speaker-0: We have clients asking us to do more. And let me tell you, it's very tempting. And I took the bait, but it adds complexity to the business. Yes.
speaker-1: And we've all done that. We've all done that. You know, as you said, it's tempting to try to be all things to all people, but you dilute your ability to really do the things you do well and to offer that high level touch experience.
speaker-0: I didn't realize I was actually cannibalizing my high profit margin services. When you're trying to be everything to everyone, it's overwhelming and really hard. And so you end up being forgettable.
speaker-1: Mark, so good to have you on today. We've had ⁓ some interesting discussions. We met through a networking collaboration group, which I know we're both big fans of, but we might even touch on that subject a little bit because I think it's something that if people have not really gleaned the opportunity in getting outside the box of whatever your ⁓ specialization is, your business is. ⁓ there's so much out there. So that's where we met. We've had some subsequent conversations, and I thought it would just be really interesting to bring to the table someone who is not, you know, part of my my environment necessarily, which is, you know, practicing doctors and dentists, ⁓ but comes from, you know, an outside world of still being very entrepreneurial, which is what we all are. So what I like to do is is let's go back in time and think it was two thousand six is when you started up your digital agency. ⁓ you ran that for fifteen years and then boom, ⁓ COVID hits and ⁓ you had to like downshift and then reshift. And I think there's some some storylines in there about ⁓ making these pivots, ⁓ because that's part of life, right? So take us back. So I mean start us out and give us a little of color on your background and then what let's talk about what ha little bit about what happened in COVID.
speaker-0: Yeah, well, thank you for having me, David. I really appreciate it. So, ⁓ you know, and I was twenty-three years old. My wife and I, we got married, we were high school sweethearts, we got married young. We had my first daughter, and I was working at the time, I was 23. ⁓ we live up here in Toronto, so my wife's at home, single family household income. I'm making forty-five thousand dollars a year working for ⁓ an internet marketing franchise. I work at the head office. We have fifteen hundred offices in ninety countries and territories. And my I was responsible for producing all of the education content on video, all of the franchise development marketing. I was responsible for everything. But my daughter's born in October of two thousand six. And a day or two into holding her and looking at her, I turned to my wife and was like, I think I want to quit my job. And and I think I want I've been I've been thinking about it for a few years, but for some reason this seemed like the perfect opportunity. My wife is at home with no income. I we are living in a a very expensive urban center, like high cost of living. And I'm like, I'm gonna quit my job and be and here's my pitch to her. Listen, if I make like forty-five thousand a year working for one person, giving them all my time, imagine how much money I'd make if I worked for 10 companies. You know, I mean like we're just gonna make so much more money. ⁓ and that's where my business sense started. It started with very little. Business sense because I don't know about you. But launching ⁓ at the time a video production company because we still shot things on tape. And it was before Google had even bought YouTube and there was no real social media yet. ⁓ it was hard. It was early. I didn't understand sales. I didn't understand targeting. I didn't understand messaging. I didn't know why people bought or what they were really paying for. I didn't know how to explain my value. I didn't know how to explain why to pick me versus somewhere else, someone else. And so, you know, the first year was hard. We lived below the poverty line. ⁓ by year two, we got pushed onto social assistance because how could a f you know, a family of three possibly live making eighteen thousand dollars a year? But I figured it out. I figured it out. And you know, the Great Recession was really hard and challenging, and there were many, many, many challenges, but I will skip ahead. So by by twenty thirty thirteen or fourteen, we're doing a little over a million a year in re in revenue. It's a project based company, so this is not recurring revenue. This is every year we are going out and we are replacing our revenue.
speaker-1: Basically go out and you eat what you kill.
speaker-0: Every single year. Year over year over year. So ⁓ by twenty sixteen, seventeen, I saw that our market had we had become kind of uncompetitive because I I I didn't realize, and sometimes you don't realize when you're on a wave. I rode a really great, great wave. You know, we were early into the market focused on video when no one could really do it, and then it blew up. We we really pivoted hard to be a certain type of company, and people loved that. But then By twenty sixteen or seventeen, there are a lot of other options. There's other companies, there's other geographies, people were losing business for the first time to people in Brazil. That had never happened before. And how could I compete? You know, I had twenty four people in my office full time ⁓ by twenty twenty who are doing a little over two million a year in revenue. And when I would quote a project for, you know, pretty decent project, but I'd say maybe like twenty five, thirty, forty, fifty grand for a project. And and then they could do it in Brazil for like six thousand dollars. And it it's I I don't know what to say to that. Right. So I was forced to to look ahead and figure out what's next. And ⁓ and so yeah, when when COVID hit, our business took a massive hit. We were doing 70% of our revenue was boots on the ground revenue. People going into locations with cameras, with shooting photography, working with people, everything got put on hold. We had grown up market. So what started as us being mom and pop. By 2014, 15, 16, we're now starting to compete against larger agencies, national agencies. We're winning television campaigns and we're working with real major players. ⁓ and by 2018 and 19, we're working with international brands, we're working with national airlines, we're working with NBA teams. Like we had we my answer to was just more, more, more, more. Let's go up market, let's take on harder projects, let's just keep, let's grow our way out of whatever lack of competent competitive edge we had. But when everything got put on hold, y e you know, the business disappeared. Everything disappeared. And so to your point, it we really had to ask ourselves, and I should have done it years earlier, perhaps. It's not like I wasn't trying, but it really it it really forced me to to go, okay, we can't just always grow our way out of some of these business ⁓ challenges or ⁓ structural challenges or even who we're targeting or what we're offering. We're just doing too much for too many people, honestly. That's
speaker-1: There's there's some real relevance there, and I'm gonna just pick up ⁓ in case some of our docs might miss this, but probably most will get it. In the healthcare industry, which I know you also know a lot about, the it's very insurance driven today. It's become a commodity ⁓ across the board, it's unfortunate. Yes, there's boutique and concierge services, which are great, but for the rank and file medical practitioner, Dr. Dennis Vett today, patiatrist, y audiologist, you name it, ⁓ you know, it's it's been commoditized and insurance drives the margins drives the reimbursements. And and so the game has been, ⁓ I'm glad I'm not still in it, but the game has been, as you said, well, we can we can make up for it it that la loss in revenue and margins make up for it in quantity. I like kind of grow our way out, you know? Well there's only so far you can get with that. Yes, efficiency is important, right? So you can get more efficient ⁓ in process the systems and but there's a point where that's that's going backwards. You're on a slippery slope and doesn't work. So I that was one point I want to bring out is growing your way out is not necessarily The way to go. The other thing that that I want to make sure people got was that, you know, you said that the competition had been gaining ground ⁓ internationally in the years s prior to COVID and you were seeing that happen. and it seems to me that COVID became you said the push, I call it like the catalyst that said, okay.
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like it was like a cliff that we fell off on.
speaker-1: No more waiting, there's no there's no more no more ⁓ waiting to see if something better will happen. It's like, okay, we gotta go. In so now in retrospect, do you see that as then being a good thing from the standpoint of the push that made you go forward with, or would you just soon do without COVID and go back and figure out a different way?
speaker-0: I I I can't help it either way. So I mean, I would love to be able to go back and have everything happen the way it happened with me having a second chance. I know that's not one of the options you gave me, but now that I know how things played out, I would do things differently. But the truth is I didn't have a choice in the matter. I kind of responded pretty slowly actually, because the other thing is having been in business for so long, thing things were things were pretty heady at the time. It was a lot of we were you know, we were doing a hundred and eighty to two hundred projects a year. We had 40 projects on the go at any given time. We're working in 29 industries. ⁓ we're doing things that are really, really small. It you a company might hire us to help them with an email sequence. Hey, you know, when when a client when new clients come in for intake, we're not doing a great job. How can we get them to know more about who we are and what we do and why they might want to stick with us or refer someone to us? Well, okay, that's a pretty nice small project. But then on the other side, we would help ⁓ with a like a brand new go-to-market launch strategy for brand new. product or service, which means we're figuring out all of their positioning and all of the things we need to say. And we're creating, we're shooting commercials and videos and we're helping to manage performance campaigns to make sure they show up in the right place. ⁓ we're doing billboards, like huge, huge projects. So if I could go back, I would very I would respond faster. I would know exactly what to do today. I wouldn't worry about the things that turned out it didn't matter. But the truth is we don't have a choice in these things. So all we can do is just Do our best.
speaker-1: Do you look at the strategy back then where you were doing, as you said, very comprehensive ⁓ s strategies and then also would take on some small projects just to keep the door open to potentially clients who could grow bigger by showing them ⁓ how well you could perform at a lower scale based on their needs? Is is that something that you feel like was still an advantage back then or is is it it's something you still do today, or did you make a change and said, We've gotta focus on you know, a certain criteria or box of compliance and we can't fool with that. What what do you say to that today? I mean you still do that or is that not something that you still take on smaller projects to see if you can grow a client?
speaker-0: ⁓ we we take on small projects, we take on large large projects. What we've done is we've cut back on the number of things we offer. Mm-hmm. So so leading up to twenty seventeen, we were a video ⁓ centric agency, which meant that if if video wasn't the main component, if you weren't doing promotions or ads, if you weren't doing a video or case study, if you weren't if if it wasn't the v the the storytelling through video first and then the campaign pages or the ads or the landing pages, then the email sequences or Whatever you're doing for marketing. But if it wasn't that first, we wouldn't take the work. And we had clients asking us to do more. We had clients who wanted us to do more. They said, We had one client said, Mark, you've ruined us for other vendors because your service and your approach, like like the we love everything about your strategy and your approach and all this. Why can't you just help us with this thing over here? And let me tell you, it's very tempting. And I took the bait, but I didn't realize one, when you add new services or products. to your operation, your shared services, so your contracts, your legal, your finance, ⁓ your your onboarding, your account management, whatever you might do. If you're if you're running a practice, you're your front of desk people, ⁓ you might think, okay, all I need is a new room and a new piece of equipment and train someone go. But it adds complexity to the business. Yes. And so I didn't respect or understand that. I've learned that since then. The other ⁓ thing that's very challenging is I didn't realize I was actually cannibalizing my high profit margin services. So while my clients were saying, Mark, you ruined us for everyone else, we really want to work with you. It's because we were so high touch. Where because we had the pr budgets and we had the profits, I could I could afford to have the team. I could afford to take the time. I could afford for me to throw a little bit of our money into it to make it really sing and be great. And when you're again the one of the biggest moves in healthcare over the last number of years, and we've helped on strategies to help our clients with this. You know, the big thing is to acquire multiple offices and then to to outsource back end office work and not, you know, they said we used to say, but the doctors be doctors. You know, you care about patient outcomes, you care care about your time in the thing. Don't worry about your back office. Okay, cool. You can find those efficiencies. ⁓ you know, we could we can try and make sure that that our autoresponders and our follow up dials and our texts To get people to show up, can get them into the office on time so we don't have late bookings or cancellations. You can do that stuff. But if your operation counts on you running minute to minute, back to back, day to day, you don't have the time or the budget or the luxury to throw those extra little things in there. And I didn't realize that I was moving while I was making our whole business look more competitive, I was eroding a profit center. I was cannibalizing it towards lower. cost ⁓ lower profit items or or services that also introduced more risk for us to ruin our reputation. Yes. So so a few years in now, I'm doing more work for less budget and I'm apologizing a lot more. I hadn't had that in my business before.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Well, there's there's there's a lot of takeaways there that I I know our listeners can certainly pick up and probably having ⁓ noticed the same experience if they've if they've tried that. And we've all done that. We've all done that. You know, as you said, it's tempting to try to be all things to all people, but you dilute your ability to really do the things you do well and to offer that high level touch experience, which today, ⁓ particularly in any business that deals with people, which most do, unless you're a accountant in the in a in a back room. I mean, you know, it's people business. And that's what a big part of what you do ⁓ with with with your branding ⁓ strategies is is how do you differentiate, right? Which we may have time to get into that, but I I I'm glad we brought that out. ⁓ I I'd also like to just dig a little bit on any particular lessons you learned or how you were able to downsize a two million dollar revenue company, you know, right there prior to COVID, ⁓ and then 70% of your revenue was virtually gone overnight. How how do you take all these projects and 24 employees and bring it down fast enough to keep things going. ⁓ and y and I I know you're a person who cares deeply about people. You c Y I mean it just it shows and everything you do. So as any business owner, you've been you've you've been on a run rate and it's gone well and then something slaps you, you know, that that's a black swan. How how do you deal with that? I guess both emotionally and practically would be my question.
speaker-0: I'm not gonna lie, it was it was the most challenging time of my life to date. ⁓ I was not leading up to that, I was not a very strong or good manager. Good entrepreneur. And if for anyone who's entrepreneurial, you know the difference between being a great entrepreneur and being a great manager. And so I had already, you know, burned some bridges with some of my core team members. So truthfully, I just I just paid for everything. ⁓ you know, I've heard people say in in our group and other groups They talk about leverage. I have never been one to leverage properly. I don't leverage well. I don't leverage things. I'm I'm just like, you know, I keep a lot of cash on hand and I keep it in cash. and all through 16, 17, 18, 19, I'm looking around at my friends, my other c entrepreneurs, and I'm looking at what what they like what they're able to do, right? Just when you when you have some cash and then you're able to leverage that and and borrow against it or borrow against assets or put off cash flowing assets, like all this stuff, you can build. as you know, you can build a tremendous amount of wealth.
speaker-1: You know, in in the in the right in the right market.
speaker-0: In the right market with the right situation with everything lined up. I I I will not go into anything I don't understand. The to the point where the only thing I've ever invested in is ETFs because I don't even understand I understand enough to know that I can't win stocks. I understand enough to know the games I can't win because I've pushed into enough industries and enough situations where I go, I don't know anything about this. And so I keep I kept a lot of cash on hand. I held on to staff members as long as I could. I'm Canadian, so when we let someone go, we didn't have the right to lay anyone off. It's not part of our we we we couldn't legally do that. And I had to I let some some people quit and found new work. Some people saw a writing on the wall that like Mark's not really not really what sure what's happening with this company. And then I ha I had to let a few people go. And I don't think I don't think I came out of that with with anyone liking me. ⁓ so it's just one of those things. And then but the but the b the bigger challenge, quite honestly, as a leader or a business owner is is having to build back up your confidence. You know, it's that that is one of the biggest challenges. I was twenty three when I started. I'm like now kind of forty, thirty nine, forty at the time. Can I do this again? Do I have the energy? Do I have the skill set? Those are all the things that you have to be able to get through.
speaker-1: Well, y you kind of took a couple of years ⁓ to you know, rethink ⁓ as you said, you know, growing it back up and and at this point you're definitely changing the the avatar of your your client base. ⁓ what was that process like? Because you were dealing with mostly as you said, large corporations and you went to more ⁓ you know, privately owned, ⁓ smaller, you know, owner operators. ⁓ talk talk about that shift and and how that's worked out and how you went through the process of seeing that as to be the way to move now that you had to make all these t these decisions and changes.
speaker-0: Yeah. Well that's and that's a great question. Here's something that I've learned and it's taken me a long time to accept. Culture matters a lot. Culture matters a lot. So if if you know I hired you, let's let's say that I'm running a nonprofit and I want to send you to the other side of the world to provide dental care for for for you know communities and villages that don't have it. You can come in and you could look at the tools or whatever and you're gonna do a great job, right? You're gonna you're gonna come in and do a great job. Now if I asked you to be dropped in To, I don't know, working at a dental practice in Belarus and you're now you're now an assistant, ⁓ you're probably not going to understand what's going on, right? Because there's there's a culture. There's and we've seen this with the healthcare professionals we work with who are who are trained overseas and come in. It's not the skill set, it's the culture. And with my business, what I realized is that I'm an entrepreneur. I spend almost all my time with entrepreneurs. I go to mastermind groups and peer mentoring. All of my team wanted to work at an entrepreneurial company for entrepreneurs. But we spent but all of our clients, not all of them. The majority of our clients were corporate clients. And I like working for corporate clients because I can come in a little faster and looser. I know that they have structure and guidelines. I get them, they get me. But but I what I realized was my team didn't sign up to work in these corporate environments. I didn't hire a corporate team for corporate environments. And that that misalignment took me years to realize. And so yes, we have worked on our avatar, but But in fact, all I've done is aligned the people that I spend all my time with. I spend my time with business owners. I spend my time with entrepreneurs. And so instead of either going out and building a corporate team for a corporate client, even though I'm an entrepreneur and I would drive them crazy, or build an entrepreneurial team with an entrepreneur and then sell to corporate clients. And again, we still have some corporate clients, but this alignment really matters. And and so If anyone is listening right now and you've ever been hurt by a marketing company, burned by an agency, said, ⁓ I don't think it works, ⁓ I don't know. I mean, there could be a bunch of problems here, but one of the biggest problems that I see is when there's a misalignment of these values, or frankly, just kind of a cultural misalignment. ⁓ if I can share one quick story, we were working on a rebrand for ⁓ a company out of Dallas. ⁓ they they are in the water business, so they do ⁓ water filtration and water purifiers and ice machines for for companies and for hotels and for restaurants. And it's a very local market. ⁓ we connected with them and I love their business and they really appreciated my strategy and approach. But I mean I've I've never lived in Dallas. I I don't own a business in Dallas. I've never lived in Dallas. So a huge part of our work, and I'm talking about like weeks of time, was us ⁓ watching real estate videos, us understanding the differences county by county, us understanding the makeup of the businesses. Because if you think about just this one area, if we think about the Dallas Fort Worth area, and if we think about small business owners who are more conservative, who may be church going or not, who may be hunting or not, even just that, if if I'm responsible for coming up with your brand and your look and your feel and helping you speak in your language, I I really need to understand little things like, do we include camo or no camo? It's like is that is that professional or not professional? When we talk about the fact this is veteran owned, is this like, ⁓ it's veteran owned? Or is this like Houston, where it's like, like I don't know about I don't know if it's true or not, but my understanding is in the Houston area, veteran owned is like a really, really significant claim. So so this is what I'm talking about for culture. And this is what's really important. And and even if you're listening and you hear my story about this water business, the water business is super competitive, very commoditized. So when I'm helping them talk about, you know, how to how to sell more filtration systems for for different companies, yeah, I mean the product is amazing, but everyone has the same product. So the only thing I have to lean on is is the the the two generation family, you know, the father and sons who are working together, the the fact that it's veteran owned, the fact that they've been in the area for a long time. ⁓ you know, that they speak your language. Like like we really wanna make sure that what happens in your four walls, your thinking, your people, your processes, your approach, how do we make this come to life? Because that's the only thing that is our competitive advantage.
speaker-1: I love that. And to your point, I think the experience that most people have and I have some of it too in working with agencies ⁓ that are, you know, marketing agencies, branding agencies, ⁓ maybe direct response ⁓ type, ⁓ whatever it might be. I've rarely in in the little bit I've worked with some ⁓ had anybody that really engaged like you're engaging right here. ⁓ in actually digging in. Where's the story? Where's the story? ⁓ a a a mentor of mine, Dan Kennedy, ⁓ who's a who's a great copywriter, ⁓ you know, many years ago I I learned the same thing. He said, you know, to copyright, which is differentiation, ⁓ he said, I if I didn't know the industry, I had to go in and dig deep, as you just said. I had to I had to re get their trade magazines. You would you you're watching videos which it a little easier to do today, but he had to dig deep and really study the industry so that he could come up with the specificity that told that story. And that's a huge part of as you said, that's where the w where he started, you know, in in in the videos and the storytelling. And so putting together that package I think is so important. And so I guess a lesson to our listeners who are perhaps wanting to or working with a marketing agency, can you find that agency that actually wants to dig in that deep and ask and ask the questions. I mean, is that would that be one of the first things you want to s have from an agency that you are vetting to see what they ask you and see how deep they're going to go? It seems to me that would be where I'd want to start.
speaker-0: I I would I would I would definitely so I I value engineer everything. So even to answer that question, I would go, well, what is the outcome? If the outcome is fast and cheap, then then frankly, if someone's asking a million questions, they're just wasting your time. But that that's not the type of work we do. And so I would I would definitely judge the types of questions they ask. I would definitely judge how fast they move. You know, we were we share a lot of contacts and I was on a call with someone. I spoke to them in December. I met with them in December. I followed up in January. We finally get a call February. About 10 minutes in the call, the person said, What are you here to pitch me? Like, Mark, that's all great about your stuff. You're asking me all this question, but what are you here to pitch me? I said, I said, nothing. I d I don't even know you well enough yet. Like, like, if you'll give me a few hours of your time s ⁓ over a few conversations, I'll probably get to the point where I can get make a recommendation to you, whether that's with me or someone else. My my fear as an entrepreneur and my whole goal is I never I never want to make a promise I can't deliver on. And I don't believe you can make a sale without making a promise. And so I just need to know that we are actually the right option for you. The other thing that we have to be truthful about is ⁓ great work takes time. And great work that takes time costs money because everything is going to come back to your hourly rate or or the value of what you're selling or working on. And so if if So I value engineer things to put the right level of people because the higher the level, the more expensive they are, but they could work quicker, maybe. So I was looking for the right level of skill set and the right number of hours and the right people that we need. And you can break down most complicated projects. You want to build a house, great. We know we need ⁓ we need framers and we need roofers and we need the window installers and the plumbers and the electricians. Let's just use those traits. Great. So those are the people that we need in the skill sets. But do we need a master electrician who can write off everything without even getting a city permit? Or do we need an electrician or can I get my cousin to come in and do it, you know, to help me out? That's the like skill set level in the hours. But the biggest trouble that I see owners walk into is trying to do too much, too fast with too little budget. And that is a recipe for finding someone who can kind of sell themselves really great and kind of be a generalist and talk about a bunch of stuff. But they just don't have the people or the time or the budget to actually deliver on their promise.
speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, so well said. So slight deviation in this great conversation. I know that you we talked about the fact that you went from your corporate agency work in really supporting ⁓ intangibles, insurance, ⁓ financial ⁓ advisory type of services, right?
speaker-0: And pension plans and yeah. And insurance and pension plans and and property management companies and healthcare and all that stuff.
speaker-1: And you're moving more towards ⁓ tangibles, ⁓ manufacturing. just w what why why? What's the what's the flavor there that do you that you appreciate ⁓ in that in that realm? Well
speaker-0: So one of the greatest benefits for being in my position is we've worked in twenty-nine industries. We've worked with over three hundred corporate clients. We've delivered three thousand projects. And when you work in all of these industries, in all of these company sizes and all these different departments, and with my approach is I ask every question I possibly can. Like I want to know the skeletons, I want to know what works and what doesn't work. And so when you map that over with what I witnessed and I saw without offshoring, a lot of competition. Now with AI coming along, the the the writing is on the wall. And the return of local, the return of localization is huge and will continue to be huge. Our trade schools that are almost non-existent are not putting out enough trades. We can't immigrate enough trades or won't. ⁓ and and frankly, even those who graduate can't find apprenticeships to be able to enter the trades. And so my son who's 16, who really loves math. And really loves physics, but also super creative. I'm not pushing him to be a singer. I'm not pushing him to be a photographer. You know, I went to film school. So like maybe twenty years ago there was a path. But I'm pushing him into like engineering. I'm pushing him into the maths. And I think, you know, a trade could be great. And and he's a really smart nineties grade kind of kid. He's a junior in high school. And he's thinking about becoming a heavy machinery operator. And I think twenty years ago we would have talked him out of that. But today I'm saying we we we need to build stuff. We need to make things. The yes, there is globalization. There's a lot of stuff happening. But right here, you know, I I'm up here in Canada. You can feel however you want about that. But right here in North America, we have and and if you want to include Mexico or not, there is a there is a block and and we need to make stuff here. We are making stuff here. I have ⁓ clients who are in manufacturing, I have clients in transportation and logistics. ⁓ for years now and those markets were were squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. But what I see and what I believe is there is a renaissance happening because we are seeing people who offshored stuff bring it back. Right. We're we're seeing ⁓ you know I was watching on Mike Rowe's podcast him interview the ⁓ the head of the Loggers Association of America. Fantastic really great conversation. Like if you want basically an a great argument or case study for why we need to do things locally. You need to we should listen to that. But he he brought up a board, a piece of ⁓ softwood that he got at Home Depot or Lowe's, and it's from New Zealand. And he says, tell me how it's cheaper to forest in New Zealand, put it on a boat, bring it here and sell it than it is for us to pay our own loggers to pull our own timber out. So this is why I'm excited about ⁓ manufacturing and and robotics, because Yes, manufacturing jobs may not increase, but manufacturing is still going strong through automation, through robotics, through different systems. We're seeing ton you know, transportation. Truckers might not be a thing of the future, but things are still moving by truck. There's no doubt about that. And someone has to make this, someone has to maintain this infrastructure, someone has to build these things up. And so I'm like really, really excited about the next few decades. But but For me it was a shift away from and even questioning myself as a white collar knowledge worker, what is my place in this? What is my role? As an investor, where do I invest and where do I think things are going? And I feel very, very strongly that people who make real things at home or deliver services at home to a local economy, to a local group, you know, ⁓ statewide, national, but that's still local to me, I think that that's important.
speaker-1: hundred percent agree in my own little world, ⁓ because I'm not the handiest guy in the world. So I I have to hire everything out. ⁓ I don't get on ladders anymore. I don't do electrical work. ⁓ so but yes, ⁓ finding those vendors, contractors, the people who who actually provide that level of service in a competent way, I'll pay the freight and the freight has gone up tremendously, as we know, ⁓ in all us all respects. But I think it's a it's it's a void that ⁓ definitely needs to be filled and I'm a hundred percent with you on that. Let's ⁓ I hate to conclude this, but let's let's end on this and this is kind of a broad question, but I I would say this mark, if if you could leave our audience with one piece of advice, ⁓ whether it's about resiliency, ⁓ strategy, growth, ⁓ what would it be? That's a big wide question. And I know you've probably got more than one piece of advice, but could you give us one that seems relevant to today, to general entrepreneurs, business owners?
speaker-0: Yeah. I have two and and I'll let you pick. How about that? Can can I let you pick? Sure. So so one could be about only being known for one thing and the other could be how powerful it is to differentiate your business from from those people down the street. Which one do you think is more important? Okay. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier on, and and I have been up against this myself, but this is the number one thing we help people with. If you are ⁓ if if if you're a dentist and you know
speaker-1: go let's go differentiation.
speaker-0: Being a dentist. You live in a dentist world. You speak dentists to dentists. Your customers are not dentists. Right. Right. And so a often what happens is is you want to look as good as the person down the street, or you know who your competitor are is, and you want to be as good as them. Being better than them is not that hard. It really comes down to figuring out exactly who you're speaking to. And I'm I'm talking about like like let's break this down to ⁓ an Let's break this down to an ethnic or even race level. Let's break this down to a level of education, a level of income, the type of work people do. And when you see, let's say that you happen to look at your customer base or your area and you go, you know what, there's a lot of single moms. You know what? There's a lot of trades. You know what? There's a lot of high net worth individuals. The best thing you can do is if you like these people and you're great with them, is go all in on it. So so go all in. It's gonna feel super uncomfortable to say, like, you know, it's and it's not that you're turning people away. Yeah. It's just you're not actively trying to recruit anyone other than the people you're known for. And let's say it's the trades. If it's the trades, then why not go to the Chamber of Commerce and why not put ⁓ put together some kind of package or deal with with the the factory down the street? And like like go out there and hunt for these people. And then when people come in, make them feel comfortable. Make them feel however it is that they want. If it's high net worth individuals, You might want to have ⁓ you know, expensive teas and a cappuccino machine. It could be that small. Maybe you're already doing that. ⁓ it it come down to how you communicate, how you email, how you follow up with people. Do you know they're all younger and they don't open emails? Why are you sending emails? Send texts or create ⁓ create a Snapchat bot that follows up with people. Like when you're trying to be everything to everyone, it's overwhelming and really hard. And so you end up being forgettable. If you want To be noticed, if you want people to recommend you, then you have to be exceptional. And the only way to be exceptional to someone is to give them exactly what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And the easiest way in business to do that is just to limit the number of people you're trying to target.
speaker-1: Great advice. I love that. Mark Gregor, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on today.
speaker-0: ⁓ thank you, David.
speaker-1: Cash out and coast, hey, that's every business owner's dream and desire, right? Get into the business, make a lot of money, get a big multiple, get out, and go live the life you really dreamed of all along. The problem is when you get an offer from somebody or you put yourself out there to get offers and you get something back, well, that feels good. It's flattery. It's validation of all the work you've done. And it's like, should I take those chips and make my move now? The problem that most owners haven't done is the work to say, well, am I ready? Am I the best version of myself that I need to be going forward? Do I have enough what are the stakes that follow me once I exit this business that for many years has served my family very very well it's not a problem of exiting the practice or the business it's exiting at the right time the right buyer understanding these problems is something I've looked at for many many years and I wrote a book the Exit Optional Playbook. I'd be happy to send you a copy of this to give you some of the frameworks and the questions you should ask yourself before you make that big move whether it's right for you or not just go to exitoptional.com request your refree book be glad to send it over to you
speaker-1: And we've all done that. We've all done that. You know, as you said, it's tempting to try to be all things to all people, but you dilute your ability to really do the things you do well and to offer that high level touch experience.
speaker-0: I didn't realize I was actually cannibalizing my high profit margin services. When you're trying to be everything to everyone, it's overwhelming and really hard. And so you end up being forgettable.
speaker-1: Mark, so good to have you on today. We've had ⁓ some interesting discussions. We met through a networking collaboration group, which I know we're both big fans of, but we might even touch on that subject a little bit because I think it's something that if people have not really gleaned the opportunity in getting outside the box of whatever your ⁓ specialization is, your business is. ⁓ there's so much out there. So that's where we met. We've had some subsequent conversations, and I thought it would just be really interesting to bring to the table someone who is not, you know, part of my my environment necessarily, which is, you know, practicing doctors and dentists, ⁓ but comes from, you know, an outside world of still being very entrepreneurial, which is what we all are. So what I like to do is is let's go back in time and think it was two thousand six is when you started up your digital agency. ⁓ you ran that for fifteen years and then boom, ⁓ COVID hits and ⁓ you had to like downshift and then reshift. And I think there's some some storylines in there about ⁓ making these pivots, ⁓ because that's part of life, right? So take us back. So I mean start us out and give us a little of color on your background and then what let's talk about what ha little bit about what happened in COVID.
speaker-0: Yeah, well, thank you for having me, David. I really appreciate it. So, ⁓ you know, and I was twenty-three years old. My wife and I, we got married, we were high school sweethearts, we got married young. We had my first daughter, and I was working at the time, I was 23. ⁓ we live up here in Toronto, so my wife's at home, single family household income. I'm making forty-five thousand dollars a year working for ⁓ an internet marketing franchise. I work at the head office. We have fifteen hundred offices in ninety countries and territories. And my I was responsible for producing all of the education content on video, all of the franchise development marketing. I was responsible for everything. But my daughter's born in October of two thousand six. And a day or two into holding her and looking at her, I turned to my wife and was like, I think I want to quit my job. And and I think I want I've been I've been thinking about it for a few years, but for some reason this seemed like the perfect opportunity. My wife is at home with no income. I we are living in a a very expensive urban center, like high cost of living. And I'm like, I'm gonna quit my job and be and here's my pitch to her. Listen, if I make like forty-five thousand a year working for one person, giving them all my time, imagine how much money I'd make if I worked for 10 companies. You know, I mean like we're just gonna make so much more money. ⁓ and that's where my business sense started. It started with very little. Business sense because I don't know about you. But launching ⁓ at the time a video production company because we still shot things on tape. And it was before Google had even bought YouTube and there was no real social media yet. ⁓ it was hard. It was early. I didn't understand sales. I didn't understand targeting. I didn't understand messaging. I didn't know why people bought or what they were really paying for. I didn't know how to explain my value. I didn't know how to explain why to pick me versus somewhere else, someone else. And so, you know, the first year was hard. We lived below the poverty line. ⁓ by year two, we got pushed onto social assistance because how could a f you know, a family of three possibly live making eighteen thousand dollars a year? But I figured it out. I figured it out. And you know, the Great Recession was really hard and challenging, and there were many, many, many challenges, but I will skip ahead. So by by twenty thirty thirteen or fourteen, we're doing a little over a million a year in re in revenue. It's a project based company, so this is not recurring revenue. This is every year we are going out and we are replacing our revenue.
speaker-1: Basically go out and you eat what you kill.
speaker-0: Every single year. Year over year over year. So ⁓ by twenty sixteen, seventeen, I saw that our market had we had become kind of uncompetitive because I I I didn't realize, and sometimes you don't realize when you're on a wave. I rode a really great, great wave. You know, we were early into the market focused on video when no one could really do it, and then it blew up. We we really pivoted hard to be a certain type of company, and people loved that. But then By twenty sixteen or seventeen, there are a lot of other options. There's other companies, there's other geographies, people were losing business for the first time to people in Brazil. That had never happened before. And how could I compete? You know, I had twenty four people in my office full time ⁓ by twenty twenty who are doing a little over two million a year in revenue. And when I would quote a project for, you know, pretty decent project, but I'd say maybe like twenty five, thirty, forty, fifty grand for a project. And and then they could do it in Brazil for like six thousand dollars. And it it's I I don't know what to say to that. Right. So I was forced to to look ahead and figure out what's next. And ⁓ and so yeah, when when COVID hit, our business took a massive hit. We were doing 70% of our revenue was boots on the ground revenue. People going into locations with cameras, with shooting photography, working with people, everything got put on hold. We had grown up market. So what started as us being mom and pop. By 2014, 15, 16, we're now starting to compete against larger agencies, national agencies. We're winning television campaigns and we're working with real major players. ⁓ and by 2018 and 19, we're working with international brands, we're working with national airlines, we're working with NBA teams. Like we had we my answer to was just more, more, more, more. Let's go up market, let's take on harder projects, let's just keep, let's grow our way out of whatever lack of competent competitive edge we had. But when everything got put on hold, y e you know, the business disappeared. Everything disappeared. And so to your point, it we really had to ask ourselves, and I should have done it years earlier, perhaps. It's not like I wasn't trying, but it really it it really forced me to to go, okay, we can't just always grow our way out of some of these business ⁓ challenges or ⁓ structural challenges or even who we're targeting or what we're offering. We're just doing too much for too many people, honestly. That's
speaker-1: There's there's some real relevance there, and I'm gonna just pick up ⁓ in case some of our docs might miss this, but probably most will get it. In the healthcare industry, which I know you also know a lot about, the it's very insurance driven today. It's become a commodity ⁓ across the board, it's unfortunate. Yes, there's boutique and concierge services, which are great, but for the rank and file medical practitioner, Dr. Dennis Vett today, patiatrist, y audiologist, you name it, ⁓ you know, it's it's been commoditized and insurance drives the margins drives the reimbursements. And and so the game has been, ⁓ I'm glad I'm not still in it, but the game has been, as you said, well, we can we can make up for it it that la loss in revenue and margins make up for it in quantity. I like kind of grow our way out, you know? Well there's only so far you can get with that. Yes, efficiency is important, right? So you can get more efficient ⁓ in process the systems and but there's a point where that's that's going backwards. You're on a slippery slope and doesn't work. So I that was one point I want to bring out is growing your way out is not necessarily The way to go. The other thing that that I want to make sure people got was that, you know, you said that the competition had been gaining ground ⁓ internationally in the years s prior to COVID and you were seeing that happen. and it seems to me that COVID became you said the push, I call it like the catalyst that said, okay.
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like it was like a cliff that we fell off on.
speaker-1: No more waiting, there's no there's no more no more ⁓ waiting to see if something better will happen. It's like, okay, we gotta go. In so now in retrospect, do you see that as then being a good thing from the standpoint of the push that made you go forward with, or would you just soon do without COVID and go back and figure out a different way?
speaker-0: I I I can't help it either way. So I mean, I would love to be able to go back and have everything happen the way it happened with me having a second chance. I know that's not one of the options you gave me, but now that I know how things played out, I would do things differently. But the truth is I didn't have a choice in the matter. I kind of responded pretty slowly actually, because the other thing is having been in business for so long, thing things were things were pretty heady at the time. It was a lot of we were you know, we were doing a hundred and eighty to two hundred projects a year. We had 40 projects on the go at any given time. We're working in 29 industries. ⁓ we're doing things that are really, really small. It you a company might hire us to help them with an email sequence. Hey, you know, when when a client when new clients come in for intake, we're not doing a great job. How can we get them to know more about who we are and what we do and why they might want to stick with us or refer someone to us? Well, okay, that's a pretty nice small project. But then on the other side, we would help ⁓ with a like a brand new go-to-market launch strategy for brand new. product or service, which means we're figuring out all of their positioning and all of the things we need to say. And we're creating, we're shooting commercials and videos and we're helping to manage performance campaigns to make sure they show up in the right place. ⁓ we're doing billboards, like huge, huge projects. So if I could go back, I would very I would respond faster. I would know exactly what to do today. I wouldn't worry about the things that turned out it didn't matter. But the truth is we don't have a choice in these things. So all we can do is just Do our best.
speaker-1: Do you look at the strategy back then where you were doing, as you said, very comprehensive ⁓ s strategies and then also would take on some small projects just to keep the door open to potentially clients who could grow bigger by showing them ⁓ how well you could perform at a lower scale based on their needs? Is is that something that you feel like was still an advantage back then or is is it it's something you still do today, or did you make a change and said, We've gotta focus on you know, a certain criteria or box of compliance and we can't fool with that. What what do you say to that today? I mean you still do that or is that not something that you still take on smaller projects to see if you can grow a client?
speaker-0: ⁓ we we take on small projects, we take on large large projects. What we've done is we've cut back on the number of things we offer. Mm-hmm. So so leading up to twenty seventeen, we were a video ⁓ centric agency, which meant that if if video wasn't the main component, if you weren't doing promotions or ads, if you weren't doing a video or case study, if you weren't if if it wasn't the v the the storytelling through video first and then the campaign pages or the ads or the landing pages, then the email sequences or Whatever you're doing for marketing. But if it wasn't that first, we wouldn't take the work. And we had clients asking us to do more. We had clients who wanted us to do more. They said, We had one client said, Mark, you've ruined us for other vendors because your service and your approach, like like the we love everything about your strategy and your approach and all this. Why can't you just help us with this thing over here? And let me tell you, it's very tempting. And I took the bait, but I didn't realize one, when you add new services or products. to your operation, your shared services, so your contracts, your legal, your finance, ⁓ your your onboarding, your account management, whatever you might do. If you're if you're running a practice, you're your front of desk people, ⁓ you might think, okay, all I need is a new room and a new piece of equipment and train someone go. But it adds complexity to the business. Yes. And so I didn't respect or understand that. I've learned that since then. The other ⁓ thing that's very challenging is I didn't realize I was actually cannibalizing my high profit margin services. So while my clients were saying, Mark, you ruined us for everyone else, we really want to work with you. It's because we were so high touch. Where because we had the pr budgets and we had the profits, I could I could afford to have the team. I could afford to take the time. I could afford for me to throw a little bit of our money into it to make it really sing and be great. And when you're again the one of the biggest moves in healthcare over the last number of years, and we've helped on strategies to help our clients with this. You know, the big thing is to acquire multiple offices and then to to outsource back end office work and not, you know, they said we used to say, but the doctors be doctors. You know, you care about patient outcomes, you care care about your time in the thing. Don't worry about your back office. Okay, cool. You can find those efficiencies. ⁓ you know, we could we can try and make sure that that our autoresponders and our follow up dials and our texts To get people to show up, can get them into the office on time so we don't have late bookings or cancellations. You can do that stuff. But if your operation counts on you running minute to minute, back to back, day to day, you don't have the time or the budget or the luxury to throw those extra little things in there. And I didn't realize that I was moving while I was making our whole business look more competitive, I was eroding a profit center. I was cannibalizing it towards lower. cost ⁓ lower profit items or or services that also introduced more risk for us to ruin our reputation. Yes. So so a few years in now, I'm doing more work for less budget and I'm apologizing a lot more. I hadn't had that in my business before.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Well, there's there's there's a lot of takeaways there that I I know our listeners can certainly pick up and probably having ⁓ noticed the same experience if they've if they've tried that. And we've all done that. We've all done that. You know, as you said, it's tempting to try to be all things to all people, but you dilute your ability to really do the things you do well and to offer that high level touch experience, which today, ⁓ particularly in any business that deals with people, which most do, unless you're a accountant in the in a in a back room. I mean, you know, it's people business. And that's what a big part of what you do ⁓ with with with your branding ⁓ strategies is is how do you differentiate, right? Which we may have time to get into that, but I I I'm glad we brought that out. ⁓ I I'd also like to just dig a little bit on any particular lessons you learned or how you were able to downsize a two million dollar revenue company, you know, right there prior to COVID, ⁓ and then 70% of your revenue was virtually gone overnight. How how do you take all these projects and 24 employees and bring it down fast enough to keep things going. ⁓ and y and I I know you're a person who cares deeply about people. You c Y I mean it just it shows and everything you do. So as any business owner, you've been you've you've been on a run rate and it's gone well and then something slaps you, you know, that that's a black swan. How how do you deal with that? I guess both emotionally and practically would be my question.
speaker-0: I'm not gonna lie, it was it was the most challenging time of my life to date. ⁓ I was not leading up to that, I was not a very strong or good manager. Good entrepreneur. And if for anyone who's entrepreneurial, you know the difference between being a great entrepreneur and being a great manager. And so I had already, you know, burned some bridges with some of my core team members. So truthfully, I just I just paid for everything. ⁓ you know, I've heard people say in in our group and other groups They talk about leverage. I have never been one to leverage properly. I don't leverage well. I don't leverage things. I'm I'm just like, you know, I keep a lot of cash on hand and I keep it in cash. and all through 16, 17, 18, 19, I'm looking around at my friends, my other c entrepreneurs, and I'm looking at what what they like what they're able to do, right? Just when you when you have some cash and then you're able to leverage that and and borrow against it or borrow against assets or put off cash flowing assets, like all this stuff, you can build. as you know, you can build a tremendous amount of wealth.
speaker-1: You know, in in the in the right in the right market.
speaker-0: In the right market with the right situation with everything lined up. I I I will not go into anything I don't understand. The to the point where the only thing I've ever invested in is ETFs because I don't even understand I understand enough to know that I can't win stocks. I understand enough to know the games I can't win because I've pushed into enough industries and enough situations where I go, I don't know anything about this. And so I keep I kept a lot of cash on hand. I held on to staff members as long as I could. I'm Canadian, so when we let someone go, we didn't have the right to lay anyone off. It's not part of our we we we couldn't legally do that. And I had to I let some some people quit and found new work. Some people saw a writing on the wall that like Mark's not really not really what sure what's happening with this company. And then I ha I had to let a few people go. And I don't think I don't think I came out of that with with anyone liking me. ⁓ so it's just one of those things. And then but the but the b the bigger challenge, quite honestly, as a leader or a business owner is is having to build back up your confidence. You know, it's that that is one of the biggest challenges. I was twenty three when I started. I'm like now kind of forty, thirty nine, forty at the time. Can I do this again? Do I have the energy? Do I have the skill set? Those are all the things that you have to be able to get through.
speaker-1: Well, y you kind of took a couple of years ⁓ to you know, rethink ⁓ as you said, you know, growing it back up and and at this point you're definitely changing the the avatar of your your client base. ⁓ what was that process like? Because you were dealing with mostly as you said, large corporations and you went to more ⁓ you know, privately owned, ⁓ smaller, you know, owner operators. ⁓ talk talk about that shift and and how that's worked out and how you went through the process of seeing that as to be the way to move now that you had to make all these t these decisions and changes.
speaker-0: Yeah. Well that's and that's a great question. Here's something that I've learned and it's taken me a long time to accept. Culture matters a lot. Culture matters a lot. So if if you know I hired you, let's let's say that I'm running a nonprofit and I want to send you to the other side of the world to provide dental care for for for you know communities and villages that don't have it. You can come in and you could look at the tools or whatever and you're gonna do a great job, right? You're gonna you're gonna come in and do a great job. Now if I asked you to be dropped in To, I don't know, working at a dental practice in Belarus and you're now you're now an assistant, ⁓ you're probably not going to understand what's going on, right? Because there's there's a culture. There's and we've seen this with the healthcare professionals we work with who are who are trained overseas and come in. It's not the skill set, it's the culture. And with my business, what I realized is that I'm an entrepreneur. I spend almost all my time with entrepreneurs. I go to mastermind groups and peer mentoring. All of my team wanted to work at an entrepreneurial company for entrepreneurs. But we spent but all of our clients, not all of them. The majority of our clients were corporate clients. And I like working for corporate clients because I can come in a little faster and looser. I know that they have structure and guidelines. I get them, they get me. But but I what I realized was my team didn't sign up to work in these corporate environments. I didn't hire a corporate team for corporate environments. And that that misalignment took me years to realize. And so yes, we have worked on our avatar, but But in fact, all I've done is aligned the people that I spend all my time with. I spend my time with business owners. I spend my time with entrepreneurs. And so instead of either going out and building a corporate team for a corporate client, even though I'm an entrepreneur and I would drive them crazy, or build an entrepreneurial team with an entrepreneur and then sell to corporate clients. And again, we still have some corporate clients, but this alignment really matters. And and so If anyone is listening right now and you've ever been hurt by a marketing company, burned by an agency, said, ⁓ I don't think it works, ⁓ I don't know. I mean, there could be a bunch of problems here, but one of the biggest problems that I see is when there's a misalignment of these values, or frankly, just kind of a cultural misalignment. ⁓ if I can share one quick story, we were working on a rebrand for ⁓ a company out of Dallas. ⁓ they they are in the water business, so they do ⁓ water filtration and water purifiers and ice machines for for companies and for hotels and for restaurants. And it's a very local market. ⁓ we connected with them and I love their business and they really appreciated my strategy and approach. But I mean I've I've never lived in Dallas. I I don't own a business in Dallas. I've never lived in Dallas. So a huge part of our work, and I'm talking about like weeks of time, was us ⁓ watching real estate videos, us understanding the differences county by county, us understanding the makeup of the businesses. Because if you think about just this one area, if we think about the Dallas Fort Worth area, and if we think about small business owners who are more conservative, who may be church going or not, who may be hunting or not, even just that, if if I'm responsible for coming up with your brand and your look and your feel and helping you speak in your language, I I really need to understand little things like, do we include camo or no camo? It's like is that is that professional or not professional? When we talk about the fact this is veteran owned, is this like, ⁓ it's veteran owned? Or is this like Houston, where it's like, like I don't know about I don't know if it's true or not, but my understanding is in the Houston area, veteran owned is like a really, really significant claim. So so this is what I'm talking about for culture. And this is what's really important. And and even if you're listening and you hear my story about this water business, the water business is super competitive, very commoditized. So when I'm helping them talk about, you know, how to how to sell more filtration systems for for different companies, yeah, I mean the product is amazing, but everyone has the same product. So the only thing I have to lean on is is the the the two generation family, you know, the father and sons who are working together, the the fact that it's veteran owned, the fact that they've been in the area for a long time. ⁓ you know, that they speak your language. Like like we really wanna make sure that what happens in your four walls, your thinking, your people, your processes, your approach, how do we make this come to life? Because that's the only thing that is our competitive advantage.
speaker-1: I love that. And to your point, I think the experience that most people have and I have some of it too in working with agencies ⁓ that are, you know, marketing agencies, branding agencies, ⁓ maybe direct response ⁓ type, ⁓ whatever it might be. I've rarely in in the little bit I've worked with some ⁓ had anybody that really engaged like you're engaging right here. ⁓ in actually digging in. Where's the story? Where's the story? ⁓ a a a mentor of mine, Dan Kennedy, ⁓ who's a who's a great copywriter, ⁓ you know, many years ago I I learned the same thing. He said, you know, to copyright, which is differentiation, ⁓ he said, I if I didn't know the industry, I had to go in and dig deep, as you just said. I had to I had to re get their trade magazines. You would you you're watching videos which it a little easier to do today, but he had to dig deep and really study the industry so that he could come up with the specificity that told that story. And that's a huge part of as you said, that's where the w where he started, you know, in in in the videos and the storytelling. And so putting together that package I think is so important. And so I guess a lesson to our listeners who are perhaps wanting to or working with a marketing agency, can you find that agency that actually wants to dig in that deep and ask and ask the questions. I mean, is that would that be one of the first things you want to s have from an agency that you are vetting to see what they ask you and see how deep they're going to go? It seems to me that would be where I'd want to start.
speaker-0: I I would I would I would definitely so I I value engineer everything. So even to answer that question, I would go, well, what is the outcome? If the outcome is fast and cheap, then then frankly, if someone's asking a million questions, they're just wasting your time. But that that's not the type of work we do. And so I would I would definitely judge the types of questions they ask. I would definitely judge how fast they move. You know, we were we share a lot of contacts and I was on a call with someone. I spoke to them in December. I met with them in December. I followed up in January. We finally get a call February. About 10 minutes in the call, the person said, What are you here to pitch me? Like, Mark, that's all great about your stuff. You're asking me all this question, but what are you here to pitch me? I said, I said, nothing. I d I don't even know you well enough yet. Like, like, if you'll give me a few hours of your time s ⁓ over a few conversations, I'll probably get to the point where I can get make a recommendation to you, whether that's with me or someone else. My my fear as an entrepreneur and my whole goal is I never I never want to make a promise I can't deliver on. And I don't believe you can make a sale without making a promise. And so I just need to know that we are actually the right option for you. The other thing that we have to be truthful about is ⁓ great work takes time. And great work that takes time costs money because everything is going to come back to your hourly rate or or the value of what you're selling or working on. And so if if So I value engineer things to put the right level of people because the higher the level, the more expensive they are, but they could work quicker, maybe. So I was looking for the right level of skill set and the right number of hours and the right people that we need. And you can break down most complicated projects. You want to build a house, great. We know we need ⁓ we need framers and we need roofers and we need the window installers and the plumbers and the electricians. Let's just use those traits. Great. So those are the people that we need in the skill sets. But do we need a master electrician who can write off everything without even getting a city permit? Or do we need an electrician or can I get my cousin to come in and do it, you know, to help me out? That's the like skill set level in the hours. But the biggest trouble that I see owners walk into is trying to do too much, too fast with too little budget. And that is a recipe for finding someone who can kind of sell themselves really great and kind of be a generalist and talk about a bunch of stuff. But they just don't have the people or the time or the budget to actually deliver on their promise.
speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, so well said. So slight deviation in this great conversation. I know that you we talked about the fact that you went from your corporate agency work in really supporting ⁓ intangibles, insurance, ⁓ financial ⁓ advisory type of services, right?
speaker-0: And pension plans and yeah. And insurance and pension plans and and property management companies and healthcare and all that stuff.
speaker-1: And you're moving more towards ⁓ tangibles, ⁓ manufacturing. just w what why why? What's the what's the flavor there that do you that you appreciate ⁓ in that in that realm? Well
speaker-0: So one of the greatest benefits for being in my position is we've worked in twenty-nine industries. We've worked with over three hundred corporate clients. We've delivered three thousand projects. And when you work in all of these industries, in all of these company sizes and all these different departments, and with my approach is I ask every question I possibly can. Like I want to know the skeletons, I want to know what works and what doesn't work. And so when you map that over with what I witnessed and I saw without offshoring, a lot of competition. Now with AI coming along, the the the writing is on the wall. And the return of local, the return of localization is huge and will continue to be huge. Our trade schools that are almost non-existent are not putting out enough trades. We can't immigrate enough trades or won't. ⁓ and and frankly, even those who graduate can't find apprenticeships to be able to enter the trades. And so my son who's 16, who really loves math. And really loves physics, but also super creative. I'm not pushing him to be a singer. I'm not pushing him to be a photographer. You know, I went to film school. So like maybe twenty years ago there was a path. But I'm pushing him into like engineering. I'm pushing him into the maths. And I think, you know, a trade could be great. And and he's a really smart nineties grade kind of kid. He's a junior in high school. And he's thinking about becoming a heavy machinery operator. And I think twenty years ago we would have talked him out of that. But today I'm saying we we we need to build stuff. We need to make things. The yes, there is globalization. There's a lot of stuff happening. But right here, you know, I I'm up here in Canada. You can feel however you want about that. But right here in North America, we have and and if you want to include Mexico or not, there is a there is a block and and we need to make stuff here. We are making stuff here. I have ⁓ clients who are in manufacturing, I have clients in transportation and logistics. ⁓ for years now and those markets were were squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. But what I see and what I believe is there is a renaissance happening because we are seeing people who offshored stuff bring it back. Right. We're we're seeing ⁓ you know I was watching on Mike Rowe's podcast him interview the ⁓ the head of the Loggers Association of America. Fantastic really great conversation. Like if you want basically an a great argument or case study for why we need to do things locally. You need to we should listen to that. But he he brought up a board, a piece of ⁓ softwood that he got at Home Depot or Lowe's, and it's from New Zealand. And he says, tell me how it's cheaper to forest in New Zealand, put it on a boat, bring it here and sell it than it is for us to pay our own loggers to pull our own timber out. So this is why I'm excited about ⁓ manufacturing and and robotics, because Yes, manufacturing jobs may not increase, but manufacturing is still going strong through automation, through robotics, through different systems. We're seeing ton you know, transportation. Truckers might not be a thing of the future, but things are still moving by truck. There's no doubt about that. And someone has to make this, someone has to maintain this infrastructure, someone has to build these things up. And so I'm like really, really excited about the next few decades. But but For me it was a shift away from and even questioning myself as a white collar knowledge worker, what is my place in this? What is my role? As an investor, where do I invest and where do I think things are going? And I feel very, very strongly that people who make real things at home or deliver services at home to a local economy, to a local group, you know, ⁓ statewide, national, but that's still local to me, I think that that's important.
speaker-1: hundred percent agree in my own little world, ⁓ because I'm not the handiest guy in the world. So I I have to hire everything out. ⁓ I don't get on ladders anymore. I don't do electrical work. ⁓ so but yes, ⁓ finding those vendors, contractors, the people who who actually provide that level of service in a competent way, I'll pay the freight and the freight has gone up tremendously, as we know, ⁓ in all us all respects. But I think it's a it's it's a void that ⁓ definitely needs to be filled and I'm a hundred percent with you on that. Let's ⁓ I hate to conclude this, but let's let's end on this and this is kind of a broad question, but I I would say this mark, if if you could leave our audience with one piece of advice, ⁓ whether it's about resiliency, ⁓ strategy, growth, ⁓ what would it be? That's a big wide question. And I know you've probably got more than one piece of advice, but could you give us one that seems relevant to today, to general entrepreneurs, business owners?
speaker-0: Yeah. I have two and and I'll let you pick. How about that? Can can I let you pick? Sure. So so one could be about only being known for one thing and the other could be how powerful it is to differentiate your business from from those people down the street. Which one do you think is more important? Okay. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier on, and and I have been up against this myself, but this is the number one thing we help people with. If you are ⁓ if if if you're a dentist and you know
speaker-1: go let's go differentiation.
speaker-0: Being a dentist. You live in a dentist world. You speak dentists to dentists. Your customers are not dentists. Right. Right. And so a often what happens is is you want to look as good as the person down the street, or you know who your competitor are is, and you want to be as good as them. Being better than them is not that hard. It really comes down to figuring out exactly who you're speaking to. And I'm I'm talking about like like let's break this down to ⁓ an Let's break this down to an ethnic or even race level. Let's break this down to a level of education, a level of income, the type of work people do. And when you see, let's say that you happen to look at your customer base or your area and you go, you know what, there's a lot of single moms. You know what? There's a lot of trades. You know what? There's a lot of high net worth individuals. The best thing you can do is if you like these people and you're great with them, is go all in on it. So so go all in. It's gonna feel super uncomfortable to say, like, you know, it's and it's not that you're turning people away. Yeah. It's just you're not actively trying to recruit anyone other than the people you're known for. And let's say it's the trades. If it's the trades, then why not go to the Chamber of Commerce and why not put ⁓ put together some kind of package or deal with with the the factory down the street? And like like go out there and hunt for these people. And then when people come in, make them feel comfortable. Make them feel however it is that they want. If it's high net worth individuals, You might want to have ⁓ you know, expensive teas and a cappuccino machine. It could be that small. Maybe you're already doing that. ⁓ it it come down to how you communicate, how you email, how you follow up with people. Do you know they're all younger and they don't open emails? Why are you sending emails? Send texts or create ⁓ create a Snapchat bot that follows up with people. Like when you're trying to be everything to everyone, it's overwhelming and really hard. And so you end up being forgettable. If you want To be noticed, if you want people to recommend you, then you have to be exceptional. And the only way to be exceptional to someone is to give them exactly what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And the easiest way in business to do that is just to limit the number of people you're trying to target.
speaker-1: Great advice. I love that. Mark Gregor, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on today.
speaker-0: ⁓ thank you, David.
speaker-1: Cash out and coast, hey, that's every business owner's dream and desire, right? Get into the business, make a lot of money, get a big multiple, get out, and go live the life you really dreamed of all along. The problem is when you get an offer from somebody or you put yourself out there to get offers and you get something back, well, that feels good. It's flattery. It's validation of all the work you've done. And it's like, should I take those chips and make my move now? The problem that most owners haven't done is the work to say, well, am I ready? Am I the best version of myself that I need to be going forward? Do I have enough what are the stakes that follow me once I exit this business that for many years has served my family very very well it's not a problem of exiting the practice or the business it's exiting at the right time the right buyer understanding these problems is something I've looked at for many many years and I wrote a book the Exit Optional Playbook. I'd be happy to send you a copy of this to give you some of the frameworks and the questions you should ask yourself before you make that big move whether it's right for you or not just go to exitoptional.com request your refree book be glad to send it over to you
