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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_04: Hi, I'm Phil Bliss-Fander and co-host of Canada's podcast,
[00:10] SPEAKER_04: coming to you today from Toronto.
[00:12] SPEAKER_04: Today we're going to meet Alican Jetta,
[00:15] SPEAKER_04: AJ, who's CEO of Market Circle CRM company,
[00:21] SPEAKER_04: very well established.
[00:22] SPEAKER_04: So, without further ado, let's meet AJ.
[00:26] SPEAKER_04: AJ, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:30] SPEAKER_04: So, you know, Market Circle, obviously it's been your focus
[00:34] SPEAKER_04: for a couple of decades.
[00:38] SPEAKER_04: Tell us a little bit more about the venture,
[00:40] SPEAKER_04: you know, why you started it, what its future might be,
[00:44] SPEAKER_04: and then, you know, we'll get back to the journey, to your journey.
[00:48] SPEAKER_04: Okay.
[00:49] SPEAKER_00: So, I started Market Circle because I always had an itch to be an entrepreneur
[00:55] SPEAKER_00: or to have a business, you know, something like that,
[00:58] SPEAKER_00: maybe not an entrepreneur, those words, that word,
[01:01] SPEAKER_00: but to have a business, sort of, maybe in a business.
[01:04] SPEAKER_00: And one day I was sitting and watching this documentary on eBay,
[01:12] SPEAKER_00: and I said to myself, well, you know, how many people actually do auctions?
[01:15] SPEAKER_00: More people actually negotiate, you know.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: Why don't I, you know, why don't I do something where people can negotiate for a product?
[01:22] SPEAKER_00: I mean, how hard could it be, you know?
[01:26] SPEAKER_00: And so that started me on my journey to creating Market Circle.
[01:30] SPEAKER_00: We evidently pivoted a few times.
[01:34] SPEAKER_00: And today we're in the SaaS business with, you know,
[01:40] SPEAKER_00: a native app and cloud, a cloud,
[01:43] SPEAKER_00: native apps with the cloud backed infrastructure.
[01:46] SPEAKER_00: So that's where we are today, but it didn't start this way.
[01:49] SPEAKER_04: Okay, so let's get back to your journey in particular.
[01:56] SPEAKER_04: You know, what motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
[02:01] SPEAKER_04: You know, how did you get into your area of expertise?
[02:07] SPEAKER_00: So maybe my family background is a little bit to a bit of a contributor,
[02:13] SPEAKER_00: although I'm not sure.
[02:14] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, my parents were always in the family business,
[02:19] SPEAKER_00: which was founded by my grandfather,
[02:22] SPEAKER_00: when, and this was in Africa, in Uganda, in the Congo.
[02:28] SPEAKER_00: And when we got expelled from those countries,
[02:32] SPEAKER_00: and then went back to China.
[02:34] SPEAKER_04: I'm old enough to remember that.
[02:36] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:37] SPEAKER_00: So my wife was two months old when she had to leave.
[02:43] SPEAKER_00: And I was four years old when I had to leave.
[02:47] SPEAKER_00: So, but in that process, we always had businesses.
[02:52] SPEAKER_00: There were shops, you know, like they're not huge enterprise kinds of things,
[02:58] SPEAKER_00: but there were shops and so forth.
[03:00] SPEAKER_00: So we always had the thing, okay, you know, we want to run our own business,
[03:02] SPEAKER_00: we want to kind of hopefully control our own destiny, so to speak.
[03:07] SPEAKER_00: And so that, you know, since I've been a little kid,
[03:11] SPEAKER_00: has always been part of our family.
[03:15] SPEAKER_00: And so for myself, it was always, I guess it was an expectation.
[03:22] SPEAKER_00: But I'm also drawn to it, like that's what I enjoy,
[03:26] SPEAKER_00: that's what I enjoy hanging around with.
[03:28] SPEAKER_00: That's what I enjoyed, the challenges that we face and so forth.
[03:32] SPEAKER_00: So not only did I get in, but I stayed it.
[03:35] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[03:36] SPEAKER_04: So, you know, I think speaking to kind of younger, you know,
[03:42] SPEAKER_04: entrepreneurs, one of the big questions is, you know, how the heck can we finance it?
[03:48] SPEAKER_04: I don't get, you know, I really have this idea that is, how do I get it rolling?
[03:55] SPEAKER_04: How does it, how does it do?
[03:57] SPEAKER_04: Have you got anything that you can, you know, you know, you, as I said,
[04:00] SPEAKER_04: you know, over two decades in the business, you've been there.
[04:03] SPEAKER_04: And there are times I'm sure when cash flow is not where, where you wanted it.
[04:08] SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
[04:08] SPEAKER_04: You think you know, you know, there's a some advice that you can pass on in terms of financing, building that kind of,
[04:20] SPEAKER_04: those side of the business.
[04:21] SPEAKER_00: I can share what, what happened in my situation.
[04:25] SPEAKER_00: So in my situation, when I decided to, to start market circle, I was already doing some consulting work.
[04:33] SPEAKER_00: So I had, I had a little bit of flexibility in my time in the sense that, you know, I'm not afraid to work.
[04:39] SPEAKER_00: I can work 16, 17, 18 hours a day, no problem.
[04:42] SPEAKER_00: And I, yeah, it doesn't bother me.
[04:44] SPEAKER_00: Right. So I had the flexibility of having that consulting job.
[04:50] SPEAKER_00: And so I started the business kind of on the side.
[04:55] SPEAKER_00: And I raised some friends and family money.
[04:57] SPEAKER_00: So sister, you know, cousins, friend of a friend, kind of thing.
[05:04] SPEAKER_00: And that's how I got the initial pool to start market circle.
[05:08] SPEAKER_00: Of course, with my consulting flexibility, I was able to do consulting work for, you know, five, six, seven, eight hours a day.
[05:17] SPEAKER_00: And then work on the business, you know, another five, six, seven, eight hours.
[05:23] SPEAKER_00: So, so that's, that's kind of like how I butcher.
[05:26] SPEAKER_00: But beyond that friends and family money, I was never able to actually land investors.
[05:33] SPEAKER_00: So, so I had to basically be really scrappy and work with what I had because when I tried to raise money, either, you know, maybe I'm not such a great salesman, I wasn't able to actually close those deals.
[05:51] SPEAKER_00: Even even back in the dot com days when what we started was a negotiation thing, I managed to get to some of the top VCs and so on.
[06:00] SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't able to close the deal didn't help that I was there when the bubble burst.
[06:05] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, May of 2000 is where everything started to implode.
[06:13] SPEAKER_00: And that's when I was in draper Fisher, Juvitz and Zoff is trying to make a pitch didn't turn out so well.
[06:19] SPEAKER_00: So, so I was never actually able to raise money, even with the banks, you know, I struggled with raising money.
[06:25] SPEAKER_00: So, it's always been a scrappy kind of, okay, you know, if I'm not going to get money this way, what am I going to do?
[06:33] SPEAKER_00: You know, what are some of the decisions I'm going to make that I can get some money and then reinvest that money.
[06:38] SPEAKER_00: So, it's always been one of those kinds of things for me.
[06:42] SPEAKER_00: I think nowadays the environment is a lot more open to the idea of people investing and so my advice to people like if they ask me today is I pay, you know,
[06:55] SPEAKER_00: put a one two three page not not a hundred page, you know, one two three page kind of business idea business proposal and go and ask, you know, go and do a little bit of networking and ask people like who they know they would invest in this kind of adventure and go from there and just do that networking.
[07:12] SPEAKER_00: So, that you can find somebody that is hopefully compatible with what you want to do and and get them.
[07:19] SPEAKER_00: So, I don't have, you know, concrete because I've never actually been able to land that kind of money.
[07:25] SPEAKER_04: Well, that's good.
[07:30] SPEAKER_04: As much as it's bad in the sense that you don't, you don't want that kind of money, you end up on more of the company.
[07:37] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
[07:39] SPEAKER_04: That's the balance you got to make.
[07:41] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's really it.
[07:44] SPEAKER_04: So, you know, the other thing that I was really important to me is mentorship.
[07:52] SPEAKER_04: What do you, you know, in terms of mentors, is there somebody that sort of, you know, advise you told you something and, you know,
[08:05] SPEAKER_04: that you've been counting it in your pocket of the sense and pull, you know, pull it out when, you know, it never leaves you basically.
[08:14] SPEAKER_04: Is there something like that that you know, it's it's interesting.
[08:17] SPEAKER_00: So, so I've had a few of those incidents, some of those from my sister, some of those from people that I've encountered.
[08:25] SPEAKER_00: And there was this one time I was, I think, I don't know, 15, 16, 17, somewhere around there and I was working in a automotive shop, you know, part time job, while going to school kind of thing.
[08:37] SPEAKER_00: And this one fellow there, I remember, I don't remember is, I think his name is Calvin.
[08:42] SPEAKER_00: Just told me, you know, you know, I was, my thing was I need to do as many of these things as possible, I was putting some roots in.
[08:51] SPEAKER_00: As many of these things as possible and he was a bit slower and, but his quality was better and he, he told me this line that has stuck with me is if you do something, do it well or don't do it at all.
[09:06] SPEAKER_00: And, and so that, you know, that always resonates with me, it sometimes in conflict with the entrepreneurial scrappy kind of I don't have money, what do I got to do, you know, I got some corners here a little bit.
[09:19] SPEAKER_00: But, but that that that line always sticks in, I repeated to my son, for example, if you're going to do something, do it well or don't do it at all.
[09:35] SPEAKER_01: And, and going back in time, you know, if you could sort of advise yourself, should say 25 years ago, what would you tell yourself to do or not to do.
[09:51] SPEAKER_00: I would, I would tell myself to be, to, to be true to myself and let me explain that because a lot of times you'll get advice that is not necessarily true to who you are.
[10:11] SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you an example. One of them is, you know, hey, you're running the business, you got to, you know, up in the morning early 4 30 AM 5 30 AM, you should wake up so you're ready for, you know, for the day kind of thing.
[10:25] SPEAKER_00: And so I tried to do that, but that's just not me, you know, I'm a nighttime person. My most productive time used to be not anymore now that I'm older, but when I was younger, my most productive time was from 11 PM, like 3 AM or 4 AM.
[10:40] SPEAKER_00: Right, that's when I would be like, I'm a morning.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and in the morning, I'm a zombie, but I tried to kind of follow the general advice out there that, hey, you should be, you know, as you're running the company, you know, you should be there in the morning, get things going, etc.
[11:00] SPEAKER_00: And this is just not me. And so for the years, I tried to fight that when, and so I wasn't as productive as I should have been or I was.
[11:11] SPEAKER_00: And so that was, that's an example of when I tell people, you know, you got to understand yourself, be true to yourself. And as long as you're productive and accomplishing your goals, you know, that's your metric kind of thing to say, okay, I'm moving forward, I'm doing things.
[11:29] SPEAKER_00: And I'm accomplishing things and I don't necessarily have to, you know, be like what everybody else tells me what I should be like.
[11:37] SPEAKER_00: Of course, when you have kids and you better take them to school in the morning, that's a whole different story, but in terms of, you know, productivity for somebody like me who actually was, you know, in the nitty gritty coding and stuff like that.
[11:51] SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, so how do you maintain your focus? I mean, you know, you've been building this business for a long time.
[11:58] SPEAKER_04: How do you keep focused on the growth side of it? And all not just the growth satisfaction that all of those other elements.
[12:10] SPEAKER_00: It's difficult. It's difficult and it's, and it comes in ebbs and flows.
[12:16] SPEAKER_00: There are times that if I look back in the last couple of decades that I wasn't as focused as I should have been, because I was maybe a little bit lost.
[12:26] SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what, you know, which way was up until I kind of re-grounded myself.
[12:33] SPEAKER_00: And so that's right. This is what actually gives me energy on we go.
[12:38] SPEAKER_00: But so I never want to paint a picture that it's a smooth straight line kind of thing in terms of that it's ebbs and flows.
[12:47] SPEAKER_00: There's always, you know, down times and there's always like these other times where you know, you're just humming.
[12:53] SPEAKER_00: Right. And so the question really is what brings you back when you're one of these troughs, you know, what gets you back out and what are the crutches that you use to kind of lift you up?
[13:07] SPEAKER_00: And for me, it's, it's some of the customer stories that we built this product to help small business growing when we, when I hear some of these customers and I talked to them after a while that they've been customers and they've actually grown.
[13:21] SPEAKER_00: That gives me energy, right. So that's one of the sources of energies. Some other source of energy is is, you know, when I'm able to focus on something for a couple of weeks without any distractions.
[13:36] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, block things up, pretend I'm on vacation and focus on something and then that gives me energy. So these are these crutches that I've learned about myself that I've used to get out of those troughs when they do occur because they do occur.
[13:51] SPEAKER_04: So let's go to yourself. I mean, if you have to pick one word to describe yourself, maybe two words of them to describe yourself.
[13:59] SPEAKER_04: What would it be? And why?
[14:03] SPEAKER_00: So I have two words. One of them is a little unusual and the first one is symbiotic. The second one is resilience.
[14:13] SPEAKER_00: And symbiotic, whenever you're looking at any kind of like a business, like, you know, we're about a little under 50 people and all that.
[14:22] SPEAKER_00: So as a business, we're a symbiotic creature, right? Like I can't do what I do without the other people.
[14:31] SPEAKER_00: And so, so it's a symbiotic relationship between me making my commitment to make sure that, you know, they're making a good living and then the reverse where they're producing for me and whatever thing that they're doing.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: And so, so that's an example. Another example is the human body. The human body is a symbiotic organism with different organs, you know, working with other organs to kind of, you know, present who we are or manifest who we are.
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the reasons I like that. I, you know, I tend to like system level thinking and so symbiotic is a word that I always come back to.
[15:13] SPEAKER_00: And the other one resilience and resilience goes to the fact that, you know, in life, you always get knocked down and and it's not the fact that you get knocked down. It's not the fact that you're down. It's the fact that you get back.
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: Right. And to me, that's where resilience comes in.
[15:31] SPEAKER_04: So, you see lots of books behind you.
[15:34] SPEAKER_04: What books are you reading now? What you think of in terms of the business side of things?
[15:39] SPEAKER_00: So, I'm actually reading this. I have, I have sometimes I multiple copies of books because I buy a book and then I don't have time to read it. And then I go and I go,
[15:49] SPEAKER_00: this is the good book I buy it again. So I have two books of normal rules rules.
[15:53] SPEAKER_00: The Netflix book by Reed Hastings.
[15:57] SPEAKER_00: And so I'm reading that a little bit about and I'm finding actually fascinating about how there's some really counter not counter intuitive but counter mainstream thoughts there in terms of company culture.
[16:14] SPEAKER_00: So that's the one I'm currently reading. But I tend to not read one book at a time. I'll have like 10 books on the go and I'll be reading a chapter here and a chapter there.
[16:23] SPEAKER_00: And so I and I also rarely read a book cover to cover that, you know, but but I get, you know, I end up going back to the same book several times.
[16:34] SPEAKER_01: What's the best thing about being an entrepreneur versus being, you know, something else?
[16:42] SPEAKER_00: I think it's the, the ability to control the choices you make and being accountable to yourself and and you know, the, the, the, the both, it's a double led sword, right, like like, okay, you're accountable to yourself, which means if you don't perform that's on you, right.
[17:07] SPEAKER_00: And so and so the ability to have that flexibility to make those choices to to solve bigger problems and and so yes, that I don't know if I answered that question effectively.
[17:23] SPEAKER_04: What's the best thing, you know, what actually what are you most excited about in your business these days?
[17:32] SPEAKER_00: So the, you know, it's it's it's a good question. I every once in a while you kind of ask yourself like why you do this right.
[17:42] SPEAKER_00: And it's really the same as it all that that was from before when when we made this particular product, which is daylight, which is, you know, we wanted to do something to help ourselves, the organizer so that we could grow.
[17:53] SPEAKER_00: And so now we're we're we're doing it for for our customer for customer for other people and become our customers.
[18:01] SPEAKER_00: And and that's still to me something that I wake up for in the morning.
[18:09] SPEAKER_00: I also like building things, you know, so I wake up for that.
[18:13] SPEAKER_00: So that's what keeps me excited as as boring as that sounds or you know, it hasn't changed much in all the years from when I started the business to where I am today.
[18:24] SPEAKER_04: I think you know, from from my perspective, there's one thing that the couple of things are on the kind of fun things.
[18:32] SPEAKER_04: You know, you've been doing this for a long time.
[18:35] SPEAKER_04: Yeah. So I presume you like it. Yes. What kind of job would you not like to do?
[18:43] SPEAKER_00: Right. Good question. Good question. So so so in in trying to understand myself or build a company in a way that's enjoyable to me.
[18:57] SPEAKER_00: I've had to learn what I'm not good at and what I don't like to do and and have other people that love to do that do that job.
[19:08] SPEAKER_00: Right. And so I'm not an operations person. Right. I'm not a process person.
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: I'm more of the on the creative side. So so those things are run by other people in our business.
[19:23] SPEAKER_00: And so that that's how I kind of deal with this fact that I'm you know, I'm a little bit different.
[19:31] SPEAKER_00: And so the things that I don't like to do or I'm not good at once I identify that I'm not good at them.
[19:37] SPEAKER_00: It's pretty easy because I'm not good at many things.
[19:41] SPEAKER_00: I tend to hopefully find somebody that can do that job way better than I can.
[19:47] SPEAKER_04: Let's go back to the word think that I love it because it ends up get finding out he found it a lot more.
[19:54] SPEAKER_04: In business what's your favorite word?
[19:57] SPEAKER_04: Court or you know, so it can be phrase or whatever.
[20:02] SPEAKER_04: And what's your least favorite word? And then kind of I think it gives you gives us a reflection.
[20:08] SPEAKER_00: So so my least favorite word is can't and but.
[20:17] SPEAKER_00: Or or because usually when you have you know some kind of idea you want to do something they'll be like, but you know we can't do it because of this or we you know and so there is that you're always fighting against that.
[20:31] SPEAKER_00: So I hate those words.
[20:35] SPEAKER_00: Or let me you know, he's a strong word but it's strongly dislike those words.
[20:39] SPEAKER_00: And in terms of in terms of my favorite words is you know tell me more why not.
[20:51] SPEAKER_00: How how can we do this? What are the options?
[20:55] SPEAKER_00: Those are my kind of favorite kind of like like things that I like to hear in our conversations because there are many possibilities and ideas and.
[21:09] SPEAKER_00: Having those words to trigger those conversations are words that I like.
[21:15] SPEAKER_02: So you said you you what overnight?
[21:23] SPEAKER_01: You used to so what is the first part of your day look like now in terms of the business perspective.
[21:32] SPEAKER_00: So nowadays so my kids are older there's 17 and and and 13 so the 17 year old they're able to the same school so the 17 year old drives so I don't have to do that anymore in the morning although sometimes most of the times my wife would take them.
[21:48] SPEAKER_00: But in the morning I'm usually a bit lethargic you know I'm slow to wake up.
[21:55] SPEAKER_00: Not that I'm not awake but I'm you know I'm not I'm not like I'm not buzzing in the morning.
[22:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah and so.
[22:03] SPEAKER_00: So usually I'll check for any emergencies and I'll take it easy in the morning and by the time I get down to you know just.
[22:11] SPEAKER_00: Amazing commute that we have now with COVID from upstairs to downstairs.
[22:17] SPEAKER_00: I am here sitting here by 9 30 10 am you know I'm not here like at 8 am.
[22:23] SPEAKER_00: There are odd times when you know there is something happening that I got to be here in prep earlier but majority of the time it's a you know 9 30 ish kind of.
[22:33] SPEAKER_00: I think I'm trying to move it to 9 but it's it's proving it's proving difficult it used to be 11 11 30.
[22:42] SPEAKER_04: I'm here at 6 30 so it's like really.
[22:48] SPEAKER_04: It's great I don't know what it is about the cycle but it's it's really interesting how people.
[22:55] SPEAKER_00: Yeah there is a there's a Matt Walker that taught the sleep guy that that has a few.
[23:02] SPEAKER_00: YouTube videos on explaining the circadian rhythm and and I don't know he there there is an explanation for.
[23:09] SPEAKER_00: Why certain people are morning people and other people are not morning people.
[23:16] SPEAKER_04: Hey yeah I'm looking at the time we're we're over our time that's why there's been really really interesting meeting you I hope you've enjoyed it.
[23:27] SPEAKER_00: Yes I have I have and it's been an honor being here with you I really appreciate what you've been doing with this podcast and it's really inspiration I listen to a whole bunch of them I recommend anybody to listen to a whole bunch of them because it's quite inspirational so thank you.
[23:42] SPEAKER_04: Thank you very much JD great having you on campus podcast thank you.
