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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:08] SPEAKER_00: So, Nathan, welcome to Canada's Podcast. We talked a little bit before and it's great to see, great to meet you.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: First off, let's get right into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you're doing.
[00:25] SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell everyone he's really in the licensing business and you know, I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone from that side and I'm very interested in what you're up to.
[00:38] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm from the media business so it's not I don't know about it.
[00:43] SPEAKER_00: But I won't spoil it for you. Tell us a bit about yourself, what you're doing, how you got there, that kind of stuff.
[00:50] SPEAKER_01: Well, Jim Davis always said, I'm an anomaly.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I've worked with Jim Davis and I'm a licensee of Jim Davis.
[01:01] SPEAKER_01: His company is called Paus Inc. He's the creator of Garfield.
[01:07] SPEAKER_01: And so, I, yes, indeed, I am in the licensing industry.
[01:11] SPEAKER_01: I'm also in the food industry, food and beverage industry in restaurant business.
[01:15] SPEAKER_01: Not so much now because of COVID, but yes, I, my name is Nathan Masry and I've started at 27 years old.
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: I've licensed I've licensed the cartoon Garfield. He's a pop icon cat, a sarcastic hungry cat.
[01:33] Speaker UNKNOWN: I've been a salesman since 1978.
[01:36] SPEAKER_01: And I had this brilliant idea because I came from a family of franchise, Canadian franchise.
[01:42] SPEAKER_01: Franchises my father owned Mr. sub jugo juice and Van Houth cafe.
[01:46] SPEAKER_01: So he worked with MTY Group for a while and I've learned the restaurant business or the brick and mortar and the franchise business from the ground up.
[01:53] SPEAKER_01: And I knew I wanted to deviate and do something alone and more disruptive as a millennial we use apps.
[02:01] SPEAKER_01: So I had this great idea of doing Garfield, a Garfield restaurant called Garfield Eats.
[02:08] SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's Taco for Taco Bell burgers for McDonald's or Burger King pizza for pizza hot.
[02:13] SPEAKER_01: But there's no drive through or lasagna or no one has, has tapped that lasagna category.
[02:20] SPEAKER_01: And so Garfield is a perfect, a relevant brand to tie it up with this food category and I did Garfield Eats.
[02:30] SPEAKER_01: But I wanted people to, to also have fun with Garfield.
[02:37] SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to create an inter gauging experience and entertaining and engaging experience on an app where people or consumers of all ages can play the Garfield game on the restaurant.
[02:50] SPEAKER_01: So it's not a boring McDonald's app where you go, you order and you check out, you download it, you can play the Garfield games where he throws food at you, you got to, you got to cut them into parts and you win pause.
[03:04] SPEAKER_01: And with your pause, you can unlock coupons and you can get free pizzas or 50% off or tons of offers.
[03:10] SPEAKER_01: And so it's really engaging in that way. It increases user retention and user acquisition and it helped us a lot with the whole, you know, the whole gametification.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: And Globe and Mel said that the whole gametification idea that we've created for Garfield leads can really become revolutionary to the fast food industry and the restaurant business with a sluggish growth of 1% a year.
[03:35] SPEAKER_01: And so I really thought I was on to something.
[03:37] SPEAKER_01: And I, and then Garfield was acquired in September of 2019 Garfield was acquired by Nickelodeon by Viacom CBS.
[03:49] SPEAKER_01: And so when you acquire a cartoon, a trademark, an intellectual property of such caliber, global caliber, you are taking the 400 licensees with it.
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: So we were in the gray area, what on earth is going to happen to us are contracts?
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: Are they going to honor them? Are we going to continue? What about all the brick and mortars that we've created and, and their recipe and all the costs associated with it?
[04:17] SPEAKER_01: And you know, because the thing is about license sores, they, you know, they have the upper hand and there's always some tricky clauses and those licensing agreements.
[04:25] SPEAKER_01: And so we were scared. I was, I was scared to death.
[04:30] SPEAKER_01: But they kept us on. We got a congratulation email from Viacom and they said you're going to be working with us personally, no agent, no intermediary.
[04:39] SPEAKER_01: And we thought, okay, wow, that's, that's amazing. They want to know more about us. They, you know, they want us to grow.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: And so that's, you know, that's the licensee license or relationship, you know, that's the I very much.
[04:55] SPEAKER_00: So you came obviously for a entrepreneurial family, but it sounds like you were pretty all set. You could have stayed in that family business.
[05:04] SPEAKER_00: You know, why did you decide to step outside of it, become an entrepreneur, you know, take, take your own risks.
[05:15] SPEAKER_00: All of that kind of thing that goes along the side of it. What made you do that? I mean, you know, most people were said, okay, found a business.
[05:23] SPEAKER_00: This is cool. I'm here. Okay. How light.
[05:27] SPEAKER_01: Well, here's, here's the, here's what I always say. There's my grandfather always told me he looked, he looked into my eyes and he always said, you, you've got fire in your eyes.
[05:37] SPEAKER_01: And I knew that I've always, I've always known that I'm going and, and, and branch out and destined and, and, you know, and, and, and build my own destiny.
[05:46] SPEAKER_01: But the thing is the, here's what the burning desire was. The burning desire came from me.
[05:57] SPEAKER_01: Trying to live a life that is away from mediocrity. I came from Montreal, Laval, Kibach, you know, and for us, we were, you know, we, we have a Kibach team, by the way.
[06:11] SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know what to throw you back to, to Laval, so you can speak to somebody. I'm quite international.
[06:19] SPEAKER_01: We lived a very, you know, mediocre life, you know, we were middle class, maybe middle low class too.
[06:25] SPEAKER_01: And it was a very humble, humble life. I saw how my father built his own blockbuster video rental store in downtown Montreal and how he hustled.
[06:34] SPEAKER_01: I mean, for those who call it entrepreneurship, I mean shame on you. It should be called hustlership because I'm going to have to live on a $20 bill in your account.
[06:48] SPEAKER_01: That's all you got under your name. But you know what? I got that thick skin to live on the $20 and still put a smile on my face and, and have a big, huge, gigantic vision. It's not dead yet.
[06:59] SPEAKER_01: And you know what? I also have, there's one thing that helped me and I have to be honest about it. I did not come from a billion dollar family. I'm not a son of Donald Trump.
[07:11] SPEAKER_01: But my father, he gave me the luxury of time. So he gave me the time to innovate and fail, innovate and fail, re-innovate and fail.
[07:23] SPEAKER_01: And in case I fail, I did have a gigantic house to go to back and Dubai. And so yes, I had a comfort zone if I was on the red line.
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: And so that allowed me to innovate. And I really sometimes ask and wonder to myself, I ask myself and wonder, will governments ever help and provide the basic necessities for the young men and the future generation of tomorrow, like the Gen Z.
[07:53] SPEAKER_01: And so I think that the people who are going to be just gave them their basic necessities to allow them to think and innovate because they might really well be the next people behind the next Uber disruptive idea or Airbnb.
[08:05] SPEAKER_01: I've always wanted to create a community solution to a whole community problem. And I hate thinking local. I like thinking global. And I've always been that way. And my father's kept saying, keep your feet on the ground, son. Keep it. I said, no, no, no, I got wings that you don't even see. I get to fly.
[08:22] SPEAKER_01: And so him and I were very different on that on that level, but it's the burning desire. It's the passion, persistence, perseverance.
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: So working fast food, which is obviously COVID, I mean, COVID for fast food, arguably, COVID has been a great thing, you know, in the sense that people, if you want to have food, they don't want to go out. So order in.
[08:47] SPEAKER_00: So what's that? I mean, you're on the ground. What's that done for the Paris.
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: Here's everyone asked, even, you know, you know, a lot of media, you know, they asked me, how did you, how can you know David's T has closed 200 shops.
[09:01] SPEAKER_01: Pizza Hut has filed for chapter 2000.
[09:04] SPEAKER_01: You know, you've got brick and mortar who are mama and pop up for 25 years, they're closing down. Garfield leads goes ahead and, and, and, and, and battles.
[09:15] SPEAKER_01: COVID and, and I think the government, the federal government as well for the support, such as Waves, subsidies, and others. And they really came in fast.
[09:25] SPEAKER_01: But what helped with Garfield is that because he's a pop icon merchandise helped us the cross selling with food. So if you sell a pizza for 1399, then you're selling a t shirt for $299.
[09:38] SPEAKER_01: Then, you know, that helped us a lot. And we do shipping for merchandise. We don't do shipping for food. Obviously, you'd have to be five kilometers or eight kilometers, maybe close to the brick and mortar store.
[09:47] SPEAKER_01: So it does so the geographical distribution for food picking up food or delivering food, even on Uber, they, they restrict to a certain radius.
[09:56] SPEAKER_01: But merchandise, we ship with our partner, UPS, we, we ship around. And that helped us a lot battle COVID. Those who wanted to taste our food, but can't because they're, I don't know, Niagara Falls.
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: But we, they do buy our merch. So merch help the restaurant business. And you, and there's no one would buy, you know, no one like us, like a, Garfield leads would attract consumer stores merch like McDonald's, Canter Burger King, Can, because Garfield again, it's an entertainment brand.
[10:25] SPEAKER_01: And, but I can tell you our lasagna are delicious. You know, it's five layers and we'd record a cheese. So for us, what happened is we, because we, we wanted to focus on e-commerce.
[10:39] SPEAKER_01: So we went ahead and started our frozen lasagna's. So we can start shipping them with ice packs.
[10:46] SPEAKER_01: And start, you know, tasting them and enjoying the world's first Garfield leads lasagna. And so we're really much into e-commerce and we have our website up. But brick and mortar COVID has not been nice to brick and mortars.
[11:02] SPEAKER_01: And landlords have been even greedier. And, and it was, it's not, it's optional. It's actually optional to, for landlords to opt in into the governmental programs. Many don't want to just because it makes them look bad. I don't know.
[11:32] SPEAKER_01: But, and we've got to be very, very, very emotional period. We are grieving, but we must go through through this transition towards from information era to an interconnected era, an interconnected society, a tech society.
[11:45] SPEAKER_01: Where you see everyone going bankrupt, but Amazon is hiring 100,000 more people. And there's, and they're also hiring and they're also employing 200,000 robots. So it's, it's really not replacing human capital. But we're seeing a transition.
[12:02] SPEAKER_01: And that's what, you know, Garfield eats is all beautiful and nice. But that's what also during the lockdown has allowed me to brainstorm and perhaps save other licensees through our tech company that's launching soon called Iggy's.
[12:17] SPEAKER_00: Obviously we're talking about a COVID challenge, which is probably the biggest challenge that most of us have faced. I mean, I've done quite a few recessions, but this has been a little different one, I think, you know, like many people since we've seen him being.
[12:31] SPEAKER_00: You've seen it all Philip.
[12:33] SPEAKER_00: A lot. Yeah, but this was a different one, but I think we'll come and come and have the other side. So that's good.
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: But when faced with those challenges, I have a process that they've developed, but animals interested to know what other people's, is there a process, you know, when you kind of hit a wall, is there a process that you have Nathan or that you've learned from, you know, from your mentors, but we all have mentors around it.
[12:58] SPEAKER_00: The, the, you, um, the works that helps you kind of get around the wall, get over the wall, whatever, you know, that, that kind of thing.
[13:08] SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to sell you a motivational book because I've read many of those books and it's different when you read and it's different when you're living the experience and now you need the tools.
[13:18] SPEAKER_01: The book won't give you that precise tool to overcome this challenge that you're going through. Most of it has to do with investors relations, finance, it all comes down to money.
[13:31] SPEAKER_01: The thing is you either ride the wave and and and and and you know, continue the brand presence, even if it's even if you're not even breaking breaking even.
[13:43] SPEAKER_01: But you know, you have to continue and and and sometimes they say, oh, it takes three years for a restaurant to break even, but that means you need a lot of investment to keep going to pay expenses in order to reach that threshold in order to create brand, you know, brand resonance and the city and brand visibility and people to get to know you and maybe on the third year make a profit.
[14:03] SPEAKER_01: But that needs investments and so the thing is I'm a risk taker. If I have zero dollars, I'll even I'll go and do it.
[14:13] SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, I'll still do it. But you have to be resourceful.
[14:18] SPEAKER_01: My mental here, my my my mental blockage is if that's if that's your question, right, when when do I when when do I get into a whole mental blockage or I get around it.
[14:31] SPEAKER_01: Correct. And well, for for for me is to, you know, it's, you know, you you either you either get around it and you find the tools to get around it or you don't.
[14:46] SPEAKER_01: But the thing is if you don't, it's not the end of the world. And for many, it is the end of the world. For many, oh my God, he's going to take me to small court.
[14:57] SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, he's he's going to he's going to assume you. Oh my God, people are people going to think of me. Oh, they're not going to like me more on social media.
[15:06] SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter. And you got to keep going. Now you have a beautiful history that can be part of your beautiful Wikipedia page. You started something, but I think entrepreneurs to really start to to to really prevail succeed.
[15:24] SPEAKER_01: Failures are amazing. They're beautiful for me. I feel a sense of relief when something comes to an end and it hasn't been rewarding. It's a sense of relief.
[15:33] SPEAKER_01: Because no one can take away my ideas. No one can take away my visions. And as I work towards bringing investors on board creating beautiful pitch decks.
[15:44] SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's the people also they're the building blocks of of a company. And you know, and you go on to the next thing. I mean, you know, you got to stay, you got to stay positive.
[15:53] SPEAKER_00: I was having suffered more wife and talking about the environment today. I was getting getting me down and suddenly depending drops.
[16:04] SPEAKER_00: And it's just another challenge. I mean, exactly.
[16:09] SPEAKER_00: That kind of cool. I like challenges. I haven't done this challenge. So this is a cool.
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited about it. He said, he said, again, the price. Oh, I'm done this one. That's good.
[16:35] SPEAKER_01: I'm glad of the effort for generations and generation X hasn't done a great job in motivating and encouraging their children to take risks.
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: And also remember that our previous generations, our parents haven't taught us good things about money.
[16:57] SPEAKER_01: They haven't taught us good things about accumulation of wealth. We often feel guilty for the accumulation of wealth.
[17:07] SPEAKER_01: And it depends how you allocate wealth if you do have it. And so we're kind of we're kind of self destructive in a way where, you know, we shouldn't be taking risk.
[17:18] SPEAKER_01: We should be paying our bills, be good citizens vote. But the thing is light. That's that's that's not how you elevate in life.
[17:27] SPEAKER_01: And I think it's an edge generational education and development. And I and I always like to disrupt. I'm just that type of personality.
[17:38] SPEAKER_01: I look, I always say use your own critical thinking and leave CNN alone.
[17:45] SPEAKER_00: So, okay, you would tell me some of your grandparents said, and I this question asked everyone, because I love to hear the answers.
[17:53] SPEAKER_00: It's totally selfish and my part. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received and keep on using?
[18:00] SPEAKER_01: You know, there's so many because every advice is it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's advices are an advice is relevant.
[18:18] SPEAKER_01: You know, it depends on the situation. But one thing I can I think I resonate well with is Nike slogan. And in in a really it's really a powerful human condition.
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: Just do it.
[18:31] SPEAKER_01: Just do it. And you'll be and you know what? You'll be just fine. You'll be just fine.
[18:37] SPEAKER_00: Just just concluding some rapid five questions. So you are mourning or a night person.
[18:44] SPEAKER_01: I'm a night person. I I brainstorm well and night and silence. Maybe with my glass of red wine, but I yes, morning for me.
[18:54] SPEAKER_01: I can be I can wake up quite grumpy and be screaming at an accountant.
[19:00] SPEAKER_00: So what book are you currently reading or listening to?
[19:04] SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, my book.
[19:07] SPEAKER_01: It came out two weeks ago. It's called the Arabiosis. It's about fighting suppression. But I do love outlier the outlier.
[19:18] SPEAKER_01: And for and it's quite it's quite it's quite disruptive. But one book which is which is consistent with consistent with my next thing that I'm doing.
[19:27] Speaker UNKNOWN: I'm going to be reading the book.
[19:28] SPEAKER_01: So what I'm going to be reading is how to build a billion dollar app with George Burkowski Burkowski.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01: I met my met London for dinner in England. And quite what were quite remarkable. Quite remarkable. And, you know, hopefully I'll be in, you know, hopefully EG's can become a case study in his next book.
[19:48] SPEAKER_00: If you had to be long look to describe yourself, Nathan, what would it be and why?
[19:54] SPEAKER_01: I know, Millie.
[19:57] SPEAKER_01: I know, Millie. Nickelodeon called me that.
[20:01] SPEAKER_01: I guess it's working well. Globe and male Toronto star. But I think why is because I use my own critical thinking.
[20:09] SPEAKER_01: My thinking process or my paradigm of thinking is not is is is not boxed by society or my my employer or boss or partner or parent.
[20:20] SPEAKER_01: I've escaped from all of it. It took me time. But I'm my own I'm my own man. And I do what I believe in. And I do want to create something that society can use.
[20:29] SPEAKER_01: And I can solve an industry problem. I hope to create something. I think it's about time that we find in in one of the top hundred WPP brand index score.
[20:41] SPEAKER_01: One of the top hundred brands originally I'm Arab. And it is it saddens me to death.
[20:47] SPEAKER_01: Not even one brand makes up the top hundred brands in the world. You see in Domey the noodles from Indian is it and Indonesia I think.
[20:57] SPEAKER_01: And they're there. You see a Turkish cookie or chocolate brand. They're there. Immorance airlines. They're there. But that's publicly funded.
[21:06] SPEAKER_01: But Uber is there. You know, you don't see Pepsi Coca Cola. Not one Arab was able to innovate.
[21:11] SPEAKER_00: But I think that's a really good point. You do absolutely right. You know, I think I think we still live in a very local world on the brand level.
[21:21] SPEAKER_01: And I wanted it to come out of Toronto. I wanted to start in Toronto in Canada. I mean, Toronto is becoming the next tech hub because of Donald Trump's immigration laws.
[21:29] SPEAKER_01: A lot of software engineers are moving to Toronto. And I'm really glad about Toronto.
[21:34] SPEAKER_00: What's your most favorite place in the world?
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: I love Toronto. It has everything.
[21:39] SPEAKER_01: Toronto. But Toronto is your most favorite place.
[21:41] SPEAKER_01: You know what? I do want to end up in LA. I'm a 40 boy. My uncle's there in OC and I love it there.
[21:50] SPEAKER_01: But you know, my roots are in Laval. You know, and it's where I go to try to stay humble. But yeah, you got to ride the waves of life.
[22:01] SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's so.
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: It's just a whole minute pitch on it.
[22:12] SPEAKER_01: EGIs. Well, during the lockdown, we, you know, I've realized that a lot of licensees like myself, I was a licensee of Viacom CBS for Garfield.
[22:21] SPEAKER_01: So I understood other licensees as pain with overstock. They had tons and tons of merchandise and overstock, including, you know, big studios, you know, like WWE 20th Century Fox, you know, some of them have tons of merch in the stock.
[22:36] SPEAKER_01: And when you go on, you want to search for Mickey Mouse plush or a Mickey Mouse toaster or a smurf bag, you don't go necessarily on, you know, on Amazon.
[22:45] SPEAKER_01: And then you go to the Amazon, the first thing that comes to mind, we like to be the first marketplace that comes to your mind.
[22:51] SPEAKER_01: EGIs is the world's first licensing marketplace where when you think of a cartoon, we have all the products for it.
[22:59] SPEAKER_01: And so it's an app and a web and we are empowering it with artificial intelligence where you take this app.
[23:06] SPEAKER_01: And you, you know, you put it near a movie of, you know, the Garfield movie in 2004 on Netflix and it hears the cartoons voiced and he creates all the products nearby you and you simply order them.
[23:17] SPEAKER_01: We have nothing to do with shipping and storage.
[23:21] SPEAKER_01: We, they, the order simply goes to the licensee that we have unborted similar to Uber Eats, they unbored restaurants.
[23:27] SPEAKER_01: And we do quite the same thing we unbored you if you're a licensee and we are currently, we I currently have a happiness account manager and every continent who are currently onboarding around the clock.
[23:40] SPEAKER_01: And we are in talks with Sonic from Sega while Disney, 20th century Fox, the smurfs, WWE and many more.
[23:50] SPEAKER_00: Cool. Okay. Well, you know, I think it's fundamentally I like to keep going because I think we could chat for a long time.
[23:57] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would, I would never shut up.
[23:58] SPEAKER_00: I said, Ellen, the generous.
[24:01] SPEAKER_00: We went, like, I can't wait to go run about 30, 35 minutes.
[24:06] SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, listen, that, that sort of what, what people want to listen to that, that tends to be, to be there.
[24:14] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, how can people find you online? I mean, because we've got lots of things that we didn't cover and you know, people get interested and again, what do they want to get in touch?
[24:25] SPEAKER_01: I think the best way to get in touch is obviously LinkedIn.
[24:30] SPEAKER_01: But I always say the best way to get in touch is Instagram.
[24:35] SPEAKER_01: I'm quite, I'm quite, I'm quite a heavy user of Instagram.
[24:42] SPEAKER_01: I mean, if they, if they shut my account, I don't know what I would do.
[24:49] SPEAKER_00: Okay. Well, listen, Nathan, thank you so much for coming.
[24:53] SPEAKER_00: Thank you. You have a lot of fun and, you know, hope to meet again.
[24:58] SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Canada podcast. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.
