Creating a Culture for Success

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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canvas Podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Cynthia Lockery from Canada's podcast
[00:09] SPEAKER_01: where we talk to entrepreneurs
[00:11] SPEAKER_01: who are making it happen right here in DC.
[00:15] SPEAKER_01: Today I'm excited to have Marcus New on the show.
[00:19] SPEAKER_01: Marcus is a pioneer in the pre-IPO asset class
[00:23] SPEAKER_01: with a career that spans over three decades
[00:26] SPEAKER_01: in the private and public financial markets.
[00:30] SPEAKER_01: He is the founder and chief executive officer of InvestX,
[00:35] SPEAKER_01: a firm headquartered in Vancouver
[00:37] SPEAKER_01: that delivers access and liquidity
[00:40] SPEAKER_01: to the growth equity asset class
[00:43] SPEAKER_01: and empowers the sell side
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: to invest and trade in institutional quality private equity.
[00:50] SPEAKER_01: Marcus is passionate about entrepreneurship
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: and has made his life's mission to be at the forefront
[00:57] SPEAKER_01: of innovation and leadership in the financial markets.
[01:02] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canvas Podcast.
[01:04] SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to hearing
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: and learning more about you and your journey.
[01:09] SPEAKER_01: So why don't we start about you telling us a bit about yourself
[01:12] SPEAKER_01: and your current business?
[01:15] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll build on myself.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: I've been on Twitter all my life when I was young
[01:19] SPEAKER_00: and from having the paper route,
[01:22] SPEAKER_00: I know that today in April,
[01:24] SPEAKER_00: most people would even know what paper is,
[01:26] SPEAKER_00: but having paper route when I was 12,
[01:29] SPEAKER_00: putting on school dances when I was 16
[01:31] SPEAKER_00: and in high school to running student painters,
[01:34] SPEAKER_00: which was somewhat a college bro,
[01:36] SPEAKER_00: if you're familiar with that,
[01:38] SPEAKER_00: we still is around during the summer's going to university
[01:41] SPEAKER_00: and then eventually starting a financial company
[01:45] SPEAKER_00: and that kind of internet era, then mid-90s.
[01:50] SPEAKER_00: And so I've had a long career.
[01:52] SPEAKER_00: I've considered myself.
[01:53] SPEAKER_00: I've always considered myself an entrepreneur since I was young.
[01:56] SPEAKER_00: And I love it.
[01:58] SPEAKER_00: And I'm passionate about it.
[01:58] SPEAKER_00: I'm passionate about other entrepreneurs.
[02:00] SPEAKER_00: And I've been passionate about just people
[02:02] SPEAKER_00: that want to make the world better
[02:03] SPEAKER_00: and make amazing products and serve customers.
[02:07] SPEAKER_00: And do so in a way that creates a lot of,
[02:09] SPEAKER_00: as you know, sacrifice a lot of different areas of their lives,
[02:11] SPEAKER_00: typically.
[02:13] SPEAKER_00: But the thrill of it and the passion for it is really extreme.
[02:17] SPEAKER_00: And our current business that we started nine years ago, I guess,
[02:21] SPEAKER_00: really came out of my experience in building a company called Stock Coast,
[02:24] SPEAKER_00: which was a financial community online,
[02:27] SPEAKER_00: where about a million investors would use it a month
[02:29] SPEAKER_00: to get access to public equity markets.
[02:31] SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you have to be deeply in something
[02:33] SPEAKER_00: to really understand where there's opportunity.
[02:35] SPEAKER_00: And so as we come to the public equity markets,
[02:37] SPEAKER_00: we saw that number of these companies
[02:39] SPEAKER_00: when they were going public,
[02:40] SPEAKER_00: we're starting to stay private longer.
[02:43] SPEAKER_00: And so the background in the venture ecosystem,
[02:46] SPEAKER_00: which is really where the biggest companies typically go public,
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: you know, they start off with kind of this idea they call it seed investment.
[02:55] SPEAKER_00: You know, and most companies can't make it to the next round.
[02:57] SPEAKER_00: You know, the A series A, then the B and the C.
[03:00] SPEAKER_00: And the most successful companies is basically like the world's
[03:04] SPEAKER_00: fiercest competition, you know, for world-class companies
[03:09] SPEAKER_00: and getting access to capital,
[03:11] SPEAKER_00: because they continued to have to really progress their business
[03:14] SPEAKER_00: in a really substantive way.
[03:16] SPEAKER_00: And what we found when we, when it moved in the public markets,
[03:20] SPEAKER_00: was that number of these private companies,
[03:21] SPEAKER_00: all of a sudden, were staying private longer.
[03:25] SPEAKER_00: And this was back kind of in 2013, 2014.
[03:29] SPEAKER_00: And when you looked at it, what you saw was there was a number of large institutional investors
[03:33] SPEAKER_00: like Fidelity or Wellington or TPG,
[03:36] SPEAKER_00: that were coming in and basically instead of that company going public,
[03:39] SPEAKER_00: they would say, look, we'll write you a check for $300 million.
[03:43] SPEAKER_00: You know, and just stay private longer.
[03:44] SPEAKER_00: And we will capture the returns in that company.
[03:47] SPEAKER_00: What was really fascinating, Cynthia, about that was that the company
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: of that staged the business with historically go public.
[03:52] SPEAKER_00: So for example, Amazon would public with above $400 and I think $42 million.
[03:58] SPEAKER_00: You know, it was kind of the size of the business when it went public, right?
[04:01] SPEAKER_00: You know, Facebook went public at $107 billion.
[04:06] SPEAKER_00: Right? And so you saw like $106.6 billion of value was created in the public,
[04:12] SPEAKER_00: in the private markets, that only people that got access to that were in some of these large institutional investors
[04:17] SPEAKER_00: and obviously the employees.
[04:19] SPEAKER_00: Right? Whereas Amazon, most of the returns came for public equity investors,
[04:22] SPEAKER_00: which are everything from pension funds and institutions to obviously the average retail investor.
[04:27] SPEAKER_00: And so when we started to see these companies staying private longer,
[04:30] SPEAKER_00: literally there was about 10 institutional investors, maybe 12 that were making all the money.
[04:35] SPEAKER_00: We said, this is fundamentally unfair.
[04:37] SPEAKER_00: You know, why in the world should only those 12 people or those 12 funds be able to get access to this asset class?
[04:43] SPEAKER_00: We said, there's got to be a way for us to provide broader group of people access to this asset class.
[04:48] SPEAKER_00: And so that was really kind of the foundation.
[04:50] SPEAKER_00: It was kind of foundation of us starting stockouts too, you know, which was why in the world
[04:54] SPEAKER_00: was should the brokerage community own all the information?
[04:56] SPEAKER_00: So regular retail investors can't actually make any other decision.
[05:00] SPEAKER_00: And they have to pay massive fees.
[05:01] SPEAKER_00: You may not remember this, but back in the kind of 90s and early 2000s, you know, especially the 90s,
[05:08] SPEAKER_00: brokers used to charge like 3.74% and put a trade in.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: The market makers would take another eighth.
[05:15] SPEAKER_00: And so when you started to think about like the cost of trading, it was massively,
[05:18] SPEAKER_00: you lose 10% of the return just to the fees to Wall Street and the fact or Bay Street.
[05:23] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, then what happened was information starts like us and yeah,
[05:27] SPEAKER_00: who financed and others came in and then the discount brokers came in.
[05:31] SPEAKER_00: You know, and what it did is expand the market 10x.
[05:33] SPEAKER_00: So the number of people trading the market, that was 10 times what it was because information became available.
[05:37] SPEAKER_00: And we were a big pioneer of making that happen.
[05:39] SPEAKER_00: And we saw ourselves a little bit, you know, not to be so dramatic,
[05:43] SPEAKER_00: but you know, a little bit of like, you know, the way that's kind of helped many.
[05:49] SPEAKER_00: I want to call it Robinhood, but you know, to help many be able to get access to that.
[05:52] SPEAKER_00: And then of course, you know, that market grew a lot.
[05:55] SPEAKER_00: And so when we saw the private markets, we actually saw some similarities to what we saw the public markets back in the 90s,
[06:00] SPEAKER_00: which was, you know, a small group of institutional investors controlled the market.
[06:03] SPEAKER_00: They made all the money. No one else did.
[06:06] SPEAKER_00: You know, and what would made it even worse since the end is that these companies, you know, were the best companies in the world.
[06:11] SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, when you get up to the final stage of venture capital, they go public.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: They're typically the best companies in the world.
[06:16] SPEAKER_00: You could think of Airbnb or DocuSign or Uber, all these kind of companies.
[06:19] SPEAKER_00: You know, so not only could investors not get access to them in the private markets,
[06:23] SPEAKER_00: they stayed private longer.
[06:25] SPEAKER_00: And they started to move up the average amount of time that they would go public from kind of five, six years to like 12, 13 years.
[06:31] SPEAKER_00: Right. But they also couldn't get the IPO shares because it was always controlled by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
[06:38] SPEAKER_00: So not only could you not get access to the private markets, you could also not get access when it went public.
[06:43] SPEAKER_00: And so the regular investor was in fact, you know, having all this return captured by a small group of institutional investors again.
[06:52] SPEAKER_00: Right. And so, so we said, look, this is fundamentally unfair.
[06:55] SPEAKER_00: And so we need to go and we need to fix that problem.
[06:58] SPEAKER_00: And so, but what was I think one of the most exciting things though is that these are the most amazing companies driven, you know, run by the most amazing entrepreneurs and leadership teams in the world.
[07:08] SPEAKER_00: These are world class companies that have really become the things that are most mainstream here.
[07:14] SPEAKER_00: And so we found a way to be able to really drive those returns to, you know, more investors instead of fewer, which is really how we started the company.
[07:22] SPEAKER_01: And I love how you started in Vancouver.
[07:25] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
[07:26] SPEAKER_01: So is there any job or experience and it might not even have anything to do with your current work that really, really motivated you to be an entrepreneur and to go down this entrepreneur route.
[07:43] SPEAKER_00: You know, I think my story is probably a little bit different than many entrepreneurs in my whole community really is of entrepreneurs.
[07:48] SPEAKER_00: And I love them as I mentioned very passionate about entrepreneurship.
[07:52] SPEAKER_00: You know, I just had it in my genes and things that's always young, right.
[07:56] SPEAKER_00: I did have some a little bit of modeling for my parents who had some different, you know, kind of experiences being an entrepreneur.
[08:03] SPEAKER_00: Not the way I would think of it today in terms of running big businesses more like the, you know, my dad was a photographer who had his own small photography firm.
[08:11] SPEAKER_00: You know, but and my mother, you know, work to build an education program for people to help them, you know, become certain skills in terms of geriatrics.
[08:23] SPEAKER_00: So the construct of that was that, you know, I had some modeling, but I've always just been passionate about the creativity of like, you know, doing something, you know, making some money from it, you know, figuring it out, you know, and many people would, you know, maybe put that energy into a lot of other things to develop and programming, whatever might be.
[08:40] SPEAKER_00: My mother was just really just super fascinated about all of those different things. And so, so it started really as I mentioned.
[08:46] SPEAKER_00: And that was really kind of, you know, I think just just a constant passion of wanting to do it, but also a constant passion of wanting to be really the best at it.
[08:57] SPEAKER_00: Like I had a high drive for achievement. And so, you know, so I just didn't do it like when I did student painters, you know, I was number one in the country.
[09:05] SPEAKER_00: And then when I did, I was number one in North America. You know, and so, so I always had a passion to be really, you know, to be highly achievement orientated and to do it, to do it extremely well.
[09:14] SPEAKER_00: And I've to really taken a lot of that. And I think that's just built into people, right? You know, where you, you know, you have creativity, the passion for that creativity that can be expressed in being an entrepreneur can be expressed in any kind of trade or craft. Of course, I might have got to be expressed in being an entrepreneur.
[09:28] SPEAKER_01: I love that. Is there any advice that you would give to an entrepreneur who's just starting out?
[09:38] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think, you know, the great thing about being young is that, you know, you have no fear or typically have no fear. And you have, you also usually don't have too many dependencies and financial commitments.
[09:48] SPEAKER_00: And so I find it's probably easier to start with you young. But one thing, you know, I think that there's lots of different types of entrepreneurs, right? And so, and they're all equal in terms of, you know, you know, kind of pursuing the dream.
[10:03] SPEAKER_00: And so, but they aren't quite different in terms of what their ambition may be. So, for example, you know, you can have an entrepreneur that would love to just have their own business and, you know, and have a franchise of something.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: And there's no less than not being an entrepreneur than I would be an entrepreneur running a different kind of business or someone that was running a business of a 5,000 employees.
[10:22] SPEAKER_00: You know, there's still all entrepreneurs. But what they may do there would might be different in terms of how they would start or set up or something like that, right?
[10:31] SPEAKER_00: So, so if you want to do your own thing, you have a passion and then, you know, Gerber and the EMF talks a lot about this, right?
[10:37] SPEAKER_00: You know, where people that were the account, they want to, you know, they said, I don't work for the man or the woman anymore. And so I want to start my own.
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: And so they go through that process, you know. But I think that from a pure, if I think from technology, which is where we really are, you know, go talk to customers and see if there's really a problem.
[10:55] SPEAKER_00: And talk to a lot of them before you go do something, right? And so, because if you go talk to a lot of customers and say, look, you know, this is a solution thinking about, you know, they say,
[11:04] SPEAKER_00: I want them to say there's a problem, then you then you ever get start for something. If all of them say that's not a problem, right? And this is the big issue.
[11:10] SPEAKER_00: We see all the time people build stuff with no problems at all, right? And so they spend a lot of time in energy that they get kind of disgruntled about it.
[11:17] SPEAKER_00: But that's in technology. In other areas, you can start a store or retail thing online or there's lots of different ways to be entrepreneurs today, especially with the internet.
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: But I always say, you know, there's a couple of things I always recommend. You know, one is find a group like EO, for example, is a great group for entrepreneurs. Of course, you have to have a business or a certain size, but they have a program called accelerator.
[11:38] SPEAKER_00: You know, for if you have, for example, $400,000 a revenue, I think you can dread accelerator. And those are learning programs that are helpful.
[11:45] SPEAKER_00: There's lots of groups online. There's lots of entrepreneurial things like ink magazine, lots that write on entrepreneurship, you know, different things about it.
[11:53] SPEAKER_00: So learn the craft because it takes a long time to be very good at it. Right? You can have a great product and be allows you entrepreneur and get some initial traction, right?
[12:04] SPEAKER_00: Which is great. Which is what most most most start that way because they just don't have the skillsets right around how to build a team.
[12:09] SPEAKER_00: You know, how to, you know, really understand a product market fit like all these kind of things they just don't know yet. And so my encouragement is go for it, start it, but you know, go talk to some customers first, right?
[12:21] SPEAKER_00: And make sure that there's a there's a thing there because also we talked to customers. They may you may get a lead customer for something, which also help you build some confidence and get the learning.
[12:30] SPEAKER_00: But it's really all about learning initially, right? You know, and if learning is not a core value of yours, I would really struggle to see whether you be successful on your right?
[12:38] SPEAKER_00: Because you have to keep learning not only about the market, the customers and products, we have to keep learning about the skillsets required to be good entrepreneur, which is really about team building, you know, deeply understanding customers and product market fit and things like that.
[12:51] SPEAKER_00: So those would be some of the things that I would always recommend.
[12:53] SPEAKER_01: I think it's great advice about the passion and the research and just connecting with people.
[12:59] SPEAKER_01: So in terms of what you do, what are you most proud of?
[13:05] SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, well, you know, putting if I think in the business context, you know, when I eat, when I start business, big business, I think business has a special exit before this one.
[13:22] SPEAKER_00: I want to design a culture. And this case through experiments of, you know, going through a lot of pain and issues related to, you know, what culture meant.
[13:31] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when you think about culture, you know, most people say, you know, the joke is that the executives go away from weekend, they come up with some values and some things like that, they come back, they tell everyone they punch on the walls over the office and then basically then.
[13:45] SPEAKER_00: So I would in my business before this at stock house, I went through a lot of different issues that business as a younger entrepreneur and grow business and went through a number of very difficult market issues, right.
[14:00] SPEAKER_00: We had the financial crisis in 2008 and none, you know, we lost like, you know, 50% of our revenues in one year, things like that.
[14:08] SPEAKER_00: And so as I went through that, I started this business. I said, what I want to do is I really want to design the culture. So I started it from that piece of paper first before actually hiring anyone and then I described the values that really important to me as an entrepreneur around people that I wanted to work with and had those similar values.
[14:26] SPEAKER_00: And then what we did is we really incorporated that in to our business. And so we have a values interview, which you know, today might be a little bit more popular probably, you know, maybe it was, you know, days ago, but where different people in our company are on that interview and the questions are all geared around understanding the person's you know, aptitude for our set of views.
[14:45] SPEAKER_00: And the way I describe it is like, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to agree with them, you know, what those values are.
[14:53] SPEAKER_00: There's lots of places to work, but if you like them, you know, this is not going to be the place, you're not going to be happy here, right, because we want to have people that kind of agree on a base set of principles on how we want to do things because we're all about kind of people doing our stuff, you know, we're going to really enjoy it more.
[15:06] SPEAKER_00: You know, and so I think that the, you know, we've worked to really work hard to build a culture like that, you know, and we're not perfected by any means and sometimes stops all the wall and we don't practice it the way it should be practiced.
[15:19] SPEAKER_00: But I think there's a genuine intent, you know, at our all means at the end of it, you know, every time at the end of that meeting, we have an open session where people talk about other people that exhibited the values over the last six weeks, give me their twice a quarter, you know, in the company.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: And so we reinforce it through the game in our weekly meetings of the value we're going to practice that we reinforce it in the company level talking about it all the time.
[15:43] SPEAKER_00: We reinforce it in terms of people going and demonstrating and calling out others that have exhibited it.
[15:50] SPEAKER_00: And so, and I think that's one of the things I'm really proud about is that, you know, we built a, a, a, a, a lonely highly capable, competent skilled people that are passionate about the things that we're doing in terms of how we serve customers and, and return to them.
[16:03] SPEAKER_00: And so, I think that we should take for portfolio for our clients, but, but also in terms of like having kind of those seem like minded people in the firm. And so, so that's I think, you know, I mean, there's lots of things that, you know, that I'm proud about, but I think, you know, that's probably one of them that's most important.
[16:20] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's great about how you bring your values to life instead of just being a list of words on a wall behind you.
[16:27] SPEAKER_01: So, so let's talk about being in VC, where both based in VC event, you know, entrepreneurs. What are some of the benefits of being here?
[16:40] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I think most entrepreneurs start, you know, sometimes where they're where they live, right? And so, you know, I lived here. I had another successful business here.
[16:50] SPEAKER_00: And so, I was able to kind of start this business, you know, out of the office of a other successful business, you know, before I sold it.
[16:58] SPEAKER_00: And so, I just naturally was here because I started here. Now, with that said, people are attracted to BC, you know, in terms of the lifestyle, the outdoors, you know, this kind of life balance piece that, you know, people have been talking about for 15 or 20 years now.
[17:14] SPEAKER_00: But there are some significant challenges too, right? And so, I think that if you have, you know, certain type of workers that can come to want to come to Canada, for example, from immigration perspective, we've hired some like that.
[17:27] SPEAKER_00: You know, usually they're in technology, you know, developers, product people, things like that from, you know, other parts of the world, you know, they like to land in BC because it's just beautiful. It's not as cool.
[17:37] SPEAKER_00: You know, if the weather's great, it's stuff that the challenge in BC, though, is it depends on your industry. If you're the media industry, creative arts industry, you know, things like that, there's a great talent pool here, right?
[17:50] SPEAKER_00: Because the, you know, the Hollywood North kind of idea, and it spawned into other technology related investors, right?
[17:57] SPEAKER_00: Or sorry, technology related companies, which is, which is built more a bit of a technical system here, which is great.
[18:03] SPEAKER_00: The piece that's challenging for us here is that we are in, you know, asset management, and there are very few people in that category in this, in this, unfortunately in this province.
[18:14] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we, we set up an office in New York because that's where the talent was, right? And so, and I'm a member of a group called C100, which is kind of a bridge between Canadian entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and lazy to venture like that.
[18:28] SPEAKER_00: And entrepreneurs that go down into the valley that are still Canadian, keeping their roots back in Canada, which I think is a great organization to do that and helping to build the Canadian ecosystem, right?
[18:38] SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of that talent goes down to America. And if I was younger and be honest, you know, I probably would have had a move to sell from a value to New York, you really get it going.
[18:46] SPEAKER_00: But because I, you know, have been successful, so don't try to add more flexibility, but a lot, because you have to go or talent is on some level.
[18:52] SPEAKER_00: So it depends on your business, right? And our business, you know, it wasn't as important for me to be able to go, but if I was younger, I probably would have maybe had a move.
[19:01] SPEAKER_00: But lots of other businesses really fit here well, right? So, there's a track to a place to come. And, you know, and we love Vancouver. I mean, it's obviously as beautiful as you know.
[19:11] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think every person I've interviewed has said it's for the beauty.
[19:18] SPEAKER_01: So how do you define success and more importantly, how do you celebrate success?
[19:26] SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a great question. I think, you know, a lot of people define it different ways. I am most passionate and I feel success is happening is really two things.
[19:34] SPEAKER_00: When customers are served and are happy, right? You mean, in our case, that means creating very good financial performance for their investments, right?
[19:44] SPEAKER_00: Being able to service them well, you know, because we already delivered to them an asset class that is probably set out after that they won't have.
[19:53] SPEAKER_00: They just never been able to have. So our products amazing, because, you know, we invest in Airbnb, you know, a few years before when public, you know, for example, you know, a doctor said all these amazing companies, Insta Cartwheel, you know,
[20:04] SPEAKER_00: so, but with that said, so giving access is the real key thing for our product, but from a service perspective on how we think success is really if the clients are successful,
[20:15] SPEAKER_00: they gave the returns that we expect, right? And so, and that requires a lot of work and an effect of markets and a lot of different things like that.
[20:22] SPEAKER_00: So, and then the second piece is the team, right? Is the team working really, really well together, you know, and I get a lot of satisfaction of seeing that happen, right?
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: We're really smart people are engaged, they're working well together, you know, we're kind of, we're moving through walls together. And, you know, adversity sometimes really helps in terms of doing that.
[20:41] SPEAKER_00: And then the other piece is that, you know, we try to create not in a, this in genuine way, but we, we, or maybe more frequent with this genuine stuff, right?
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: We're, we're automatic way. We try to build in some of the celebrations.
[21:00] SPEAKER_00: And there's really two things that two ways I've kind of described it. So, number one is when we, if we, we set curly goals every quarter, we communicate them to the company, you know, and then we have rocks, that's what we call our goals, you know, that are cascaded down through the out the organization.
[21:12] SPEAKER_00: So, every person has kind of three to four rocks for the quarter apartments have rocks and the company has rocks, very typical, you know, style.
[21:19] SPEAKER_00: And then we have a celebration for us achieving 80% of them for the end of the quarter.
[21:23] SPEAKER_00: And that celebrations company wide. And so we try to do things like that, right? In difficult times though, what happens is sometimes, you know, where you're in challenging, like last year, the very challenging market, right?
[21:34] SPEAKER_00: So the stock market, very, very challenging, most assets, you know, most people lost money last year. And most asset classes that they own because of the effect of interest rates moving up so high, we're going to, this and that kind of discussion, let's see, like, too.
[21:47] SPEAKER_00: But so you had to find green shoots, right? But you have to be genuine. You can't just go and have a boat celebration because, you know, you sign one customer or you made a great investment.
[21:58] SPEAKER_00: I mean, the idea here is that, you know, we have to reinforce it through, you know, kind of acknowledgement more so than maybe big celebratory things. So I think it's always a combination of acknowledgement.
[22:09] SPEAKER_00: So learning, you know, small acknowledgments of things are going well and green shoots are going well, you know, larger celebrations and they all form part of the culture, you know, when, when, when milestones objectives get hit, you know, celebrations are important, right?
[22:24] SPEAKER_00: And people want to feel good about that hard work. It can't be just all head down all the time, right? And so, so I think, you know, we probably can do a better job at it too.
[22:32] SPEAKER_00: We've got a really great person in our people culture that leads that. That's really good at helping cut up those things together. But, you know, I think that that's something that, you know, in difficult times, it's always hard to do well, I think.
[22:46] SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of difficult times, you're the CEO. It's on you. How do you deal with fear and doubt when that comes up?
[22:57] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, you got to be a bit like tough one, I think, you know, I think there's a couple of things that you have. Number one is that, you know, is having a really good executive team, right?
[23:07] SPEAKER_00: So that, you know, can kind of share that those that that not that burden overall because they don't own it the same way, obviously, as the leader as the entrepreneur does or the CEO does.
[23:18] SPEAKER_00: But, but certainly, you know, are a part of the solution, a part of working through, you know, how to how to deal with those issues, right?
[23:27] SPEAKER_00: And then, I think personally, you know, you have to take care of yourself, right? Like this, especially when it's stressful, right? And so, you know, you have to do some exercise.
[23:37] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, probably about things that people talk about all the time, and they're really hard to do, right? Especially if you're not doing them a lot, right?
[23:43] SPEAKER_00: And so, but you have to get clarity, you have to spend some mindful time, and that's a top topic, you know, I do it more in a devotions kind of thing.
[23:52] SPEAKER_00: But I try to, you know, do a little bit of that and a little bit of exercise five times a week, you know, more important when it's stressful, right?
[23:59] SPEAKER_00: It's less stressful, probably could do it three times a week, right? So, two times. And I hate it, and I don't want to do it, right?
[24:04] SPEAKER_00: So, but I know it's really important every time I do it, I go, thankfully, I did it, right?
[24:08] SPEAKER_00: So, but I need accountability. And so, you know, so the things are really hard, you know, I really am a big believer in getting coaching, right?
[24:15] SPEAKER_00: So, every professional athlete has a coach. Every top performer has a coach. So, I have different coaches too, right? So, and accountability group.
[24:23] SPEAKER_00: So, I have an accountability group, for example, I have a form group in EO, you know, and we have a MOOP app, you know, which is a MOOP band, which somebody might be familiar with, it's a kind of a sophisticated art rate monitor.
[24:34] SPEAKER_00: But it tracks our level of strain, and whether we do exercise or not, you can see our whole group. And so, I just have that accountability of seeing on the app that the rest of us, is eight of us in it, you know, makes you do it more, right?
[24:44] SPEAKER_00: And so, always having something like that. I have a devotional accountability group, it was a couple of us that, you know, text each other when we do that. So, having accountability group is really important, and the second piece is having a coach.
[24:54] SPEAKER_00: And so, we have the executive coach for our executives, but I also have a personal coach that helps me in terms of, you know, trying to really create peak performance, you know, working on the right things,
[25:03] SPEAKER_00: talking through issues, right? And so, and as an entrepreneur, as you know, it sometimes can be a little bit more lonely there, right? You know, because it's not, you don't have the same unfethered, you know, we have describing every fear and issue you've got, you know, with your executive team, you don't want to scare the heck out of them.
[25:20] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when sometimes you feel it. So, the construct of that is that, you know, I think coaching is a super powerful way of doing it. No, they're not cheap, and it's an investment, you know, but to me that would be a highly recommended thing for, you know, once your business gets to it, you know,
[25:33] SPEAKER_00: certain size, but, you know, definitely having a coach should be helpful.
[25:37] SPEAKER_01: I couldn't agree more every jump that I've made in my career has been with a coach and having different coaches based on where you are in your journey. So, I think that's great.
[25:51] SPEAKER_00: Well, Cynthia, I want to other thing to that, you know, is we would think of it typically, you know, in terms of, of a coach for your business or executive team, etc.
[26:01] SPEAKER_00: But I had a point when that I hired a coach as well, just my personal life, right? And I had, you know, made a very typical error that a lot of entrepreneurs did, which was kind of overemphasized kind of the business and kind of under-emphasized kind of some of my family.
[26:16] SPEAKER_00: And so, so I hired a coach actually just to work with me just to help me actually rebuild some of the skills that I needed.
[26:23] SPEAKER_00: And some of the commitments I needed in starting with spending time, you know, and then it made a really good impact, right?
[26:29] SPEAKER_00: And so having a kind of an accountability code just for that. I wasn't for business, it wasn't for the exacts, it wasn't for anything like that.
[26:34] SPEAKER_00: I was just like, you know, get my kind of personal life rebalanced back. And so again, you could have coaches for different things.
[26:40] SPEAKER_00: And that's actually been something I've found a lot of entrepreneurs have asked me a lot about what was my experience with that because the coach for about two or three years in that specific area of my life.
[26:49] SPEAKER_00: And it's because if your, if the entrepreneur has a good family life, it will be a better entrepreneur.
[26:55] SPEAKER_01: And 100% agree with that.
[26:59] SPEAKER_01: So if you weren't doing what you're doing now, what's another career path that you could see yourself in even an alternative life?
[27:10] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I love being an entrepreneur, you know, one of my core values is also generosity. And so, you know, we spend a lot of time, I should say a lot of time.
[27:21] SPEAKER_00: We spend time and financial resources to try to be generous.
[27:27] SPEAKER_00: And we believe that, you know, that we've been given a lot of opportunities, a lot of people in a lot of places the world have not been.
[27:32] SPEAKER_00: And so I think that if I was to think about being outside of business, it would probably be related to being as involved with a nonprofit on some level, you know, to use some of the leadership and building skills to be able to help, you know, drive more of that.
[27:49] SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I would see as kind of if I wasn't a business, but I'm, but you know, currently I'm so, I'm so passionate about kind of companies that we invested in, the area that we invested, you know, to me, these are amazing businesses.
[28:02] SPEAKER_00: And grace a lot of passion, but I think in the next set or generation will be look something more like that, where I'll take that same passion and put it back into people versus putting it back into kind of, you know, profits for people.
[28:15] SPEAKER_01: And is there any advice that you gained on your journey that that you think would help other entrepreneurs?
[28:25] SPEAKER_00: Well, you can almost pull out any topic area for that. I think, you know, I think that there's at different points in my career, you know, you learn different things.
[28:36] SPEAKER_00: And it get it, I said at the very beginning, it depends on what kind of business that you want to have.
[28:40] SPEAKER_00: Not every person wants to go and put in what's required to go build up, you know, business with 100 million revenue, you know, versus they want to maybe have a franchise, you know, because it's a more cleaner way of being able to still be an entrepreneur.
[28:52] SPEAKER_00: But have a lot of those things already done for you, right? And so those are very different types of things. And so for me, my passion was to build something substantive.
[29:00] SPEAKER_00: And so it's a really, you know, so I think there's a couple things I look at. Number one is, you know, I said at the beginning, learning has to be a core value. You know, you have to learn, right?
[29:09] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and I just don't think there's very many success entrepreneurs that don't have a core value of learning. Right? And so, you know, not to be so, you know, for me, a layek.
[29:19] SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the team is important. Now, the team is important, but most people don't understand how to get a good team. Now, a lot of businesses aren't big enough to attract good people either, whether it's good people for different stages of the business.
[29:31] SPEAKER_00: So you have to, one of the important things, I think as a business grows, especially if it starts to scale quickly, is that you have to also be able to recognize when a person that is a Swiss Army knife that you hire at the beginning, when you're six or eight people, right?
[29:45] SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very different when you're 20. It's very different when you're 50. It's very different when you're 100, right? And very few can go through that transition, right?
[29:53] SPEAKER_00: And so you just have to recognize that right at the beginning, right? Because if you hold that person too long, you may really affect your business. So, so that's why I also started to get as your business grows bigger, you start to attract more quality talent because they want to be a part of something that's growing.
[30:06] SPEAKER_00: They don't typically want to be in some of the six people.
[30:08] SPEAKER_00: And so then you have more people that can help you with those things too. But so the people that transition, you know, and how those people can either get into different roles.
[30:17] SPEAKER_00: Or maybe unfortunately have to exit the company, but as you go through that. So it's all about people on some level. So that's one aspect, right?
[30:24] SPEAKER_00: So learning people, then the other thing I think is that, you know, think bigger, you know, and I think this is a, this is an issue for a lot of people, you know, they don't believe it could be really massive or they don't understand maybe how to do it.
[30:37] SPEAKER_00: But there's lots of resources to help to create that understanding, you know, there's lots of books like Blue Print to a billion and many like this to talk about some of these things. But when you think about one of the things I think about as we invest, for example, but I also think about for our businesses, where are their markets where there's unlimited scale, right?
[30:53] SPEAKER_00: Where you were, you know, versus defined markets and I've an entrepreneur friend of mine for me literally last night.
[30:58] SPEAKER_00: He has a software business in kind of a local service business. Let's call it. Then he served the service look like a local service kind of business, the music industry.
[31:10] SPEAKER_00: And the, you know, when we looked at the size of that market for his product, the whole market, the entire market of North America is like $30 million.
[31:18] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, maybe it's $40 million, right? So you're never even going to have the market. So you've got 10% of the market. The max that business is going to be $3 million business, right?
[31:27] SPEAKER_00: And so, so the, the construct of that is that if you build in products from very, very small markets, you know, yeah, it might be okay as it, as a basically a job, right?
[31:36] SPEAKER_00: Or maybe lifestyle business and it's quite fine. Nothing wrong with that, right? So, if you want to build something that can scale or be larger, you have to be markets that are sizeable, right?
[31:45] SPEAKER_00: So, even though at the beginning, you're not going to have anything that's going to be close to it, but it has to be the size of the market.
[31:49] SPEAKER_00: So, I always think a little bit about that and I've been trained more to think about that, you know, how we invest today.
[31:55] SPEAKER_00: It's all the companies we invest in are massive markets, solving massive problems, and they're usually the world's leader in it.
[32:00] SPEAKER_00: So, the other thing too is, you know, scaling companies requires typically a big brother for the small brother, right? Or a big sister for the small sister, right?
[32:10] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, they're very hard to do, but they bring immense credibility and accelerate businesses faster.
[32:15] SPEAKER_00: So, the faster that you're able to go and, you know, partner up, get investment from, get a alliance with, you know, some of these big companies, they can actually bring you through a lot more doors faster, right?
[32:28] SPEAKER_00: And we were very fortunate, we had a company called Jeffries, you know, that invested in our business, you know, it was a very, very large for investment banking brokerage for financial services from the US.
[32:39] SPEAKER_00: You know, and they were open up a lot more doors and helped us to really kind of accelerate a business as well.
[32:43] SPEAKER_00: And so, so those kind of things, I should have done more when I was younger, right? I should have focused more on understanding the skillsets of how to find an eight player and attract an eight player, right?
[32:53] SPEAKER_00: You know, because it was more just whoever you could almost get to come in. You know, so it's been more time there. It's been more time on what are some, you know, kind of big sister alliances that we could put together for the business, you know.
[33:05] SPEAKER_00: And so, and then, you know, continue to learn.
[33:08] SPEAKER_01: I think that's great. Well, those are all the questions I had for you today. So is there anything else you want to add before we close out?
[33:18] SPEAKER_00: You know, I think for entrepreneurs, you know, the passion to do something is really great, but the passion is one piece of it only, right?
[33:26] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really would emphasize, and I tell us to my nieces and nephews too, you know, I haven't found one that wants to be an entrepreneur yet, unfortunately. But if they do, you know, just you need to learn, you need to put the skillsets in place.
[33:39] SPEAKER_00: It is not natural. You didn't you weren't built with them, right? And so you have to put the skillsets in place. So, you know, take the passion, but start to really make sure you're learning and, you know, and enjoy one last thing.
[33:52] SPEAKER_00: As I've gotten a little too, and I rate this down until I'm able to do less to remind me, right? Which is also to enjoy the journey, right? And you know, sometimes you just see working so hard all the time, or you're so stressed out because all the issues, right?
[34:04] SPEAKER_00: Something you got back it up and say, look, I'm, you know, why am I doing this? Well, I want to enjoy the journey of it, right? And so, and the problems are just opportunities, great solutions. Sure, that's kind of a bit again for me, like, but if you really think about it, you know, the way I think about it is, you know, and deep problems too, especially is,
[34:21] SPEAKER_00: I will be smarter at the end of this, right? So, no matter what, I will be smarter at the end of it. I will be more skilled and based on building skillsets here, right?
[34:30] SPEAKER_00: You can't not build skillsets to that adversity. And so, I will build more skillsets and I'll build more skillsets and I will become, you know, no, people might think that that's a little bit too much like, you know, your computer.
[34:41] SPEAKER_00: I just keep getting smarter. Maybe yeah.
[34:45] SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for coming on the show. I definitely learned a lot and enjoyed our conversation. And we look forward to seeing you again.
[34:55] SPEAKER_00: Wonderful. Great to be with you Cynthia. Have an amazing day.
[34:58] SPEAKER_01: Thank you.