How To Stop Micromanaging And Start Leading
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Summary
In this episode, we talk to the founder of Banana Tag, a software company that helps companies communicate better with their employees. We talk about how they started, how they got started, and what it takes to run a successful business.
Transcript
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The best thing ever is finding people that are better than you at different things and just
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letting them do it and get it out of their way. Mr. Corey, what's up, dude? Not a whole lot.
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Bananatag.com. Always wearing the brand. Corey, when I see you, people probably, well, if you're
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so that I make sure that I always have one ready to go.
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software. So we're a software as a service platform. We help internal communicators of the
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biggest companies in the world, basically create really engaging emails, send them out and then
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measure them. So they get to see how people are interacting. So it's an internal comms tool for
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employees inside of the company, as opposed to like a marketing tool that's hammering out
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marketing messages. We've been doing that since 2011 now, started off as a sales tool, but
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after a few years, moved into the internal communication space. And that's what we do
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today was it called banana tag prior to the communications that's called banana tag prior
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to the communications so and so how long did when did banana tag start the domain uh probably around
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the same time so august 2011 give or take somewhere around there okay but before when it was the sales
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tool that it was still banana tag so we came with a name from the very beginning and then uh launched
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it as a sales tool and over time as people were using it people said hey can i use it for my
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internal communications, and we said, sure, why not?
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I know your brothers, was your dad involved in the early days?
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Almost everyone's involved, or was involved at some point,
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funny enough, so my brother's one of the co-founders,
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my older brother, and then my mom was actually,
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she wrote the first version of the Outlook Add-in,
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So she was a programmer, is a programmer, I guess.
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She wrote that and then my best friend growing up,
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and his sister married my brother who's in the business.
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Dude, and you guys are what, a hundred and some people now?
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I don't know your dad, I'd love to meet him someday,
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and there's a, on the doors, next to the doors,
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but my dad today still actually is, is part of that
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There's the do not disturb, housekeeping type sign, signage outside.
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But then also it's gotten into motion sensors, contact sensors, occupancy detection,
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They even have stuff that I don't know about these days.
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And did you learn about entrepreneurship from your dad?
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So I learned how much work it can be, definitely.
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and kind of started a water bottling company there
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And then when I came back, I was working with my dad
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That's actually where we had the idea for banana tags.
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So we were looking for a way to get metrics on sales emails
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that marketers and other people had when they were sending.
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This is like early days of like the toad apps and like.
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Yeah, that would have been, so it was all around
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there were the other early ones like ToutApp and Yesware.
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I think we're all sort of coming out at that time.
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Like, how did you start in the entrepreneurial world?
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had ideas before that, but never, never really got into something there. The first, the first
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time I had a taste, I always, um, I always thought I liked running a business. I always said back in
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the day, maybe now I like running it again. But, uh, when I started, I said, Hey, I really like
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running a business. And I got my first taste, I would say of kind of like a startup in, uh, when
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I was in Africa and I got to set up that water bottling plant and the whole, the concept of
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just figuring something out, reading about it, making it happen and creating this thing. That's
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and management side of things and how all that works.
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I'm assuming you guys have raised very little capital,
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big team, you are the CEO, but you have these partners.
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a lot of people think it's probably really difficult
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And then also there's times where it's difficult too.
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of having the different family members and friends involved
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you you're really able to rely on people you have that trust and you have each other's backs and so
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when times are tough if it was you know there have been times where if it was just random people
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banded together doing it uh looking back on it you wonder if you would have made it through
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everything but having it be the family group it's made that easier and we kind of knew we
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you know we can't fail at this uh we're all in it but then at the same time you definitely have
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interesting relationships where I have my best friend as well, like I work with them all the
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time. And so you don't have the normal, I would say, reporting relationships that you might have
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in a traditional business where there's a CEO and hires people and they can just like kind of do
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whatever. You're always kind of taking that family portion into account as well and making sure to
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consider that. So I'd say it's definitely been interesting. When you say interesting, I feel
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I mean, I think all of us would have different stories.
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It's just the, there's an added element, I think
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Has there been any members that didn't make the cut
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I think the, I think one of the interesting things
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is like we're all, I would say maybe we're all fairly
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stubborn. I know I can be a little stubborn. And so there's times where like my brother will
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think he's right. I think I'm right. And Isaac thinks he's right. And we have this great way
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of kind of balancing in the middle and maybe being the best version of right with all the
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different people's thoughts and opinions. So it's been cool. And I think in the early days as well,
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it was really especially a strength of ours because we had the Vancouver office and the
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Kelowna office. And so with Chris and Isaac in the Vancouver office and me up here, we were really
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able to run two smaller companies for a longer time rather than having this like big, you know,
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50 person company or something that they had to take care of or try to figure out a remote office
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with remote employees. We always had people there who were pretty invested in the business and
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and could sort of lead that part of the business. So, so, you know, when you made the pivot from
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from the email sales tool to the email communication tool.
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Yeah, so there were a couple of things at play there.
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I mean, the subscriptions we were selling were,
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at the whole internal communication side of things,
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So what that really allowed us to do was actually create a sales team and build out that way.
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Whereas with the $5 a month product, that just wasn't a possibility.
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We kind of had to grow as fast as we would grow by people finding us and signing up.
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And then I think the other part that was a big thing for us and really spoke to us was the whole,
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that problem of solving an internal communications problem.
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that got us all really excited because we started to learn more about it and what some of the
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challenges were and what people were facing the whole idea of employee engagement and being
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you know happy at work knowing what's going on that was something that that spoke to us i think
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as a founding team and and a direction that we wanted to go um as well so a combination of those
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two things i would say are the the main things that drove drove it that way it was there a chance
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No, there wasn't a chance that we didn't make the pivot.
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I think maybe in support calls, I think is what it was.
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what it was that was causing all this extra load.
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And CTO was like looking at queries and going like, okay, what's going on?
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We realized that people were sending these emails that we thought were like
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meant to be one-to-one emails because that's what you do to lists and lists of people.
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And we'd never, we'd never actually designed the software to handle something like that.
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And so that once we realized that we're like, why are these people doing it?
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And then we started watching and there'd be like spikes and spikes.
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They, they were trying to try in this email, it was, it was just aggregate data as well.
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So they were just interested in knowing, not necessarily who opened up the email at the company,
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but how the email was performing because they just had no metrics up until that point.
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And so we saw that people were using the software in a way, or at least we could see the load in
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our systems and then knew what was causing it and started talking to people more. I was getting on
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the phone call with different customers or people who were looking to use the software. And suddenly
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we started to create this picture of like what people were actually trying to do and the need
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that they were trying to solve and so once we found that um we just kind of kept on going with
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that and i think that's something we've probably done fairly well since the since the beginning is
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listening to customers listening to how people are using the tool what the struggles are and
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pinpointing you know what it is and how we can best help them and we still do that today i would
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say it's one of our one of our strengths so as ceo was it natural that you were going to be the ceo
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based on like how did you end up with that role um yeah that's a great question i mean when we
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when we initially started my brother are both entrepreneurs and if we started business together
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i'm not sure it'd be as obvious who yeah so i mean originally like isaac my my co-founder and
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best friend he built kind of the first version of the software and we were working together on that
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piece and so there like it was obvious he was a cto my mom was programming the add-in and so
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she was helping on that side of things. And that piece is pretty obvious. I think for me,
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I was kind of pulling the different pieces together, um, and doing that. And so it was
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just kind of, you're the only person who wasn't writing code that, yeah, I wasn't. Yeah, exactly.
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I wasn't writing code. And then Chris, um, came in on the marketing side. And so that was that.
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So there, there wasn't a lot of, um, yeah, there, it wasn't like a big battle or anything like that.
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It was kind of just how things fit together and piece together. And it sounds glamorous,
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I must say, I think Isaac probably worked twice as hard
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and then trying to convince him to quit his job
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So that was probably one of my bigger contributions
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and I was answering support tickets, yeah, nonstop.
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How did you fund the business in the early days?
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And at the time I was working, still working for my dad.
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And then this was kind of evenings and weekends
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So we'd finish the job or Isaac had a full-time job.
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weekends as well. Like every day, um, yeah, every day, a lot of strain on relationships and things
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like that. But, you know, at the time we were, uh, it was early and we're like, this is what we need
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to do to make it happen. And so we were, we were basically all in and doing that. So that's how we
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funded everything to, um, to begin with. And then, yeah, I mean, then Isaac, you know, at some point
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we started getting a little bit of revenue trickling in, then Isaac was able to reduce to, you know,
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one day off a week and then two days off a week. And, uh, and I had a little bit of flexibility.
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He went first. I had a little bit of flexibility in that I could still answer some support tickets
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and things while I was, um, you know, also helping my dad with the stuff there. So, um, so yeah,
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that's how we were kind of able to fund the first bit. And then eventually we had enough money in
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the bank where we're like, Oh, Hey, we can hire someone. And like, this is a crazy novel concept
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and learned a lot of stuff along the way there.
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I find one week to the next, I'm always kind of trying to figure out what my job looks like.
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I've always kind of seen it as whenever I'm doing something, my job is to find someone else to do that.
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And then I fall into the next thing and that's like the next thing that needs to be fixed.
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Where I spend most of my time though, and I think it's probably because I gravitate towards it more than anything,
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is the whole piece kind of between the customer and sales.
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and then tech and product and how these two things really fit together.
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So on any given day, I'm trying to look at like revenue.
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And what pieces do we need to make this engine like go faster, work faster,
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And so some of it still, I'm connected to that whole tech,
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kind of the solution engineering, um, part of the role. Cause I, I, I think cause I like it,
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but, um, I find it gives me really good insight into how customers are trying to use things and
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where we can structure things differently to, uh, to create a better system overall and, uh,
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and be more efficient with all that. So on the product side on the customer.
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Yeah, I'd say like customer facing and then, uh, and then just some of the general things,
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looking at different partnership opportunities,
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I mean, how did you learn to build the company?
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it's very rare companies even make it to 10 years.
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Um, yeah, I mean, I guess probably just by, I grew up definitely around, you know, watching my dad and watching him build the business. And so some lessons that I took from there, a lot of lessons that I took from there, to be honest, I think a lot around hard work and, and just making sure you give it your all. Yeah, I got to work with sales teams, see product people. So I got a lot of, I'd say general knowledge around different pieces with it being electronics.
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company there's some like tech there so got to talk with programmers and see how they talk and
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then also talk with a lot of customers and learned a lot about customer success and and just um yeah
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listening to the customer and trying to solution things for them and come up with things that can
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make stuff work and so I'd say that's the that's probably the place where I where I got a lot of
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the foundation for things but then after that um would have been I mean really just kind of being
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thrown into it and having to figure it out. I think we were all probably naive when we started
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it. Actually, definitely were naive when we started it. And a little while along the way,
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actually Accelerate Okanagan, someone mentioned that we should join Accelerate and get some
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mentorship through there. And that was probably the first time where we had people outside
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giving us recommendations. I remember that someone's like, hey, you guys have money. You
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could hire someone now. Why don't you do that? And kind of sat back and went, oh, hey, that's
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a great point. I guess we could hire someone. It just never really crossed our minds that we were
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at that point where now we had like cash and we could do things like that. And so there definitely
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over the years, a lot of support, a lot of things. I remember Jeff Keen, who was the CEO there at the
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time. He's like, guys, like get an office. Why don't you, why don't you actually come in if
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you're taking this seriously, do that. And so we did that. And again, that, that helped and just
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he was really helpful as we looked at that sort of market
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and we're raising money and what that looks like,
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Lance Schaefer was another person at Accelerate Okanagan.
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that was at the time, the most life-changing thing.
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in terms of like my tasks and stuff I had to do
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like the weight of everything that I had to do.
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And he's like, oh, I put everything in my calendar,
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But joining Accelerate Okanagan was a big factor
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but then saw this bigger opportunity from the customer,
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What, you know, if you had to start a SaaS company
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what would you say are the characteristics of that company
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okay, take all that learning and then blank slate.
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and I could build my kind of ideal, perfect company
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I would try to find something that has a huge sticker price
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that I was selling to enterprise or something like that
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And yeah, and probably something that I would be able to sell
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It's interesting how much, the one thing I think that we learned
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is the whole like that sales engine and the marketing engine
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and how many people it actually takes in coordinating
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And I remember at the beginning in the early days,
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we were talking predictable revenue is what we based
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well, we're selling for $2,000, sorry, $10,000 a year.
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And I'm like, nah, I mean, it seems like we're fine.
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it's like, oh, right, we need to add like legal.
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and we need to add like more SDRs and we need to add this
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we got away without when we were a small company
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and having the right people in place to run all them.
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And I think that's one of the neatest things that we did.
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But yeah, the learning of how many different pieces
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that we figure out with like tweaking some efficiency
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of some handoff process between this team and that team
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or changing the way that we're looking at leads
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and all the cascading effects through different teams
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that that looks at, changing trial processes, everything.
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So yeah, if I was gonna build my perfect thing,
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I don't know what it would be, but I'd say like-
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expensive, easy to sell, and ideally, yeah, the less people, the better for making your life
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easy. That being said, I love all our people. Yeah, you're like, team's rocking. But no,
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it's always interesting to start, ask yourself that question to see what comes up. When you look
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at, you mentioned some people that supported your journey. I'm not sure if you're an avid reader,
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but is there any books that, you mentioned Predictable Revenue, is there other books
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Yeah, I mean, Predictable Revenue, I think was the,
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where I was listening to the audio book at the time
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oh, sales process, like you can build a sales process.
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Looking back on it now, it all seems kind of funny,
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I mean, over time, a number of different books,
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Sales acceleration formula, that was another one.
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Yeah, so that was another one that I really enjoyed.
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And what I liked with the different ones is everyone,
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And so hearing different perspectives and, you know,
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one book will teach you a lot about sort of like sales
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And another one talks about the kinds of people
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And it's interesting reading some of those things,
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especially after we had made a lot of those decisions
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and like learned a lot of things through hiring
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what we found worked and what we found didn't work.
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And then you read a book and you go, oh, funny,
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that's like, I wish I read that a couple of years ago
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but it would have been a lot easier to learn it
1.00
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up front as my buddy, Ryan, he calls it the stupid tax.
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I was just like, dude, there's a lot of stupid tax
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What do you think from a mindset point of view?
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There's the skillset and then there's the mindset.
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It's one of those things as well that I always think about
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as maybe like an evolving journey all the time.
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Like I, when I look at myself, I go, man, there's probably like 80,000 things I could be doing better.
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And I think maybe at least for me personally, that's been a great thing to drive, drive me.
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And as I look at things, I go, okay, like, did I do as good as I could have with what I had?
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And then I kick myself and go, okay, you got to be better and do that better.
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We cannot fail and we just need to give it our all
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And then combined with listening to people and taking advice,
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that's something that I think we've done well as well
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it's really great, but sometimes those people are wrong
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I find myself like making a disclaimer and being like,
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hey, I haven't done that part that you're talking about
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for like five years, so this might not be right,
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That combination of like head down and just get it done,
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but still make sure that you're thinking about it
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And then, sorry, I had two things now, add a third,
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and just letting them do it and get it out of their way.
00:27:10.460
But how do you get comfortable with doing that?
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you may not be as smart as they might've thought you were?
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Yeah, I mean, it probably still happens every day.
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a little bit of a perfectionist back in the day.
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at actually the water bottling plant in Africa.
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and I need to have everything running through me,
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So from there, I think that's the thing that I've always,
00:28:26.620
And I think we've done a pretty good job of that.
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and one of the biggest things that I've learned
00:28:35.440
Um, but once you work with someone who's an amazing person in that role and your mind
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just like flips and you realize what an incredible person that role looks like, that to me is
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like one of those biggest learnings because next time you meet someone like that, I feel
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like you can recognize it right away and you go, Oh, like that's one of those people.
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But when you start out, you don't know that those people exist.
00:29:02.060
And they join your business and you're just like,
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so that when you're actually going out and hiring,
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and I like see somebody at Starbucks or at the mall
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Entrepreneurship can be tough, even on a personal level,
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What are some of the sacrifices you've had to make
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to be the successful entrepreneur that you are today?
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I mean, personal life, a lot of sacrifices there.
00:29:55.900
I know Isaac and I, we chat about it quite a bit.
00:30:04.680
and we really spend some time like focusing on our health.
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So it's like an ongoing, it's an ongoing thing.
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in the early days was just the amount of time in it.
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And even these days, like after 10 years of, you know
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late night phone calls on different items and things
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because you're like, you're the person, it stops with you.
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And those types of things can definitely be strenuous
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there's always, I'll speak for myself, I guess,
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I have this balancing act of like balancing the family
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and like really focusing on trying to make sure
00:31:15.780
they probably didn't need to get done all the time.
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And so I think that's probably one of the biggest tolls
00:31:22.900
tolls on people around, but then also on yourself
00:31:30.880
you kind of feel like you can't do the right thing
00:31:33.300
because if you do one, you're sacrificing that piece.
00:31:35.760
And if you do that, you're causing a problem here.
00:31:39.520
And so that would definitely be something that's there.
00:31:43.680
And then this would be the part probably with business,
00:31:52.900
you know, working with my brother and working with Isaac, my best friend growing up,
00:32:00.500
every time we talk, it's about business. And so a lot of the, I'm probably the worst about it.
00:32:07.380
My brother's a lot better than me and Isaac's better than me. But yeah, so now my best friend
00:32:13.700
is actually a business partner. And so less friend conversations and more things about business. So
00:32:20.660
So those, yeah, those would be the main things sort of on a personal level.
00:32:26.040
And then just from a business level, I mean, again, at the end of the day, it stops with you.
00:32:32.480
And so a lot of people get to go home and not worry about stuff on the weekends.
00:32:37.220
But still to this day, as much as I've like really tried to now set a schedule so that I'm not working into the evenings and doing those late hours anymore,
00:32:48.740
and I start thinking about some random company thing
00:33:09.220
when you started this journey versus who you are today,
00:33:13.780
and working through kind of the learnings in your evolution,
00:33:19.720
to be the person that gets to run a 100-person company?
00:33:30.640
is not be the person who just like puts their head down
00:33:34.240
and pushes through and powers through everything
00:33:41.600
So I've had to really step back and, you know, still put my head down, still grind, still do that.
00:33:47.180
But at the same time, realize that I need to also take time to, you know, if I have a bad day or something like that and I need a day, like you can take a day.
00:33:55.900
It's fine. The world keeps on turning. And I think being able to step back a little bit, I guess, looking at the business from the outside and and all the different moving parts and things.
00:34:04.780
If you're deep in it all the time, grinding away the whole time, you'll probably miss you'll probably miss a lot of that stuff that's going on.
00:34:18.320
where's the best way they should find you online?
00:34:30.420
Otherwise, you can probably find me on Instagram,