The Entrepreneur Nobody Quit on Tough Times

True entrepreneurs persist when others quit. Building a business demands relentless grit through failures, cash shortages, and doubts. They adapt, learn, and push forward, viewing setbacks as lessons. Quitting is never an option; vision fuels daily action. 

In this episode, I had a discussion with Paul Doroshenko, K.C., one of B.C.’s top criminal defense lawyers and founder of Acumen Law Corporation. A leading expert in DUI and impaired driving, Paul has defended over 10,000 cases, is a vocal critic of B.C.’s IRP regime, and frequently speaks at legal conferences across North America. He combines sharp courtroom advocacy with deep technical knowledge of police testing equipment—and outside the courtroom, he’s a songwriter, classic car enthusiast, and co-founder of Deep Blue Distilleries Ltd.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-doroshenko-93667980/
https://vancouvercriminallaw.com/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Paul Doroshenko's Journey
00:38 From Homelessness to Law School: A Personal Journey
02:11 Building a Law Firm: Challenges and Innovations
04:37 The Importance of Marketing in Business
07:28 The Distillery Venture: A Family Legacy
11:47 Managing Multiple Businesses: Insights and Struggles
12:56 Common Struggles in Business: Financial Challenges
15:13 The Specialization in Law: Finding Success
18:20 Learning Business Skills: Trial and Error
21:32 Managing People: The Human Element in Business
24:15 The Fate of Small Businesses: Survival and Transition
28:03 Opportunities in Business Transition: Buying vs. Starting
30:08 Seeing Opportunities in Business
31:06 Navigating Red Tape in Business
33:25 The Impact of Red Tape on Distilleries
36:45 Economic Challenges and Market Competition
39:54 The Role of Tariffs in Business
41:59 Adapting to Technological Disruption
51:49 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Introduction to Paul Doroshenko's Journey

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You always must be marketing. It doesn't matter what business you're in. You always must be marketing because you're forgotten, you know, in the next minute if you're not reminding people of your existence all the time, and this is something that's available for them to come to you for the service that you're providing. Hiring people is always a difficult task, right? It's it's touch and go. You often you don't know who you've hired and what they're gonna be like, and some people can can fake it for a long time. Uh some people are corrosive and you need to get those people out as quickly as you can. You can call up many business owners and they'll talk to you about things. Um there's even sometimes competitors will reveal things to you. Uh you've got to be out there all the time, you've got to be social, there's not you're not getting any value being at home playing on video games. I've always looked for inexpensive rent because rent is crushing and people want views for their rent and things like that. Your clients don't want to pay for your view. Like my clients don't want to pay for me to be in an office tower downtown. My clients want to pay for me to do the work that's gonna get them ahead in some form or another.

Building a Law Firm: Challenges and Innovations

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Paul Doroshenko KC. Paul is one of the British Columbia's leading criminal defense lawyers, called to bar in 2000 and successfully defended over 10,000 cases and founded Aquaman Law Corporation in 2008 with offices in uh Vancouver, Richmond, and Epsford. Paul is a recognized expert in a DUI and empire driving law. He's a vocal critic of BC's IRP regime, frequently speaks at legal conferences across North America, and holds a membership in the top DUI defense associations. He was appointed King's Consul for his contribution. Paul combines sharp advocacy with the deep technical knowledge of a police testing equipment. And outside the law, he's a songwriter, classic car enthusiast, and co-founder and a president of a Deep Blue Distillery Limited. Now, this was very interesting discussion. You know, we talked about various different topics on business, leadership, and growth and many other challenges. You know, Paul talks about his experience, his journey, um, and some of the challenges that he had to get um get over to in order to grow not only law business but also marketing company and the distillery business as well. Um, so he shares a lot of lessons learned um over the years for him to grow the company. So hope you find a value in this discussion as much as I did. If you like this discussion, don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel, and share with your friends. Your feedback is very important for us to stay focused on the right discussion to deliver value and help you grow your business uh on a weekly basis. So thank you again for your time. Please welcome Paul Dorshenko. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Paul Doroshenko. Paul, uh, you worked in a variety of different industries. You know, move around from one to I'm looking forward to learning from you, and there's gotta be some sort of secret that you're able to move from one industry to another one. I think a lot of people struggle with that. So I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to our discussion. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Okay. So so if you uh I I think your journey is very important because you kind of you kind of you know move around in a few industries. So if you walk us through um your journey, you know, uh you where you started from and where you at, you know, how many different industries you're in right now.

The Importance of Marketing in Business

The Distillery Venture: A Family Legacy

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Well, I mean, I I your your life history comes into your business history, comes into your you know, your journey through through through life, I guess, you know, starts with my childhood and I grew up in Edmonton. The Edmonton was wonderful in the 1970s, it was an enjoyable place to be. But when the early 80s hit, interest rates skyrocketed, industry was basically collapsed, Edmonton suffered it as bad or worse than anywhere in the country. And of course, you know, fairly affluent Alberta prior to that, but suddenly everything was was on the rocks, and so was my parents' relationship. And I ended up uh homeless. My my parents basically lost everything, and we went from from being a normal family to being in poverty. And so I was uh high school dropout, and ultimately I, you know, I was a wily guy, hardworking guy, and I was able to figure out that, you know, uh there was one way that I could ensure that I would succeed in life, and that was to go and get an education. So I went back to school, completed some high school, I got into university, I ultimately got into law school because I looked around and I realized in a bad economy, the lawyers do fine. In a good economy, the lawyers do fine, one way or another. You won't be poor. You may not be rich, but you won't be poor if you're a lawyer. So I considered doing a degree in economics because I was really into economic history. And when I was in law school, I did uh IP law and I did a bunch of business law things. And and prior to that, I worked for the auto trader back when the auto trader used to be used to be pre-digital cameras, right? I drove around and I took pictures of people's cars, and I got into marketing and advertising when I was doing that, and I was writing ad copy for for car small car dealerships. And uh so a bunch of these skills sort of came together for me when I started practicing law. So I finished law school in in 99, I moved to Vancouver, I started articling. One of the classes that I did really well in in law school was criminal law and ethics. Those were my two leading things in law school, fairly easy for me to understand. And so I got a job in a criminal law firm and started defending uh impaired driving cases. And I realized after not many years that a lot of lawyers were not very creative as far as I could see with looking at the technology and the steps that the police were doing in their impaired driving investigations. And, you know, you I'm always I'm on a lifetime learning challenge, right, at all times, and I'm always trying to improve myself. And it just didn't feel like the other lawyers who were doing the same type of practice as me were trying to improve themselves. Like the general method was a client would hire you, you'd pick one or two good arguments, you would run those one or two good arguments. If you lost, you turn to your client and you say, Well, let's go for a walk in the hallway, and you tell them that they've lost. And and I never liked that approach. I didn't think that it was the right way to do it. But I became very good at impaired driving cases, and I started looking at the technology more, challenging the breathalyzers that were being used. Two breathalyzers in this country have been pulled from service because of things that I figured out over the years. And eventually in 2008, I started my own firm where we focus more on driving law than anything. So we do criminal law generally. We don't take any murder cases, not interested in doing murder cases. But we'll we handle big cases, impaired driving causing death, and dangerous driving causing death and things like that. But we also handle like traffic tickets. And we do that because it lets us refine our skills a lot. We're dealing with police officers. We get to cross-examine police officers, they're professional witnesses. This is one of the personal challenges that I like. I mean, there's lots of areas of law that I don't find I don't find that interesting, but cross-examining professional witnesses, police officers, accident reconstructionists, people who are going to push back and know how to push back is really challenging to your brain and professional. And so we got very, very good at that. And it got to the point where we expanded. We've had up to 15 lawyers in the firm. I started it in 2008. We typically have about 22 staff. We've had up to 35 staff, depending on how busy we are. And it's, you know, we made our mark and and we've been very successful and we continue to perpetually set goals for ourselves and remain creative. And those have been challenges to do that when you get a little bit bigger. But it's been one of those things that we recognized allowed us to get where we are. Along that same line, you know, you always must be marketing. It doesn't matter what business you're in, you always must be marketing because you're forgotten, you know, in the next minute, if you're not reminding people of your existence all the time, and this is uh something that's available for them to come to you for the service that you're providing. And my marketing background that I had enough of from previous jobs I'd worked in and working at the auto trader, it always made me interested in marketing. It was something I was interested in early on. So we started doing most of our marketing ourselves. Eventually we got to the point where there were lawyers contacting us wanting us to do their marketing for them. We didn't want to do it in the same market we're in because I like as a lawyer, I have to recognize that I have competing interests and I don't want to be in a I can't be in a conflict with my client, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

And if my client is a another law firm that it practices in the same area that I'm in, yeah, I'm now I've got the potential lawyer conflict for my business. And as a lawyer, you're supposed to always be, you know, as upfront as you possibly can be. It's like proactive integrity. But we started accepting advertising work for lawyers in the States who weren't competing with us. And in order to do that, we had to create an advertising company. And so we unintentionally created an advertising company, a marketing company. And the marketing company did okay, but it's quite a distraction from the law aspect of it. But I'm not afraid of the distractions, I guess, because as you know, I also part owner of a distillery.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So how does the distillery idea came along?

Managing Multiple Businesses: Insights and Struggles

Common Struggles in Business: Financial Challenges

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, I mean, long history, long family history of distilling. I didn't know about the family history of distilling until I first distilled. I was about 13, I think. And we lived in a house in Edmonton that had been converted to a duplex at one point, probably in the 1930s, converted back to a single family home, and my bedroom was a kitchen. And so I had a gas stove and I had a sink, and I was in science class learning with Mr. Simmons, learning about uh uh grade, I don't know, grade eight science, I guess, grade eight science, grade nine, grade eight, learning about uh and it caught my attention, learning about distilling, and I realized I've got most of the equipment here in my room. Everything else is either out in the garage or I can steal from the science lab at school. And so I did. I made my first vodka when I was 13 years old, did it in my in my in my bedroom. I didn't drink it. I was too scared to drink it. I thought it might make me blind or something like that. Also, I was 13, but I, you know, it was vodka. I know the smell, knew the smell then. And then I disclosed it to my family. And that's when sort of the flood of stories came out on the Ukrainian side. Uh they when they immigrated to uh Alberta, they were looking for a spot with a creek so they could continue to produce vodka. On my other side of the family, my great-grandfather was the first Presbyterian minister in British Columbia. There's a place called uh Parsons Crossing in in the East Kootenies, and he's the parson who crossed. There's a road named after him. His name is George Hartley. And when they came here, of course, they were also leaving prohibition in the States. So this was in the you know about a hundred years ago. And everybody who was in that was also selling tonic on the side. And so people were coming to BC looking for gold. The gold he was looking for was the best juniper. And they continued to distill for a while. My my grandfather used to speak of all the the copper that they had collected for building stills. But my great-grandfather discontinued it. But my great uncle George, who was a really weird guy, continued to do it in Jasper when they had finally settled down in Jasper. He dug tunnels under the town from their basement. This is well known in Jasper. If you Google George Hartley tunnels, you find out all about it. My my eccentric uncle. And he was secretly distilling in these tunnels, and he was making uh ethanol that he was actually driving his car around. You Google George Hartley's car, Jasper, you'll find out all about that. He told everybody it ran on water. It was eventually sold to a collector in in Edmonton and it was displayed in a shopping mall for a couple of years there. But yeah, so there's a long history of it there for me. I discontinued distilling when I got into law school because I thought, you know, I did it a little bit in university, but um, and I'd built my own equipment and it was just, you know, for me personally. But uh I didn't want to break the law. And when I got to law school, I'm not okay, I'm not gonna distill anymore. But then I thought, you know, the space came up next to our space in our Richmond office. So we've got an office in Vancouver. We used to have one in Victoria. I shut that down because it was too hard to manage when you get too far away. And but we have one in Richmond, and I'm there basically every second day. And the space became available next door, and the the owner of the building, he inherited from his dad, and he promised his father that he would keep that building there so the Richmond Food Bank would continue to be able to exist. And I've been leasing the space there, and I also want the Richmond Food Bank to continue to exist. So he needed a solid tenant, and I agreed to to rent this space and then set out on the quest to build a distillery, and that was that was a serious, heavy project, much heavier than you could possibly imagine. But it's up and running now, and it's going fairly well.

unknown 13:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So yeah, thanks for walking us through that you know. Long long story, I know. But these three businesses, whether it's marketing, whether it's law firm, and they're they're still all three running in a fun a full functional, and you spend time in all of the we we we are so overwhelmed with our own marketing for the distillery that we're not accepting any more people, any more clients for Brazenbull, the uh marketing company.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

And really, like it's it's anytime we're contacted, it's uh okay, do I have to hire some more people to do more work for more marketing? So Brazenbull is sort of just runs on the few things we don't accept any more clients. We have the clients we've got, you know, we're not expanding. But the distillery is is running full tilt, and as is the law office, and they both of them are uh serious going concerns at this point.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

So generally, you know, when a lot of people start a business, even this, you know, there's a struggle, even get one business up and running. You've been you know uh involved in the three of them. What are you what do you what are your thoughts are uh Paul? Where do people struggle when they're trying to build a business? What are some of the struggles? It looks like for you, it's natural. You you get over those struggles very quickly. A lot of people struggle even when they're trying to get a bun one business off that uh off the road. So what do you think some of the struggles are for people?

The Specialization in Law: Finding Success

SPEAKER_01 15:01

I mean, the struggles are always financial. It's always financial struggles. It doesn't matter what you're doing. When I first left the firm that I was at to set up my own law firm, you know, the moment that you've committed to that point, you know, you've signed the lease on somewhere, you're gonna go, you've you've informed your employer that you're leaving, it is a war. And I just look at it every day as you know, I'm all these businesses that are down the road, if you look at drive down any major street and you'll see all those businesses and they're owned by somebody. You know, sometimes they're franchises, sometimes they're big businesses, but mostly they're smaller businesses owned by somebody. And if you look at a photograph of that road from 30 years ago, it's all different businesses. And the reason for that is because most businesses do not survive their founder. And the reason for that is the founder is always putting in that much more work. And so from the moment you pull the trigger, you've got to be getting up every day like this is a battle. You are fighting to survive, you've got to get things done, you've got to accomplish. You know, you can't be spinning your wheels. And that is, you know, a lot of people are not equipped for that. They they they're just not set up for it. I I often look around at, you know, my dad's business, for example, that he had back in Edmonton, you know, he was at retiring age, and there was really nobody who could could pick it up and run with it the way that he did. And so ultimately we ended up shutting that business down. So understanding that before you pull the trigger, most people who are contemplating uh you know starting a business have some idea of that. They have to do some real self-assessment and decide that that's what they want in life because what are you getting out of it? You're not secure necessarily in any job. You're not secure more secure if you have your own business. You know, I as I was building my law firm, I was thinking, well, if we have five lawyers, we'll be very secure. If we have ten lawyers, we'll be very secure. Well, we're you know, we always have to work for our work, right? Like it's we always have you you you don't stop the the process there.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

But does it get a little easier? When does it get easier? Five lawyers does it get another. Well you get better at it.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

You get better at it and you define your roles. Like in law, over the last 40 years, but really over the last 15 years, it's become so specialized because you can't, it's very hard to be a generalist. There are some lawyers out there who are generalists, but uh the thing for us is we cannot reinvent the wheel every day. We had to get very good at the things that we are good at, and that allows us to be so hyper-focused on them that we end up thinking of new things, new defenses, new, you know, angles of attack for things. Law is weird, right? So in law, like unlike every other profession, if you were a litigator, you know, if you're in out there suing, there's somebody on the other side trying to make you lose. Like you don't have that in other businesses. You've got you've got competitors, but you don't have somebody, it's not like a surgeon having somebody smacking the instruments out of their hands, right? Every file that we've got, there's a prosecutor who's trying to make sure that that we don't succeed. So it's a uh I mean it's a it's a different struggle every day because of that.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

But going into that that that that the lawsuit, you know, understanding that one one of us has to lose, another one is gonna win, this gulli is gonna be win or lose. Does that make it you know a little bit easier just because you're going in with the understanding only one person can win, another person gonna lose?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Well, I guess back to the specialization thing. I want to make sure that we're not in a position where we're gonna lose. You know, we are trying to win for our clients every time, and and we do remarkably well for them. And it it does hurt you when you don't succeed for a client, especially if you think that you've got a a decent shot. You know, you're you're always laying it out for the client. These are the the options that you've got. This is, you know, is it worth proceeding? If you think it's worth proceeding, you know, you have to make that decision yourself. Some files are less likely to succeed, others you've got a a greater chance to succeed. But I mean, does it it doesn't alleviate the the bad feeling when you don't succeed? You still want to win for your client and you're feeling that way all the way through because you you get the connection with the person. I mean, you're providing a service, right? Law is a service. You're providing a service, and the service that they want is to succeed. Success can be various different things. You know, success can be just keeping somebody from going to jail. Success can be keeping somebody from being convicted and getting a criminal record. You know, it's going to be different each time. You do get to define that, but then there's also cases where it's it's an all or nothing. And you run into court and you're going in front of a judge, and a judge makes a decision in the end, and you don't have control over that decision.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Got it. So, but working as a lawyer call or running a law firm, two different skill set, right? Uh, one has a business skill set, other one is a simply service skill set, as you just mentioned. Where do Morse lawyers pick up the skill? That skill, the business skills are not taught in our schools, you know, it's not got in a law schools, right? So, so how did you pick up that skill set? Because I I I've I I learned that this is where the struggle is for a lot of lawyers, because the business skills are not taught. They have to learn those skills on a job.

Managing People: The Human Element in Business

SPEAKER_01 20:19

A lot of it is trial and error. You know, you you you unfortunately learn the hard way. You know, I paid close attention to the lawyer I I first started practicing with, and I was with that firm for eight years, and it was a small firm. There was no more than four lawyers there at any given time. And, you know, I I I critically viewed it. I wasn't, you know, I was a very positive person at at work, but I also looked at the things that were going right and the things that were going wrong, and I thought I could improve on them. And there were some things that I thought I could really improve on, and largely I I did. So by the time I set out to start my own firm, I had a pretty good idea, but I was paying attention the entire time. You know, the lawyers who I've worked with over the years, some people have have worked with me and gone off to start their own firms and done very well. Some people have not done as well, some people aspire to that and other people don't. And the people who aspire to it, for the most part, you know, are paying close enough attention that they they'll they can pull it off in some manner or another. Not everybody can. It is definitely a different skill set. And you know, switching hats and remembering that you've you've always got to be this this thinking of your clients' interests all the time is I think sometimes difficult for people. There's a real conflict there all the time for lawyers because you know your especially when I look at it, like I don't like hiring lawyers who are hourly charging on an hourly basis because to me that you know they're they're conflicted and that they should be working more slowly to charge you more money to get the job done. Now, most lawyers are capable of compartmentalizing that and not doing that, but that's the sense what I want to get. Gets. And I've never been. It's not something I was ever happy with. We do most things on like a piecemeal specified fee for it. But I don't know how I talked myself out of in a circle there. But uh that's decisions you make in your firm, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah. Well, you know, that m even my industry changed a lot. You know, we used to charge hourly as well. You know, my industry changed to flat fees and stuff, right? So easy for us to change because it's uh, you know, we can predict what the outcome is, we can control what the what the issue is gonna be in your business, I think a little bit difficult.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah, well, actually, what I was talking about, I guess, was the conflict. You have the conflict sometimes with your clients. You want to get paid, they want to pay less. I personally want to protect their economic interests at the same time I'm doing work for them and they're gonna pay me for it. And then you've got, you know, running the business, and everybody wants to get paid, and everybody wants to get paid more, and you can only afford to pay them what the market is gonna bear for what fees you can reasonably charge. And so there's always these this conflict that you're dealing with at all times, I guess. And it increases the conflicts when you're the one running the business.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Because now you're dealing not just with that, you know, are you in a conflict with your client for wanting to charge them a fee to do work? And then you've got to pay a lawyer to do work. And I can tell you, you know, like the margins might be better in law, in some law, not necessarily in the law that we're doing, but I'm paying lawyers, right? So I'm paying lawyers' salaries, which is which is an expensive part of running a law office.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Other part of the business is people. Every business is about people. How do you hire people, how do you manage people, how do you you know, how do you manage the expedition? And you know, how did you get good in a people side? Because you know, managing business is all about managing people, as you mentioned, whether they're an apparel or they're not apparel, but you're dealing with them all the time. So how do you how did you get better with that in managing people?

The Fate of Small Businesses: Survival and Transition

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Well, hiring people is always a difficult task, right? It's it's touch and go. You often you don't know who you've hired and what they're gonna be like, and some people can can fake it for a long time. Some people are corrosive, and you need to get those people out as quickly as you can and mitigate the damage. Some people are great and so you know wonderful at their job. It is it is a terrible situation to have somebody who is damaging to your business, working in your business. And in those circumstances, the best bet is to try and uh and and get rid of those people, pay them out and let them leave as quickly as you can because it's holding you back. I remember years ago in the firm I was at before, there was one person who was just so hard to work with that you'd be walking into the office each day, into a building you like, with otherwise people you like, doing something that you enjoy, but there's this one person, and it just is in your stomach, you feel sick about going in. And it turns out, you know, half the people feel sick about going in. That's always hard in every business. And, you know, in the pandemic, we we had a labor shortage and we had difficulty getting legal assistance, for example. And you end up taking the person who's there who showed up for the interview, you know, rather than having a market of available potential, a pool of potential staff you can hire where you can scrutinize a little bit more. You know, it always is is there's a supply and demand issue going on. And that's always hard. Like it's it's it is it never that never gets easy. I have I've been able to to offload a lot of that to the manager of the law firm, basically. You know, I'm I'm at the top and I'm I deal with my types of files that I like to deal with. I still deal with them. I still do the lawyering on those files, but various tasks obviously I've had to hand off to people as we expanded to just to be able to handle it. So I don't deal with the HR anymore, thank goodness, because it was one of those things that that's what you wake up at four in the morning and can't fall back to sleep because you've got that, you know, thing you've got to deal with there that's unpleasant.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yeah, you know, you you made a very good point. I want to circle back to the other point you made, Mark Hall. You were saying that a lot of businesses don't make it after first owner. When you look at the data I was looking at recently, 93% businesses in Canada, they're all small businesses. And uh if owners, you know, you know, business doesn't sort of survive the original owner after that based on the you know we were just talking about. I mean, that's a big problem, right? If a 93, 90, 90 percent businesses have to change hand in a in a few years. I mean, how do you circle how do you refresh the whole cycle of the businesses?

Opportunities in Business Transition: Buying vs. Starting

SPEAKER_01 26:34

There's so much loss in that. There's the value of the institutional knowledge, there's the capital of the business, there's the goodwill of the business. You know, it's just there's so much value in a business, and they don't survive the owner because you can't inspire somebody to come in and take the risks, and the owner thinks it's worth more than it is, and then you see everything's going to an auction somewhere. And it's it's it's heartbreaking to see it. I would say that it is important not to be sentimental about your business. Your business exists for the sake of earning a living for you and you know, putting you in a hopefully better situation than you'd be without your business and paying for your family and the existence and the staff and making sure that you know people have good, solid employment. You can't be too sentimental about it if it's if it's not going to last. But the value to society of businesses surviving and businesses thriving is hard to quantify, but it's reasonable to assume that it's significant. And, you know, I look at, again, shutting down my dad's business, which produced products, metal products for resource extraction in Alberta that nobody else was producing. And somebody else might produce it, somebody else might come along and make something, but he was very innovative coming up with things. And in the end, you know, nobody was willing to to take on the risk, the effort, and being that one who wakes up at four in the morning thinking about the staff problems. And that's unfortunate. And I, you know, as I set up the distillery, and I've you know seen the impediments there, and there's all of the impediments to become a lawyer, right? And there's all those hurdles that you know basically keep other people from doing it. And then setting up your law firm and then running your law firm and making sure you're you know compliant wherever you can, and it's it's you're gonna screw up at some point. The the the the barriers to entry and the hurdles, red tape you could call it, are pretty damn extreme. And it does hold back business anywhere. You're gonna have red tape, but it holds back business everywhere. And some maybe, you know, I like I I wish you could you could dump some of it. Some of it, you know, you can purely see that it's good safety reasons. A lot of it unfortunately arises out of litigation, but it does feel like we are we are overly burdened and it takes away the dynamism in our economy and our capacity to compete.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

You made us such two good points, Paul. I want to just dissect it. Let's talk about the barriers to entry, then we'll talk about the red tape afterwards. So, barriers to entry, if somebody looking to start a new business with the number we were just talking about, 90%, 93% businesses, they don't survive owner. Wouldn't that be easier for them to just buy a business instead of starting from scratch and going through the all the lessons learned that somebody already done it? If there was a transition period, somebody can pass it on. Like your dad was running a business, it would have been much easier if somebody could just run with that with the business instead of just a little bit.

Seeing Opportunities in Business

SPEAKER_01 29:44

There's a great business opportunity right there for business brokers. And you you Google it, you can find stuff. I mean, there's the realtors who handle it, but nobody's like making it a serious project. I'm I'm often surprised that there isn't young lawyers setting up law firms just to be a small business firm. Just do small business. You know, I we do we do so much driving. We're criminal law and driving, but you know, I could set up another law firm next week. I could discontinue this and create a law firm that just does business for small business, and I would be very successful in a very short period of time. Because there's nobody, whatever reason, nobody seems to be doing that marketing just for that. Marketing just for businesses that want to people who want to buy businesses, acting as a broker for these people who are baby boomers, who are in their 70s and need to get rid of that business and and don't want to, you know, have it just shut down.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

There's look also how many restaurants open every day, how many restaurants got closed, right? So if in case instead of uh just uh opening a new restaurant, why not look for somebody who is running it and trying to close it and just partner with them and and build a business from there?

Navigating Red Tape in Business

SPEAKER_01 30:53

There's a fellow on his TikTok show up in my feed every once in a while who's taking over his dad's Chinese restaurant and his dad's teaching him everything, and his dad's in his 70s. I'm like, you know, this is this is a good way to earn a living. It's a a good solid business that you've got. These are skills that you're gonna learn. Your dad's already figured out the hard parts and he can explain it to you without you having to to to to fail to learn. So yeah, I I I mean, I just think it's I think there's lots of opportunity out there for people with that. I will say that in times when I was down, in times when I was broke in my life, I could not come up with a good idea. Then I'm out in my life, you know, busy being out there in the world, and I just encourage everybody to be busy out there in the world, be social, because these are, you know, things that let you gain learning experiences all the time. But, you know, now in my position now, I can see opportunity all over the place. Uh you know, I could see business ideas for things that you could you could start relatively easily, relatively quickly, and probably do fairly well all over the place that I wouldn't see when I'm like in that. I used to say, uh, if I can't think my way out of a paper bag, then I maybe I shouldn't be, you shouldn't be out here even trying. But you know, you can see it when you're on the other end of it. It's kind of like on the mountain looking down and seeing the valley, as opposed to looking up and wondering what's on the peak.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Yeah, and and there's a lot of businesses in the market, you know, you can just pick simply pick and choose instead of trying starting from a scratch, is your point. Very interesting. So let's talk about the red tape. When you you were talking about the red tape, was that specific to distillery, or just in a general, you were talking about that there much uh so much red tape in a business is it it, you know, or is this something special to Canada?

The Impact of Red Tape on Distilleries

Economic Challenges and Market Competition

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Well, the distillery is a very specific thing. You know, uh I've done a number of projects now where we've renovated a building or something like that. You know, our law office here, we we bought this building, we renovated this building. Doing that in Vancouver, I can tell you it is not easy. When I first did my uh first office, I've always looked for inexpensive rent because rent is crushing and people want views for their rent and things like that. Your clients don't want to pay for your view. Like my clients don't want to pay for me to be in an office tower downtown. My clients want to pay for me to do the work that's gonna get them ahead in some form or another. And I feel like I'm cognizant of that all the time. So the first place I found was an old warehouse. I often wonder, you know, it's always uh architects in old warehouses. And you're thinking to yourself, if you're an architect, and the best that you can uh architecturally conceive of is brick walls, why aren't you just designing everything that's brick walls? But in any event, I digress. I've rented a good chunk of a floor of a building downtown that was an old warehouse, and I did my own drawings, I submitted my own plans to the city. I submitted it all, and when I took it in there, she said, Wow, this is better than most of the contractors. You say you're a lawyer, I'm like, you know, I did it with like SketchUp or whatever the equivalent was. I did a reverse drawing of the ceiling. And I had my permit within, I had a destruction permit within an hour, and I had my my building permit within like eight days. When we did it for the building that we're in now, which we were doing very few changes to it, like we pulled the drywall out because there was asbestos and I didn't want to have any asbestos in the building, and we redrywalled it, carpet, kitchen, not much else. There was already offices and everything in here. I think we were about nine months to get our building permit. The we had to do a zoning change despite the fact that it was office and warehouse before, and we're still doing office and like creative because we have got the marketing in the back. We still had to like get permission to do it. And all of those things are like are are such bad sunk costs. They're corrosive sunk costs when you're paying a mortgage and you're paying rent somewhere else at the same time in order just to wait for the city to produce for you. And there's the red tape right now, right there, that is the perfect example of red tape that crushes so many businesses. Lots of projects fail while they're waiting for a permit. And the distillery was the worst example of that. It was it was uh 2020, March 2020. You remember, we all shut down everywhere. We had all our equipment had just arrived. We had already, you know, all our plans, our application was into the city. It had been in there for nine months. We had we had done our zoning change. They I'd spent already months and months and months. They wanted to change the parking lot before they would let us do the zoning change. Finally, when they approved our parking lot changes, they said, okay, we just have to drive by and and then we'll be able to sign off on this thing. This is after having to go in front of City Hall and City Council and everything. They drove by and then they phoned me and said, you know what, it's okay the way it is. So we spent nine months, sunk costs, paying rent. And they drove by and they didn't want to change it. They just wanted to add a sidewalk out front. They said, we can do it. It would be$6,600, or you can hire your own contractor. I said, I'll just give you the$6,600. They never built it, never did it. They never built a sidewalk. I paid them. But then after that, March uh 2020 came along and I said, Look, I've been waiting nine months. I phoned them. I said, I've been waiting nine months here. When am I gonna get my building permit? Because I can't afford to wait for forever. And I've got this distillery equipment that I can sell to make hand sanitizer equipment next week. Like they were looking at expropriating that equipment from distilleries in the states or taking over distilleries in the states. I talked to a distiller who said that the like the government showed up at their door and demanded he make sanitizer, otherwise, they're going to take his distillery from him. And I was like, I could sell all of my equipment right now. I could probably make money on it. So I phoned the city and I said this. And they she said, uh it's probably going to be two weeks. We waited another year before we got the building permit. And they had basically no changes to it. Now we had missteps, of course. You know, they were things that that we hadn't covered off the first time, but by that point we had basically covered everything. And that's just like sunk costs. And it would crush most people. And it's only because I was in the situation where, a, my business is next door, B, I'm a lawyer and you know, I have a the other investor is another lawyer, a partner of mine, that we could afford to do it. But it was, you know, massively expensive uh barrier to entry that would have crushed most people at that point.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

If somebody's starting at that as a primary business, they wouldn't have survived no matter what you know. If somebody had a chance.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Yeah, but a lot of craft distilleries are uh don't survive. We've I've watched go through auction just in the last year, three craft breweries that shut down and they just couldn't compete. Now there's the ones that are remaining. There's Joseph Schumpeter said that it was a recession was like a like a good shower washing away those businesses that can't compete. I like to think the ones that are still out there are gonna continue to compete and and do well. But you've got to be prepared to pivot every day. You've got to be, as I said, marketing every day, and you've got to be on that business every day if you're gonna make it work. And you know, we're still in the initial stages. We've been opening our distillery for a couple of years, and it's looking fairly good, but it is still, you know, we're away from making money. We've had we've had some really solid months, but it's not, you know, there's drinking driving law and craft distillery run on a very similar sequence. So you're gonna have a busy December, but you're gonna have a very slow February. You're gonna have you know times of the year that you know it's gonna pick up.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

February, Valentine's Day, it doesn't pick up at that around that much.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

No, I mean after Christmas, people in in January, there's still liquor stores that are ordering to fill up stock for stock that they sold uh up to New Year's, and people are still drinking early in the in the new year. But then people really stop, and you know, we see it here where drinking driving cases drop in our office in February. February's usually our slowest month. October is never very good, February's uh never very good, but the rest of the time we can see it. And it's uh that's something I recognized right from the beginning of my practice, the second year. Like I articled and I knew in my first year this is going to be a busy week, this is not. And I didn't need a calendar for it. It's in my brain, and it happens to correspond because the two industries obviously have some linking there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Well, you know, you're in a very good position now, Paul, from from that angle that you know the both sides of that industry, right? So from uh from love from you know when the cases come and you you know at the same time you can predict the business when it's gonna be busy on a distillery side. You know, it's it's it's a great position to be in.

The Role of Tariffs in Business

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Well, I also know what people drink. So I could see what they're drinking, and we're manufacturing some of those products that you know I think not looking forward to the day that somebody has been charged with a drinking driving case and they were drinking something that we were doing. We're interested.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

But you know, talk about economic challenges. You know, we always complain about that economy and all the stuff. But can you imagine we remove that, you know, a lot of industry you know have a similar challenge. Whether it's a mining industry, they complain about the red tape all the time. Housing industry, they complain about the red tape. But you know, can you imagine the government can simply get out of the way and and that control some of the red tape? I mean, if you try to rebuild economy, the job numbers are so low. I mean, just doing that part will simply put back all the businesses uh, you know, the trying to open it and get back the economy on a on a track.

Adapting to Technological Disruption

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Well, if you were to suddenly like eliminate the red tape that I had to go through, for example, for my distillery, there would be five other distilleries on the street probably within two years, and none of us would survive. So, you know, it's the uh the the barriers of entry to becoming a lawyer, you've got to go to law school and then you've got to pass the bar, and then you've got to you've got to get out there and work. And so those barriers to entry keep other people from coming in and and charging, you know,$15 an hour, which would make it so we couldn't comply with all of our requirements to do our job and to do it well. So those barriers to entry can serve really good. I mean, uh in mostly they they they can serve some really good process in the economy. But at the same time, like uh so much of it is just capital destructive. You know, again, waiting for the city. You know, they they've talked about getting more people in permitting in Vancouver. A lot of these things just should not take that long, and it is government basically standing in the way, mostly for the time, you know, and and and getting variances on things, you know, the my wife's German and I've spent quite a bit of time in Germany, and my mother-in-law worked for the city, and the civil servants there had a lot of discretion and have a lot of discretion in Germany. They might be difficult to deal with and a little bit crotchety. But you know, if you can go in there, you can make your pitch to very often a lower-level civil servant, and they've got the the rubber stamp that they can stamp your different, slightly different idea if you can explain it. Forget that here. You know, nobody's gonna stick their neck out here to do something good for you when they work in a civic government.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Got it. Is tariff impacted your business, Paul? Any other business? I think uh the Surrey probably only business world if you go into uh sell across the border, but other business uh looks like tariff is not a big deal for three days.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Well, we there was a few interesting things actually that happened. So we because we're a craft distillery in BC, we use all BC grain. It's got to be like we all of our alcohol has to be made with BC product. So that hasn't been an issue. Getting BC grain has not been a problem. The the grain we get is from the Peace region in northern BC. It is the best grain you're gonna get for distilling because it's the most consistent. Like they get 22 hours a day of sunlight in the summer. So they get very good quality every time. It's the exact perfect grain for us. Bottles is a different thing. So we we actually made the decision to buy Canadian. And we get a lot of our input things that are not grain we get from Canadian suppliers, and there's been some really good Canadian suppliers. But our bottle supplier is an international bottle supplier, and we were getting these great bottles for fighter vodka. We really like the bottles. We said, can we confirm that you guys aren't getting these through the states? You know, because I don't want to buy it if it's coming from the states. Oh, no, no, don't worry, it's not coming. Coming through the states, they're paying tariffs, and then it's coming here, and the our bottle price was about to go up and it was coming through the states. So we ended up giving up on that one bottle because the price went up by I think 30% or something like that. And uh also I didn't want to pay, I don't want my business to be paying Trump's tariffs. You know, if Trump wants to tax his own people with tariffs, they can go. Ahead and do that. They have, you know, democracy, but I don't want my business to be paying Trump's tariffs. And if you go to Home Depot, almost everything at Home Depot goes through the States, tariffs are paid, then it's shipped up to a warehouse in Canada. And so you're buying from Home Depot, you are paying Trump's tariffs. If you go to Home Hardware, if you go to Canadian Tire, you are not. They're buying directly from typically from China. Almost everything in Canadian Tire comes from China, but they're not paying Trump's tariffs. So it has affected us. We used to buy barrels from the States. There is no barrel supplier. Like we're barreling whiskey. We haven't sold any whiskey yet. We've got to have it barreled for three years. But we had a barrel supplier with a fantastic cooperage in northern New York State. They built it all with modern equipment, modern manufacturing processes, really precise barrels. But we stopped buying them because we don't know what's going to be tariffed and what's not going to be tariffed. And I again, I don't want to send money to the states right now because I don't want to encourage a country that's you know threatening our very existence.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

But can can can the cost still be sustainable if you if you have no choice you have to bring the barrels from there or bottles from there? I'm sure all other distinctly got to do the same thing in Canada, I guess, right? They they they end up probably in the same boat. Can you still consume the cost?

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Well, the the the there's two barrel markets. There's a new barrel market, and if you want to make something that's bourbon-like, you have to use a new barrel. So bourbon is corn, it's got to be 51% corn, and you've got to use a brand new barrel. Those were the barrels we were buying for that. And we barreled, I don't know, 50, 60 barrels of uh, and they're expensive barrels, as you can imagine, with new barrels. But there's also the used barrel market, and the used barrel market are our prior bourbon barrels. And so we're buying them used from various different barrel suppliers in Canada. There's no barrels manufactured in Canada. There used to be like 30 cooperages in British Columbia. The last one was on Granville Island shut down in the 60s. Everything used to be in a barrel at some point. But there's a couple of barrel uh brokers in Canada, and we've been buying barrels from barrel brokers, and that's worked out. Our prices have not gone up on them. They're not charging us more than they than they were prior to Trump. But I think there's also warehouses full of barrels, and I don't know what the tariffs would be one way or another on a used barrel coming up. I know we had to pay duty and tax when we were shipping up new barrels before you know our our federal government made, I think, the right decision to not do a bunch of reciprocal tariffs because that's just a tax on Canadians. Yeah. And we don't believe in it. I mean, the whole idea is we're supposed to have more free trade. More free trade is better generally for democracy. It's better generally for producing more value for more people in the society.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yeah, hopefully we'll have, you know, there's a free trade deal very, very soon with them so that they don't tariff us. We don't tariff them, and it's just an open, open business. Hopefully one day we'll we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

There's things we have to tariff. I mean, we have to tariff dairy. And we're not doing it because we're trying to restrict their dairy. It's to preserve that we've got enough dairy in case something goes wrong. You know, we always have to have milk. You must have milk. You've got to have your own domestic supply of milk. So you know, the Americans are complaining about our our tariffs on milk. They've got tariffs on milk coming from Canada. And we all recognized when those tariffs were you know implemented, and they've probably been there for a hundred years, that you have to protect it domestically here, here, here, here, and here. And they're not.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

And the quality of milk is different than theirs, I guess, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:35

So so the the the the way we the inputs are different. You know, what we allow to be injected into the cows in Canada is different. What we allow to be in their food is different, the processing we allow is different too. But it's only, you know, there there's these quotas, and it's only if you've got uh, you know, so much that's been that's not been produced in one country that you can start shipping it in with a lower tariff. And and the way that it's structured is essentially designed just to ensure that everybody's got a domestic supply of those absolute necessities.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Very interesting. Well, you know, there's yeah, definitely, hopefully, you know, very soon we'll have a deal, so we don't have to worry about this, this uh, you know, uh, sure hope so.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Uncertainty is terrible for business, it creates opportunity. You know, there's always some opportunity from it. Yeah. You know, for our distillery, of course, there's no American products being sold that are manufactured in the U.S. in BC right now. Same thing in Ontario and Manitoba. And so for us, that's a you know, a leg up for us to an opportunity for us to get into the private liquor stores in BC at least and people to see our product and try our product. But um, you know, it's not gonna last for forever.

unknown 48:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

Are you are you thinking about that technology disruption coming, about their AI or whatever technology is gonna make any difference to your business? Uh uh, do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 48:53

We we feel it already. So what we're seeing is people trying to be their own AI lawyers, writing their own letters using AI if they've got uh an impending driving prohibition from the superintendent of motor vehicles. So, for example, the superintendent of motor vehicles sends you a letter after you get a ticket that says your driving record is unsatisfactory in our view, and we're gonna prohibit you from driving for three months. We're giving you 21 days from the date of this letter to write in to explain why you shouldn't be prohibited or why you should be prohibited for less. Now, twenty-five years ago, I started writing those letters for people and I got really good at it, and I actually thrust a change upon their office early on that gave me a leg up. I forced them to add an extra step by with my brilliant new ideas I had still from law school and administrative law classes. And so I, you know, I had an advantage there. Again, that was a change that led to an advantage for us. But now what we see is people get these letters, and the first thing they do is go to Chat GPT, they write their own letter, they send it in, they get nothing. And they've then used their step, like that is that was your appeal step. Your next appeal is to BC Supreme Court, like superior court, and and trying to persuade a judge that the decision maker at the first level made a mistake, and good luck. You can't, you know, you're not gonna be able to prove that. And it's so people are are ruining their own cases by using AI. And unfortunately, they're coming at us instead of coming at us to us when they get that letter and letting us write that letter and maybe getting it down to a month from three. They are they're sending in their own AI letters and then coming to us afterward and saying, Can you help me now? And instead of being able to help them now, we have to tell them no. And so it affects our our that that service that we provide because we're not getting the same number. We're getting the people calling us after the fact when it's too late. Yeah. And so there's there will be things like that that we can see, you know, some frictions that are happening already.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Easy to get a letter from an AI. You can simply just go to any chat in chat programs and ask for the letter it will get give you. But what good is the letter if uh if uh you don't have uh the knowledge to what to do with it?

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

SPEAKER_01 51:05

Might sound great, but it won't deal with your you know, the circumstances that are the actual concerns for the superintendent of motor vehicles. They won't deal with the it won't deal with the evidence properly. Everybody, you know, you you've got to you've got to explain to them their situation that they're in so they can understand how they have to approach the letter. Rarely is it appropriate to approach that letter with indignation. So unfortunately, those are the letters that are very often sent in my need and my indignation rather than than actually dealing with the factual circumstances and taking responsibility and and doing something to to demonstrate that they the the understanding. And that's where the lawyer comes in. I mean, you know, that's just generally, there's always other things too. But all they have to do, the adjudicator at the other end, is find something to hang their hat on.

unknown 52:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

So long as they found something to hang their hat on, the the higher level of court will defer to the lower level of court. So it's not a new hearing and people don't know that.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Very interesting. So what can you know the young people they're coming out of school is and colleges, Paul, if they want to start a business, they they're looking to uh you know go to the same journey and same path that in you I went through uh to start a business. What can something that uh they they can something do? What skill they can pick up to get them ready for for businesses they can start?

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Well, they can listen to your podcast because I'm sure they're gonna get it. I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 52:38

You know, I hope they you know definitely the experience you have, I'm I'm I hope that you know people pay attention, but there's always a cases, right? What can they do?

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Well, I think there is huge institutional value, huge institutional knowledge in this country, and I'd say always looking for learning opportunities from older people. You can call up many business owners and they'll talk to you about things. There's even sometimes competitors will reveal things to you. You've got to be out there all the time, you've got to be social. There's not you're not getting any value being at home playing on video games. You've got to be open, you've got to be open to to talk to everybody. We have huge value in this country in our pluralistic society with people who have come from around the world who bring those insights from around the world. And that that is a like a leg up that we've got. Look for those valuable things. Do your best to be positive. I you know, I can be very negative about a lot of things, but I I thrust myself into being positive because cynicism gets you nowhere in business. And generally it gets you nowhere in life, despite the fact that I mean, you have to have a realism in your approach. You know, accept the fact that there's lots of things in the world that you don't like. I would go with like what Mark Carney has said, there's plenty of things we don't like, but we've got to deal with the the cards that we're dealt. This is the world that we're in. We've got to be pragmatic about it. But I would say, you know, you have to be positive all the time. You have to be a squeaky wheel. Squeaky wheelism is something I push on every young lawyer that starts and works in my office. You've got to keep asking, keep pushing. Squeaky wheelism, a term that I invented. You know, we resolve things with prosecutors because we phone them and phone them and phone them and phone them and explain the problems to them, and eventually they get it. So you're perpetually educating somebody, but it's squeaky whealism. And be preemptively preemptive integrity. So try and make sure that you are starting off with the idea that you're going to give value to people, you're going to be honest with people, and hopefully you can persuade them that what you're planning on selling, the service, the item, whatever, meets the expectations that you set.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Yeah. You know, that is the idea of the whole this podcast we started is uh, you know, people for you know for us to document, especially uh, you know, people like you build the businesses, you've been successful in the three different industries. So that's a whole idea, you know, young people who are getting into the market or they're looking to start a business to listen to this podcast and and to learn from uh you know people like you, you know, with all the experience. So they're not making the same mistake that you know we made it early on. There's some sort of uh you know path to avoid some mistakes and be successful much sooner than than going through what what uh you know you and I gone through. You're gonna make mistakes. You know, yeah, you can't avoid it 100%. Hopefully you can cut it down.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

I learn from them faster, and a lot of times I I recognize it before it becomes a problem or I spot it. But there's there's there's there's there's perpetual headwinds. You can certainly reduce the headwinds by getting out there and talking to people and and doing things like listening to your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

The a lot of things can be answered now with the internet that you know we did not have answers for 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even, and the AI, chat GPS.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

There's no shortage of information and knowledge out there at the moment, right? We when we were building a business, there was not enough information, there was not knowledge how to do these days. There's no shortage of knowledge or information out there. The kids know where to look at the information.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Well, it's an interesting thing because you know it used to be pricing information was one of the advantages you could have that people wouldn't know what something's being sold for in a jurisdiction next door or where else they could get it. And now all of that information is available. You can find out what something's selling for anywhere. And that tends to drive the prices down because you're always competing on price. And so it's almost like the information has been has undermined your ability to have a profit. Because if you're charging two cents more than the next person, you know, your sale is not going to happen. You look at Amazon, you know, there's people who are beating each other up. The company is trying to sell some small electronic thing on Amazon, and nobody can be making money at the price that they're selling it for. That is unfortunately one of those things about the thing.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Or you find a way to add tons of value to it if you want to sell the same thing. At least you added some value to it, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:13

There's always room to innovate with everything.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Word interesting. People are listening to us, watching us, definitely I would encourage them to have you know have a discussion with you. There's so much to learn from you. I learned tons for from our discussion. Do you take a phone call, Paul? Do you do you uh do you still uh connect with people? Do you still uh take a phone call if somebody has a question or they try to connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 57:33

People people direct message me on TikTok. I'm on Blue Sky. Sometimes people contact me on Blue Sky. I I take phone calls. I I mean I I I never uh it's one of those things about barriers. I never want there to be too many barriers to get a hold of me. The I often you know, even students in school projects call me and I will spend half an hour with them. I don't again, I don't uh one of the things that I I never liked about lawyers was the persuading themselves that they were so important, that they were above everybody else, and that uh it should be hard to talk to them. I you know uh language that is often used, these are all things that were just contrary to my being. And so I I could never adopt that.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Very interesting. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you if they want to have a reach out to you?

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Well, they can find me on the on my website. They can they can send me an email. It's Paul Doroshenko, all one worded gmail.com. Send me an email, the office number six oh four six eight five eight eight eight nine. And as I say, Prairie Paul on on uh Paul Doroshenko Prairie Paul, my country music, my country music artist persona on uh on TikTok and a few other spots.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Nice. I'm gonna include a link to all those websites and emails below this video. Uh people are gonna click a button and they can reach out to you. But uh, you know, you've been very generous with the time, and you know it there's so much to learn from your experience, and encourage all the business dealers, bit business owners who are listening to us, reach out to you for conversation. Who knows where the conversation is gonna go? Um, and definitely there's so much room to learn from you. So thank you so much for time. It was a great discussion, Paul.

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Yeah, thanks so much.