From Startup to Merger: How One Entrepreneur Built, Merged, and Scaled his company

Building a business demands relentless execution, risk-taking, and problem-solving under uncertainty. Scaling multiplies complexity—hiring, processes, culture, cash flow—all break at speed.

In this episode, I had a discussion with Aldo Carinci - a workplace safety and compliance expert. As Managing Director of Safety First Training Ltd. and founder of iSource Solutions Inc., he delivers expert health & safety training, risk management, and programs for construction, property management, and Ontario condominiums—prioritizing zero incidents, due diligence, and safer workplaces.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aldocarinci/
https://safetyfirsttraining.ca/

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Recap of Previous Episode
01:02 Aldo's Business Growth and Recent Acquisition
08:11 Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions
11:52 The Importance of Compliance in Health and Safety
21:39 Common Pitfalls for Business Owners
24:04 Personal Reflections on Entrepreneurship
32:08 The Role of Family Support in Business
38:15 Plans for the Future and Business Growth Strategies
42:21 How to Connect with Aldo Carinci

Transcript

Introduction and Recap of Previous Episode

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There's always a pressing priority, as you know. There's always a pressing priority. But if you you know take a step back and think about health and safety, we do it every single day. You know, I always say how often are you gonna go to work and you're gonna think I'm gonna be unsafe today. No, nobody does that. Health and safety is an evolution of a program, right? So it's not like saying, I just did my health and safety today and then I move on. It's a continuous challenge was to try to make sure people understood that you have to take that sort of um heartfelt connection away and look at reality and what it's actually worth. I've been here all this time, we've been doing it this way. Oh, I don't need the training because I've been experienced, and that's when things unfortunately uh fall off the rail and something happens and unfortunately somebody gets gets killed or you know gets hurt or gets killed.

Aldo's Business Growth and Recent Acquisition

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Gurby Judge, and in this episode, I had a discussion with the Aldo Curincy, safety leader, founder of iSource Solutions, and owner of Safety First Trainee Limited with the decades driving workplace safety cross Canada. Aldo shares insights on a training, compliance, and protecting teams. This was very interesting discussion. Um Aldo and I started a business almost the same time, about 16, 17 years ago. And when I started a business leadership podcast, he was my first guest uh on this channel. Uh so there was a lot to catch up. We talked about uh, you know, his experience been building companies over the last 16, 17 years. We also talked about um health and safety industry itself, you know, with uh what we recently gone through with the financial challenges and economically and also COVID, what change in the health and safety industry? We also talked about the merger and acquisition process. Aldo recently went through merger and acquisition that he uh merged with another company. We talked about his experience and and some of the lessons learned uh through the process as well. And we also talked about our families. You know, a lot of people don't realize that when you're building a company, it's hard to find a balance between uh um you know family and and uh building a business. So we talk about that experience as well. So whether you are uh looking to start a new company or if or whether you're going through a transition where you uh you know already started a company and trying to figure out um you know where to focus on, or you already have a company and trying to go through a merger acquisition, I think you will find a lot of value in this discussion because Allah shared a lot of lessons learned uh through all of this uh his journey. If you like this discussion and find a value in this discussion, if you only have one ask, please comment, share, and subscribe to this channel. Um you know that means a lot to us uh for our team. It allows us to focus on the right discussion and a deliver value to every discussion for you. So, until next time, thank you for joining. Please welcome Aldo Currency. I guess welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today we're guessing Aldo, Aldo this is a part two. We we did the podcast a while ago uh when I started a podcasting. So thank you so much for time. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Thank you very much for having me. I know I remember the uh first time. It was actually pretty good. It was one of the first ones.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I was uh you were the first one. We we started about a year and a half ago. You were the first one. So, how you been and and how's the business been since then?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Very good. I've been very, very good. Uh, there's lots uh been happening in the last uh year and a half. A lot's been going on with not only my business, but in general, right across the board with the health and safety world, which uh we discussed the last time. So, myself, my business is going really well. We we're a growing company and we're obviously having a lot of opportunities around bringing on more clients, but it's also some of our existing clients and nurturing those clients right now. So that's that's kind of uh what we're at right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

So you guys recently merged with another company. Was it an acquisition? Was it a merger? Like if you walk us through us through what happened.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, for sure. So my my business, you know, I you know, I started uh iSource Solutions back in 2013 with many years of experience in the risk management side. So I did a lot of health and safety, but I also did a lot of risk management uh programs. So I decided in 2013 to move away from the corporate world and go into uh my own business. And I started iSource Solutions, which we are a health and safety solution provider. So we do a lot of uh health and safety program development. We do a lot of emergency procedures, fire safety procedures, so a lot of the programs beside it. Then kind of fast forward to where we're at today. In 2024, a friend of mine, he's um used to be the former owner of Safety First Training. We decided that it was time for him to sell the business because he didn't have the experience in health and safety. He brought the business for the eight years that he did what he did. So we uh acquired the business in May of 2024, myself and two other partners, uh Nicholas and Kevin. So that's where we're at today. We're growing that business, but we're also bringing in all our experiences together to evolve and make that the business that much better. So that's where we're at right now, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, no, good for you guys. You know, it's always an opportunity to grow. I'm I'm glad the opportunity came along and you guys uh partner up. So what is uh what is uh what is some of the challenges? You know, I mean there's a lot of merger acquisitions going on in a cash out right now, you know, as uh whether whether it's your your industry, any industry, you know, they there's so much movements, whether people you know are afraid of tariff or they're trying to consolidate, there's so many different reasons. What are some of the challenges you guys have to deal with uh when you guys uh got together as a business?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Oh, absolutely. That that you know, those are like things that always stick to my mind because it was, you know, one of our first acquisitions that we did as a group and you know, getting involved in the operational side and the due diligence side and understanding, you know, a lot of people value their business uh in a way that it's very heartfelt because you put a lot of time and energy into that. But when reality hits and you're actually doing an assessment, it really hits reality for people. And especially when you're the owner-operator of a company that you're trying to sell for what you're trying to sell it for, uh, we found the challenge was to try to make sure people understood that you have to take that sort of heartfelt connection away and look at reality and what it's actually worth. So we found not only that, we we we determined that from the exercises that we did and you know working with the different uh advisors, but we also figured out our own businesses and how we have to align our own businesses. And if in the future we want to look at, you know, doing some form of other acquisition or or somebody acquiring a business from us, we have to we have to do a lot of the legwork initially because a lot of people don't realize, as small business owners, entrepreneurs at small business owners don't realize how much work is really involved. You know, even from a small transaction, everybody kept saying, oh, this is a small transaction, you know, it's a it's a smaller business, it's been around, but it's very small. The family, there's so many moving pieces to the to to acquiring. And we found that the challenge was getting everybody on the same page as to valuing the company and saying, this is what it's valued, not because you put all this time and energy in it, because that's you know, that's part of it. How you structure and how you build your operations, what you have documented that really proves your your worth. Because ultimately it's not about, oh, you know, we have all this stuff going on, but then you could you're not able to prove it through through your due diligence and and an aspect of acquiring that business. So we we found it very challenging.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

And having the same mindset, I think that's a good start. You know, um I I see a lot of deals fail simply because people have a different mindset, you know, go this way, another one goes this way. Having that good mindset and and the growth mindset in the same direction, I mean everything else kind of works out, but as long as you got that piece sorted out.

Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions

SPEAKER_00 7:27

That that is that is uh true. Totally true. Like I learned so much from acquiring the business and bringing in a couple of different partners where, you know, younger generational partners too. And you know, they brought a different perspective on things where I brought different perspective and coming together and collaborating that way uh made a big difference because if we didn't have that sort of synergy between all of us, things would would wouldn't work out because you know, you're bringing in two other partners and it's three of us that are running the company, it could become very challenging, you know. But it's uh we really definitely aligned ourselves to ensure that, you know, we did what we needed to do, uh, not only from a legal standpoint, but understanding saying, where do we want to go? Like, you know, I'm in a in a position where, you know, I've grown safety first eyesource solutions to a level where, you know, I was thinking, well, how am I going to grow further without having employees and without having other individuals part of my growth? And and when the opportunity came up and bringing out the other individuals, I thought of it from even my future and saying, you know what, this is my future, and and kind of leaving that legacy in the future, you know, in the future with for my kids or for my family. And that's kind of everything that you have to look at when you're doing a business acquisition, not just about, oh, I'm gonna buy the business and then you know, within five years, I'm gonna turn it around and sell it. It's all about, okay, that's great, but you have to also have the infrastructure in place. Because if you don't, you know, no matter what you say, if that client is not signed off for three years and you're trying to sell it and saying that client's always coming to us for 15 years, but that client could go anywhere else, that shouldn't be, that's not gonna be part of the deal part in most cases. It's goodwill. And you don't, you never know what that client client decides to leave without, you know, being able to kind of have them on as uh as a continuous client for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And if you put it trying to put a business value, I mean, these things matter, infrastructure matter, your systems matter, your your process matter, all that stuff matters to add up to the business value, right? Without that, how do you value the business when there's nothing?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Absolutely. And that's another thing, too. Like we we we value the business by you know going off of our experience too, of like what we've experienced through the corporate world. And saying if you wouldn't really want to look at a good valuation, you have to look at how the corporate world and how these bigger businesses and these companies are running. And basically they have everything documented. So a lot of times, you know, when we were asking for the question about, oh, do you have an operational manual with all these things that you're talking about? And the the answer was no, we would go back and say, well, that's part of the valuation because if we have to create that and we don't know, and and it's all basically off of your mind, it's gonna be decreasing the value of your business. So those are the reality checks and the conversations that we had to have. And it was hard because uh uh the person that you know wounded before was a friend of mine. Like we we knew each other for for a while. And it's like this is reality. It's not like saying I'm trying to make things up. It's like this is what it is. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna come in and say, oh, we're gonna give you all this money because you know, you're saying this is what it's about and this is how much you could do. It's not about that. It's about what is it, what's in it for that particular moment, right? When you're actually doing the evaluation.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

So we're interested. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Um, let's talk about opportunity. How does that opportunity look like after this uh transition?

The Importance of Compliance in Health and Safety

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Oh, it's it's amazing. You know what? It's amazing because this company, you know, our safety first training has been around for 30 years, 30 plus years. So there was, you know, owners, owner operators prior to the the person that we bought the business with. But opportunities exist in any business, but this business itself, the amount of clients and the clientele uh that's within the within within our database, but as well as the different industries that we deal with. We deal with different industries. And then the experience that we're bringing on, it's not only health and safety training, it's a lot of the consulting. One of my partners, Nicholas, he's an industrial hygiene hygienist, and he does a lot of environmental testing and assessments. He went to school for a long time for it. So there's a lot of opportunity in that area because we do leverage a lot of our clients within that, those industries that require it by law. They require industrial hygienes to be there to do the testing, to do the air quality and the sound testing and the asbestos testing and all these different things that all our clients require it. And we never really went after these clients, you know, with with with SFT, safety first training, uh, in the past because it was all about training, you know, getting the instructor in the classroom. And that's that's pretty much it. So now we're evolving and we're we're we're establishing that sort of side of the business, not because we're bringing in on, you know, newer business. It's just we're going to our client base and saying, hey, we're offering this type of offers. These are the different things that we're offering now. You know, we weren't doing any of that stuff before. And now they're, you know, they're looking at it and saying, oh, these guys are credible because they've done it for many, many years. And, you know, it helps when you have someone like uh uh Nicholas on on our team because he's well, well uh regarded, well-renowned industrial hygiene in Canada. He's received a lot of awards and all these different things. That helps a lot too, right? So it's kind of like leveraging all that and making people understand, saying we're not here just to kind of, you know, tell you that this has to happen. It's a legal obligation and we're showing them and we're trying to make things simple for them as well, right? So it's a simplified sort of approach. And it's real life stuff, too, that we're trying to get people to understand. It's not about, you know, checking off that checklist and saying, here you go and it's done and you're compliant. No, that's not what it's about. It's about doing it every single day, part of your operations, and it becomes a natural thing that you're not even thinking about. And that's the difficult part for a lot of companies, because a lot of companies will do their part by just saying, oh, we've done this part, we've checked it off, and then they leave it until the following year or two years later, or three years. Well, unfortunately, when something happens. And that's when they usually change their mentality. But that's a little bit too late, you know, when it comes to health and safety.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, you you gotta bring that up as a part of the operations on a daily basis, not just one when you have a time to do it, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's that's the main thing with businesses. They always think that there's something more important than anything. Like there's something more important. There's always a pressing priority, as you know, there's always a pressing priority. But if you you know take a step back and think about health and safety, we do it every single day. You know, I always say, how often are you gonna go to work and you're gonna think I'm gonna be unsafe today? No, nobody does that. It's just a matter of understanding that you have to go in and you have to do it as part of your day-to-day routine, and it becomes part of that sort of routine. And when things happen, is people become complacent. You know, they become complacent. I've been here all this time, we've been doing it this way. Oh, I don't need the training because I've been experienced. And that's when things unfortunately fall off the rail and something happens, and unfortunately, somebody gets gets killed or you know, gets hurt or gets killed.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah. So it looks like the training and compliance, they go hand in hand kind of stuff, right? For you guys, you just put a lot more focus on a compliance side of things. So talk about compliance. How important that is compliance? What industry that applies to in and is it a government compliance, is it a just solution? Is it just an industry compliance? What kind of compliance is do we you know we talked about?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, so every industry, like so in Canada, to be compliant in the Occupational Health and Safety Act is a legal obligation. So no matter what type of business you're in, what type of industry you're in, you need to comply with the occupational health and safety. If it's in Alberta or if it's in Ontario or if it's in BC, wherever it is, Quebec, there's always some form of legal obligation. And that's, you know, you're doing everything reasonable as an employer or as a supervisor to ensure the safety of yourself and others. And that's basically kind of like that area that you it it it kind of evolves from. And then that point where you look at the different industries, there's different specialized sort of areas that people have to comply in. So if you're in construction, you have to comply in the working at heights. Everybody needs to have working at heights. They need to have, you know, formal formal training in those areas. If you're working in the mining industry, there's different specialized training. If you're working in different trades, there's different specialized. So it's there's a variety, and that's where the confusion is in a lot of cases, because companies think that, hey, you know what, as long as I get the training, I'm compliant. No, the training is continuous. You have to have managers to understand what their due diligence, their responsibilities are. And a lot of times we leave it at, oh, the worker responsibility to do that. And it's not the case. In a lot of cases, it's the company in general, but it kind of filters into like the supervisors and the and the workers and the employers and the subcontractors and the temporary work that's there. Everybody has a responsibility. Nobody could could say, I don't have a responsibility. Ultimately, the employer, the constructor has those responsibilities, but every industry has the similarities, but also some different uh aspects of it. So if you're like, for example, if you're in forestry, there's chainsaws that they are using. So there's a there's a legal obligation that you need to be trained on chainsaws. But trained doesn't mean you go in there and you know how to do a chainsaw. You need to know how to operate the chainsaw, how to take it apart, how to put it back together. If you're in the middle of the forest, something's happening, and you know, you need to know how to deal with survival. So there's a different legal obligation. If you're in BC, you need to be aware of bears, right? And uh there's a legislation on bear awareness. So they do training on bears. So if you're working in these areas and these fields, you need to take that training and understand that the employer is responsible to ensuring that staff is doing that training on a regular basis. And a lot of people think that regular basis means one time, but it's not the case. You know, it's it's it's continuously, meaning if you feel that this hazard is more often than than not in your workplace, then you need to train that person more often and you need to build on the training. It's not the same training, it's just built onto the training from your experience. Something unfortunately happens, and you've had training done with, you know, chainsaw and something unfortunately happens, you could go back and say, okay, no, this happened. Now we got to retrain people, but we have to also show them the reasons why we're doing the retraining. So those are all things that people forget to do and they just kind of go in and do generic stuff, which kind of defeats the purpose in most cases, right? Because the generic stuff is there, but they don't do the work site-specific training, which they kind of move away from because it's just a lot of time, it's time and energy. And there's still companies that are looking at costs, right? They look at costs of doing business that way and they think it's just the cost center versus it's something that they're doing to make sure that uh people are going to be safe at the end of the day and go home to their families. Because that's the whole objective here, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And these these policies you talk about, you know, uh considering these from coming from government, whether federal or provincial, they probably change all the time as well, right? So so that change management is itself is a bigger job, right? So I think that's where experts like you come in. You know, how do we understand these changes and how to communicate and how to bring this change back to the businesses?

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Oh, absolutely. And that's that's the critical piece, right? There's there's all this information. A lot of times I tell managers, I'll tell my clients, I'll say, you could find this information. It's all there, it's readily available. You could go into the websites, look at it, look it up, you know, the information. It gives you the chat GTP now. You know, you could find a lot of stuff immediately. There's a lot of information, but it's really not real, like reality driven in a lot of cases, like site-specific stuff that you really have to determine. In a lot of cases, the the the expectation is that people know all the all the information. But you definitely need that individual, this expertise. If you have it's it's internally or externally to help you guide you through that. Because a lot of times, if you have a great hazard assessment, because most all companies should have a hazard assessment conducted, meaning you identify the hazards that are in your workplace. If you identify the hazard in your workplace, you could determine what are the next steps. Is it a high hazard? Is it a medium hazard, or is it a low hazard? If it's a high hazard, how do you gonna bring it to a medium or to a low hazard? And you got to determine what are the steps. Is it training? Is it policies? Is it procedures? Is it like controls? Is it like barricades, whatever it is? That's what you have to determine. But you have to have that on paper because not everybody has to be trained the same way. A lot of people think that. It's not. Maybe like Wimmus training, for example, the work workplace hazardous material information system, WIMIS, a lot of people think I got to get that training. And some people think I don't have to have that training because I'm not exposed. I'm not using chemicals. But meantime, you're exposed to chemicals. Everybody's exposed to some form of chemical, if you're in an office or wherever. So you need to determine that through a hazard assessment. So a lot of people take our um expertise and say, create a hazard assessment for our business and at least put it down on paper. So we know that if somebody comes in from the ministry and they'll say, Why aren't you training all these individuals? Oh, because they're not really exposed and they're not even really dealing with this. So we determine that through our hazard assessment that it's a very low risk. You don't have to train those individuals on a constant basis. But then if you go on the other spectrum, you see that it's a high risk for the individuals. Maybe you have to train more than every three years. You have to train maybe every year, sometimes every six months, depending on the scenario. So a lot of people kind of brush everything with uh paint everything with one brush. They say, oh, let's do the training every year. Meantime, you know, there's companies that don't do training because they think we don't need to do it, but they need to do it. Everybody needs to do some form of training if you're in an office environment, if you are in any type of industry. There should be some form of orientation from a health and safety standpoint. As simple as it may sound, people are going to work to and from. Now they're going back into the offices, getting into your vehicle, going to your office. That's a work, uh, work hazard. You know, you're going driving back and forth. So do you have a do you have a driving policy, safe driving policy? Do you have those type of policies in place? Those are all things that we come in and assess and say, you know, you go to a conference, you know, you encounter a lot of stuff that goes on in a conference. You're flying to and from, you're you're going to places that are unknown to you. So those are all things that need to be in a policy and procedure, but has to be not only in a policy and procedure, but it has to be part of your training. Because a lot of people think that they do a policy and procedure, but then they leave it at that and they have this book left on the shelf. Meantime, they haven't trained on the procedure. So everybody that has a forklift in their operations has to train to their procedure, not just get training on the forklift. So that becomes the complicated piece, but also the confusing piece because people think I come in, I do the theory, I train, I get the company to come in like us to come in and do the practical, and it stops there. And now we don't have to worry about it for three years. No. You have to continuously improve on your on your procedures.

Common Pitfalls for Business Owners

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Considering construction industry is a big part of Ontario, you know, whether it's commercial, whether it's residential. Uh and so this gotta be very important for those construction companies that, you know, we have a lot of those in in in Ontario. Absolutely. It's supposed to be critical for them to run a business.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Oh, absolutely. It's critical, it's critical in that industry itself. The majority of fatalities are occurring in that industry. People are falling from ladders, people are falling from, you know, uh working at heights, people are falling in and and And you know, killing them, get getting killed. So that's a big industry that focuses in on, like the Ministry of Labor is really focusing in on doing a lot of inspections and blitzes and and finds, uh, finding companies, not only in in construction, but then in it kind of like if you're that, you might not even be that that construction company that's doing the the doing the work itself. It could be the trade that's inside that construction company. So it could be the, you know, anybody could get affected, right, if you don't, if you don't comply. So if you're in an area where you're, you need to comply for that legislation. For example, construction, you're working at heights. If you're a plumber or if you're an electrical person and you're in that facility, you need to have working at heights. Doesn't matter if you are going to be working at heights or not. It could be as simple as a laborer. You know, everybody has to have it. So a lot of times it it's it's more difficult for a construction company to manage their business because they're so they have so many moving pieces. And then they have things that they that other injuries industries don't have to do. So they got to do a hazard, you know, hazard building survey, it's called that, where they have to identify all the different chemical hazards and and specific hazards. And that's that's more of a cost to those companies. So, you know, when you see construction costs going up, there's a lot of contributing factors. It's not just saying, oh, they're just, you know, guys want to make money. No, it's just there's so many other costs associated with insurance and all these different things that are occurring. Their training is a lot more elevated because there's a lot more things that have to be done, and it becomes more complicated for them.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Got it. You talk to a lot of business owners on a daily basis, although where do you think people are getting stuck? You know, well, what is that area that they're not understanding? Is it a mindset or simply just uh they're not able to pick on that because they have so many things operationally going on? Where is uh little bit of hesitation coming from from business owners?

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, I I think you know this is a combination. Is it like the combination where people don't know where to start sometimes? Sometimes it they think they don't have the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

That's probably done. I don't have a time right now.

Personal Reflections on Entrepreneurship

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I don't have the time right now. We go in and we talk to people, and it's like, okay, great. Everything looks so urgent at the time, and we're, you know, we're we're we were basically showing them the plan, and this is what we need to do. And then they call us and they say, Oh, we're gonna be thinking about it, and they kind of wait, and it's like three months go by, four months go by, five months go by, and then you know, all of a sudden on the sixth month, maybe they call us, like, yeah, we're ready to go, but you're already six months behind because a program or health and safety is an evolution of a program, right? So it's not like saying, I just did my health and safety today, and then I move on. It's continuous. So when we go into our clients, we say, listen, this is not like a one-time time deal. You need to continuously improve the program, but also you need to have some form of infrastructure in place that's gonna support it. Where if in case the administrative person that's running it right now, in most cases, if they're the one that's running it, or if it's maybe a lead that's running the program, they leave. Who's gonna take over? How are you gonna do it? So we try to put in the systems in place as well, from a health and safety program, you know, platform to you know, different automations to make things a little bit more simple. And I and I always hear people thinking that, you know, in their mind, that's gonna be very expensive, which it's not. You know, I tell people a lot, it's it's not gonna be expensive, not like back in the day where you have to put something in place and you have to do all this coding. You know, it's there, it's already there. You know, you could do it through your Microsoft, you could do it through your Excel, you could do it through so many different, you know, avenues. And everything is so technology driven and digitized that it's so easy to do. And that's what we show people to say, this is how you main manage it, because that's that's another thing, too, that they worry about. So, how am I gonna manage all this? Especially small owners that have no staff for health and safety, or they don't have an HR person to run all this stuff, they have to do it. You know, a person that has, you know, 20, 30 people, they got to do it. Or they have somebody that they designate, but they got to do it. So, how do we manage? So you could control it by the digitizing a lot, automating a lot, and making things remind you directly so you don't forget, but also things get done. And that's kind of, I think those are the those are the the the sort of the the the pain points for a lot of these these businesses.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Very interesting. So let's let's talk about personal site. And yeah, you and I started a business probably at the same time, right? Yes. There's a lot to learn. Definitely it's a groin. You know what, you know, what what are your thoughts on? You know, would you have started if you knew that had this much hard work that you have to put in and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

So I you know what? I look back and I said, I should have started earlier. That's what I could have done. I should have started earlier myself. But then I look back and, you know, and and people say, well, if you start earlier, maybe they didn't have the expertise and experience because of over the years of what what I gathered. Because when I first started, you know, iSource Solutions, it wasn't a startup because I I had my first two clients right at the beginning when I first I was still working for PetSmart. I worked for PetSmart for five years. And I went to my employer and I said, you know, this is probably gonna take me another two years, but I I wanna go on my own. And they were very open about it. I still did my work and never, you know, I never had a conflict. I did a lot of stuff after hours. I did things on the weekend, you know, to build my business to try to figure out. But I went to two clients, and two clients were two friends of mine, and they had businesses and they had employees, but they had nothing. And I knew that. And I went to them and I said, listen, this is what I want to do. You give me$750 per month, and I'll come in and do your inspection, and I'll come in and do your program. And they said, What are you talking about? What program? And it's like, this is a health and safety program. This is what you need by law. You got 25 people, you got 30 people, you need that. And I did that with two, two of them, and they they went with it. They said, Yeah, no problem. We're gonna get you, we'll help you out, whatever. And I did that for, you know, it was like 12 months. And I look back and I said, then I started thinking, and I said, once I transitioned and I started looking at I had to be the HR guy, I had to be the accounting guy, I had to be the operational guy, the logistics person, the scheduling, all this stuff. I'm like, I, you know, the vendor, the vendor. I was telling, you know how many vendors I had to call and say, I apologize. I'm sorry that I was like this to you when you were calling me, because I felt it after it's like, wow, I did that to a lot of my potential vendors that were calling me, that they wanted to do business. And then I realized, I was like, wow, right? I had to go and call them. And I called a few of them. I was like, I apologize that I did that. I'm in my own business now, and I realized what you guys were trying to do, and I never realized it at the time when I was in the corporate world. So, you know, people gave me a chance and I look back and I said, I would, I would do it all over again. I would definitely look at things that I did a certain way and do it differently. And that's why with Safety First Training, there's a lot of things that I learned that I'm, you know, sharing with my, you know, two other business partners and say, this is the route we should take because I did it this way and it didn't work, but it worked after I did it this way. So I'm able to, you know, they were able to leverage that. So they're they're not, and I'm all about trying to help people to kind of get to that next level too now, right? I I always look at it this way, say, you know, where I've gotten to a lot of hard work. It is. It's a lot of hard work. It's not like saying, you know, it's a quick fix or you you turn it around within a, you know, within a There's no shortcuts. There's no shortcuts. All the stuff that you see, like I tell my my kids all the time, right? On online and social media, I go, that's all staged, a lot of it too, right? It's like there's a lot of successful people that like to promote it, but there's a lot of stuff that's there that you have to be very cautious about because it's hard work. And you gotta go out there and you gotta be taking on collaborating with people. Partnerships. You can't take it out, you can't do it alone. And I learned that because I was trying to do that at the beginning of 2013 when I started doing things all alone. I said, I have to keep this quiet because I want to do it. But it took me longer to get there because I wasn't really partnering with people until I started doing that. And I was always a person of partnerships and always a person of collaboration because I did that through my corporate world, right? I had to always leverage departments, leverage, and I said, I got to do the same thing in my business. So I got to leverage different people, different.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Different kind of partnership, but it's still a little learnership.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

It's always the same. And that's what I did, and it evolved from there and it started working because it's like it's you know, my business. I don't advertise, you know, throughout, you know, like a lot of people do things on social media. We do stuff, but it's not like we're, you know, we're consistently on there. But it's all word of mouth, but it's also consistent feedback and follow-up with with people that I already know and just to keep top of mind, you know, what we do. A lot of people still think I do security and safety because, you know, be being in the loss prevention, risk management, and safety world, it was all about, I remember people saying, Oh, you're in you're in security. I said, Yeah, I always say I'm security. And there's still people that say, Are you still working for Gap? Are you still working for, you know, that no, no, I'm having my own business. So even people that know you do that still, right? So you have to keep them top of mind with what you do. And everybody's everybody's an opportunity out there, but it's also trying to help others as well. And that's the biggest.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yes, it's it's amazing how many skill sets business owners picked up, pick up, you know, over the time. You know, you start with something, then you gotta learn this, you gotta go through different skill sets, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

You know, we pick up skill set all the time, and then you find uh people that that you want to work for you and they're so resistant to a change or so resistant to a learning. Yes. There's so many you know, how do you justify that as a business owners, we go through that and it's natural for us to, hey, I don't know anything about the marketing, let me pick up that skill set. Yeah, I don't know anything about this. You know, let me pick up the skill set. I don't know how to do podcasts. Let's start. You know, we figure out as we go through. Yes. And a lot of people that, you know, are so resistant to that, that change, that learning the skill set, you know, sometimes it boggles your mind. Like, you know, why are you so resistant? Learn from it and just move on.

The Role of Family Support in Business

SPEAKER_00 31:15

That's that's you know, that's absolutely. I totally agree because you don't have to know everything, right? Like a lot of people saying, well, you owe your business and you need to know all this stuff. And, you know, even when I got into the safety first training world with employees, there's already employees that have been established. We have our customer experience manager that's been around for over 13 years. She's experienced different things over the years. It wasn't like a structure that we're doing it now. But I don't know everything. And I sat down with her quite a few times and said, I don't know everything. You know, that just because I bought the business and I acquired the business, I don't know everything. And I just need to know what, you know, what we need to do and what are the pain points, you know. And and if we don't have the answers, we got to pull somebody that has that's an expert from outside and bring them in. We can't be worried about, you know, having people think, oh, no, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know what we don't know, and that's the thing, right? So yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I always tell that to the younger generation that's coming up. I always say you're not gonna know everything, but you you could leverage other people that may know and surround yourself with those people because you may have an expertise in IT, you know, an expertise in in cyber and cybersecurity and expertise in those areas. I'm I'm not an expert in that, right? I may know a bit of it because I read up on it, but you need to have that expertise, right? So we're in that sort of phase right now where it's kind of like we try to take on some projects that I'm like, you know, is it really something that we should be doing or should we just go on the outside? And one of the things is that it's the technology thing, right? Right now that we're working on towards trying to figure it all out because it's like, you know, we have automation, but we have workflows, but you know, RIT is not up to par with what where we need to be, you know, from a security standpoint, from anything. We have a lot of people that work from home, those type of things that we have to really look at. And it's like, do we really need myself or Nick or Kevin to sit down and figure this out? No, it's not going to be possible because we're not the experts, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah, you know, I follow Greg Cardone and he, you know, he has a comment saying that, you know, hey, if you're the smartest person in a room, it's the wrong room.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

You know, it's a different room. I I know. I I follow him too. I see I see a lot of his content. I follow them, I've read his books and stuff. Yeah, I get I get I get exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

So if you're smartest in a room, you know, it's the wrong room. To find another room where it's people are smarter than you and learn from them and so you know, collaborate and then you can get somewhere. Yeah, otherwise you don't make progress.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Oh, for sure. Absolutely. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

So I want to talk about something very important. I think a lot of people struggle with this. You and I had a discussion over the coffee many, many, many months ago. That uh, you know, I think uh you are the you and I probably the very fortunate one that we had a great support from our family. I you know I and I you mentioned that you had a great support. Talk about that. People are building a business as they're trying to go after new new ventures, they're trying to go after company. How important that is to have that great support from a family in order to build a business.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Oh, absolutely. Like I would not have been able to do what I did because uh if you think back at 2013, I had three young kids. Three young kids. I had a great national director job, Pet Smart, making, you know, some really good money, great bonus structure, benefits, all that stuff. And, you know, when I decided to do it, but I was talking to my family, I was talking to my obviously my spouse, Carla, and you know, I was talking to some closer friends and my parents, and I said, you know, this is what I'm I want to do. And they were always very supportive. And my wife at the time, she was also off because, you know, the young kids, taking care of the kids, were like, you know, we had some savings. But my dad, my dad came to me and said, Listen, if you want to do this, this is the time to do it. Because if you're not gonna do it now, you're never gonna do it. Just get it done, and we'll be all here to support you. If something happens, we'll be supporting you. You could always go back to doing what you were doing, right? And I said that. I'm like, wow. And that took a whole, you know, this weight off my shoulders. And I went in and I just did it. And I just basically did it. And I knew that I had something to fall back to because, like, hey, I had to still have a career. I could go back and I left in good terms in every job I went to, left in good terms. I never burned bridges, and that's one big thing that I want to mention to people is like, don't burn your bridges because you don't know. You know, and uh when I left PetSmart, they were calling me after to do work for them as a contractor because they needed somebody that in that expert area. And a lot of people were from the US that did not have that expertise. So I went in there and I did some consulting for them. So that kind of how it evolved. But a family is everything, you know, your family, your spouse, or your significant other, whoever you're dealing with, if they don't support what you're trying to do, it's gonna be that much harder to do. And then it becomes this sort of big burden on your shoulders. Like, you know, because if you fail, then it's like, wow, you know that it's gonna be a problem. I always had that failure piece to my head. If it doesn't work out, what am I doing? And you have it's feast or famine in this industry. It doesn't matter where you're at when you're a business owner, it's feast or famine, I say, because sometimes you're doing really, really well. And then all of a sudden you got those months that you're looking, it's like, what the heck's going on here? Why is it, you know, and it's like it's it's a it we have to learn how to adapt to that because you don't get that two-week, every two-week paycheck coming in and going to the dentist now is going to cost you out of your own money, out of your own pocket for a while. So we, you know, it was a collaborative thing. And I had a I had a great opportunity to do that. And, you know, my dad was was a key to say, listen, don't worry about it. And you said, Don't worry about if something happens with money. You know, we had our savings, and I did have my savings just in case as a backup, you know, had at least six, seven, eight months of savings because I said, if something happens, what do we do? Right. I could go back and find a job, but by the time you find a job, you know, I could have gone to back to Petsmart because they didn't they didn't hire somebody until like nine um nine months after I left. So I was kind of like in that sort of area where it's like, oh, you know, I could still probably go back there. So it had motivated me. But you definitely have to have the subfamily support or your your spouse, your significant other, your you know, your family, your kids, older kids, you know, because if I didn't do it then, I wouldn't have done it. And and, you know, for me, the timing was was everything because in 2012, if you remember, the ministry was making this whole big push on training, mandatory training. They were doing news, they were doing, they were on the radio, they were on TV at 2012, all going into 2013. I started my business in 2013. So I leveraged that. I leveraged that as sort of like strategy, not at the time knowing it, but then once I was into it, it's like, oh, this is kind of why it's helping me, because I really didn't have to advertise. I was going into small businesses. They were all hearing this commercials all the time, and they're like, what does this mean? Oh, you got to do this training. This is how I could help you. I could consult with you, I could do, and then that's how I built my business from that, right? So it it it kind of, if I didn't do it then, it would have been probably that much tougher to do later on in life. And, you know, having the family is is critical to support you.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah, it's it's uh you know, you hear so many stories, never happened to me. You know, I I know we we hear these stories, but you hear these stories all the time that, you know, somebody started a business, family fell apart. So yeah, it's critical to build a business, critical to scale a company, build it, but same time it's important to take your family as well. You guys stay on the same page, because that's you know, if if you're not you don't have that support, I'm gonna go two different ways. I mean, that there's a what's the point of building a business?

Plans for the Future and Business Growth Strategies

SPEAKER_00 38:06

I mean, absolutely. Yeah, building a business doesn't mean you want to, you know, ruin your other relationship, right? And and the same with the acquisition, right? You have to be honest about it and you have to tell people. And even though you want to keep it to you know, other individuals that you don't, you know, obviously it's different, but your family or your your spouse or your significant other. I had told, you know, I sat down with my parents, I said, this is what I'm trying to do from an acquisition standpoint. My mom thought I was crazy because, you know, again, the Italian background, too, it's like mom mean like you're crazy. Yeah, yeah, you're crazy, you know, especially when I left Pets Barn, you know, I'm making a certain amount, and she goes, You're no, that's no, no, you know, she was in fear for fear for me, fearful for me. My dad was more, don't worry about it. Your mom's gonna be like this, this is what she's gonna think. But, you know, and then same thing with the acquisition. I sat down with my my wife, you know, I went through it. I even sat down with my kids because they were older. I said, This is what's gonna happen. This is how we're gonna have to, you know, maybe pull up our socks a little bit. This is where we may have to look at, you know, kind of doing things a little bit different. You know, it's not gonna be the same because, you know, we have to invest some, some, some, you know, cash. And it's gonna be a little bit different uh than than what we're we're used to. And they're all very supportive. And they're all very supportive in the business now, too, right? Like all three of my kids do get involved somewhere. My daughter does some of the social media.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Like when the kids get involved in.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Uh she's in university, but she still does a lot of social media. My son helps me on like the inspection sides in some cases. My other daughter is always, you know, helping with the administrative, you know, so there's always that that support and that that that background that's very helpful to to growing your business, but also staying on, you know, kind of staying in sync. So people don't don't, you know, realize when everybody else finds out, everybody, you know, your family's finding out. That becomes a a major issue, right? And then it's like always that conflict that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

So now so let's talk about this year. Uh you just started, it's a Q1. What's the plan for this year? How does it look like going forward with uh with the you know merger and and and you know opportunity for you guys as a family? What's what's up, it looks like or not?

How to Connect with Aldo Carinci

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yeah, so for us, and you know, from the safety, uh safety first training aspect, you know, we're growing our our client base in, you know, what we're doing right now is our focus is, you know, we we we uh schedule a certain amount of instructors per day, and we're increasing that. We're increasing that because you know, we're opening up a calendar, we're opening up a schedule to more individuals because we have we have a uh an independent control uh independent contractor pool that we started last year, which is very cool because there's a lot of independents like me that have the sits uh skill sets and they have the the knowledge, they like to be on independent, it's about the flexibility. So we're working with maybe about five different independent providers, safety providers, uh, that do this on their own. And we're basically leveraging their skills in those different competencies that we're doing. And now we're opening up, so for example, we're booking all of our own internal people, and we're still opening up those dates for clients. So when a client is calling us, sometimes we have last-minute dates. Last year we couldn't do it. This year we're doing it where it's like, well, we have Monday, we got Tuesday, we got Wednesday for you. Oh, really? Because nobody does that. So hopefully now everybody's gonna find out, but that's what we do. And then that builds up on the amount of training we have on those weeks and increases our strategy around getting out to more clients, getting the training done quicker. But also we're increasing the amount of time that we're spending on our top clients. We're spending more nurturing those relationships. We have we hired a part-time uh sales development person that kind of just basically all they're gonna concentrate is our top 40, and the top 40 person that kind of deals with all those client key clients that are with us all the time, but always continuously coming and doing training, but you know, offering other things that we do. You know, we we uh we opened up first aid certified. We have two individuals that are certified first aid internally, that we got them certified last year. Now we are offering that internally. We've we were going through a third party before, so that's another big win for us. And uh, and we're looking at creating this whole platform, online platform. But it's not just generic, it's more specialized because we have an industrial hygiene on our team that we could take advantage of a lot of the expertise stuff that we need. So we're doing that. That's gonna really increase our exposure out there with that industry because a lot of companies don't go to that area because they don't have the expertise. And a lot of the industrial hygiene experts are independents. So the the advantage for us is that we have a company, and then, you know, because of Nicholas's background and experience, we're able to do that as well and leverage that that experience to build from there. And then from family, we're gonna be hopefully, you know, there's uh there's a lot of talk about uh my kids got older now, so there's a lot of talk about they want to travel here, they want to travel there. I said, good, good for you. As long as you pay for it, I'm fine with that. That's all. So yeah, but uh they're all you know, they're all looking at tri uh at traveling and uh in the summertime.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

The wish list, they're gonna pay for it.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

That's what I said. They go, I I had a wish list like that too, and I had to always pay for it, right? I remember I I my car, my dad used to always say, because he gave me my first car, it was like this Honda, Honda Civic Station Wagon. And my dad gave it to me, and he said, uh, your next car, you're gonna have to buy it, right? You know that. And I said, I never realized. I said, Yeah, because this car is not gonna last. It's already 15 years old. He goes, I get it. So I remember him telling me that. I was like, I have to pay for that. And I tell my kids all the time, it's like you guys want to do this? That's absolutely, I support you. But it's definitely an expense that they have to sort of budget for and work for, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:28

So that changes a lot of plans, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:30

It does, it does, it does. They start thinking differently and they start looking at it saying, Well, yeah, you know what, but I didn't know that it cost this much to go to Europe. Yeah, it does cost a lot.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

With the cost of everything going up. I mean, definitely it's costing. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

For sure. That's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Business owner were listening to us, you know, uh, you know, they want to start, you know, where can they start from and where can they find you to connect with you, Aldo?

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. You you could definitely find me everywhere right now. If you look at you, look me up at Aldo Carincy on the LinkedIn, but you could contact me. Directly with my email. It's a currency at safetyfirstraining.ca. Or you could call you could call me directly. My cell number 416-3994.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Put all this up under below the.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Absolutely. And you could you could uh call me like I'm on LinkedIn. You know, we we have a lot of exposure on LinkedIn. We deal with a lot of people on LinkedIn. There's a lot of, and we we don't like there's a lot of consulting companies that will will will will bill for the the the the the sort of the conversation. We don't do that. We you know we want it people to know. We we offer a lot of free resources, we offer a lot of workshops just just for for you to learn. Uh so you could look that up as well, you know, on our websites and different things. And you know, we have different types of companies, but if you look at safetyfirstraining.ca, you'll have all that information there. Yeah, absolutely. And those are all things that uh you could reach me at. And then, you know, we're there not to, you know, pile on the work uh for people, because a lot of people say, you know, we bring in a consulting company, bring in a safety, you know, we're there as your sort of backup plan. You know, there's companies that need us because they don't have anybody, but there's also companies that have health and safety professionals, experienced HR people, but they need a third party to kind of ensure that all the other things are in place because they don't have time to do it. But also, do you really want that that sort of fully, you know, responsible opportunity for you to be, you know, not kind of partnering with somebody? So it's really important. And I and I used to be the person, you know, at a company working for these corporate companies that I always partnered with vendors because they're the experts. I I wouldn't want to be doing the internal stuff regularly because you know what, I'd rather bring in an expert. And yeah, it might cost me a little bit more initially, but it's gonna give me a bigger return on investment down the down the line. So that's kind of where where where you could find me there.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Yeah, business owners, there's a lot of like blank spots. You know, they're not gonna know all the details because we're so busy running a business, running my business. Everybody else is gonna be running their business. That's for sure. That's where the experts like you come in, you know, all the changes that are you know going on in the market, all the policy procedures, all that exactly government changes. So you need experts like you to uh to you know over, you know, take a look at some of those and and highlight some of the blind spots that people have.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yeah, and that's exactly it. It's a blind spot. You know, and it's also those, those, those some of the things are you know, low-lying fruit that you could deal with immediately. And then some of the things take a bit of time and we phase it in. We don't say you could do it all to someone. Here's here's the cost associated with doing all this stuff. People are overwhelmed when they say, but it's phasing in. You know, you have to have a plan. You're gonna say, how do I budget this? And how do I ensure that, hey, you know what, I could demonstrate that I'm doing my continuous improvement. And then at the end of the day, if somebody comes in to ask and question it, a legal obligation, you know, like a you know, like any type of uh government agency, you could prove it and say, listen, we're we're partner with this company or we're doing this. This is the plan that we've created, whatever the case may be, you have to have a plan. Because if you don't have a plan and you just basically try to do it after unfortunately something happens, too late. You're not gonna be able to prove due diligence after something happens. That's too late. You got to do everything before anything happens, so you could be proven, not negligence, causing something to happen in your your your workplace. Doesn't matter what type of work you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

All right. One last question. So yeah, for sure. Somebody's starting in a similar business that you started in in 2012, 2011. Any word advice you want to leave for the person who's uh looking into getting in the same kind of line of business and they're starting from uh from a ground zero at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Yeah, for sure. If you're starting from a ground zero, take take a partner, get someone, get, get expertise advice, make sure that you, you know, you don't know everything. That's that's the main thing. You don't know everything. Because if you think you know everything, then that's when you're gonna end up failing, you know, and you have to make sure that you take on those partners, you collaborate with other we're collaborating all the time. We were just on a call just recently this this morning. We're collaborating with a company that is an expert in technology when it comes to health and safety, digitized technology. And you know, we're not the gonna be the ones that are gonna create that. Why not partner with a company that maybe we could collaborate with and come up with you know some ideas and then work towards you know that one official thing that we want to work on? So those are all things that you need to take take into consideration. If you're starting from scratch, you have to use your network. And then you and most people have a network. If you don't, then it's gonna be that much more difficult to deal with it if you're trying to do things on your own.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yeah, very interesting. Well, people are listening, watching to uh watching us on a YouTube, I'll strongly recommend hey listen, reach out to you for conversation. All the information is below the video and connect with you, reach out to you. I learn so much from a discussion, I'm sure people who uh reach out to you, they're gonna learn a lot about uh you know your industry and your business as well. So thank you so much for time, Aldo.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Thank you very much for having me. Take care, Grimia. Thanks. Okay, bye-bye.