Corporate Work Culture Broke Rick Curriers Spirit So He Started His Own Company

What drives someone to walk away from a successful corporate career to pursue an entrepreneurial dream? Rick takes us on his compelling journey from SVP of Sales to becoming CEO of Partner Vista—a decision that meant leaving behind financial security, benefits, and comfort for the unknown.

Rick shares how Hurricane Katrina disrupted his senior year at Loyola University and unexpectedly launched him into a 20-year career in media sales. Rick reveals how relationship-building became his secret weapon in sales success, and how sharing drinks and conversations helped him connect with clients beyond transactional relationships.

Rick's new venture highlights the inevitable connection between professional fulfillment and personal well-being. His realization, combined with an entrepreneurial itch he'd always had, eventually pushed him to leave corporate security for something more meaningful. 

Now building Partner Vista, Rick offers thought-provoking insights on how AI is transforming sales careers by potentially eliminating entry-level positions. That could be good in bad for jobs that traditionally serve as training grounds for future sales leaders.

If you've ever felt misaligned in your career or dreamed of charting your own course, this conversation may resonate deeply and might just inspire your own professional reinvention. Join us at Station Six Pub for this fun, border crossing episode.

You can visit https://www.partnervista.co/ for more information on how they plan on changing the game on partner market relationships. 

Your Dream Home Does Not Have to Be Just A Dream. Today's show is brought to you by Kimia Nejat of Exit Reality Metro. Kimia is the realtor who knows how to get things done. Buying or Selling? Go to afternoonpint.ca/kimia and we will set up an introduction

Does Your Business Need a Boost With Foot traffic? Hosts for An Event? Or Even Actors For A Production? Or the Production itself? Go to https://www.afternoonpint.ca/services and see some of the services that the Afternoon Pint team offers. 

Transcript

Meeting Partner Vista's New CEO

Speaker 1 0:34

Cheers this title like what's the story of this company?

Speaker 2 0:36

Yeah, you know it's funny because literally right before we started I was like I don't even know how to introduce myself Because I've been take a step back Partner Vista has been around for three months and I've only been CEO for three months, so my whole world's kind of changed. So I was like, how do I introduce myself?

Speaker 1 0:50

So where do we start? You did great, so you're CEO of Partner Vista. Yeah, I guess you know. Before we go back, let's just talk about Partner Vista for a second. What is Partner Vista?

Speaker 2 1:00

Yeah, it's funny. I was actually trying to get ChatGPT to answer this for me, because it's one of those types of companies that's hard to explain to your mom what you do for a living right or my wife Funny, joke crazy, but it's like bernie please please, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:18

What do you do, please, yeah, that's awesome no, I work.

Speaker 2 1:22

I work in, uh, enterprise tech, specifically supporting marketers at large tech companies, so a lot of ones you're probably familiar with google, amazon, web services, intel, microsoft. Specifically, I support the marketers at those companies that work on partnerships. So it's a big thing in enterprise tech right now. So a good example is Google Cloud will partner with a software company to take a solution to market.

Speaker 1 1:47

And by a solution to market just for our listeners, because they may not know some of this lingo you mean basically to bring their product to consumers.

Speaker 2 1:55

Well, their consumers, their buyers, are other companies, right? So you think about if you work at a hospital or a manufacturing company or you work at the airlines. You're probably working with IT equipment of some sort. Right, you have a computer. There's probably a security system on that computer. You have office or Windows. Right, there's a lot of IT at these companies. Other companies will try to target those IT buyers and sell their solutions. Right, and so I work with the marketers at these tech companies that are trying to reach buyers at other companies.

Speaker 1 2:23

Got it Cool. Well, I understand it, I think.

Speaker 3 2:27

Could you?

Speaker 1 2:27

explain that to your three-year-old.

Speaker 3 2:31

To my four-year-old. Yeah, I mean, I could explain it to him. I don't think he would understand it no, no. It's just a joke, no, but don't think he would understand. No, no, it's just just no, but no, that's. It's interesting stuff and I think in the world in which we are moving towards, it makes a lot of sense. I think it's smart move for your part to kind of get into something like that because, yeah, get ahead of everybody else I looked into it.

Speaker 2 2:51

I had no idea what any of it was. Um, you know, it was interesting I I actually fell into it during Hurricane Katrina. Oh yeah, so I was doing my senior year at a loyal university in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 3:08

So I guess it's a good point to say I'm an American, I'm not Canadian. We were going to get to that. Yeah, yeah, he's not from here. Yeah, I'm actually listening from America. He is from there.

Speaker 3 3:15

Americans they're obsessed with bear arms, bear arms. Americans, they're obsessed with bear arms, bear arms. What do you mean? They have the right to bear arms.

Speaker 1 3:23

Oh jeez, that's terrible. That's a Norm Macdonald joke there. I'll put the rap track in there for you. Everyone's just walking around, it's like what kind of arms. You got grizzly.

Speaker 2 3:34

Oh my gosh, I love Norm Macdonald.

Speaker 1 3:38

Yeah, he's probably my favorite comedian of all time.

Speaker 2 3:40

How often do you get Americans on this show? Not often. It's third maybe Two or three. How many in person? Ooh, good buddy.

Speaker 1 3:52

You might be the first American.

Speaker 3 3:54

Cheers to that. All right, cheers, there we go.

Speaker 1 3:58

Any Americans listening, make your way to Halifax and hit us up. Yeah, if you come here in person, we'll probably put you on this show. Americans, it's still okay to travel to Canada. We won't detain you If you come by.

Speaker 2 4:08

Let me ask you guys We've talked about your show growing in Canada.

Speaker 3 4:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:22

Growing in America too. Too right, we would love, I would love to. Yeah, absolutely yeah, we got to get that maple syrup down down below the border.

Speaker 3 4:24

We got to figure out the whole tariff thing. Then after that, we get maybe, yeah, maybe you guys can solve that for us. I would love to. What are the tariffs on listening to podcasts? Yeah, I, I honestly think.

Speaker 1 4:29

I mean, you know, you know donald trump. He's never had a beer in his life.

Speaker 2 4:31

He said I don't know if that's true or not, but he said he's never drank alcohol.

Speaker 3 4:35

Yeah, he said he doesn't drink, and I think that's horseshit, because didn't he have Trump wine at some point, wasn't that?

Speaker 1 4:39

a thing he had wine, no Trump vodka. Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 4:42

Trump vodka.

Speaker 3 4:43

And I'm like how do you have a product you never taste?

Speaker 1 4:45

So I don't know, he may not drink now, but I think we could definitely get Trump back on our side. Fix these sheriff things. He just came up and had a beer with us.

Speaker 2 4:55

Let me ask you guys this I've worked in advertising, media marketing, for years. Drinking has actually been a big part of that industry. You think of the show Mad Men right, lots of drinking going on. That's advertising right. I've lived in Chicago, san Francisco, working with ad agencies. It's always been a big part of that culture. I've seen it change over the last couple of years. I don't know if it's a result of COVID or just a generational shift. Are you seeing in Canada a lot less of the younger generation drinking?

Speaker 1 5:25

Yes, much less. I mean, I think I told I hope I didn't tell this story too recently, but I was just at Maxwell's Plum to see Dave oh sorry, I should go back one second. Rick's my brother-in-law. Oh sorry, I should go back one second. Rick's my brother-in-law. Fun fact, so we're living together this week. He has a beautiful family of five and they're living in our house with us, a super huge mansion of a house with two bathrooms Podcast face for this.

Speaker 1 5:55

But where was I going with that? Yeah, so I went out, dave, who you know, went to go see him play saxophone one night at Maxwell's Pub.

Speaker 2 6:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:04

And all the young people there that were going on their dates were just drinking coffee.

Speaker 2 6:08

Really.

Speaker 1 6:09

Like not everybody but like a noticeable amount Interesting. They had like probably six to seven couples there just having a coffee or a tea.

Speaker 2 6:18

What are your guys' thoughts on that? Because I feel conflicted. I'm very conflicted because I love beer.

Speaker 1 6:23

I don't really like it.

Speaker 2 6:26

People's choices are people's choices. It's healthier, right.

Speaker 3 6:27

But I'm not sure I like it either.

Speaker 1 6:28

It's not necessarily healthier, is it?

Speaker 3 6:31

Everything in moderation is good, and it's been proven that people who drink moderately live longer For them like those young students.

Speaker 1 6:38

I mean, you know, it's not as easy as when we were kids to consume large amounts of alcohol, that is true, but that's healthier.

Speaker 3 6:45

Yeah. Drinking less than we did is healthier. Drinking less, yeah, but abstaining completely has been proven actually to you live less than the people who drink on like moderately.

Speaker 1 6:54

I don't know if that's a fact. I don't know if that's a fact. Sometimes you say things and I really love what you said, but I just don't know if it's true.

Speaker 2 7:01

Look it up, I'll look it up. I'm going to believe it's true.

Speaker 1 7:04

Yeah, exactly, I'm not a fact checker. It backs up what I'm thinking here. I'm just along for the ride.

Speaker 3 7:15

But I think the thing that makes me the most sad about what you said in your question is it's Maxwell's Plum, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:18

Maxwell's Plum was a drinking place.

Speaker 3 7:18

At one point you could go there and it was like 60 beer on tap 60 different beer on tap.

Speaker 1 7:22

Not only that, and people were ordering coffee. They had like a $5 beer and fries combo or whatever.

Speaker 3 7:28

That was awesome and they would have all these little kind of you could go there and as long as you ordered a beer, you could get a whole thing of mussels for $2.

Speaker 2 7:38

Holy smokes ordered a beer you could get a whole thing of mussels for two bucks.

Speaker 1 7:39

That was the like it was the place, yeah peanuts used to be all you peanuts and they throw all the peanut shells on the floor. So when you walked around the bar, you just walking around peanuts all day yeah peanuts with a tea and just get that out there and but, but eventually they had a rap, huge rap problems, yeah, so when?

Speaker 2 7:58

I lived in New Orleans, you could be 18 and up to get in the bars there. Yeah, this was 2001 to 2006. Wow, 18 and up to get in the bar. But what they would do is they'd give everyone that was 21 and up wristbands.

Speaker 3 8:10

Right.

Speaker 2 8:10

And the bartenders were only supposed to serve people with wristbands. But the reality is, once you're in, everybody drank Now. Granted is, once you're in you, everybody drank now. Granted, this wasn't the french quarter, this was uptown. Um. So the bar, the rules were a little bit more laxed, and so we would go to the bars at 18 and they'd have quarter draft night which was tj quills on tuesday nights, quarter draft night.

Speaker 2 8:29

And so here I am, just 18 years old, just you know they're little little beers. You know like four ounces and you just order like eight at a time, yes, and just drink all night and it was crazy, yeah. So anyways, long story short.

Speaker 2 8:41

When I was going with all this, drinking was always synonymous with kind of advertising yeah and the world I grew up in and you know, I realized like for me it actually helped me professionally because I've always been in a relationship driven industry and it's always like how do I build rapport relationships very quickly. It was always like let's get out of this office environment, let's get off the calls and like let's go grab dinner or let's meet for happy hour and just having a beer with somebody and just kind of lowering that, that barrier to entry to like open up, be vulnerable, talking, and it was. It was a quick way for me to just show them like I'm not just a robot trying to sell you something, I'm a person with a job, so are you?

Speaker 2 9:18

I can help you, the human side and we connected, always on a personal level, and once I realized sales, for me it's more of a relationship game than a number. The numbers come into it and you've got to put in the work but that helped accelerate me. But I've noticed it's changing now and it's a shame. The last couple, last couple years people just want to come in and do their job, and then they have their personal life.

Speaker 2 9:43

Yeah, and you know, I hear the work-life balance and I feel like and I believe in that, but I feel like people lean so much into it they're separating the enjoyment that they can get out of work and building work relationships and how that can help your career and you can, and there's wisdom gained everywhere and I feel like they're missing that a little bit.

Speaker 3 9:58

I 100% agree with that, because you know what I would often tell people, like when I was hiring people and they were getting into a sales role, that it's like you know, depending on the sales, obviously, but sales is a lifestyle, right, and depending on the job that you're getting into, it's a lifestyle Like you have to understand that you can't necessarily count your hours. It's going to be, like you know, I have to do this thing tonight where I'm going to be networking. I'm going to be at an event. Like you know, we went to an event last night and we tried to network as much as we could, and that's just a part of it, right?

Speaker 3 10:27

yeah, right, it's not just like oh, I check out now right.

Speaker 2 10:30

I believe your your work life and your personal life are hugely connected they really are, and and your personal life's going to affect your work life. Your work life's going to affect your personal life and you've got to find that equilibrium and you've got to find that job you find enjoyment from.

Sales as a Relationship-Driven Career

Speaker 1 10:46

So it's not Severance. Have you seen the TV show Severance, where they go down the elevator shaft and they forget who they are?

Speaker 2 10:51

I've heard of it, I haven't seen it. Fantastic show, is it good?

Speaker 1 10:53

Yeah, yeah, but that's essentially what it is it's a complete separation, it's a separation. So they don't even know what they do.

Speaker 3 10:57

They just go down an elevator. They don't remember what they do for work, yeah.

Speaker 2 11:00

Let me guess it doesn't work. There's got to be some sort of conflict with that model, right, well, yeah, well, there's a common sense that most of the characters are doing, right, they do some good stuff.

Speaker 1 11:48

yeah, sorry, no, it's right on the money the way you're saying, though, like I really do think that that work life relationship, um, it bleeds out to your personal life, your hobbies, like this show, for instance right, quick, quick plug. Like you know, we this is a networking show. Yes, in a In a large way it wasn't intentionally, but also it was built out of a genuinely good intent.

Speaker 1 12:09

So, it wasn't really made to be. Hey, we want to meet, you know, the coolest people around. It wasn't that. We just wanted to have a show where we chatted with interesting people over a pint. Yeah, so it was a passion. We want to do it, we.

Speaker 2 12:22

we wanted to feel like we're at a pub and having fun and yeah, well, you connected within a social setting that's been around for thousands of years yeah people getting around and having some wine or beer or whatever.

Speaker 3 12:32

It is right and that's an easier story when he was talking about connecting with people over a drink and show that you're human. That's exactly what we're kind of like, exactly what the show and our guests generally, like you know, feel disarmed when we're sitting here at a table.

Speaker 2 12:44

I love it. It's cool.

Speaker 1 12:46

That's how I built my sales career. To people listening, I know you on a personal level. You had a massively successful sales career right across America.

Speaker 2 12:53

Yeah, and it's funny because I don't think I'm that good of a sales rep.

Speaker 1 12:56

No.

Speaker 2 12:56

It's like I got a buddy who does sales training at a software company and he's always like, do you do this technique or that technique?

Speaker 3 13:02

and I'm like I don't even know what the hell you're talking about do you know what, though, and sorry to your buddy, but do you know the type of people who teach sales? People can't sell. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true, yeah yeah, and there's, there's so many.

Speaker 2 13:16

You know you can go really deep like any subject and learn frameworks and techniques and all this stuff and and there's probably good value in a lot of it.

Speaker 2 13:26

Um, you know, I just happened to find myself in a, in a type of sales role that's very relationship based, and I, I'll be honest, I completely lucked out into that. So Katrina happened the day before my senior year and so, typical in New Orleans fashion, uh, you know, there's this hurricane barreling off the coast and I have to go to work that night because the bars are still open, and so we're all at the bar and we're looking up at the screen and it hit Category 5, and we're like this is the one we always talk about, this is the one that's going to destroy everything. And so, long story short, we all know how that played out and you know I did what we called Katrina Semester at the University of San Francisco and they were doing on-campus recruiting this company called TechTarget, and I just happened to land in this job selling what's called media sales You're basically doing advertising for a publisher and didn't know what it was, and they trained me and I kind of fell into it. That was 20 years ago.

Speaker 3 14:19

Wow, Crazy. I mean, yeah, I think that's how most people kind of fall in sales. I think a lot of people don't grow up thinking like I'm going to be in sales. Sales is a really good profession. It's a great profession.

Speaker 1 14:31

You can make a lot of money on it, right and you can get a lot of enjoyment out of your life because, like you, you've got to do a lot of things.

Speaker 2 14:44

You've got to travel to a sales job that's truly, you know, challenging and rewarding. We're all selling, though, all the time, right, you don't even realize it. Like you, could be a nurse and you want that promotion like you, you got to sell yourself on why you deserve that promotion.

Speaker 1 14:52

Absolutely yeah or you could yeah, you could be just on your facebook account every day and you're just selling that you're having a good life. Yeah right, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 15:00

You're really a lot of people doing.

Speaker 1 15:02

Whoever you're trying, to convince You're putting your shit up there You're showing people that you're having a good time. It's not much different.

Speaker 3 15:10

No, that's true, but I think when you're talking about a sales profession I think a lot of it just a certain person is attracted to it because they know about a certain lifestyle. Again, if you embrace it, that can be a great lifestyle. It can be a great lifestyle right. It can be fast-paced, you can make money, there's networking involved and there's meeting a lot of new people. It can be ever-changing and I think that just attracts a certain person.

Speaker 2 15:36

Yeah, and I think the key is finding the right type of sales job if you're interested in sales, because, frankly, there's a lot of sales that I would be terrible at. Oh yeah, yeah, job if you're interested in sales, because they're frankly there's a lot of sales that I would be terrible at. Oh yeah, you know, and it's like, because I I think mike you and I talked about this like you, you love the cold call, right, didn't you love cold calling? Or at least you enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 15:52

You know what I think? I've had my moment in the sun with it. Largely uh, but I do enjoy it because I like, I like the nuance of it all, like it's a bit of a dance, right, they don't want to talk to you and you just have to kind of have fun with it. It's like prank calling in a sense, like if you really look at it and it's, it's most it's prank calls see I'm the opposite.

Speaker 2 16:10

Yeah, and prank calls give me anxiety and I freaking hate it. Like even even if you're prank calling someone next to me it would.

Speaker 1 16:16

That would drive me nuts oh no, like that's my favorite thing, like I mean, I love, I love prank calls so I mean those dead no, no yeah, does

Speaker 2 16:23

anybody answer calls that you don't recognize nobody answers calls anymore everyone has names everyone, yeah.

Speaker 1 16:29

So it's like you know, that the art of is like they're trying to get you off the phone as quickly as possible and you got to try, all right. So it's kind of fun, right, if you just see the game and you don't see the, the, the rejection and the heart, how hard it is and you just just say, oh well, he was quick, like he's gone right. You know, sometimes a really quick no or a really quick go away is the best possible thing that can happen. It's like I'm on to the next one, right? That's my point, yeah.

Speaker 2 16:53

You enjoy that. I don't, and I'm terrible at it.

Speaker 3 16:57

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 16:58

Absolutely terrible and I probably sold in my career probably a hundred million dollars worth of advertising solutions at the various companies and I could not do what you do in that sales role. I just couldn't do it. But I I just happened to lock into a category of a type of sales where I don't have to do that, never had to do that and I've had some big, big deals in my life. But different type of sale, different. And that's my point is there's so many different types of sales roles out there and you could.

Speaker 2 17:26

I'm not saying everyone's going to go into sales, but like, just because you don't like one type of sales doesn't mean you're bad at sales. You just might not be good at that particular type you're not passionate about a product, yeah, or? Industry or type of account you know there's. I know sales reps are like high turnover, you know just getting deals in, deals out. And then I know other sales rep where one deal might take nine months, right, right, you know that's like a totally different type of sales role, yeah, different you know.

Speaker 2 17:49

So I don't know, that was kind of my life and learning and my dad gave me some great advice because I studied marketing, really wanted to go to marketing, and he was like, well, understand sales and then go to marketing. I just happen to find myself in a job where I sell to marketers at these big tech companies. So it's kind of cool because you know, you go, you're a marketer at microsoft, you're working on, let's just say, the, the co-pilot product, right, your marketing life just is co-pilot product. Right, your marketing life just is co-pilot. That's all it is. Day in, day out, I get to go to the Microsoft co-pilot marketer and then the next call, I'm over to Cisco working on their marketing plan. Then I'm over to Google Cloud working on theirs. I get to see hundreds of marketing plans and work on all sorts of initiatives. So that's why I never left the sales side is because I just get to work with marketers all day long and you're absorbing all these different kind of strategies and really seeing how the marketing.

Speaker 2 18:48

You get to add to them and work on them and yeah, so that always just kept me on my toes. A lot of knowledge, right, yeah?

Speaker 1 18:55

It's like working with businesses and that's something else I love. It's like you know, you see how every business kind of has to operate fundamentally and it's really cool and right fundamentally and and it's, it's really cool and that's rewarding, right? Yeah, so I totally get you there. So you did this job. You're obviously doing okay at it. I mean, I know you had a podcast through that job what was it called?

Speaker 2 19:11

it was called uh, on the record. It was called on the road, on the road, sorry I ran it for the company. I was the host, yeah, and it was great.

Speaker 1 19:20

I mean, I tuned into it a few times and I, I enjoy you did a good job with it and it was produced well. I think it was great. I mean, I tuned into it a few times and I enjoyed it. You did a good job with it and it was produced well. I think it was arguably had more expensive equipment than this show. The production they did a good job with the production and that was not me, that was the company.

Speaker 2 19:33

Nothing to do with it, it was very well produced.

Speaker 1 19:36

So kudos to that. And then it seems like you just had a pretty I wouldn't say easy, but you had a pretty good corporate life.

Speaker 2 19:44

Everything was going great until I ruined it, so I want to really go into your brain here.

Speaker 1 19:49

So what was going on in your head? I mean, there's two ways you can go about life. You can go about this and just count all the blessings right, Because that's like a tremendous blessing. You're tremendously fortunate to be where you were right, and not everybody makes it. There's probably a thousand guys that wish they were you, or 10,000 guys yeah, and uh, you know, now you've you've kind of walked away from that. So what was going on in your head?

Speaker 2 20:12

Walked completely away from it. So I was the SVP of sales for Foundry IDG, which is a if you uh, if you work in the tech industry. It's a storied publisher. They have some of the best brands known in the IT space. I was there for 14 years. I ran a sales team. Basically, the Western commercial organization rolled up to me. It's about a $30 million organization. We had about 11 people on the team and I walked away from it. All Paycheck in the US. It was walking away from benefits like health insurance.

Speaker 1 20:43

Yeah, yeah Scary in the US because there's there's no free health here in the US. Canadians, I'm sure you know that.

Speaker 2 20:48

Yeah, you know, and I get three young kids, four, seven and eight-year-old. You know we have a mortgage, a wife, you know a dog, yeah, yeah. So talk about scary right. And yeah, you know, chase the American dream is what I'm doing. So you chase the.

Speaker 1 21:05

American dream, but were you not happy?

Changing Drinking Culture in Business

Speaker 2 21:07

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was very blessed, very happy, very satisfied, but I always had this entrepreneurial itch my entire life to just create something on my own. And you know, for a long time I was able to scratch that itch at some of these companies because they would put me in positions where I would. You know, one time, idg, I moved to Chicago, I'd open the Chicago office and I built the team in Chicago and then I'd replicate that in San Francisco.

Speaker 2 21:31

And I always put on this new team that had this focus, and so I was always kind of building teams and building culture and driving revenue. Last couple of years, though, private equity got involved in our company, and so they were sold to a private equity firm, blackstone.

Speaker 1 21:46

It's a huge company.

Speaker 2 21:48

Yeah largest private equity firm in the world and you know, like a lot of private equity firms, the attention really got turned towards the numbers and less so on culture, and culture is a really important thing to me, and you know it's so long story short. I think I really needed a kick in my ass to go chase my entrepreneurial dream, and the private equity firm, saying it in the nicest way, gave me that really hard kick in the ass, and so I probably could have stayed there for as long as I wanted to, but I wasn't happy anymore. On an emotional level, I wasn't getting what I needed, and again I go back to work. Your work life and your personal life can be hugely connected.

Speaker 1 22:46

You take that shit home with you. If you're not happy at work, you're going to take that stuff home with you. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2 22:52

I mean there's a fulfillment out of work and that doesn't mean it's got to be like a job. Like you can find fulfillment out of working and volunteering. There's a lot of different ways that you can find. We could just be gardening, yeah, right. Um. So I use the word work loosely, but I think, you know, humans do get some sort of fulfillment, enjoyment out of work and I've had that for so long and I started to lose it and I and it really affected me personally and um, I remember I, I took a break over thanksgiving, took the week off and didn't check work at all and you know, my wife's, like you, became a different person, like I was just happy again and then so I came back from thanksgiving and I was like I made a decision, I'm done, I'm gonna figure this out, you know, and I ended up quitting in march and walking away and, you know, try to save up some money and bootstrap in a business.

Speaker 2 23:38

And, you know, now I'm just trying to make it out as a, as a, you know, small business owner. Now I'm, you know, cfo, the CEO, the operations, doing HR finance, doing it all myself and just trying to make it work.

Speaker 1 23:52

I talked a little bit about you, how you're doing it all yourself, thank goodness for.

Speaker 2 23:58

AI. I don't know how I would have done it before.

Speaker 1 24:00

Even Matt and I were doing a website the other week and it was like what do I mean in terms of service? I don't even know what that is, but thank goodness again for ChatGP Went and figured that out. I have that. I have an accessibility statement on our website to make sure that people that you know if you're visually impaired, if you're hearing impaired that we can accommodate folks.

Speaker 2 24:21

It's game changer. Ai is game changer. It's helped me so much with just starting the business in terms of, like, filling out tax forms to the website. As long as you're creative on how you use it, it's amazing what it can do. It's amazing yeah.

Speaker 1 24:34

Right, I mean, and plus it gives you, like I said, it really gives you that bigger paintbrush, right? The specialized skills, I mean not to be under like it's a scary thing because you don't know what's going to happen to the specialized skills. The specialized skills always get more specialized and more nuanced in a way. Yeah, Right.

Speaker 1 24:51

So with AI, the unfortunate part here is like, ladies and gentlemen, like it's only going to hit the limit that the really where the human contribution is gone when it comes to an artistic level. Yeah Right, you know it's really going to hit that same ceiling. You still can't get AI to say, hey, make me a completely unique, like original painting of a cat getting a goldfish out of a fishbowl. Let's say so. We paint an artistic idea and we can get influence and nuance from all these. We could use a Japanese style animation, maybe 90s american comic book writing, to get a perfect image that's no one's ever seen before.

Speaker 2 25:33

Like you, yeah, drew it it's almost not perfect, though, but I think, if I like a philosophical level, like where does inspiration come from? Right, so you think about music, like can ai go and create a perfect song, like maybe, but like just you think about some of the music that's been created over millennia, you know, like what is the inspiration that we received and where does that come from? And where does that come from? I don't know. I don't know if it's ever going to be able to do that, right, you know, I was talking to a founder here in Halifax.

Speaker 1 26:00

Tukon show awesome guy took on. Does one of like a like an awesome episode this year?

Speaker 2 26:07

go back and check that one out if you like this one. Yeah, I love it. And, um, you know we had lunch with him and you know he was his vision of it I think he shared on your show is like, look, it's going to automate just the crap we don't want to do, right, so it's going to free us all up to do more of the things that we do want to do, right, you know and I I hope he's right, that's his idea behind.

Speaker 1 26:24

I love that. Yeah, yeah, and then we'll still continue to drill down and specialize in more artistic forms and keep things going yeah, we, we talked about this earlier today too.

Speaker 3 26:34

Like I, I keep saying the reason why I don't think like, why ai doesn't scare me, is that people still will always want someone to yell at I honestly, firmly believe that, like when, when things are going great, it's fine Working in the insurance industry, when things are going great, it's fine, you may never hear from your broker, you may never hear from your client, no problem. The minute something goes wrong and something gets screwed up or someone's unhappy with something, or whatever, somebody wants to talk to somebody, and if something's still not there, somebody wants to talk to somebody. And then, if something's still not there, somebody wants to yell at somebody and unfortunately, yelling to a chat box. I know you're upset, sir. Yeah, I'm trying to calm you down.

Speaker 2 27:14

Please try breathing exactly you're so right though, like if you've ever been on like an automated phone and you're just like representative, and it just keeps going you're like you just start screaming, representative even if you're going down the road with your google assistant or your siri and she doesn't understand, start screaming.

Speaker 1 27:27

representative, even if you're going down the road with your Google assistant or your Siri and she doesn't understand what you're trying to do, you're cursing at her going down the street. I've had that happen.

Speaker 3 27:34

I have a clear example of this the other day where I had one of my employees who had an upset client about something that wasn't her fault. It was something that somebody else did, but my employee was trying to clean it up. But my employee was trying to clean it up and she was trying to go through it and finally I just said I typed out the answer, I said send that answer to the client and she copied, pasted, put it in there and I was getting cc'd and that's why I knew what was going on. The next email that came back from that upside client was I understand yeah, just like that, 100% I understand.

Speaker 3 28:07

What do you need for me to fix this? Just like that? It's like you know that human touch, that human touch of like. You know, this is the step that you need to walk through, and I just don't know if the robot will let me ask you this, matt how many uh for on your team?

Speaker 2 28:23

or maybe you shouldn't even say this, but in general in sales, how many times are sales reps utilizing ChatGPT to help them craft emails?

Speaker 3 28:32

Oh yeah, none at this point. Really Probably none. Probably Wow yeah, why not Fair enough? I mean, I don't know why.

Speaker 1 28:41

It's funny, I don't use it as much as I could either.

Speaker 2 28:44

It depends. Oh man, I don't use it as much as I could either. It depends. I have it polished up all the time, do you know?

Speaker 3 28:48

what I use it the most for Making up stories to tell my son.

Speaker 2 28:52

Bedtime stories. Yes, that's 100% the thing I make it's fantastic.

Speaker 3 28:57

It's actually kind of got me sitting there, matt's so proud of his stories.

Speaker 1 28:59

He sends them to our group chat.

Speaker 3 29:01

I do.

Speaker 1 29:02

We have a group chat of friends and I'm like it's like 1030, and I'm reading about Spider-Man and Lizard-Man.

Speaker 3 29:07

I throw in some ideas. I'm like, hey, tell me a 3,000-word story, here's what I do.

Speaker 2 29:13

I go to each of them, my prompt is like look, I want a three-minute bedtime story for my three kids Kid name X, age Y and I said I want it to include the following and then you know down there, and I said I wanted to include the following. And then I go to each of them and I and I get they get the name two things each, you know. So my daughter's like, uh, I want rainbows and a watch that turns me into any animal I want. And my son's like I want to run as fast as I can and a space roller coaster. And my four-year-old's like I just want poop.

Speaker 1 29:38

Okay, what's the second thing? You want more poop. His four-year-old is obsessed with just saying the word poop. It's very funny.

Speaker 2 29:45

But then they all like, when the story comes together and their things are in it, they just oh, they think it's the greatest thing.

Speaker 3 29:51

It's true, right, but I kind of do the same thing. He's almost four, my son, and I'll say, all right, buddy, we'll do a 2,000-word story. What do you want it to be about? And he'll be man. It's like all right. Where do you want to take place? Yeah, halifax or like whatever. It was a quebec or something, right and and. And. Then it's like all right, give me two villains, all right. And so I just get him to list it off, whatever.

Speaker 3 30:12

And he got through and it's cool it's so much fun, yeah, and he loves it because it's getting his imagination going too right, thinking of scenarios and stuff. So it's it, but you know that's not working. That's my text tech stories.

Speaker 2 30:24

No, I have it polished a lot. I'm not a great writer. I think I can put some good ideas in there, and I have to polish it up. I think what's challenging, though, is I've had 20 years of figuring out how to write emails well, and so I see a lot of crap come out of ChatGPT too, but I know what's crap and what's not. I'm worried about people that are coming into the workforce now that are utilizing it for a lot of stuff, so they're not building a foundation of critical thinking these things, yeah so they're not.

Speaker 2 30:54

They're not gonna know what's good or bad.

Speaker 3 30:56

Like chat gbt writes an email, they're they're not gonna know if that's a good email or not, because they haven't gone through the school of hard knocks, of sending bad emails out, and I feel like I see that we talked about something like this earlier but how we are all fortunate to have gone through the generation that we've gone through, where we've had to go to work every day and we've built up what it is to do that. So now, when we go and do a hybrid situation or a work-from-home situation, we all know what to do at home. But when you have that 24 year old who's coming out into the workforce right away, working from home might not be the best because they just don't know, maybe, what to do, not just like you know how to operate in an office or how to operate in a workplace, but also they don't know the job they just started and the best way to learn is to from everyone around you.

Speaker 3 31:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 31:44

Right, the most I ever learned was just sitting next to very senior sales reps and just overhearing their phone calls. They wouldn't go off the phone booths, they'd do them at their desk and they'd get off the call and I'd stand up and be like, hey, you said that, why did you do that?

Speaker 1 31:59

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 3 32:01

It's the same thing with AI.

Walking Away from Corporate Security

Speaker 1 32:03

From old places that I worked like 10 or 15 years ago, that were so good at sales. You know, you tuned into them. You might not have even liked them at first, but when you understood that they just had an art of what they were doing, you're like holy smokes. They're pretty brilliant, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 32:18

Well that's the thing. So it's like it's this weird thing If you have at least five phone numbers from your childhood memorized, you might need to redo some things you might need to go into the office more you might need to not 100% remember Childhood numbers yeah, you have to know at least five telephone numbers.

Speaker 1 32:38

I might have to go to the office more that may be true.

Speaker 2 32:41

Actually I think.

Speaker 3 32:42

I know one or my own, you may know your own my parents never growing up. You know what I I could probably tell you like I definitely my own parents but, I can. I could definitely tell you um a couple of my aunts and stuff like that I don't understand.

Speaker 1 32:58

I know my mother's work. I don't know. I don't think that's a good you know what, you know what?

Speaker 3 33:01

no, it doesn't but do you know why? Well, I mean it may be different I know what you mean, but it displays something that we all at least had to do at some point in our life and that is memorizing phone numbers.

Speaker 2 33:12

Sure, yeah Right.

Speaker 3 33:13

Well, yeah, You're right about that we had to, at least at some point, not rely on the fact that everything was just in our phone, right, and that's what I mean by that right yeah when you have the technology and all that stuff and right now and everything's kind of like easier given to you, you know, like everything, there's no bar arguments anymore. You just go to wikipedia and find out yeah, it kills an argument pretty quick.

Speaker 2 33:35

Right, we can literally consult facts let me tell you about something I'm actually really concerned about in the sales side. So we're seeing ai gets so advanced so quickly that you know, right right now world I live in, we're generating a lot of leads for these companies. So you know, lead is a name and a number that you know someone might be interested in buying something. So use a sales rep, call that lead and say, hey, would you like to buy my stuff? Right, and lead gen is lead generation. So we're generating leads for marketers and sales teams is huge in the tech industry. So we're generating leads for marketers and sales teams. It's huge in the tech industry. So like, hey, microsoft, I have this security expert at this hospital that may be interested in your $100,000 solution. That's worth a lot of money. Right, here's his name and number.

Speaker 2 34:17

So what happens today in the tech industry is that usually goes through a little bit of a marketing automation system where maybe it's a lead but it's not ready to be called on yet. We're gonna send it some emails. You know an email might have a webinar for you know, watch this video about this product. Here's another white paper which is basically like a four page article on the product. We're just gonna send it more information, see if this person engages. Okay, they start engaging. Okay, there's there's probably a lot of interest. Maybe there's a project. Now we're going to send this to a business development rep, a BDR. Someone's going to pick up on, you know, going back to your cold call, someone's going to pick up the phone and say, hey, security specialist, I'm with Microsoft. You know your cold call techniques. Would you like to? You know, set up an appointment to learn more about how Microsoft would like to? You know, and try to get an appointment or try to qualify them or just try to get them to that next level. And then from a BDR, I might go to an outside sales rep. You know a big heavy hitter senior guy that comes in and says you know, or gal, that I've done that. You know I'm the Microsoft rep. Let's talk about what you're doing at your hospital, why you're in market for this. It's a true outside sales job. They're going to now do that nine-month close.

Speaker 2 35:29

What we're seeing happen in the industry now is AI is kind of starting to absorb this BDR role. So we're seeing a lot of AI, bdr-type companies come into the market that just basically do the cold calling on behalf of the BDR, but it's entire AI-based. Wow, yeah, and it's still in the BDR, but it's entire AI based. You know, yeah, and it's still in the infancy, but the idea is, you know, next year or two there's not going to be any BDRs anymore. Ai is just going to do the whole thing.

Speaker 2 35:53

Now the problem with all this is there's a lot of like short-term great benefits in that like an AI BDR rep is probably actually a lot more effective from the company's standpoint and actually more helpful from the buyer's standpoint too, because they just have a wealth of knowledge that you can never train a BDR on right.

Speaker 2 36:10

So it's better from the from the buyer's perspective, better from the company's perspective, because they way more knowledgeable again on the products and services, the information they're collecting. You know you got a BDR taking handwritten notes or um, but the problem is we're not training the future sales reps. So a lot of that again going to that outside sales rep who's now taking over that deal. They probably started as a BDR and they learned and they progressed and they scaled in their career. So how do you get to become an outside sales rep if you're never starting at a place because your starting point was taken over by AI. I go back to 2Con and what 2Con said and I believe it that AI is going to help us with a lot of stuff we don't want to do, but I think it's also going to eliminate a lot of the entry-level stuff that we needed to do to get to what we're doing now.

Speaker 1 36:56

Foundational work right, you have to have a fundamental understanding, before you move on, of a lot of things, because if you don't take your time to learn, the mundane maybe I don't want to say it's mundane, but sometimes those entry-level things you'll never, ever be able to kind of get to the next level.

Speaker 2 37:12

Yeah, so. I think, there's going to be a really messy just figuring out stuff that we're all going to have to go through.

Speaker 1 37:18

You'll talk to this super intellectual AI machine that knows absolutely everything that you're thinking, hoping and feeling. Then you get me and you're like, hey, how you doing. And I know nothing about the problem, I'm just reading what the AI is telling me to read at this point pretty well. That's a weird dilemma.

Speaker 2 37:34

It is.

Speaker 1 37:35

And then plus, you built no relationship. You were talking about, you started this on beers. No relationship building, and that's another huge thing. We need to build relationships for sales and commerce and capitalism and everything to survive is around relationships.

Speaker 2 37:53

It really is. Things are going to move really far in automation AI. I think it's going to swing back a little bit more because I think people need that human connection. They really do in a lot of different facets of life.

Speaker 1 38:03

I think we do. Maybe it needs to evolve in certain ways, but we need it yeah absolutely everyone's doing that.

Speaker 3 38:10

I mean, that's that's humanity trying to figure out its way through life all the time, right for everything, with pendulums, like you know, you go maybe a little too far one way, a little too far the other way, and you know, in an ideal world, I mean, you know, at some point in time, when you look at like star trek and stuff like that, like they still have people manning ships and driving and all that stuff, but they probably have AI doing a lot of the scanning and all that stuff for themselves, right?

Speaker 3 38:34

I mean, at some point in time we're going to be looking at a spot like will we get to a point where there's like this utopian type world where we kind of don't need to work? Right, we get to that. I mean, that's what I think people hope ai is. But at the same time there's also the fact that you know we could get star trek or we could get terminator see what happens

Speaker 2 38:56

yeah, but again I think I going back to my original point, I think a lot of fulfillment and joy actually comes from work and you know I personally, in my own life, I've seen a lot of people retire and stop working and they're almost lost. I agree. You know they lose. I mean it's pretty bleak, but a lot of people die quickly in that route.

Speaker 3 39:17

You're right 100%.

Speaker 1 39:18

No, you're right, Health declines. We've talked about this before on our show.

Speaker 2 39:21

Yeah, and there's just something weird about work that is very humanly connected with our well-being.

Speaker 1 39:28

Work or volunteer?

Speaker 3 39:29

Yeah and again I use the word work. I don't mean the work like get a paycheck.

Speaker 1 39:34

I mean I knew this guy. I mean I'll say his name. His name is Dick Serkham and when I got up I was doing the community theater stuff years ago. And then like directing with crews and a bunch of plays, plays and stuff. This guy would show up every set built and he was in his 90s yeah right, yeah, he died doing that stuff.

Speaker 1 39:50

Yeah, but he died happy but, and he worked hard and he felt great coming in and being you know, useful and loved and, yes, he'd help me engineer things that I never dream of for a set like we'd have to do, set designs.

Speaker 3 40:02

He built them in his mind. It was unbelievable. People need a purpose and I think that it was unbelievable.

Speaker 2 40:05

People need a purpose, and I think that's the thing right.

Speaker 3 40:07

People need a purpose and I think that's the biggest thing is, like you know, people retire and think like, oh, I'm just going to do what I do on vacation all the time, until you're on vacation all the time and you realize how much you love vacation because you work, you need to stop for a minute get your mind right.

Speaker 3 40:23

It's that like, ooh, I get to relax and this is awesome. It's like because you know I'm going to go back to the grind. It's almost kind of like people appreciate happiness because you are sad at times. Yeah.

Speaker 2 40:32

And I really mean that work can mean a lot of different things. So my wife, my wife, stays at home with the kids. She works way, way harder than I do, finds purpose in that, you know, and it's very important and meaningful to her and it's like it's like. You know, work means a lot of different things to different people. But, like, what did it? What is it that you're doing to contribute? And that can just be growing vegetables in your backyard yeah, like it could be as simple as that.

Speaker 2 40:57

You know, I think that there's that, there's a human connection there. That's really important. So, you know, if ai frees me up more to do other things that I love to do outside of my job, that's also awesome. To your point that could be important, but I love my job, though now, and I always have. I think there was a little.

Speaker 3 41:15

Ross is kind of a jerk though, isn't he? He kind of makes me work all the time. He definitely needs to work. No, just joking.

Speaker 1 41:22

So what's the goals now? So you got this new company created. You know, how do you see the next year unfolding, or how do you hope the next five years unfold? What's your like? I know that's a huge question but what's your? Ultimate dream here, because I think starting out such a big undertaking like you're doing is pretty fascinating.

Speaker 2 41:38

Yeah, I mean we're leaning into community. Community is huge. That was why I was talking to Toucan. I know Toucan was a huge believer in community, especially the Nova Scotia community.

Speaker 1 41:48

And I'd love to thank him for what he's still doing for Halifax to this day. Right, he's on the Volta Labs team and he's doing a lot of innovative stuff.

Speaker 2 41:55

It's really interesting too, because he's not from here, but, I think, because the Nova Scotia community has really brought him in and now he's paying it back and he's going all in which is awesome to see.

Speaker 2 42:09

For us, community is supporting our buyers, which we specifically support partner marketers. Within these companies, the ones that are focused on partnerships. They've been kind of neglected over the years and so we're trying to give them a platform to just elevate themselves and talk about the great work that they're doing. So we're trying to build a community Selfishlyly. It is tied into our commercial efforts and we're trying to elevate our brand through that community. And, um, you know, like any any big business, like we want to make, we want to make money, we want to, we want to sell a lot.

Speaker 2 42:37

For me, that gives me an opportunity to, to hire people, to help people grow. Like I've been in my career. I've seen so many people that I've been able to, as we brought in more money. I've seen them move up, I've seen them being promoted, I've been able to hire more people. I've been able to take in interns from college and for me, you know that the money's allowed me to actually elevate more lives around me and, again, support community. And that's like you think about Halifax. How do we support the businesses here? We need more investment, investments, halifax. How do we support the businesses here? We need more investment, investment's, money right, and so a lot of it's tied to that. But again, culture Culture is so important to me so I want to build a business that people are proud of, they want to work at, they feel happy we're going to try to do a four-day work week, which is something we're going to give a shot.

Speaker 3 43:23

There you go. That's sort of your hat, buddy, in your head, buddy.

Speaker 2 43:27

I love the idea of a four-day work we give you, if the business can do it, but it sounds like your business could do it.

Speaker 3 43:30

We can do it, like you're not. You're not client facing right, like you're not seeing the everyday person.

AI's Impact on Sales and Work

Speaker 3 43:33

So yeah if you can do it. I mean it's that is the way to go, yeah and uh. Yeah, I'm talking about like just empowering people to kind of work when you need to work. It doesn't matter if you can work from a beach, work from a beach. You and I were talking about this today and talking about how result-based business is simply just the best If you can do the job in three days. Do the job in three days. You expect a certain threshold, a certain target, the amount of work to get done. Richard Branson is a guy who I learned about this from a long time ago and that was his mentality. It's just simply like I don't care where people work as long as the work gets done.

Speaker 2 44:15

Yep, no, it's so true. And you know, I think I've seen a lot of people have to take Saturdays off to get stuff done, you know, and it's one less day they get to spend with their family on and off right and. I know a lot of people don't have the luxury of having that type of job and a lot of businesses don't have the luxury to do that we do, and so I'm going to lean into that because I think we can do it, so why not, you know?

Speaker 3 44:35

I love it.

Speaker 2 44:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 44:37

Yeah, it's a technique. I think people really need to look at right yeah to look at right. Yeah, and I mean we I know we talked about work-life balance and things like that and that's kind of a part of that. I mean, most important people in your life are your immediate family and if you can spend more time with them, obviously that's a huge win yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 2 44:57

It's a huge. If you're happy at home, you're gonna be happy at work.

Speaker 3 44:59

Yeah, that's a big part of it and that's yeah, I mean, that's the big thing for me. It's like you know I, I you know my son, like it's uh and he's starting school and like I drive right now, I drive to daycare every morning that's awesome and that's something that's I'm gonna kind of miss right.

Speaker 3 45:14

It's gonna cut my commute in half when I don't have to do it, but still, so fun you get that interaction yeah, exactly, and like one time even, and even, on fridays, particularly like you know, one thing that we do is, like every second Friday, we go for pancakes at McDonald's right, it's just a thing that we did.

Speaker 2 45:31

Do you know? He's going to remember that for the rest of his life. I hope so. He just will. He absolutely will.

Speaker 3 45:35

That's the thing. So it's like we go now if you ask him it's like buddy, what stories? Because we'll listen to spotty stories like ebooks and stuff like that, whatever, and that's what we do on like, on, like every second friday, right, yeah, just uh. But if someone asked me recently in my networking group, like you know, if you could change your like work life or whatever, uh, what would be ideal?

Speaker 3 46:00

and that's, honestly, if I could work 10 to 3, that would be ideal for me yeah, because I'd spend, be able to spend more time in the morning with my son, not like have to get up at like six, rush out, like get him rushed out and all that stuff, and it's like I can spend 10. I mean he's gonna go to school, so I'll change anyway, but in the moment if I work 10 to 3 to be home by 4, truly start supper, more time with family and all that stuff, was that five hours a day?

Speaker 1 46:23

yeah, okay, okay, I was like that, did you see me?

Speaker 3 46:26

counting on my fingers.

Speaker 1 46:27

You can do that though.

Speaker 3 46:29

You can take the route of doing a four-day work week. Yeah, right, if that's what it is.

Speaker 1 46:34

That's not an entrepreneur's route. I don't think. But it's a route.

Speaker 3 46:37

It's not an entrepreneur's route I mean. Well, it depends what you get. It depends what you day work week, but I'm working 24 hour days, yeah, right, yeah, like obviously, with you starting off, you're gonna do. Yeah, you're gonna work when the client needs you to work. Yeah, I think you'll get there.

Speaker 1 46:53

I think that and that's thing like too. Like you know, like I don't, I don't hate what you just said there about the 10 to 3 idea. I think it's a, it's great, it would be beautiful, but I think you have to. I mean, I don't want to say this is upsetting anyone, but I think if you're a younger person, you're listening right now, in the beginning. It's not going to be that 100% no, no.

Speaker 1 47:14

You've got to grind, you've got to push, because if you want to make more money, you're going to have to work harder than the next guy and the next guy and all that shit.

Speaker 1 47:21

No, you're 100% right so it's like you can get there and I think, like you know, you can get there and I think they're. I mean there are people, I mean in the broker world that probably do exactly that. They probably do do a 10 to 3 probably do. They got their stuff straight and they've been doing it for a long time and their time and their, their, they're, they're so valuable at this point. Yeah, they manage so much, so efficiently.

Speaker 2 47:40

Yes, 10 to 3 to them you say, the efficiently is key there, right I think, like. I mean, we all grinded when we were younger. Right, you just put in the work. Part of it is because you're just not as efficient.

Speaker 1 47:49

Well, like you, matt, you've been a manager for 15 years, so you're going to be more effective and faster at that. Mike decided to manage a team tomorrow. He's going to be a lot slower at it.

Speaker 3 47:58

Well, there's things like that. And then, hey, this is the time when I do this type of stuff. Whatever, these are my hours available. Every business that opens go to a chiropractor. Chiropractors seem to have the most erratic hours on the face of any business ever. You're right.

Speaker 2 48:19

It's like on.

Speaker 3 48:20

Wednesdays we do two to ten.

Speaker 2 48:22

I've never noticed this. Is this a? Thing?

Speaker 1 48:32

It might not be in your, it might not be in the us. Here it's ridiculous. Not just chiropractors, actually there's a lot of professions there's like optometrists it's like we're what.

Speaker 3 48:35

You only open 12 to 3 this day. What does that even mean?

Speaker 1 48:36

it's. You just showed up and shut the doors down. What did you do?

Speaker 3 48:38

you have to go on there. It's like mondays we work nine to five. Tuesdays we work 10 to three it's a matt Conrad schedule.

Speaker 2 48:45

It is a total Matt schedule.

Speaker 1 48:46

Matt Conrad schedule would be the same hours every day.

Speaker 2 48:53

Same hours every day, ten to three.

Speaker 3 48:56

But the thing is one you've got to train your clients, You've got to train who you're working with in order to know what your schedule is and all that stuff. And the other thing is exactly what you said Don't walk in on day one looking at the most successful person and saying, oh, they make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they make it look easy.

Speaker 1 49:15

I can do that day one as well, because it wasn't easy in the beginning. Exactly Right, it sucked, it sucked for a long time it sucked, and they probably wanted to give up ten times over and they hated their lives.

Speaker 3 49:23

Enter Rick 10 times over and they hate their lives. Enter Rick. That's fun.

Speaker 1 49:33

We forgot to say where we were actually at today, because we're obviously 46 minutes in here. So where were we today, gentlemen? Oh, where were?

Speaker 3 49:41

we earlier, not right now. We're at Station 6, right now we're at Station 6 right now, one of our favorite spots.

Speaker 1 49:45

Yes, and Avan Propeller Galax. Yes, and having propeller galaxies.

Speaker 3 49:48

And what did you have, richard? Dirty Blonde, dirty Blonde, yeah.

Speaker 1 49:50

Nine Locks Dirty Blonde. All great beards, but we did something fun today. Yeah, we did something really fun today. That's why I'm saying beards instead of beards. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 50:02

I'm tired which is run through Lawrence Conrad, previous guest, through the Canadian military. It's amazing. So it was a fun day. It was an early morning. We were down there at like 7 o'clock downtown.

Speaker 2 50:17

You get a four-year-old who couldn't have been that early. You must get up early, right? Yes?

Speaker 3 50:23

I was telling this to Mike yesterday. You know what I woke up to yesterday? My wife and four-year-old at 10 to 6 howling like wolves. That's what I woke up to.

Speaker 1 50:33

You know what I told him about your little one? Because when we were all in Mexico together a couple years ago, how he was obsessed with wolf howling.

Speaker 2 50:41

Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, remember that, he was just ow.

Speaker 1 50:44

The entire time we were there that, yeah, I remember that it was just the entire time we were there.

Speaker 2 50:48

It's so funny, but we did get up early.

Speaker 3 50:49

We had it got up early. We had it headed to a military base, yeah, yeah. So we went down to the military base, which was great, and we all got on a bus and they shipped us an hour and a some odd way to camp all the shot where we had to watch.

Speaker 2 51:01

We stood in a firing range where we get to watch machine guns get shot off we get to pick them up too we get to play with them yeah, not loaded, but we got to pick them up yeah, c9, c7, c6s, yeah, which is not too foreign from the american over here.

Speaker 1 51:16

But you know, I left mine at home. So, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was like he's like I've seen all these, I have all these. He's like what's the big deal here, boys, this is like weak, but yeah, no, so we get to do that, which is, I thought, was pretty cool. I mean, it was a cool.

Speaker 3 51:27

What's the big deal here, boys? This is like weak, but yeah, no. So we get to do that, which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, it was a cool experience just to see we get to have lunch with the military folks.

Speaker 2 51:35

Those guys are awesome, yeah, I thought the whole program was pretty cool because, you know, coming in from an outsider, just seeing how you know the military is trying to show the business leaders locally that like, look, we have reservists that are not full time in the military they have to work in the private sector and you should understand, like what it is that they're doing when they're not at your company, like, why are they?

Speaker 2 51:55

why are they needing time off to go and train? What's their purpose? How are they supporting Canada? And then, what do we need from you, business leaders, to to make sure that we can continue this mission and so it was really cool from an outside perspective watching that and seeing how the Canadian government is leaning into this program to help connect business.

Speaker 1 52:13

And the passion in these young people that know that they're doing the right thing and knowing that they're helping their country out. They care about their country more than anyone. It's amazing, right. It's a wonderful thing to see.

Speaker 3 52:24

And so now, as a business leader and business owner, what was your takeaway from that?

Speaker 2 52:29

Is that something that you would if the program existed, and all that stuff where you are Totally I mean, look, I think, whatever country you're from, I think patriotism to a certain extent is really healthy and it's really good. And you're talking about boys and girls. I say boys and girls, I mean some of them are our age older, but these men and women are you know, they're not getting paid a lot to do this first of all right and they're putting their lives on the line.

Speaker 2 52:52

Like you know even you, matt, you were telling me your story you got injured serving right, like I mean, you can die and get injured just of their lives to do that right, and I think you know, I think a lot of people just naturally resonated towards that, but they're not always thinking about it, and so I like programs like this that just really just wake people up, give them perspective. Like look these people, you know it's thursday night and you're gonna go watch netflix. This person's got to go down to the base and do work, you know it's the weekend and you're just hanging out having a picnic.

Speaker 2 53:26

This person's got to go train. That's the life they chose, but there's certain things that we can do to support it and I think that's huge. The other thing I will notice, as kind of an outsider, is that military they're trained to kill the enemy. They're killers, not in a bad way, but that's what they're trained to do. Some of ew, some of the nicest people I've ever met, same thing? Yeah, it was like the Canadian military, like these are really nice people.

Speaker 1 53:52

Genuinely very kind, friendly people. We sat down at lunch with some boys and they were like you know.

Speaker 3 53:55

We felt like we were their friends for years.

Speaker 1 53:57

Right, we were all cracking jokes at the end because they were our buddies.

Speaker 3 54:00

Super nice so no, I agree with you on that.

Speaker 1 54:02

After they just left their machine guns, yeah, so thanks Lawrence, we really appreciated that, and to the Canadian Reserves, we really appreciate that too. Thanks a lot, guys. So. Rick we do a part of this show. I think we've got to get into it now. We call it 10 questions. Okay, now, matt and I didn't really have 10 questions prepared today because we've been super busy hanging out with you all day, so that's not an insult. We've had a lot of fun with you. But we're going to make them up on the fly again.

Finding Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur

Speaker 1 54:29

Yeah let's do it so making them up on the fly have sometimes been our wildest ones.

Speaker 3 54:33

Is it better or worse? I think they're better, I think they're better, it's 50-50,. I think, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I think it's 50-50.

Speaker 1 54:41

You didn't do the first one, you went for it.

Speaker 3 54:43

No fire away.

Speaker 1 54:46

Gosh, we'll just cut this out if it takes me long to think. I had something, I lost.

Speaker 2 54:52

It Okay, rick what is the purpose of suffering Growth? Are these supposed to be one-word answers or explanations?

Speaker 1 55:03

Yes, as long or as short as you want.

Speaker 2 55:05

I think growth you look, look, you look at anyone Like let's not talk about like personal suffering in your life, but like you just look at, like training, right, Like the harder I train and suffer, the stronger I'll be right. And I think that there's applications of that in a lot of different ways. And when you're suffering through something, you know, I think what meaning do you take from it to? How do you grow from it? Cool, that was a hard-hitting first question I wanted to jump right in there.

Speaker 1 55:32

Any other beer for the next one? Jump into your soul. Man, that's what we do, just firing away. You can do a softball if you want.

Speaker 3 55:40

You did a little softball. I'll go soft on this one. I'll go soft If you had to listen to one album for the rest of your life and it's the only music you can listen to. What would it be?

Speaker 2 55:54

Oh man, all right, I'm going to say no. Doubt's Tragic Kingdom, oh nice.

Speaker 1 56:02

Whoa, okay, I mean, I have the cassette, I have that cassette.

Speaker 2 56:08

I mean, look, not my favorite artists or favorite band or all time songs, but all the songs on that album Are actually really good.

Speaker 1 56:16

They were good songs. I'm just thinking in it's entirety.

Speaker 3 56:20

No doubt, by the way.

Speaker 2 56:23

No more music questions. Probably the limit of my music questions Do you like the new. Gwen Stef music questions. No, it's all good.

Speaker 1 56:28

Do you like the new question? No, I don't want to ask another question. Okay, so I'll have to ask you about this, I mean as an American, just talking about trade. I mean, you know, if Rick was president, what would you do about the Canada-US trade thing that's going on right now? How would you resolve it? What would the Rick solution be?

Speaker 2 56:50

I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if you saw the news today, but Trump yeah just ended all talks, yeah Right. And so I think I understand At least this one's a little bit easier for me to understand why I think a lot of times it's like like why did he do that? Like I just don't get it?

Speaker 2 57:06

yeah, you know, it's because of the three percent tax on digital services of companies over 20 million. So he's trying to. You know, all those top companies in the world digitally are us companies and so he's trying to protect us companies. Right, and I think if you flip it and you think like, well, does canada ever do anything to protect canadian companies? And the answer is like yeah, all the time. Yeah, they do, and so I'm not justifying it, but I can understand that. How would I solve it? I don't know. I mean, I think I'm a libertarian at heart, so I'm a very free trade kind of guy, you know. But I think there are a lot of trade imbalances around the world where, like, well, we're free on our end, but you're imposing a tariff on your end. This doesn't make sense. We should rectify it, not saying Canada's doing that. I don't know. I have free maple syrup on all goods and services going over.

Speaker 1 57:53

That was a really, really tough question. Man, the border, yeah, I think you've done great. I think you've done great. Cheers to that answer.

Speaker 2 57:58

I'm out of the beer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 58:02

No I don't know.

Speaker 2 58:04

You guys have always been a good neighbor. Yeah, obviously I married a Canadian, so you guys have a good heart, 100%. I don't know. We're feeling the love this year. We've got to figure it out. Canadians are a little, I mean. I think we've gotten better. I get why you're upset, I totally do we totally felt wounded this year.

Speaker 1 58:22

Yeah, I mean for Canadians listening, there's such a jump in Canadian sovereignty. It was like nothing you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 58:27

I hate to say this Trump has been the best thing that's ever happened to Canada, to unite Canada?

Speaker 3 58:32

Okay, I wouldn't go that far.

Speaker 2 58:34

I don't know if he's the best thing that's ever happened to Canada.

Speaker 1 58:36

We'll wait to see what happens when this recession comes or doesn't come.

Speaker 3 58:42

You see what I'm saying, though he's brought you guys together To your point one of the best things that has come out of this, I think, unnecessary bickering because we've existed with each other for hundreds of years already. So this unnecessary feud. The best thing that's come out of it is us looking inward and tearing down interprovincial boundaries. That have happened. It literally was easier to import from the United States than it was to import from a counterparty Just today.

Speaker 1 59:12

Matt, the beer thing. Did you hear about that? Yes, Tell us about the beer thing.

Speaker 3 59:17

Well, let's stay on top. I was excited about the beer thing it's a good result.

Speaker 3 59:23

There's definitely some good results. I would argue that because of that, we got what I think is a good result in terms of our federal election. Not everyone's going to be happy that the liberals are back in power, but the fact is that it's not about to me, it's not about the liberals being back in power. It's more about the fact that we have a guy who's a little bit more centered and knows the world economy yeah, better than anyone we've probably have had, maybe ever, but at least since crutchett kind of thing, right. So there is some really good things that have come out of it, but you know, I still wish that we could just put this behind and start being best buddies again totally, totally.

Speaker 2 1:00:03

and like, look, when I, when I said it's the best thing for canada obviously a joke there, but there, but I think it is causing a lot of countries to like say, well, look, maybe we can't 100% depend on America, but, to be fair, maybe you should 100% depend on America in a lot of different ways. And to your point like what are we doing as a country and how do we come together and do what's best? I think that's good for you guys. I don't think like, look, if I do it differently, I probably would. You guys have been a good neighbor and I don't like pissing off our neighbors that have that unintended consequence.

Speaker 1 1:00:32

We had the best trade agreement for like 150 years in the world Like it was huge Huge trading partners of all time yeah, Insane.

Speaker 3 1:00:39

So All right. It is what it is we got to go to the next?

Speaker 1 1:00:42

question Next question.

Speaker 3 1:00:43

That was a long question, but that's fine. Favorite style of beer.

Speaker 2 1:00:48

Oh man, so style? Oh look, we were talking about drinking a lot earlier, and sometimes I just like a light beer because I can just have a ton of them From Golden, Colorado. Coors is the factory there, so I love a good Coors Light.

Speaker 1 1:01:05

I saw Golden Colorado. I was there. I saw the cores thing I never got to go in, but I saw the sign.

Speaker 2 1:01:09

Yeah, yeah so I mean I like, I just like a light beer because I can drink a lot of them and I drink pretty fast and I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get wasted with two or three beers yeah, you know so cool cores light.

Speaker 3 1:01:20

There you go. You know cores.

Speaker 2 1:01:22

First name is adolf, fun fact fact Adolf, of course, just throwing that out there.

Speaker 3 1:01:28

I just thought it was a fun fact.

Speaker 2 1:01:31

No comment.

Speaker 1 1:01:34

I don't even know what to say. Next question your question. That's my question. Okay, if you could place it from the places you've seen across Canada, if you could pick a place to move to, where would you pick?

Speaker 2 1:01:46

It would have to be Cape Breton, cape Breton yeah.

Speaker 1 1:01:49

Beautiful, it's beautiful, one of the most beautiful places ever right.

Speaker 2 1:01:52

Yeah, and the reason is because, surprisingly, the water there has been warmer. So the what is it? The Bedore Lakes.

Speaker 1 1:01:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:01:58

Yeah, every time I've gone to the Bedore Lakes the water's been warm.

Speaker 3 1:02:01

Mm-hmm, you crescent by by you and the water's like ice bath. Well, that's all that. That's atlantic ocean water. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, but I like cape breton. Cape breton's beautiful. I mean, if you go over on the, the west side of cape breton, over like the uh, the inverness beach, the water's warm really it is okay, and that I mean that's not ocean water, but it is salt water. It's in the bay of st lawrence like this but I love it.

Speaker 2 1:02:26

It reminds me of the pacific coast.

Speaker 3 1:02:28

Highway of california meets maine yeah right, it's kind of the two come together, and so that's what my wife and I did the drive, the.

Speaker 2 1:02:35

What's the drive called? The the driver on cape breton oh, the highway trail, cabot, trail, yeah, yeah and we kept going these places and I'm I'm looking at my wife like this is amazing. We are all the people because it was like peak summertime yeah, yeah and she just goes. There's just not that many people in canada because, like you go see something like that in california.

Speaker 2 1:02:54

It's just like cars everywhere and hundreds of people there's. You almost have like an, you know, just a pristine landscape that's just not overcrowded and I love it all right, how's that?

Speaker 3 1:03:06

how's that a pitch for?

Speaker 1 1:03:07

nova scotia, the tourism side, nova scotia.

Speaker 3 1:03:13

You're sorry, you go ahead yeah, sure, okay, uh, okay, I'm gonna throw out a fun one yes, thank goodness kind of a fun one here. Everyone talks about canada being the 51st state. But what, what problem or what state do you think would make a really good 11th province? Oh man.

Speaker 1 1:03:31

Oh, good question, I love that.

Speaker 2 1:03:33

What do you mean? A good province? There's a couple I could carve off. We don't need North Dakota. You can carve it off, you can have.

Speaker 1 1:03:42

North Dakota. Okay, so maybe North Dakota would be like another Saskatchewan for us, yeah, yeah, let me think about this though.

Speaker 3 1:03:49

Who needs Wyoming? There's like two people there.

Speaker 2 1:03:56

Man, I'd probably say Oregon. I feel like Oregon would be a good fit for Canada?

Speaker 3 1:04:02

Okay, cool, rick and I are friends. Yeah, you know why? Because, literally, that is the hop capital of America. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:04:11

Probably a lot of beards, a lot of IPAs.

Speaker 3 1:04:14

Some great beers that come out of Oregon.

Speaker 2 1:04:16

It's coastal too.

Speaker 3 1:04:17

Yeah, cool, I like that answer Shout out to Oregon.

Speaker 1 1:04:19

Shout out to Oregon Rogue beer. Say it one more time. We'll hit the algorithms. Hit the algorithms. Oregon, no Rogue Beer.

Speaker 3 1:04:28

Next time you come up from Colorado, if you have come across Rogue Beer you bring me some, we'll reimburse you.

Speaker 2 1:04:33

Is that legal? Yeah, you should.

Speaker 1 1:04:36

We've just resolved inter-provincial trading on beers. I'm not sure if we're ready for beers crossing borders yet. That's a whole new program.

Speaker 3 1:04:43

Your turn.

Speaker 2 1:04:45

What number are we at?

Ten Questions with Rick

Speaker 3 1:04:50

I feel like we should just do the last question. I'm tired. I mean, you want to just do?

Speaker 1 1:04:52

the last question you started, so you have to do one. Then I have to do one, so one each.

Speaker 3 1:04:54

So I'd me, and then you do the last question okay, um gosh.

Speaker 1 1:04:58

Okay, rick, I know you. I know just from knowing you as a friend you're a science fiction guy yeah um what's one of your favorite science fiction books or whatever, of all time?

Speaker 2 1:05:07

Oh man. Well, I really like the Expanse series.

Speaker 1 1:05:10

Okay.

Speaker 2 1:05:10

Yeah, I know SyFy made a show on it. Expanse series was really good. I liked the ending. That was a good one. But I mean, I go back to nostalgia. Ender's Game really got me into SyFy as a kid.

Speaker 3 1:05:22

I think I was 15 or 16.

Speaker 2 1:05:23

I read Ender's Game.

Speaker 3 1:05:24

Yeah, I read that in grade 9 or something that's just got a nostalgia to it.

Speaker 2 1:05:30

I loved Ender's Game. It's a good book, perfect.

Speaker 1 1:05:33

Good answer.

Speaker 2 1:05:35

Don't rate my answers.

Speaker 1 1:05:36

They're all good. They're all good, they're all good. Answers, I'm easy so last question.

Speaker 3 1:05:41

Last question we ask this to everybody. So what is one piece of advice that you were given in your life that you'd like to give to us? Oh, man.

Speaker 2 1:05:50

It ties back to the show today. So it wasn't advice, but it was something I heard that just resonated with me and it was. It was a question. It was are you a cog in someone else's operating system? Or maybe it was are you a cog in someone else's machine? Right, and that's like I was unhappy in my job and that's.

Speaker 2 1:06:05

I heard that and it just instantly felt like, yeah, I am just a cog in someone else's machine, and you know that. That doesn't mean like you can't find happiness working in a corporation, because it's not your corporation, but like I just felt like I was in the wrong, the wrong system. And the more I thought about, the more I was like this is just not right for me. I have to leave this cushy job and all the security that comes with it to do something different. And so I just ask like, are you, do you feel like you're finding yourself that you're a cog in someone else's machine?

Speaker 2 1:06:39

You know, are you, are you doing what you really want to do and chasing what you really want to do? And are you finding happiness and fulfillment? And if not, change it, fix it, take a risk, like, do what you need to do, and that doesn't mean you're going to fix it tomorrow, but you can set your, and for me it took me six months of and I worked really hard every day at those six months to make it happen. And it might take six years, you know. But like, are you at least now on a path to get where you need to go? And so you know, are you a cog in someone else's operating system? Is my advice slash question.

Speaker 1 1:07:11

I love.

Speaker 2 1:07:12

It Very fitting I didn't know that was coming actually. Cheers man, you're brilliant, thanks guys.

Speaker 1 1:07:18

Appreciate it. Best luck with your company.

Speaker 3 1:07:23

Thank you Bye.