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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Robert Smigel coming to today with Canada's podcast where we talk to the entrepreneurs who are making it happen here in British Columbia.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01: Scott Lee and Ella is the co-founder and president of Omni Technologies, a Vancouver-based supply automation startup.
[00:23] SPEAKER_01: Born and raised in the lower mainland, Scott has a passion for music, invention, lateral thinking, and entrepreneurship.
[00:31] SPEAKER_01: Through the journey of building Omni, Scott has learned of destructive innovation within a legacy business can be a path to achieving success
[00:42] SPEAKER_01: with ideas too big or the conventional lean startup model.
[00:48] SPEAKER_01: Well, Scott, welcome to Canada's podcast BC edition. How are you doing today?
[00:53] SPEAKER_00: Very good, thanks. Thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate it.
[00:57] SPEAKER_01: A fellow Vancouverite, born and raised, where are we?
[01:01] SPEAKER_00: A Vancouver suburb night, I suppose, I've always lived on the outskirts of town, but I've been in the area my whole life.
[01:09] SPEAKER_01: Thank you. Thank you.
[01:10] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's get started to this. Now, you're actually living in New Westminster, correct?
[01:15] SPEAKER_01: Yes, give us the details on your current business and just kind of give us some taste for what you guys do exactly.
[01:22] SPEAKER_00: Sure. Omni is a supply-ops automation platform. It's a system designed to help growing brands, especially fabulous brands, scale up without the need to go and buy an ERP system.
[01:32] SPEAKER_00: And it helps to kind of manage all of the outsourced value chain multiplayer and sanity that's involved with trying to get products you've designed made at scale with quality so that you can actually get things into a warehouse so that your e-commerce can sell it.
[01:50] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[01:52] SPEAKER_01: I'm sure. Okay. Now, sounds complicated is software and things like that. Did you need financing to start your company? How do you currently make money in your business now?
[02:03] SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a legacy business that's a sourcing company that's been around for quite a long time.
[02:07] SPEAKER_00: Sourcing just means managing outsourced custom manufacturing on behalf of other people.
[02:11] SPEAKER_00: So, companies would come to us with their release engineering and say, please figure this out.
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: And they'd be willing to pay us a very, you know, a tidy margin just to handle that for them.
[02:20] SPEAKER_00: So we knew there was enough pain there for, you know, for there to be a business.
[02:24] SPEAKER_00: We initially built the software to automate that company and it's been running it lights out for the last four years or so.
[02:30] SPEAKER_00: So we saw an opportunity to take that software and make it available to other companies without us being in the middle, which has been the adventure of the last three years.
[02:39] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Now software, SaaS is a complicated business, but I want you to simplify it for me. I want you to give me a key piece of knowledge or information about your industry that our listeners can learn from something that the common person may not know about your industry.
[02:56] SPEAKER_00: The the SAS world or the world of managing outsourced custom manufacturing.
[03:01] SPEAKER_01: SAS, give a SAS.
[03:03] SPEAKER_00: Sure. I mean, especially with B2B SAS, the the math is, you know, if if someone has a problem and they know they have a problem, they know what that problem costs and they're willing to pay some percentage of it.
[03:18] SPEAKER_00: If you can make that problem go away immediately with some software and that is the easiest path from, you know, introduction to a client to a closed client is just find the pain, make the pain go away with as little change management as possible.
[03:33] SPEAKER_00: And then you will get paid.
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: So are some of these projects small, medium large or the which sizes to tend to deal with as far as the project.
[03:44] SPEAKER_00: Generally medium to large, we tend to catch businesses as they're in the tornado of growth in that they've kind of they've gone from garage, the global supply chain, all of a sudden because they're trying to keep up with orders.
[03:59] SPEAKER_00: And usually that means that they'll start just throwing bodies and people at the problem and then those people will build spreadsheets and things will get very ridiculous very quickly.
[04:08] SPEAKER_00: And the traditional thinking is at that point you go by any RPS system, which ends up taking 18 months to implement and doesn't really actually do all the things they needed to do when it comes to managing their value chain.
[04:20] SPEAKER_00: So that's where we step in.
[04:22] SPEAKER_00: The technical complexity of our implementations isn't very high. The tech, the real complexity for us is the change management of changing people's behavior to use our system to do the work instead of doing it the old fashioned way.
[04:35] SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of inertia there.
[04:38] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Sounds like you are operating with a global business. What is the long term vision and what will your company look like in the future?
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: Do you see the company expanding into the other areas and where beyond Vancouver BC or even Canada?
[04:52] SPEAKER_00: I, I, given the nature of software, it doesn't really matter where our team is.
[04:58] SPEAKER_00: We, you know, we have a tiny office, but nobody really uses it.
[05:02] SPEAKER_00: So we're Vancouver based. Most of our team isn't around Vancouver, but we do have people that work with us all over the place.
[05:07] SPEAKER_00: And I foresee that getting more and more all over the place as we grow.
[05:11] SPEAKER_00: Especially because, you know, even though the software can be deployed anywhere relatively easily, we still need, you know, people in different time zones, speaking different languages to support it.
[05:21] SPEAKER_00: I do foresee it becoming a fairly large business. I'd like it to be a pillar of the Vancouver tech scene eventually.
[05:26] SPEAKER_00: You know, keep our home here because it's a frankly a good place to live and do business.
[05:32] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Let me segue into the next question. What are the biggest benefits for you and being an entrepreneur here in Vancouver BC?
[05:38] SPEAKER_01: I want you to give us some of the good points.
[05:40] SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry I can't be here, but also want you to give us some of the tough things or challenges you've had along the way for listeners so they can keep it out for them.
[05:48] SPEAKER_00: Vancouver is great because there's both.
[05:52] SPEAKER_00: There's a great mix of medium-sized businesses here to serve that you can just talk to as opposed to having to try and fly all over the place or get people's attention in a different time zone.
[06:05] SPEAKER_00: Lots of different fabulous brands, lots of growing companies, lots of, you know, frankly, big name brands actually are based here that people might not know about.
[06:12] SPEAKER_00: The other point is that there's just an awful lot of talent in Vancouver and an awful lot of talent always coming to Vancouver because people want to live here.
[06:21] SPEAKER_00: So finding people is has been not that hard. We've, you know, we've built up a great team over the last few years and I'm privileged to work with them every day.
[06:33] SPEAKER_00: Downside would be that when the handful of big tech companies that have a footprint in Vancouver are in hiring mode, it kind of takes all the air out of the room and it can be difficult to retain people when they're hiring because frankly, they can pay a lot more than I can.
[06:47] SPEAKER_01: Okay, you've learned a lot along the way and you're entrepreneurial journey. If you were to start all over again and you just moved here to Vancouver, we see for this time you don't know anyone knowing what you know now, what would you do and how would you go about starting all over again as an entrepreneur, what would you do differently knowing what you know now?
[07:08] Speaker UNKNOWN: Hmm.
[07:11] SPEAKER_02: That's tough question.
[07:14] SPEAKER_01: You've been through a lot, obviously.
[07:16] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I say, you know, from a from a software perspective, I would have brought more potential clients into the pictures sooner and kind of built the product around a lot more client feedback.
[07:29] SPEAKER_00: And also, you know, not tools up a sales and marketing team before you're ready for it. That was frankly quite an expensive mistake, but we're still here.
[07:38] SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about your morning routine. What does the first hour look like for you when you get up at the morning, do you have a specific routine or a ritual that helps you get motivated to start your day?
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: For sure. Yeah. So I'm very enthusiastic about strength training, a bit of background for me is I used to be very, very, very obese. I lost about 130 pounds five years ago.
[07:56] SPEAKER_00: So I usually start the morning with, you know, I'll be breakfast, then I'll go live some weights and then I'll get to work and then later in the day, I usually get out for a long walk.
[08:07] SPEAKER_01: Exercise is important. Do you think entrepreneurs have to be weird or unique in a positive way or wire differently?
[08:13] SPEAKER_00: Definitely. I think none of us make very good employees, which is a pretty common through line with entrepreneurs is they they don't thrive without the ability to drive change and make things happen.
[08:27] SPEAKER_00: So if they're just told to exist within a set of procedures and policies, they have trouble with that. And part of that is being a little quirky and being able to think laterally and being a little bit uncomfortable with stasis.
[08:42] SPEAKER_01: Entrepreneurs like to get educated and do a lot of reading what books are you reading now and why are even audio books and can you recommend any books or for our listeners who are also entrepreneurs.
[08:52] SPEAKER_00: I am not as big of a reader as I should be I do listen to a lot of podcasts though. I'm very fond of the Jordan Harbinger show.
[08:59] SPEAKER_00: He's got all kinds of very interesting guests. He somehow got the fire festival guy from prison. If you want a good what not to do story to listen to, you can find that one.
[09:10] SPEAKER_01: Okay. So podcasts. That's how you get your information.
[09:13] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Okay, let's talk about some of the online and off tools that you use on a daily basis. Anything that stands out that you can recommend that you use at the common person may have access to.
[09:25] SPEAKER_00: For sure. So if you do a lot of professional zooming as I've come to in the last few years, I found that having like a good camera and a good mic.
[09:36] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, actually is good for business like showing up to the meeting, looking a little bit more professional than everybody else just because you have a cheap USB mic and like decent lighting will actually help you close deals.
[09:49] SPEAKER_00: Beyond that from a purely B2B SaaS perspective, there's a program called Crospeem that's very handy helping you kind of.
[09:57] SPEAKER_00: It's not quite multiplayer CRM that's something I would love to exist, but it helps tech partners share their prospects and contacts in a way that's reasonably secure.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: And then kind of right sizing agile development for your business, you know, the whole traditional agile development scheme can be a little bit procedure heavy and cause your developers to spend more time writing up tickets and moving things around on a board than actually developing.
[10:24] SPEAKER_00: But if you're willing to break the mold a bit and find a way that works for you, you can find a way that cuts the developer time on that down and lets them get back to the fun part.
[10:33] SPEAKER_00: And the productive part.
[10:35] SPEAKER_01: Any project management tools.
[10:37] SPEAKER_00: We use Jira, but we don't run the epics and things like that.
[10:42] SPEAKER_00: We use it relatively lightweight and then you know, Jira plus Slack plus GitHub is most of our development workspace.
[10:50] SPEAKER_00: And then we, you know, I let my developers use the ID of choice and I'm not big on keyloggers or employees by where I think if I don't trust them, they don't trust me.
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: And I know how productive they should be. So we just need that stuff alone.
[11:06] SPEAKER_00: If you were doing what you do now, what would you like to do for a profession?
[11:09] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm very big into music, but that's a tough way to make a living.
[11:13] SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm lucky to be in a band with a couple of fellows that do make a living in the industry and I admire them for it.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: But for me, it's, it's just for fun. But I think I would make a go of that if I wasn't doing this or find my way into the world of hardware development of some kind.
[11:29] SPEAKER_00: Because I love making things. I think I've been working on software to help people make things for the last six years, but I haven't been doing much actually making things.
[11:36] SPEAKER_00: And I would like a little bit more of that in my life.
[11:39] SPEAKER_00: What instrument do you play?
[11:41] SPEAKER_00: I'm a guitarist mainly. I played a little bit of saxophone and clarinet in school and I can operate a bass, but not in a musically useful context at this point.
[11:50] SPEAKER_01: What kind of job would you not like to do? Could not do it.
[11:57] SPEAKER_00: Anything highly procedural or kind of rules based where the rules are set in stone would be bad for me.
[12:06] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we have a wonderful accountant, but I don't think I would be a very good accountant.
[12:11] SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'd be very good, say, you know, working, you know, front line at an ICBC outlet or anything like that, I think I would, I wouldn't be very happy and the customers wouldn't be very happy either.
[12:25] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[12:26] SPEAKER_01: Great. In business, what is your favorite word quote or sentence that you like to use?
[12:32] SPEAKER_01: Anything that you use with your staff clients, anything particular, it doesn't have to be relative to your industry, but just an entrepreneurial kind of quote.
[12:45] SPEAKER_02: I'm drawing a blank.
[12:50] SPEAKER_01: I will do that. Can't do it. Let's get it done. Let's find a way.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: I don't know with clients, especially prospective clients, there's a lot of yes and there can be, you know, cases where people are very used to their spreadsheets.
[13:05] SPEAKER_00: And even if the thing does absolutely everything they want it to do, if it looks a little bit different, it can kind of freak them out.
[13:11] SPEAKER_00: So, helping them to understand that like we can make it look the way you want it to look, it's a, you know, what software everything is doable if there's a budget.
[13:23] SPEAKER_01: Obviously. Okay. If you had to pick one or two words to describe yourself, what would it be and why?
[13:30] SPEAKER_00: Probably contrarian. Like I, I like doing things that people think maybe you're not supposed to do.
[13:39] SPEAKER_00: You know, Vancouver is a very expensive town and I live in a little condo, but I have things in my life that people think shouldn't be in little condos.
[13:46] SPEAKER_00: I was like, I've got a big dog and a big stereo and lots of noisy instruments and stuff, but you know, I have fun and my neighbors don't mind me.
[13:54] SPEAKER_00: Like you can make of the world what you want to make of it as long as you're willing to kind of get around those conventions one way or another.
[14:03] SPEAKER_01: Do what you want and find out. It'll go. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. Especially with a small condo. Exactly.
[14:11] SPEAKER_01: Anything keeping you up at night. Do you tend to take your work to bed with you or are you just kind of shut it off? Is there anything that is bothering you on a daily basis?
[14:23] SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's coming to bed with me, but it's certainly coming to after hours with me in that, you know, this, this work from home paradigm is lovely for flexibility, but it also means there isn't a great boundary between work and life.
[14:34] SPEAKER_00: You know, we're, you know, I'm coming to you live from my bedroom right now. That's where my computer is. So it can be difficult to get away from it.
[14:43] SPEAKER_00: In terms of what's keeping me up at night, nothing in particular right now. I mean, it's been a long struggle to get where we are now, but you know, we're on the market and we're starting to find some traction.
[14:53] SPEAKER_00: So it's looking like it's going to be okay.
[14:56] SPEAKER_01: If it's the top three things on your inspired lifeless, do you want to travel? I mean, you got your company obviously and you got your hobbies and stuff. Is there anything you want to do travel philanthropy, right to book anything like that?
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd like to travel some more of the last six years have been quite travel light between, you know, the business and the pandemic and everything.
[15:17] SPEAKER_00: Like to get out and see more of Africa and Asia, I've seen a fair amount of Europe, but haven't been elsewhere, which is a problem.
[15:27] SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, at some point I'd like to experience having a bit of land, but as we stated Vancouver is not an inexpensive place to have some land. So hopefully the business helps with that.
[15:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to keep moving out to Shilohak.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or maybe like Castlegar.
[15:44] SPEAKER_00: You get far enough out you can have some land, but that that radius is getting bigger and bigger every day.
[15:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: I don't think I have much to add. They could find me at Scott at Omnay.com.
[15:56] SPEAKER_00: They could go to our website Omnay.com. They can find Omnay on Instagram at Omnay Global. If they look up Omnay on LinkedIn, they'll find us. If they look up Scott Lee and Elow on LinkedIn, you'll find me.
[16:08] SPEAKER_00: Where all the places you would usually find somebody.
[16:11] SPEAKER_01: Okay, awesome. Okay. Well, Scott, thanks for coming on the show. I've learned a lot about you and I'm sure our listeners have as well.
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for having me.
