.
[08:22] SPEAKER_03: And so when I saw this problem, the only way to actually solve this was to solving myself.
[08:30] SPEAKER_03: You know, I had an idea of how we could fix this.
[08:32] SPEAKER_03: I had a take on how we could tackle this.
[08:34] SPEAKER_03: And for me, it was, you know, when you sit, when I hit, I'm going to go back, you know,
[08:41] SPEAKER_03: six years ago, or five and a half years ago.
[08:44] SPEAKER_03: You know, I shared this idea after I left ZS, I shared this idea with a few, you know, ex colleagues and kind of presented this to them.
[08:51] SPEAKER_03: And everyone said, oh, what you're tackling is too big of a problem.
[08:53] SPEAKER_03: Like it's almost impossible.
[08:55] SPEAKER_03: No one's going to buy that.
[08:55] SPEAKER_03: No one's going to buy that software.
[08:57] SPEAKER_03: No one's going to be, you know, shift their ways of doing things.
[09:01] SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the, that's the thing that drives me to be an entrepreneur.
[09:05] SPEAKER_03: I think drives a lot of people.
[09:06] SPEAKER_03: We have a belief that the world doesn't need to change.
[09:09] SPEAKER_03: It needs to evolve.
[09:10] SPEAKER_03: It needs to become, you know, faster, better, and ultimately, you know, I'll say more human because with more technology,
[09:19] SPEAKER_03: I think we were talking, you know, we touched on this a little bit earlier, but with more technology,
[09:23] SPEAKER_03: you, we actually enable humans to focus on the human element.
[09:27] SPEAKER_03: What humans are really good at, which is making decisions and understanding large data sets and problems and being able to come up with a solution,
[09:33] SPEAKER_03: rather than be bottleneck with the, with the day-to-day administration and the pains of that.
[09:38] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what are those, what were those, you know, critical success actions that, if you can think back,
[09:46] SPEAKER_00: that you needed to put in place to get things rolling and to stay focused and get you to where you are today,
[09:55] SPEAKER_00: which is, you know, pretty, a pretty good place in terms of the entrepreneurial world.
[10:02] SPEAKER_03: So, I would say early on, we went the route of focusing on product and execution above everything else.
[10:11] SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, for the first three years, had, if you searched for them online, there would be nothing.
[10:16] SPEAKER_03: You know, like you wouldn't actually have done this. We were very much self-startup.
[10:19] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, part of, I attribute that to our success early on because the whole business,
[10:25] SPEAKER_03: every person in the organization was rallied around the success of our product and the outcomes that our platform delivered to our customers.
[10:33] SPEAKER_03: And by focusing on the problem, especially when it's such a complicated problem, by focusing on the problem,
[10:39] SPEAKER_03: we were so driven to get to that good outcome, which I think, especially in a model where you're kind of revolutionizing the space,
[10:47] SPEAKER_03: nothing else matters than outcomes.
[10:49] SPEAKER_03: And so, if I think about this world of sales competition, where we're putting an incentive out there to drive a behavior within a sales professional,
[10:59] SPEAKER_03: nothing matters more than does the incentive structure and the platform that we're using actually increase performance.
[11:06] SPEAKER_03: Does it, you know, increase our retention of the top performers because we know the top performers make up a significant portion of our ability to succeed and surpass targets?
[11:14] SPEAKER_03: And ultimately, is it giving finance the predictability associated with sales comp?
[11:21] SPEAKER_03: I think one of the, and this is a perfect, you know, aspect of sales competition is tough to do because you want to pay your top rep two to three times your average rep.
[11:31] SPEAKER_03: And you want to pay your bottom reps a third.
[11:34] SPEAKER_03: And so, if you think about that pay scale and the curve, like how steep of a payout curve it is, you could actually have a business where half the people double target.
[11:44] SPEAKER_03: So they get 200% to quota and half the people get zero.
[11:47] SPEAKER_03: And now all of a sudden you're spending two to three times what you were spending before on sales comp.
[11:52] SPEAKER_03: And that's a really big problem because sales competition already makes up 10 to 15% of your top line revenue on average.
[11:58] SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, being able to better motivate and drive performance, but also give the CFO a piece of mind that, you know, their financials are safe because, you know, we're able to predict and accurately model where the spend is going to go.
[12:11] SPEAKER_03: So, kind of addresses the CRO's needs of more motivating structures and incentives as well as the finance teams needs first to build.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: You've gone through that phase of, you know, start up to, you know,
[12:30] SPEAKER_00: that's not, let's say a stamp, totally established, but pretty solid and all the steps of funding and scrambling and various other things in between.
[12:43] SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, so many of the people that listen and watch.
[12:48] SPEAKER_00: That's probably the thing that they, they, they kind of scratch their head most about this.
[12:54] SPEAKER_00: I've got this great idea. How do I get it there? Maybe you can sort of give a little, I mean, because I, for what I could read and my research, give a little, because you've taken a fairly classic path of funding.
[13:11] SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can kind of cover that cover that off.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
[13:15] SPEAKER_03: Absolutely. So, you know, going back to, you know, they're beginning, I think for some startups will have an idea and go raise their initial kind of seed money off just the, off just the pitch deck.
[13:29] SPEAKER_03: And I think, you know, for us, we took the classic, yeah, a little bit more of a classic route of, you know, starting, starting the business and focusing, like I said, focusing on what matters, which is ultimately the product and what it delivered to the customer and executing to get the data points as validation.
[13:46] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I did have conversations really on, I think it, you almost do yourself a disservice of not having conversations with investors early on to get a sense of what they're looking for, what, what matters to them so that you can build towards that because you need the resources, you need, you need to be able to invest ahead of where you are in the business to kind of scale up to be a billion dollar company or more.
[14:05] SPEAKER_03: So, early on, you know, I did meet with investors like, pick this idea and the feedback I would get is, you know, there's not the demand for this is not there.
[14:16] SPEAKER_03: No one, you know, no one sells compensation is not that broken where it needs this.
[14:21] SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, we go ahead and we, we, you know, we start working with the second and a third customer and so, and then you start to kind of demonstrate, wait a second, there is actually part market fit here.
[14:30] SPEAKER_03: And then, no one's going to, you know, no one's going to want to think about incentives in a different structure or, you know, we're not sure if this is actually going to drive an outcome.
[14:40] SPEAKER_03: And then, two years later, you're, you have the data points that show, no, it actually is driving performance outcomes.
[14:46] SPEAKER_03: And so, I would say early on, get a sense of what, you know, what the market is looking for, but relentless focus on execution and outcomes with the customer.
[14:59] SPEAKER_03: I mean, I, for myself and the whole team, our entire engagement for the first two years was, you know, we would speak with our customers on a daily basis, get a sense of how they're interacting, how they're using the platform, what was needed to make it that product they would, that they would, you know, stand behind and be as big as big of an advocate as we were to, you know, to the world of what we're doing.
[15:23] SPEAKER_03: And I think that would help us focus, you know, when as far as, you know, it's just a story on, on, on our website, but early on, we started into my dining room.
[15:35] SPEAKER_03: And it was just two or three of us sitting around the dining room table working on this business. And at every point, you know, it was like the first few months in, we were starting to hire more and a question came up, but I put it up to the team.
[15:47] SPEAKER_03: I said, hey, you know, hey guys, we can either go get our first office or we can hire an additional team member. And it was, you know, it's that kind of balancing of the equation to reinvest in additional resources to help get to build the tar vision, or do we go by, you know, go get an office.
[16:04] SPEAKER_03: And it was very clear. It's like, no, it's investing in other resource. We, you know, we want it, we want to get, we want to move faster, both towards the product. That's all that matters.
[16:11] SPEAKER_03: And I think, you know, those types of decisions, not focusing on anything else, but execution and deliverables is what matters. I think sometimes entrepreneurs can focus, you know, too much on the things that don't really have a meaningful impact.
[16:26] SPEAKER_03: Those problems can be solved, right? And getting an office, you know, you'll get an office when it mode it matters. You'll have a space to, you know, you'll have a space to call home once you move on.
[16:38] SPEAKER_03: And I think, you know, maybe with the world of COVID and what it's done, I mean, obviously the craziness of remote working has its significant cons. But at the same time, it's shown the world that you could actually now build a business, without any of that, and just truly focusing on products.
[16:54] SPEAKER_03: So, if I had to summarize yet, that we're not much focused on execution and outcomes.
[16:58] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's move back to Nabil, to you.
[17:03] SPEAKER_00: Okay. What does a typical day look like for you? You know, you know, how do you maintain your progression, you know, the kind of focus that you just talked about that you need to succeed and at the same time, you know, have some fun.
[17:27] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's a really good question. I think the answer does differ because it's, I think you, and at a pace of growth that we've gone through with form, uh,
[17:41] SPEAKER_03: at the early stage, it meant one thing and what, you know, within every, you know, every eight to 12 months, it's kind of my day to day life significantly looks different than what it was a year ago.
[17:51] SPEAKER_03: And early on, it was, you know, I was sitting there with the team, you know, executing and kind of, you know, on pulling the late nights to kind of get through to building our first version of the products, to all the way to, you know, to delivering art, you know, and supporting our customers and implementation phases.
[18:08] SPEAKER_03: And so the type of fun that you have in the early stages is the wins of accomplishing and building and seeing the outcomes and seeing the happiness of the customer, you know, you're doing that alongside everyone.
[18:20] SPEAKER_03: As you scale up, I think, you know, to me now it's, I'm still heavily involved in product and I still, you know, I still very much participate in kind of guide the direction of where we're building with the team.
[18:32] SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, that's not the same that I stepped away there, but my focus now as the company scaled is ensuring that, you know, we have the right team members and making sure that we have the right leadership team to kind of continue the culture that is focused on outcomes and deliverables.
[18:48] SPEAKER_03: And customer execution and values of certain type of working culture within our team.
[18:55] SPEAKER_03: And so for me now, it's about supporting my leadership team and supporting the individuals in the organization that are going to continue carrying this forward.
[19:05] SPEAKER_03: And so it does look different, but I get a lot of joy in watching, you know, all these smart people that, you know, we brought together to execute on this, you know, this vision.
[19:15] SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the most, you know, satisfying thing. It's just seeing everyone in the organization now just can, you know, run with things. And, you know, before where we all ideate together, we're all coming with ideas together.
[19:26] SPEAKER_03: Now sometimes I, you know, I just am so surprised with some of the things that the team is doing where it's, you know, blows my mind that it's just happening without necessarily my day to day interaction.
[19:36] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, moving on to that sort of the mentoring side, which is, you know, I don't know anyone that hasn't gotten, you know, in their entrepreneurial journey, gotten to where they've been successful without some good, good mentoring.
[19:54] SPEAKER_00: And the question I have is, you know, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received from a mentor that you keep using day in, day out, that kind of thing.
[20:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this one, this one is tough. I mean, I will say, I think I wholeheartedly agree. I don't, I think it is very hard to get to where we are today without having the guidance and kind of, I want to say the foresight of having a mentor.
[20:28] SPEAKER_03: I want to give you feedback to avoid you driving off a cliff. There's a lot of lessons that you can learn the easy way the hard way. And, you know, fortunately, at early stage, one mistake could be the end of it. Right. And I think that's, that's the biggest risk you take on as an entrepreneur. And so, setting yourself self self up with the right advisors around you is critical to making sure that, you know, your, you avoid those big mistakes and learn, you know, and learn from the small mistakes.
[20:55] SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you make a mistake and you don't actually walk away learning from it. Whereas if you have an advisor that you're able to have connect on those mistakes can actually be really powerful and you leverage, you know, leverage what you say and, you know, what you've learned from the lesson.
[21:09] SPEAKER_03: So I would say that, you know, advice.
[21:12] SPEAKER_03: The most powerful advice that I've resonated with is probably that is it's, you know, early on, I kind of, I got that feedback of don't try to be the hero and do this alone, you know, like leverage leverage the network that you have leverage the individuals that are willing to help and get feedback to guide you. And, you know, I think that's been absolutely instrumental.
[21:29] SPEAKER_03: I mean, very early on, you know, we were able to get connected with a few entrepreneurs and residents at community tech and DMZ and, you know, again, learn from those individuals that have already been before.
[21:41] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, more recently, my advisor network has gone significantly where, you know, I'm kind of getting feedback and getting taught by individuals that have done this multiple times over and have seen very successful outcomes from the businesses that they had.
[21:56] SPEAKER_03: You know, being entrepreneurs, in some cases, can be very lonely because you're solving this problem and you have to take on the branch of all the challenges.
[22:04] SPEAKER_03: And I think by, you know, by not having the right advisors around you, you are going about this in a way where you actually have to learn everything on your own. It's very difficult.
[22:14] SPEAKER_03: And I feel like in the last two years where, you know, I've taken on even a bigger, you know, I interact with my advisors almost on, you know, on a daily basis now and pull them in based off of the problems that we're solving.
[22:29] SPEAKER_03: And I think I have grown more as a CEO in the last year and a half to two years, you know, in the last year of growing more by working with my advisors than I have in the first four years of this business.
[22:39] SPEAKER_03: And so it gives you an idea of how much of an impact we can have.
[22:44] SPEAKER_00: Let's sort of wrap up on one thing. If you had to pick one word to describe yourself in a real, what would it be and why?
[22:55] SPEAKER_01: I would say persistent. I'm not, I don't give up.
[23:02] SPEAKER_01: You know, it's.
[23:04] SPEAKER_03: That's a pretty good one. Yeah, it's, I would say persistent. If I had to say a second, it would be optimistic because I do have, I definitely more of a dreamer.
[23:14] SPEAKER_03: But I would say, you know, there's a lot of individuals, a lot of feedback that, you know, that I got on that I got early that, you know, this is a hard problem.
[23:22] SPEAKER_03: Why, you know, why, why solve this problem? Why tackle this? It's not going to work. Customers aren't going to buy into it. And so this is one where.
[23:30] SPEAKER_01: And you have to be persistent to survive in the early days, I think.
[23:37] SPEAKER_01: So.
[23:39] SPEAKER_00: That's been great. And some really, that's just some fantastic input there. Really good.
[23:46] SPEAKER_00: And lots of people listen and they want to get a hold of people. And I know you, nobody wants to make themselves totally public in today's world.
[23:53] SPEAKER_00: But if someone listens and they you spot something, how could they get a hold of you in the field?
[24:02] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely. If I can be of help or again, kind of pass down the support that I've been given in getting to hear I'm happy to do so.
[24:10] SPEAKER_03: LinkedIn is probably one of the best ways I'm not on regularly, but you know, I will, I will, I will see the message and respond.
[24:17] SPEAKER_03: And they can always reach out to me. Yeah, they can always reach out to me on LinkedIn and go from there.
[24:23] SPEAKER_00: That's great. Okay. Thanks to Bill. Thanks for coming on the Canada's podcast and giving us your insights. Really appreciate it.
[24:29] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. Thank you for that. Great to meet you.
